DIFFERENT OTHER CHAP

Lunch was Portuguese Chicken Rice (葡國雞飯 'pou gwok gai faan') at a place where I like going, because at that hour there are only a few regulars, not the crowd of gabbadooks that hang around most of the day. It does not resemble anything Portuguese, or Macanese, or even the Hong Kong original, being instead a mild curry chicken and vegetable dish next to a mound of rice. Very pleasant. Positively great with sambal. Along with two cups of tea it was a lovely preamble to smoking my pipe while listening to a nutball having a screaming argument with herself at the edge of the park, nearly a block away.
A nice peaceful afternoon.

All of us ocassionally have arguments with ourselves. Most of us do it silently in the mind, not screaming and howling out loud. We learned self-modulation as children. It's a valuable skill.


"I am retired window cleaner and pacifist. Without doing war crimes."
------Heinrich Bimmler, who was not head of Gestapo. At all.


I know nothing, NOTHING, about the North Minehead by-election, Britisher pig!

As soon as the bartender at the place where my friend and I went after the burger joint saw me, she put the kettle on. Which I appreciate. Not that I am by nature abstemious, but I haven't touched liquour in years. It could interact with my medication to unfortunate effect. Truth be told, I don't miss it. And sofar no stupid butch hickster from the primitive hinterlands has called me a pussy for my old lady drink. Possibly because I radiate homicidal insanity, or possibly because I look both fierce and deftig at the same time and they don't know what to make of that. Two cups of tea at the bar several hours after lunch.

The eccentricity level outside was much as it had been then. Different people, same level of normal unusualness, but far less screaming. The unstable gentleman who has fights with newspaper racks and instateller machines floated past while I was waiting, quieter and more restrained than normal. One of the regular insane people wandered past with his bedclothes, there was a mystic white person worshipping nature in one of the alleys, and a young woman with an non-existent cell-phone tromped along the street ahead of me for a block before hanging up and turning the corner.

There were the usual small groups of outsiders wandering past now and then. Some of them loud, some looking suspicious and being quiet. Which I can sort of understand.
Given so much text which is not clear for those who can't read.
Almost like it's a foreign language.
Huh.



At home during the morning I had looked up the lyrics of a song in Hokkien (閩南語). Which really is a foreign language. Leastways not understand by very many people here, other than Filippino Chinese, and even then their version differs somewhat from the standard. And tone sandhi (變調 'pin diu') makes everything more complicated to the outsider.
So best stick with Mandarin, all of you kwailo. Easier lah.

FYI: My Cantonese is sort of okay. My Mandarin is frightful.
Dutch and Malay, quite good, albeit old-fashioned.



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