Tick tick tick
Each morning I leave the flat at 6:50, ride the lift to the lobby, "Salam Alaikum" the Bengali watchman then take a sharp right into the building's convenience store, The Oasis. It's all so heartbreakingly familiar. Beefy hot dogs on roller grills have been spinning all night and their ballpark aroma wafts through the mini-aisles of the salty, chocolaty, cigarettes on display condom palace. I by-pass the litres of Pepsi and pick up the Gulf News.
A Flipper clerk uses a scanner to ring up the paper, as thick as a Sunday paper back home. All of the clerks are Flippers and they have cute Filippini nicknames on their polo shirts "Boy Boy" "Romi" "Sonny" "Tonti".
"Yes sir" "No sir" "Good morning sir."
America's first imperialistic adventure was in the Philippines. We helped the Flippers get rid of the Spanish a little over a century ago. We called the locals Gugus. When the Spanish left, the Gugus said, "Thank you sir; you can go home now." The US said "You're welcome" then sent gunboats up the rivers to incinerate non-compliant villages. We had gunboats. They had knives. That was in the late 1890s. The US left in the late 1990s.
Each morning I walk across the parking lot with my ten pounds of newspaper heading straight for a garbage can where I throw out 3/5 of it--all tabloid magazine sized ad inserts for Free Hold properties. The Emirates is the European Miami. Tired Old European bones are buying up retirement condos here by the thousands. Do Buy. Dubai. Everything is for sale in the Emirates. Everything?Evvvv-er-y-thing! Har hardy har har.
On the bus to work I thumb through the same stories I read the day before and the day before that and all the day befores on and on and on. The world east of the Nile ,west of Hawaiian Island is made up of a lot of poor people. I've been poor. Dirt Dog poor. But never THAT poor. Naked babies bawling in the street watching the tanks roll by. Ancient faces of village women humping drinking water from the wells back to the rubble left after the earthquakes or the floods or the civil wars. Rifles. Lots and lots of rifles. Some places a woman gets off lucky with verbal abuse--her husband might set her on fire and he probably will get away with it.
White guys can't be blamed for it all, but somehow the editorials hint that they should be-over and over again and again and again.
Okay. I suppose it's true to some extent. But white guys didn't scheme up the Hindu caste system now did they?
You want to not march to the devil's beat? Stop beating on the devil's drum!
Sometimes a hot dog is more than a hot dog. At the altar of the Seven Eleven, the compliant come and make their sacrifices.
A Flipper clerk uses a scanner to ring up the paper, as thick as a Sunday paper back home. All of the clerks are Flippers and they have cute Filippini nicknames on their polo shirts "Boy Boy" "Romi" "Sonny" "Tonti".
"Yes sir" "No sir" "Good morning sir."
America's first imperialistic adventure was in the Philippines. We helped the Flippers get rid of the Spanish a little over a century ago. We called the locals Gugus. When the Spanish left, the Gugus said, "Thank you sir; you can go home now." The US said "You're welcome" then sent gunboats up the rivers to incinerate non-compliant villages. We had gunboats. They had knives. That was in the late 1890s. The US left in the late 1990s.
Each morning I walk across the parking lot with my ten pounds of newspaper heading straight for a garbage can where I throw out 3/5 of it--all tabloid magazine sized ad inserts for Free Hold properties. The Emirates is the European Miami. Tired Old European bones are buying up retirement condos here by the thousands. Do Buy. Dubai. Everything is for sale in the Emirates. Everything?Evvvv-er-y-thing! Har hardy har har.
On the bus to work I thumb through the same stories I read the day before and the day before that and all the day befores on and on and on. The world east of the Nile ,west of Hawaiian Island is made up of a lot of poor people. I've been poor. Dirt Dog poor. But never THAT poor. Naked babies bawling in the street watching the tanks roll by. Ancient faces of village women humping drinking water from the wells back to the rubble left after the earthquakes or the floods or the civil wars. Rifles. Lots and lots of rifles. Some places a woman gets off lucky with verbal abuse--her husband might set her on fire and he probably will get away with it.
White guys can't be blamed for it all, but somehow the editorials hint that they should be-over and over again and again and again.
Okay. I suppose it's true to some extent. But white guys didn't scheme up the Hindu caste system now did they?
Nearly everyday I read about a maid leaping head long onto the concrete in a compound from a fifth floor roof--it's not the best way out, but it is a final act of defiance and there is freedom in the abyss.
I read the paper each day and pity the Palestinians. Raise a glass to the worker bees who are just hoping to get through each day with their arms and legs in the same place at night where they were in the morning.You want to not march to the devil's beat? Stop beating on the devil's drum!
Sometimes a hot dog is more than a hot dog. At the altar of the Seven Eleven, the compliant come and make their sacrifices.
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1 Comments:
Then again, sometimes the hot dogs are deep fried, whether you like them that way or not; that's how they're served, those shrivelled, emaciated rods-on-a-plate down the street at Dodo Rolling Ice, which apparently serves no rolling ice at all (whatever that is) but has tooth-achingly sweet bubble teas. It's crawling with teenagers, too, the Cambodian equivalent of a 50s teeny-bopper diner, but they've got japanese motorbikes rather than american cars.
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