Friday Dinner

A group of teachers pile into a Blue Bird taxi and zoom through the polluted capital to a mall for dinner.

There's a Filipino woman, married to a local with two kids. The whiners are at home with maids.

Beck and call.

There's a fat happy Catholic Filipino relic of a science teacher, a young angry Hebrides science fiction android and a wandering scribe. They find a diner. They feast on Caesar salad, chips, tomatoes covered in cheese, dip and 150 grams of cooked beef between bad white bread.

Watching people flow past, in and out of gleaming neon stores, the scribe and woman talk about advertising, marketing and the relentless pressure people feel to consume, to buy, to get STUFF. They need to buy to feel better, to improve their internal sense of worth with external STUFF.

She is waiting for her local marketing husband to fight and survive traffic to get to the mall. When he arrives he doesn't smile. He doesn't greet anyone. He slouches, collapsing in a chair. They don't talk. This happens in many old boring Friday night marriages. No surprise here.

Everyone gets up and wanders around the mall. The husband tells his wife he's going to find some dim-sum. He goes off to eat alone. Alone.

"Great!" she says, "I'm going to look for phone accessories. I really need something new, flashy and fashionable for my Strawberry."

The android and introverted priest stand around eating sweet I Scream. Waiting to leave. Waiting to become trapped in a car while the husband negotiates a business deal at the wheel next to his silent wife as the priest talks about finding a female nest.

A ride through Hell-o Friday.

Metta.