The discrete charm of the chinoiserie
Yuan restaurant, in Velazquez, Friday night. Chinese Haute Cuisine on offer. A very pleasant "pandilla" with the usual mixed blood ( Andalucian-Castillan-Navarro-Cuban-Argentino-Paraguayan) plus two compatriots of this blogger of yours. Argentinian men are handsome specimens of the latifundium owner type one normally associates with Jerez. In between the dim-sun and the Imperial duck we had a very raucous party going on (one just loves to be able to use an adjective as powerfully sounding like "raucous" once in a while..). Some of us decided to continue to indulge our drinking habits at a private apartment, and at the risk of not having his favourite spirit at hand a bottle of Bombay gin was hastily accquired by the Smiling Porteño. I happily obliged when asked to tell the story of how can a once promising medical doctor become a full time diplomat. Causing the biggest effect on the listening public is still the line when, after a convenient Stanislavskyan pause, I reveal that my entrance "thesis" to the Foreign Ministry was on "Comparative Nuclear Doctrines of the U.S. and USSR". Never lets me down, that one. Admiring features, impressed smiles but also one or two suspicious glances ( "Is this guy trying to bullshit us?" -type of look).
Should I mention my slim and timid neighbour at table, the un-coupled madrileña who was invited to redress the boy-girl balance at table ( since this blogger of yours is prowling the streets of the Ciudad as a solitary wolfish person)? Better not. Well, I just did, no?
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