continued from here
The pirate and beanstalk made a quick stop at the real Chinatown in San Francisco, to stock up on steamed buns and egg tarts before making a quick getaway in their Bonnie-and-Clyde car.
Luckily, the pirate drove. Beanstalk is better at looking out the window. The landscape changed dramatically as they left town and climbed up and over the hills. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were riding by, attacking windmills and later fighting huge armies of fruit trees. Cherry, peach, almond, olive, and orange trees stood in file along the highway, intersected by deep blue water channels.
So that’s where California oranges come from! The beanstalk half closed her eyes and the rows of trees flickered by and began to dance.
The pirate had forewarned her. People living outside of Fresno like to make jokes about the town. Real tough to be located between San Francisco and Los Angeles and not even have a beach. And something very strange happened to downtown. Aliens came and sucked up every third building, leaving empty, dusty lots. As a small thank you, they left the locals their abandoned spaceship. It is now used as city hall. The beanstalk liked it though. There was an alien invasion all over earth during the 1980s. Her own hometown also has a Battlestar Galactica, and it doesn’t look half as pretty as Fresno’s.
Downtown looks a bit empty, and that’s probably because all the cool people live, work and play in the Tower District, where the Malay pirate has his den.
In front of the den, a beautiful dove waited for the beanstalk, and she could hardly wait to fly with her. Riding a bicycle is a really lovely way to come to know a neighborhood, just the right speed to look around and take it all in. The historic gas station at the corner, street upon street of pretty old houses, trees forming a roof over the street, stunning art deco buildings, wild flowers in front yards. It was wonderful to get lost among all that.
So that was a post entirely without pictures. I promise to make up for it next time, when I will post many pictures of beautiful Fresnian princesses and … dwarfs… lol
And I hope all the pictures I uploaded to my photo site the day before yesterday will magically reappear. They seem to have vanished into cyber space.
Lecram says that I am a romantic idealist, always hoping for happy endings. Which is not true. I am actually an optimistic realist, that’s what I am, but I do hope for happy endings, and that’s why I am going to try my luck at telling a fairy tale…
Once upon a time, there was a one-inch-too-tall beanstalk with a hunched back. She boarded an overbooked fire bird with only three lavatories, one of them “out of order – sorry, for any inconvenience caused”. The crossed-legged beanstalk managed to hold on for eleven hours and forty minutes, an accomplishment of epic proportions.
She arrived in the land of the free … over the mountains, where the seven dwarfs dwell. The gate keeper asked her 1) why she had come (to cook, clean, and make beds at the 7 dwarfs’ house would have been the wrong answer), 2) if she planned to meet friends (yes), 3) looked at her suspiciously and asked to see her return ticket.
And then the beanstalk made a mistake. To the question: “Do you have any foodstuffs?” she answered “Just one apple”. That’s when she heard the tired bureaucracy of the gate keepers creak, sputter, and slowly get into gear. If you know your fairy tales, you know why they are suspicious of apples in the land over the mountains. The beanstalk had to write down “1 apple” on the blue form, which was put into a green plastic folder and given to gate keeper number two. Eventually… a small eternity later… gate keeper number five said “And by the way, we have to keep the apple”. It wasn’t poisoned, I swear. A sweet, juicy, perfectly rounded apple is now rotting in the bin at San Francisco airport, next to dried squid, porcini mushrooms, and French cheese.
So, that’s not even a happy start, but the apple smuggling one-inch-too-tall hunchback saw the funny side of it, and just gleed in anticipation to be able to blog about it one day.
Since this is a modern fairy tale, it also has a soundtrack. The lyrics are slightly creepy, that’s why the romantic idealist … eh, optimistic realist prefers the Spanish version, which she doesn’t understand.
And look, at the edge of the city on the seven mountains really stands a hotel by that name.
The beanstalk likes the city on the seven hills very much, maybe because in places it looks so similar to the land she is coming from.
When she rounded the corner, away from the “Old Shanghai” souvenir shops, it felt like home, because there was the loud, colorful chaos of hundreds of people shopping for seafood and leafy vegetables on much too narrow sidewalks.
The next day, the hunchback put on her Bond girl sunglasses and turned up at the subterranean coffee stand for a conspirative meeting with the seventh gnome, who turned out to be a Malay pirate in disguise. They measured each other with a short glance over their 007 sun glasses, and then set off to their dangerous mission.
They took the F-Line to an area with an abundance of rainbow flags, men with toned asses, and men’s knicker shops.
The hunchback liked the city even more, because she was born in a city with a gay mayor. And although he is not better or worse than non-gay mayors, his ass is at least something to look at, and maybe, one day, the rest of the land of the free will see the virtue of that. See, I am an optimistic realist to the core.
The Malay pirate had even more surprises up his sleeves. He brought the beanstalk to his Bonnie-and-Clyde car, and drove her to his wind-swept hide-out at the skeleton coast.
It even had a pool.
But his cover must have been blown, because the place was full of tourists, eager to spend weak Dollars.
So, this fairytale has a Malay pirate in disguise with evil grin…
… and a one-inch-too tall beanstalk, but where is the princess? She turned up the next morning together with her French prince. The Malay pirate had been commissioned to film her while she was speaking about her play about “falling in love and being dumped” (where is the romantic idealism… eh, optimistic realism in that ?!?!?). The French prince Julian doubled as signal man, motioning Mia to start walking along the side-walk and telling her story into a secret-agent wireless microphone. The French prince had to wave his hand four times, and passersby were clearly getting suspicious.
But eventually, his beautiful princess did turn up, and he didn’t even have to carry her glass coffin and get rid of the poisoned apple… the gate keepers did their job well.
I haven’t seen Mia’s play, and I don’t know if it has a sad or happy ending, but reality has a beautiful princess and her French prince, and young girls taking pictures of themselves with big, red hearts in the background, which validates romantic idealism, don’t you think?
Lecram promised me that I would appear in the credits as his third assistant, which makes me swell with pride…lol.
In the evening, the Malay pirate and his third assistant had a wonderful Indonesian dinner, and you can gauge for yourself who had more wine and took the blurrier picture. Although I think Lecram cheated by using the grainy mode. It got rid of all my wrinkles, so I am ok with the grainy mode.
We boarded the Bonnie-and-Clyde car and the Malay pirate promised to take me to the land of abundant fruits. On the way, his companions where cheering us on.
To be continued…
I have these wonderful jeans that not so long ago were very comfortable to wear. A month ago, I noticed that I have to wiggle a bit more to get them over my ass, and that stopping to breathe helps to close the button. The scale confirmed my fears, 3 kilos more – oops, how did that happen? – and most of it seems to have gathered in one area.
Women have the right to have a little padding on their hips, right? Especially if they had a baby and are past their 35th birthday. And what do you shake in front of men if you have no ass? The only problem is to get new jeans. A big-assed woman, one head taller than the rest of the women in Hong Kong, doesn’t have too many choices. I went shopping last week, and could only find pants that were either too tight around the hips or too wide around the waist. It was frustrating, no fun at all… the ass has to go… and who is designing these ridiculous jeans anyway?
Where was I? Aah yes, I wanted to boast about my new work-out regime that I actually enjoy doing. No measurable impact on the ass yet, but I am having fun. Every morning after I bring little man to the school bus, I walk up the mountain behind my house at a brisk pace. The first time I arrived at the top I could hardly breathe, but by now it’s quite easy to do. Last Friday, I arrived at the top and even thought that it had been a bit too easy, so I decided to walk further along a trail I had never tried before.
I am so glad that I did. It wasn’t an easy walk. The trail was narrow and slippery from a tropical downpour a few hours before, but at times it felt like walking through an enchanted forest. There were lots of sparkly dragonflies hovering above rain pools. Yellow butterflies with brown dots that looked a bit like enchanted leopards, and black ones that were so big that I first mistook them for birds. I crossed creeks and marveled at the vegetation around me. Lush, green, and still dripping from the rain in the morning. Trees standing so closely together that there was hardly any light on the ground, ferns with elegant long leaves, and beautiful blossoms in yellow, pink, and red. The trail went along a mountain range directly at the ocean, and at times the views were breath-taking, and bit vertigo inducing. Would they be able to find me, if I slip and roll down the 200 meter slope to the shore?
I made it home intact, and as I was standing under the shower to get off the mud and sweat, I was thankful that Hong Kong, more known for its skyscrapers, still has these wild places. I feel very fortunate to live right at the edge between concrete and jungle.
PS: I have just looked at my popo in the mirror, and I could swear it’s a tiny bit smaller.
