LIVING, WITH STINKY MAN

Both aunties were outside yesterday. Auntie with the cheerful pistachio-hued hat was doing her morning walkies the first time I went outside for a smoke, and at around the cocktail hour, surreptitious cigarette auntie was sitting on a ledge across the street having a puff. From those descriptive nicknames you may correctly assume that they are older Cantonese ladies.
Gay pistachio-hued hat auntie gets more exercise now than I do on my off days, traversing probably between ten and fifteen blocks in the neighborhood at the crack of dawn, and undoubtedly many more later in the day.

All together I did around twelve blocks. For a large part of the day I did not need to leave the building. It's only when my non-smoking apartment mate is home that I go outside to smoke.
Or if I need to purchase food supplies.

If I haven't smoked in the thirty minutes before she comes home, she won't notice it. Probably because the faint trace of a pipe is comforting, familiar, fuzzy and just like a teddy bear.

Also, she has a lousy sense of smell. Which probably explains why she lives here and puts up with me. My presence is not refined.

Normally, Asians think that white people stink a bit.


LATE NIGHT, AND TIME TO PANIC

The Chinese are coming! They're in the neighborhood! They're in the building! There's even one of them in my apartment! An old classmate from the third time I went to college, who occupies the other room here. And, because she is a non-smoker, I headed out to brave the wilds of Polk Street with my pipe. Caucasians were getting smashed there and skateboarding. Dodged the nuts successfully, but that was the last smoke of the day.
It gets much worse later.

White Americans drunk on fruit-flavoured cocktails skateboarding is plenty of reason to panick. Especially if they're not wearing masks. Fortunately they have a hard time coming up the hill, because they're originally from the flat states.


Both my apartment mate and I get up shortly after six AM. She makes herself breakfast, I have coffee and head out for a smoke. She usually leaves just before eight, when it's time for my second cup. On my work days, rather than talking a walk with a pipe, I'll head into the bathroom shortly after seven o'clock. Ablutions, teeth, and a shave.

I'm not quite socially capable till mid morning anyway.


Oh yeah, lots of ventilation too.
Ventilation is important.

TOBACCO INDEX


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