TATAR NOISES FROM BEYOND THE WALL

He arrived when I had just finished my pipe. The bus had been on time, earlier than usual. There may have been a connection to the state of the driver's bladder. Smoking a pipe had taken up nearly forty five minutes, which had been peaceful other than a screech from an insane man about a block away, repeated two or three times with long intervals between.
And one or two skeevy dudes passing by hurriedly.

The city, at night, has an unsuspected population of Frenchmen. Quite possibly they were visiting in an attempt to avoid the tourists in Paris, and if so, it was an ironic venture.
French tourists avoiding other tourists by touristing.


One Coca Cola and two teabags later we entered the usual karaoke dive, where there were no loud white women like there often are. Nothing ruins a nice quiet evening at karaoke like loud white women and their hunkastudlies. Who are usually filled with cheap booze, hormones all rampant, and Axe body spray awafting.

Two dudes at the near end of the bar, not singing. One of them later did.

It may have been alcohol that spurred him to do so.

We had not encouraged him.

The white guy surprised me by karaoking the theme song to The Bund (上海灘 'seung hoi tan'; a seminal 1980's Hong Kong teevee series set in 1920's Shanghai). At one point you could heard Francis Yip's dulcet voice crooning 'long pan, long lau, man lei tou tou ...' (浪奔，浪流，萬里滔滔 ... ) nearly everywhere. His rendition was not nearly so good, but I respect his balls for trying. Alcohol also may have given him the courage. In the final episode, Chou Yunfat (the hero of the show) is gunned down while smoking a cigarette outside a nightclub, proving that cigarettes are unhealthy. So why, as a pipesmoker, did I purchase that pack of Wu Ye Shen ciggarettes (五葉神香煙 'ng yip san heung yin') earlier? Well, because I could.
I now have two regular sources of smuggled ciggies, and I am a typical Brabander with a disrespect for the excise, just like my tribe have been for four centuries.

By the way, I should mention that the best tobacconist in Eindhoven began three generations ago as a tobacco smuggler thumbing his nose at local authorities, the border, competition, and local producers.


A rather splendid night. Fog, whisps of burning Virginia fragrance, plus something that resembled music, and caffeinated beverages.

Mostly calm, except for the rap noises twice disturbing the peace.
Unmelodic, with unprintable lyrics.



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