Matthew Henry John Bartlett

George Bush sings Sunday Bloody Sunday [YT video]

Lunchtime
I walked on the opposite side of the road to the side I normally walk when I walk to Chummeez/Fujiyama cafe on Lambton Quay. I don’t know which it is, Chummeez or Fujiyama. I hope it’s Chummeez but Fujiyama is more likely. It was quite a different thing, walking on the other side. There was a little more rain. The train station seemed a lot closer than it normally does. But I crossed back into normalcy and into the restaurant. Well, to be honest, I lingered outside for a bit first, to see if I could spot chicken laksa on the photo menu outside. They had chicken and seafood laksa—close enough. The photo menu inside is identical except it has prices on it. The chicken and seafood laksa was $9. Most days I can think of an excuse to celebrate and spend a few extra bucks on lunch. Today I celebrated some recent personal time-management successes. I ordered the laksa. I think it was number nine. The waitress gave me a laminated cardboard square with ’29’ on it, and I went upstairs. There was a man up there across the room from where I sat down, finishing off some soupy noodly dish. We didn’t acknowledge each other, but it was OK, I just wanted to sit down, separate my disposable chopsticks and read some of Alisdair MacIntyre’s Short History of Ethics before my chicken and seafood laksa arrived. I got through the first preface, which MacIntyre spends more or less apologising for the book, which was first published about forty years before the edition I was reading. A spotty man delivered my meal in a nice big full bowl and took away the cardboard square. Judging by deliciousness per dollar, I’d still choose the $6.50 laksa on the left bank, but on what I guess I’d call an absolute (of course I’m a little nervous about just throwing that word absolute around willy-nilly) scale I’d rate this one ‘best ever’. Returning to my narrative: I splattered some of the soup on my library book. That pretty much always happens. It gives the books a bit of history. When my meal was done I indulged myself by continuing to read until I’d finished the second preface and the first chapter. The second chapter, on the pre-Socratics, was pretty tempting, but I had recent personal time-management successes to build upon and put my bowl in the big green dishes bin and hightailed it out of there, like a rabbit. There is an Italian proverb: “who eats alone dies alone”, but I don’t think I’ll die alone, or at least no more alone than anyone else.