Stupid dates, fused-vertebrae cyclists and zombie pedestrians.

I went on a date once with a girl I rock climbed with.  She was even white!  I should have been warned off when the girl, a university graduate, didn't know the word 'idiosyncratic'.  I let that go, and the fact she was from Alberta, because I thought her climber's figure was worth a ride... I guess.  However, once she began complaining about "how bad Chinese drivers are", I knew that the duration of the relationship post-consummation would be very short.  Couldn't she stop there?  No, she made it impossible to do anything but send her home alone, once she said,

"They're bad drivers because their eyes are so narrow."

Not horizontally they're not!  Maybe, just maybe, it is possible that Zhang Ziyi is less likely to see a threat approaching from above (though without Caucasian brows, unlikely), or from below, but I'd wager a lot that her peripheral vision is fine, not to mention she is better able to see across the bridge of her own nose than the red-neck from Alberta.

So I met a girl too dumb to %$#@, though my standards were not always so high.  What does that have to do with anything?  Some days I have to remind myself that she was wrong, despite the lunacy of Japanese cyclists and pedestrians.

Japanese cyclists ride right into traffic without a shoulder-check, past blind corners the same way, and will randomly swerve into your path, whether or not they are texting (a behaviour needing more attention for Japanese' three-scripts than for English!).  The head doesn't ever turn on the neck.  The Japanese pedestrian does the same, with a few more stunned behaviours in the mix.  Don't get me started about how there is no consistency to whether cyclists should be on the road or on the sidewalk, and that the police neither know nor enforce the law on this.  There is also complete lawlessness as to the side that a cyclist or pedestrian will use, even though Japanese drivers will faithfully keep left.  Even when the side to take is marked in a subway stairwell, it is an even chance your path will be marked on either side, and that nobody will be following the sign.

I am happier with this, though.  If someone ever does cause a 'loss of separation' the advantage in mass is mine, and they are going down.  I will not be stopping, if I am not the cause, as the law is quite punitive, and there is no 'justice' system in this country.  That drivers behave with more intelligence and care is just because the law is so punitive, whereas it is not in Toronto against drivers, and that is why I am more likely to be killed by a car there.

The Alberta red-neck has not understood that though there are physiological differences between the pale-faces of her inbreeding and the people of East Asia, they are not ones that do her any credit.  It's no accident that 'rice kings' are created by intimate exposure.  A red-neck can only appreciate the most pneumatic feminine secondary-sexual characteristics, none of which defy gravity far into the twenties.  Just about every other of the feminine secondary-sexual characteristics is preferable on women who are less voluminous, and lack of volume is itself one of the charms.*

*Though I did have once have a 95lb girlfriend in Japan I referred to as 'The TARDIS', behind the poor woman's narrow back.