Net Down

Near quart 10, double check the date.... September 1. Net down at Four Chain meant Starbs and its biz meet-greet morning voices filtering over from the far back corner. Issuing in fact from guys 25 years younger than presumed. Check and double-check. Positive ID: guys at the very back. An intermediate rear middle-aged who had been on the phone earlier ruled out. Introductory rattle of awkward jokes and encouraging laughter. First in-person. Back turned looked an old fashioned body shirt if you can believe it. It would be fast-stepping to the taxi rank on the other side of the street for that young buck. Light Indian facing—as is the older intermediate. Shirt Asian the guess, but educated off-shore and extended living. (Chinese Asian.) Tinkle-dribble from the speaker mercifully turned down. (Did one of the gals remember the pesky customer whining and complaining last time?) Gee! Don't look now, but dweebs every side and more piling in. Guy walked past carrying his blue suit jacket over one arm as he wended his way through the tables with his brekkie tray—toasted wafers with a range of spreads, kaya, nutella & honey maybe. Loud big bearded old Sikh, blue striped shirt and light navy turban ruined the impression later with his broken plastic sandals. One of the U.S. publications on the stands at Kinokuniya yesterday with up-beat trumpet blaring on the front cover: New Golden Age, If Only We Knew It whatnot. Wasn’t Time. A nice neat-pin Chin girl was steered away from that when she took it up from the stack. On a positive note: two young American exchange students at Kinkun buying jewels that had been carefully ferreted out from the toxic coloured piles. Nick from San Diego with Huxley under arm & a Mukherjee on cancer (Pulitzer). Then Lone Star Austin, Texas Vy, born in Vietnam.... Wait for it.... No reader in the Western hemisphere could possibly guess the young gal’s inspired choice. Vy carried in her hand white-covered Svetlana Alexievich no less! Da-Da!...Never sighted previously by this author on any shore; Svetlana had only been translated into English in the last year or two. The Chernobyl volume. Big, big ticks guys! Done your country real proud.