Longest day off EVER.
Begin, wake at 7:00, prime, prime, at 9:30 go out and lie beneath the Jetta for 2 1/2 hours to replace the rad hose. I've procrastinated this for weeks. 2 Hours reaching up, cutting, pulling with pliers, to remove the old hose, covered in rad fluid, a mere half an hour to add the new hose. The day grows hotter and hotter.
Job done, drive off, replace rad fluid...drive a bit, the car overheats. It's the damned water pump. This is a repair I don't want to undertake, don't have the finances, tools, bloody hell, so for the moment it's stock up on cheap radiator fluid and ride it out. I'm a one-man ecological disaster.
3:00 it's time to head to G's, pick up the new Italian waiter, head up to the old basement suite. It's his Mom's birthday, we're invited, more obligated, to attend, she's 60.
Well attended, fed, liquor & wine, it's a grand event. About 25 people in attendance, not counting me and the new waiter, 5 of whom are elderly Italian men, the other 20 Italian women, average age somewhere between 70 and 200 years. Conversations in Italian, a hot summer's day, 32, 34 degrees, too hot to eat or drink, merely pass the time and ride it out...and the conversations, mostly in Italian, occasionally someone takes pity on me and translates, mostly they leave me alone, how long to stay here, how long, exactly, is polite? The grandmothers break into arguments over who has the most grandchildren, it's less the number than the loudness of the argument that wins, everyone has their turn, I'm thinking I should win because I have none, then they pass around their phones with the pictures of their grandchildren on them...
One old lady, perhaps mid 70's, she's contrived a dislike for me...I remind her of an actor in an Italian movie who played a drug dealer and murderer, "a very bad man", she tells me, she tells the other ladies and broods upon it. And she returns to it again and again, and I'm being damned by association, I finally have my epiphany and say: "But he was doing it for his mama...!!!" and the other old ladies titter in agreement, if it's for his mama it's a different story, and absurdly enough I'm off the hook...
Another old lady, older even, perhaps 90, she looks at me and smiles ... "Lots of pretty girls here for you...", she says, she's taking the piss, I have to admire her malice...I can only hope to be that lucid and malevolent at that age...
We escape, finally, the Italian waiter and I, after happy birthdays are sung, now to the next party...
The Filipinos of Rundle.
Our Chef, having invited us a few times for dinner, we can postpone it no longer, we go for dinner. A case of beer, but it's too hot to drink, we arrive at around 7:00, the chef is so glad to see us, these people, packed 20 to a house, the landlord, shirt tied up around his chest like a halter-top, others, all temporary foreign workers, paying $500, $600 a month for a small room in an average house, shared, the landlord, he's doing well enough he doesn't have to work. I count 7 rice cookers on the counter. But they've put on a feast for us, shrimp, chicken, pork, rice, asian noodles, it's all fine and close enough to Chinese food that I have no problems with it. The Italian, he has problems, doubts the chicken is really chicken, when we leave I'm treated to an hours speculation as to what it was, what breed and species of purloined pet, but I don't notice, merely different flavors, and souse anything with enough chili oil and it will become edible.
Conversations, mostly about work, a few of the other TFW have better jobs, much better, and I feel for our chef that he got so shafted in this, one of the Filipinos makes $17 per hour, and has use of the company truck. Nice. Foreman for a local landscaping company, he's no complaints, I'm impressed, of course, no one in the world, not even Satan's minion's themselves, have the working conditions of our chef...
2 hours here and it's time to leave, we could stay later, but for no good reason, merely to drink, and it's my day off, there are still yet obligations...
Jurassic World
9:45 and I meet the boy, "Jurassic World", after the day, today, I just want to see people get eaten by dinosaurs, damn the plot, gimme hungry dinosaurs and deserving prey...
And everyone is deserving, but only a few get eaten, exactly the same silliness, plot, as the first, but the dinosaurs are first rate, I knew what I was getting into, for sure, no surprises, but for once, just once, I'd like to see the dinosaurs win, eat the damned annoying children, eat the stupid woman and too-cool Chris Pratt, hire Quentin Tarantino as director for God's sakes and just make it a little less predictable, I'm begging you...