GOOD GOD !!! What just died?

It is said that the average human farts 14 times a day.
I think they all do it on the MTR.
The MTR, for those not in Hong Kong, is an exceptionally well run, efficient, safe, and cheap mostly underground railway system that keeps a city of 8 million moving 18 hours a day.
It is also clean, in the sense that there is no graffiti on the walls, no rubbish in or around the stations, no broken or disgusting bits anywhere....except the air.
On a winters day, with the heaters on the train set to 'toasty but comfortable', the smells that emanate inside carriages could kill a canary.
A Scottish one.
And those buggers are hardy.
It's obviously not the fault of the people who run the MTR.
It's not like they can put up signs that say " Please do not fart on the MTR".
This isn't Singapore.
Plus, it's not just the bottom end gasses that cause offense.
Anyone who has lived for 30 seconds in Asia has come to appreciate the delicate aromas that can be left on the breath after a lunch of broccoli and garlic and a plate of hitherto dried and desiccated seafood.
Nothing says 'yummo' to the average Honkie like a snack of roasted dried squid coated in 'what the fuck, lets use all the spices' powder.
I have eaten that stuff.
It smells amazing while it's being cooked.
What does NOT smell amazing whilst it's being cooked is what is known in Cantonese as 'chow dofu', which literally means 'smelly bean curd', which is just like regular tofu only it's left to 'ferment'- ie:rot- and THEN cooked.
To try and describe it in print would be like me trying to explain the ever expanding Milky Way in a Hai Ku.

Ever expanding
Yet you began as nothing
So, how does that work?

OK, maybe I CAN do that....
I shall try a Hai Ku to the smell of Chow Dofu.

Unwashed Vagina's
How can you be so rancid
And yet delicious?

Hmmmm....I feel it doesn't 'scan', as they say.
I have never eaten Chow Dofu....I just can't get past the smell.
I do love the regular stuff though, and at my age appreciate the gloriousness of phytoestrogens wrapped up in easily digestible food.
Asian women do not suffer the menopause so much, they say....bring THAT on.....I say.
Speaking of suffering, I caught a news article ( if we can call what I am about to describe as 'news' and not 'advertorial', which is what it was called in MY day, however, moving right along) about a certain cheaper end clothing chain selling a very-famous-to-the-young-and-hip designer ware at a fraction of the cost of the REAL label this week.
Oh, the World was aflutter....so I took a look at the said so-cool-it-would-melt-the-Arctic clothing and I have to ask.
Are you all fucking blind?
I mean SERIOUSLY???
Prints that make anorexics look fat, tops that suit neither women WITH breasts, nor WITHOUT, and fashion accessories that look like they were thrown away by the Imagineering costumers at Disney??
Has the World gone mad?
When did dressing like a 1960's special needs kid become fashionable ? (With respect and apologies to the special needs kids of the decade of love and new fangled drip dry materials).
I have long had an issue with the fashion industry, having worked for a heart beat with a design company way back in the old days where part of my gig was to 'Host' their runway shows in Grace Brothers to try and explain to Sydney's middle classes why they needed to dump their perfectly good shirts of last season for this years ones.
I have personally stood next to 'designers' who have over bought material from a dodgy supplier and PERSONALLY heard the words " How will we get rid of this shit?".
Easy, it would appear.
Get a bunch of drug fuelled 'fashion writers' to the early showing, force feed them champagne cocktails, and get someone like me to ramble at them about 'newyounghipcoolhoturbanrebelretro' until their eyelids peel back.
Then set up a photo shoot is a suitably grungy (yet accessible to the middle classes) locale with a leggy '15-but-could-be-18-so-it's-ok-if-you-want-to-either-be-her-or-bang-her-year-old-female' and a 'clearly-gay-but-lets-call-it-metro-male'.
Slam the whole lot together in a schmick press release- along with a freebie for the writer and a bottle of Moet for the editor and badabing badabung...FASHION.
Goodness me.
It's so easy, even a child could do it, and in most cases in terms of the ages of the people involved, it is.
Sure, I know I sound old and cynical, and I can live with that.
I grew up throughout the 80's.
I wore things with shoulder pads.
I've been a victim too.
In life, we all have moments of being a winner and a loser.
On the MTR, with the air of a million commuters gently flowing through my hair, I don't always feel like a winner....but I would rather die of asphyxia on public transport than wrap my aging body in clothing not even Minnie Mouse would wear.
Mass produced individuality?
That REALLY stinks.