drcuriosity

Tonight was a night of food, combat, eyeballs, cake-questing and religious icons.

The enigmatic

st_innocent and I went into the central city to catch up before she heads away to Australia for a while. We progressed to the Asian food court off High Street, and spent far too long being indecisive about what to eat - eventually settled on Thai food with Indian bread, misoshiru and bubble tea - henceforth to be known as eyeball tea. The "bubbles" in question are little balls of tapioca, drunk through a straw the size of pea-shooter. She threatened to make me snarf tapioca out my nose, but then couldn't think of anything funny to say while I was drinking.

We then proceeded to the local arcade, where I settled my over-filled stomach over a few rounds of Tekken 4 - a fighting game which I knew very little about, but still managed to hold my own with, somehow. I lost most of the games we played, but made her work for most of them, at least. We also tried that odd Dance Dance Convolution thing (well, that's the appropriate name for the way I played it, anyway) - if I were to play it more, I'd need to get out of the habit of tapping the foot pads as if they were arrow keys on a keyboard and probably work out my fast-twitch muscle fibre; I've been cycling for far too long, which requires more raw strength than reaction time. Of course, new eyes and the ability to track fast-moving scrolling objects on a screen would probably help, too.

After the gaming came the Quest for Cake. Traipsing around the central city we found a few places that were open, but it took us quite a lot of walking (and a side-trip through an adult store, just because it was there) to track down a Place of Good Cake. In the end there was Tiramisu of Considerably Tastiness (+9) to be found across the road from the Dux, and we left the staff there with a sculpture made of glasses, sugar sachets, straws and the this-is-your-table-number stand. Various other patrons were alternately amused and disconcerted by the

st_innocent's plans of taking over the world starting on Sundays in Harajuku Park, gathering J-Rock minions unto herself. And Jesus with a cow on his head. And a spinning top making patterns in the sprinkling of spilt cocoa. And the aforementioned sculpture.

Then we traipsed (again!) over to the Bus Exchange for amateur ethnography of the inner-city teenage tribes, and waiting for buses. It turned out in the end that I'd just missed my last bus, so I headed home via the Colombo Walk. Now, the boy racers of this city are probably more familiar with the Colombo Run - that is, heading up and down the main street of the city with a car full of other teenagers. All night. With occasional stops to talk to people who need to pull their trousers up, and drink. This is what passes for entertainment for far too many people in their mid to late teens, and I still don't entirely get it.

However, the most amusing thing for me about the Colombo Walk is half-catcalls. These young drunk gentlemen in cars seem to like yelling out the window to cute girls and the like that they see as they're driving past. Now, I'm not particularly femininely built, but I have long hair down to the middle of my back and for some young drunkards, that's good enough. So I often heard the start of a catcall, which then tapers off very abruptly when they see me in profile and notice that I'm of the facial-haired, breastless persuasion. If I catch up to them at a traffic light, they remain very quiet and stare forward fixedly, not meeting my gaze. I admit, I am easily amused :-)

My feet are sore, but my stomach makes happy burbling noises. I blame the eyeballs.