Passed the flurry of rainbow headscarves, I entered Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown. Convinced by a pushy maitre d’, I sat at a table in a pricey restaurant on the main thoroughfare to eat some garlic asparagus and watch the people variety pass by.
I learned a lot at that table. But mostly I figured out why I like Asia so much.
The table was wearing her red dress that day. Right in the center were two holes. She’d gotten one from a group of rowdy Aussies who were careless with their cigarettes. And the other mysteriously appeared in the rinse cycle. The maitre d’, who wasn’t pushy at all with the table, had found a fabric the exact red of the dress and expertly stitched round patches over the holes. His hands were quite nimble and the threads fine. Even so, the patches were large and obvious. They sat dead center atop the table. My drink fit cozily above one as if it were a coaster.
But the table didn’t mind. Her dress still fit properly and smartly accentuated her curves. Those patches saved her from being sliced into rags. And so it was… two big patches atop a table at a pricey restaurant in a Malaysian Chinatown.
Imagine a patchy table dress at a snazzy restaurant in Manhattan. Big shots would cry, “What is this, Jersey?” And the perfectly useful dress would end up at the house of some smart Asian waiter.
In the West, perfection is always a new tablecloth away.
In the East, perfection is patches.
Other things I learned in KL:
The twin towers are there in the day…
And at night!
Peacocks can go bald.
So can Italian men.
