>>104 111 is coming up soonThen will
hoi polloi compete to say "
Trips. Check 'em."?
Of all the convenience stores in all the world, yesterday she walks into mine. It was raining cats and dogs, but she was eager to explore the campus in the daylight. I volunteered to be her tour-guide, after I delivered one of the "Three for $3" hotdogs to my nearby publisher. I held open the bag, and -- oh gee, what shall be her code-name? All I did yesterday was show her my New year's monkey card, volunteer to show her Old Seattle, and then we spent the next twelve hours together. I always assign a code-name based on her most salient feature. She was extremely self-assured and self-confident for being only twenty-six years old. She had that jet-black newscaster hairdo where random clusters of her bangs drop to her eyebrows. She was wearing a wide-V smock right out of Star Trek. Maybe I should write this story later, about the computer science grad who now works as a software tester from 9:00 to 6:00 and does not really like her job. Since the company would not send her abroad on company business, she requested annual leave and flew to Sea-Tac all by herself for five days of exploring an American city. Dufus here (should I call her "Dufa"?) took her to the campus, then downtown to the Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room, and then we walked all the way down from 1124 Pike Street (the largest Starbucks in the world) to the Pike Place Market and the oldest Starbucks in the world. Along the way, a black lady said to Dufa, "I like your shoes." I looked at them. They were tennis shoes, all in white or beige. Dufa said, "They are a different style."
We went to the Pig Statue in the Market by one of the seafood stalls, where they had just thrown a salmon. The fish hucksters heard me tell Dufa that they would throw a fish again as soon as a tourist ordered one, and under the spell of her pert, radiant beauty they began to show off. One guy like a carnie barker prepped the crowd for an incipient fish-hurl and then he lobbed a giant salmon directly towards his dunce confederate standing in front of Dufa. She did not blanche or blink. They were so excited at seeing _her_ that they threw the fish THREE times. Then they grabbed an even bigger fish, and I said, "That fish is too big; they won't throw it." A lady standing near us said, "You mean, that fish won't fly?" and I laughed.
Walking on and feeling thirsty, I bought for me and the Mandarin girl two juicy mandarin oranges, which we peeled and ate as we walked. The first Starbucks in the world had a long line so we only looked in the window. Her bus transfer, that she kept calling a "ticket," was about to expire at three o'clock, but she was adamantly determined to visit Chinatown fifteen blocks away. I had not wanted to walk so far, but then I remembered that we could go by bus for free. So from Third and Union [Oh no, I am trying to keep my browser connection open while I type this dufic story from memory, and somebody in the German newsgroup is writing "Häufig wird Mentifex aka Mindforth vorgeworfen, dass die Software keinen Erfolg bringt und alles andere ist nur nicht intelligent."] we took bus #99 down to Main Street and the King Street Station. Along the way, Dufa said that she hates all the modern architecture in China and also in downtown Seattle, but she got to see the old brick buildings in Chinatown. We walked up to Maynard and Jackson, where I promised her that she would see the Chinese park and the Tai Tung restaurant. The Chinese structure in the park thrilled Dufa to the core. She said it was made in the old way as the Chinese themselves would make it. So we went back to Jackson Street and caught a free bus uptown, then a #70 Fairview to the U District. It was now 5:30 and too late for Happy Hour, but Dufa was willing to take a #44 over to the Hiram Chittenden Locks and walk a mile out to mine and Bill G.'s favorite Seattle Restaurant, the one and only, the jewel of the Northwest, you guessed it -- Ray's Boathouse.
I ordered a lemonade and Dufa drank an apple juice. She kept using her smartphone to view photos of the damage being wrought by Typhoon Haima on her work-place city. Although Dufa comes from the deep interior of China, where there must be a secret genetic project to engender world-class beauties for the Chinese equivalent of MI6 -- hey, how did they know that I would be visiting that particular convenience store yesterday? And why did Dufa take a picture of me and the Market Pig but not of her and me together? Of the front door of the Roastery but not of us? And why did she not come and meet me again this morning? Anway, in the dark we walked the mile back along the Lake Washington Ship Canal, where a mile-long railroad train was making so much clatter that Dufa stopped and would not proceed until the last double-decker boxcar went by sans caboose. I parted from Dufa outside her hotel and our hands brushed intimately as the open door went from me to her. Back at the Burschenhaus, I explained that I was late because I had met a Chinese girl and I had spent twelve hours with her. Knowing me, they believed me, but one housemate said, "Had you met her before?" No, and probably never again.
http://bbs.progrider.org/prog/read/1413747858/12
