THINKING ABOUT PIZZA

There are three possibilities. 1) Cantonese women think of garlic and meat upon waking up. 2) Single women think of garlic and meat upon waking up. 3) All women think of garlic and meat upon waking up.

Clearly it cannot be ALL women, because some of them think of kittens or little butterflies. The precious.


Having left just before eight o'clock, when my apartment mate was still asleep in her bed, I was somewhat disconcerted to find raw chicken pieces marinating in garlic, soy, and black beans sitting on the kitchen counter when I went in there forty five minutes later for my second cup of coffee after smoking my pipe while taking a walk. It's a beautiful morning out there, y'all should go out and enjoy it.

Stay away from the pipe smokers, darlings, they don't want to die from whatever infection you are carrying.

The Canto auntie with the pistachio-hued hat was on the other side of the street, walking up and down the slope for exercise. Once she had finished, she undoubtedly went home to consider garlic and meat.
Such comforting thoughts.


It may be just a Cantonese women thing. When you grow up in a household that thinks of sticky rice chicken, pork siu mai, wu gok, and hargow, as the breakfast of champions, at least once a week, with a crowd of noisy kinfolk getting all hepped on tea, then garlic and meat in the morning easily come to mind. These women are mostly descended from grave robbers, salt smugglers, and congenital gangsters, who fled south during Tang and Sung times to escape the tax man and civilized authority. Live life with zest, or whine operatically at great length with theatrical gestures and anger.

Or it could be single women. No kids and no lumpen-male with a beer belly to consider. Children and men are sensitive and delicate creatures, who will easily turn green in the morning. Unless someone offers them leftover pizza.

And I doubt that it's all women or even a close approximate of that number.
In Africa, they would think of fufu, piri piri, and bush meat.
Southerners, on the other hand.....

Fried doughy crap, syrup, eggs, and a sludge-puddle of grits. The English equivalent is fried tomato slices, cold toast, and gluggy oatmeal, sometimes with a kidney plopped on top.
So by no means "all women".


Perhaps just 'all Cantonese women'. I can definitely imagine the ladies at the pharmacy and the nurses I've met at clinic, in Chinese Hospital reacting with considerable joy to garlic and meat at the crack of dawn. As well as the frail old auntie at the bakery whom I've known for years, her former employers who have retired, and the slim young thing at my favourite chachanteng which is presently closed.

It does not extend to men. What we think of in the morning is stale pizza, coffee, and the New York Times (nicely ironed for that knife edge crease). There has been no stale pizza in this household in many years (which is my fault, I suppose), and I do not subscribe to any newspapers because the street people would make off with it before I have a chance to pick it up from the front steps. Some men simply think of beer.


I suspect that my apartment mate is simply thinking ahead to lunch. There's an awful lot of raw chicken there, but despite being smaller than me and thinnish besides, she can manage.

I'll probably prepare a sausage and some greens for lunch.
Good with toasted cheesy bread and hot sauce.
I'm a fastidious eater.




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