The interesting people you meet at the Chinatown Food Court

So at lunch time today I had a craving for inferior laksa (the good stuff being unavailable at the moment due to “the family problem”), so I went to the inferior food court at Chinatown. It was pretty busy, and there were no unoccupied tables. So I did a scan to see which seat in the food court would allow me to sit furthest away from any other patron. That sounds bad, but think about it for a while and you’ll realise that you do the same in this situation.

The best I could do was a seat two seats down from a reasonably normal looking woman. As I approached, balancing my laksa in the beautiful perilous dance of man and foodstuff, the woman glanced up from her beverage and asked me if I needed a hand.

This is where I should have flung my food tray at her and fled the scene. But at the time, I thought she was just being considerate. So I smiled, said something along the lines of ‘thanks but no thanks’ and took my destined seat two seats down from her.

She seemed to ignore me as I picked up my spoon and plunged it beneath the surface of the spicy yellow liquid. Then, at the very moment before arrival in flavour country, she turned to me and said ‘sorry, it’s just that when you live with a family member who’s suffered from burns, you tend to be a bit jumpy around soup.’

Okay, fair enough. Fine. ‘Yeah’ I reply, in a friendly but non-committal way, my spoon poised halfway between the bowl and my mouth.

‘Oh!’ she says. ‘You’ve got a family member who’s been burned too, do you?’

‘No. But I agree, soups can be mighty perilous.’

‘My daughter got burned from some hot water. On her upper thigh [crazy woman’s emphasis, not mine]. We tried running some cold water on it, but boiling water seeps in under the skin. It wouldn’t heal. They had to take a skin graft from some skin on her back, and…’

I won’t recount the entire speech here. She went on for quite a while, and I threw in a ‘yep’ every now and then. By the end I tried to use the tone of my yeps to indicate I’d prefer the conversation to end. I still hadn’t tasted sweet laksa. It seems to me a little insensitive to eat something aromatic and delicious while a woman tells you about her burnt daughter.

Anyway, by this point I hadn’t decided that the woman was crazy, but perhaps just lonely and sad. Still, her daughter’s condition rapidly worsened as she went on, and in addition to her skin graft she was now mentally disabled and ‘dying’ (no elaboration on this last was forthcoming).

Finally she ran out of steam. I took my chance to start tucking in to my laksa. But my enjoyment was to be short lived. ‘What do you do?’ she asked.

I replied that I was a student doing work experience at a law firm. ‘Oh’ she said. ‘Oh. Lawyers. There’s a lot of 666ers and Freemasons in that line of work.’

In one sense, I was relieved, because now I could neatly plonk this woman into the crazy person category. Having worked out where she fit in the grand scheme of things, I could eat my soup and chat without worry.

‘I must say I haven’t heard of any lawyers into that sort of stuff’ said I. [as an aside, does anyone know what a ‘666er’ is? Being a lawyer, I might be one and not even know it].

‘Oh yeah, they’re everywhere, especially in the Family Court.’

‘Really? I don’t have much to do with the Family Court, so I guess you could be right.’

‘Heaps of them, there are. They’re going to get a big shock when they’re in front of the Lord Jesus!’ She laughed at this, so, being the polite young man that I am, I did too.

She continued her rant: ‘I had a lawyer friend once. He said he didn’t believe in God. I said that it’s easy not to believe in something when you can’t see it, but it’ll be very hard not to believe when you’re standing in front of Him! After he heard this my friend repented and quit his job as a lawyer.’

My laksa was growing cold, and although this lady was interesting, I didn’t want her to start quoting Bible passages at me. I also realised that this was a golden opportunity that might not come again. I turned to her and said ‘hold out your hand.’

She did, but asked ‘why?’

I replied ‘I want to draw a pentagram on it.’

She was out of that food court in a flash. And so it was that I contributed to the widely held view that lawyers are the servants of the devil.

Laksa Time!

For the last three days I've been working at a law firm a stone's throw away from the central markets. On Monday, I had Suzuki Sushi for lunch. Mmmm, that's good sushi.

On Tuesday, I had Suzuki Sushi for lunch. Then I had Sushi King for tea.

By the time lunch came around today, I was (a) sick of sushi; and (b) hungry as all getup. There was only one solution: a Laksa House Large Laksa Noodle for $6.80!

I was a bit hesitant, because eating Laksa is generally a messy business, and I was wearing the suit that I'll be living in for (at least) the next five and a half weeks. Nevertheless, the call was too strong. I ordered from the friendly Laksa woman, and she looked at me like I was mad. She made a point of giving me extra serviettes. She said: 'I give you some extra serviettes'.

Suitably warned, I took my tray, and balancing a full bowl of steaming Laksa and a Peach Iced Tea, headed for a vacant seat. The food court was busy, and I sat down diagonally opposite a friendly looking man with no obvious signs of disease. I started to eat. VERY carefully.

I'm pleased to report that I managed to stay completely free of tricky laksa stains. I also got that amazing laksa high you get after a good laksa (try it, you'll see!). Tonight I went jogging, and the laksa helped overcome my lack of commitment to a regular training regime.

All in all, a good day.



In other news

Julian: Bottle Baby!

Jerry Falwell has died. I really try hard not to express happiness at the death of another human being, but perhaps there's an exception to every rule. Here's something funny related to this piece of news. Extract:

Buddha: I think he should go back for another few lifetimes. We could start him off as a tadpole.

Vishnu: That's your answer to everything, Buddha!

Buddha: Take it easy, third-eye.

Vishnu: Oh, go sit under a tree!

Jesus: Could we not talk about trees?