It never rains but it pours (London)

I was cycling home after work one Friday evening.  

The office had lots of surplus milk, so I was given two pints to take home.  I’d also just bought a bottle of dark soya sauce earlier that day, so I put them in a plastic bag, and strapped them to the rear rack.  

It started to drizzle.  

Came to a halt at a set of traffic lights.  Heard glass shattering behind me.  Thought, “Oh dear, some driver’s run into the back of someone’s car.”  

For some reason, I decided to turn round and look.  What I saw, in the glare of the headlights of the car behind me, was my plastic bag sitting on the road, with a trail of white liquid and a trail of black liquid oozing out of it, running on the road.  

No time to do anything as the lights were about to change to green, so I just picked up the bag and re-strapped it onto the rear rack.  Cycled off when the lights turned green.

Came to another halt at the next set of lights.  Another shattering of glass behind me.  Yes, that plastic bag had come off again.  

By now, the rain had become a heavy drizzle.  

Grabbed the bag, re-strapped it a second time, and cycled off, with a trail of white liquid and a trail of black liquid dripping off the rear rack.  

At the next set of lights, the bicycle chain came off.  The heavy drizzle had now turned into a steady downpour.  I just wanted to sit down on the pavement and cry.

I finally arrived home, drenched from head to toe, with a plastic bag with lots of holes and three broken bottles inside, by now sans contents, and a pair of hands all black and greasy from putting the chain back on — in the pouring rain.

(London, 1983)

One way of putting on weight (or not) (Singapore)

Traditionally, when the Chinese tell you you’ve put on weight, they mean it as a compliment, as can be seen from the way the observation is phrased:  發福 / 发福 fā fú / “develop good-fortune”.  

The thinking behind it is:  if you’re fat, you must have more than enough to eat; if you have more than enough to eat, you must be rich.  Also, you don’t have to do heavy work, which would keep you thin.  

(The same with having fair skin:  it must be because you don’t have to work outdoors, therefore you must at least be a white collar worker, if not outright rich without needing to work at all.  Same thinking behind the Brits traditionally setting so much store by a tanned skin—you must be sufficiently rich to go far enough south to where the sun is.)

My mother retired at age 47 and, being very face-conscious, was concerned about her social standing image now that she no longer had to toil day and night as a midwife.  Being of a naturally slim build, she decided to speed up the process of putting on weight by drinking milk, which she’d heard could make one fat.

Fresh milk was not easy to come by in those days in Singapore, if at all, so she went to a lot of trouble tracking down an Indian man not too far away from us who had a cow.  An order was placed with him for a bottle to be delivered daily.

My mother would boil the milk, but some five minutes after drinking the stuff, she would go straight to the toilet.  

It is fairly common knowledge that the Chinese constitution is, as a general rule, unable to process dairy products since it is traditionally not a milk-drinking culture.  (This might now have changed, as more Chinese are adopting Western habits.)  

So, what was meant to be an exercise in fattening up my mother ended up with her losing weight through the runs.  The delivery was cancelled after a month.

(Singapore, early 1970s)

See also:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/12/chinese-characters-07-vs.html