adventures in neverland

( for the first part of this tale, please click here .) there was a sudden change in his mood. i didn't know what triggered it. "are you alright?", i asked, suddenly alarmed. we were talking jovially on the way to my apartment after shopping some groceries, about his day at the restaurant, about my day at work. about an interview i had that morning with a fund manager who warned about the collapse of the chinese economy in three to four years. he responded with a laugh and told me to stop talking in french. "you know that i don't understand anything about business news. i don't even read the business page," he said, teasing me. i laughed too. his laughter, full of the energy of youth, so honest, so ethereal, was contagious. if it were a disease, i would gladly invent a virus so i could spread it all over the world. but a few meters away from the apartment door, he suddenly became quiet. his face darkened. when i asked why, he pointed, us...

(pls click here for my serious musings on my forty fourth birthday.) "young, young man. did anyone ever tell you you look like a young prince out of the 'arabian nights'?" -- blanche dubois,  a streetcar named desire. i have always luved blanche dubois. i feel her -- delusional, living in her own private world, promiscuous yet pretends to be coy. so gay! last night, in late celebration of my forty third year on earth, i hopped from one bar to another even on a tight budget. luckily, like blanche, some kind strangers paid for my poisons for the night -- stella, lots of it, tequilla and mojito. no cosmo for this not so grand old dame, i reserve that for sinfully lonely nights. when the mean reds strike cruelly like a phantom without the opera. or too much of it. chos! (the luminous and talented cate blanchett as blanche.) inside a bar surrounded by hong kong's young and beautiful, i swayed to the beat of raining men, holiday, ...