Va Instead of Ma

I have finished another class this evening.  I just got a note that said “It was a pleasure to take your class.  Your story telling made it one of the best course I have ever taken.  Hope to meet again soon.”  That doesn’t usually happen in the software business.  At least my business. I checked the photo of the person.  He was a particularly bright young man, who’d had lots of strong contributions.  All the better.  I wrote him write back saying how honored I was.  And I was. 

I had many students come up and suggest that I put these online as recorded blog posts.  That’s interesting, though I’m not sure how I would promote them and get them from my mouth to other’s ears.  Maybe I could just sit around in my underwear talking into a microphone and get paid for it.  It would be easier surely, then what I’m doing now.  I have so little energy or appetite though, for self-promotion. 

To my right are two young men, one of whom has glasses, the other does not.  They are sitting with a young lady who had long pink hair, golden glasses and black sneakers atop her pink socks.  She has an odd smile.  Although I have some rather pleasant Freddie Hubbard playing in my ears just now it is obvious that they are from Shanghai, or at least they are speaking freely in Shanghai dialect.  I don’t know if it is because we are in Shanghai, or because I already heard him suggest an interrogative by saying “va?” instead of “ma?” or because he had a generally corpulent constitution that suggested entitlement to go with his silly, stringy comb-over haircut but I have decided that he and the rest of them are all from Shanghai.

The lady has a little white bag.  It is sitting beside me on the bench to my right.  When it is in my peripheral view it strongly resembles a cat.  I don’t know why.  My mind has established that this is a bag.  I go back to typing, watching the airport traffic here in Hong Qiao and then, my cave-man mind sees a cat lounged out peripherally and suggests I take action.  So, I bring the object into my view and reestablish that it is a white bag, not a white cat.  I repeat this process at least four times.  It’s a bag John.  It’s a bag.  It is bereft of fur.   We’ve established this.

Sunday, 6/16/19