Red Packets on cold nights. Mirabilis! A second chance!

I'm going to Brussels on Saturday morning.
I'm going to Cherie's birthday dinner this evening. Happy Birthday!
I'm going to the gym in five minutes.

My parents have left for Singapore.
My heart has left for Valentine's.
My mind has left my soul - all alone...

On Tuesday evening over a hearty Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with my family at the China Dream restaurant I informed my parents that the original 'Woman in White' story involved the hero being accosted by a woman dressed in white near Hampstead. It was bitterly cold and shortly thereafter we headed home, but just at the corner before the 'Creperie de Hampstead' stall my little eye espied a thick red wallet on the ground. We glanced around for the lady in the photograph - to no avail. The signalman at the tube station mentioned a police post 10 minutes from that very spot, but I tried again, at my father's urging this time calling out the name printed on the wallet's ID card....the eyes of onlookers queuing for crepes by the dozen bore quizzically into me but their ranks soon parted for a young lady and her two friends, who erupted in a joyous spasm upon seeing the wallet. Identity was confirmed and all was well.
All in all, a lovely red packet (hong bao) for a lovely young lady (not quite in white) on Chinese New Year's Eve. The walk home was just as cold, but our spirits were raised by the evening's splendid meal. Perchance some kind soul out there might take the trouble to return a pair of black Lowe Alpine gloves which I so cleverly lost that same morning?

I think Chinese people view food as something truly special. It seems to rule our consciousness. It is used a tool of punishment, coercion and reward. The underlying, base, animalistic, physiologically-based concept of "FOOD = GOOD" seems to permeate our thinking more than I have observed in other people...of course, this rather presumptuous generalisation can be easily disqualified, but not before another salt beef sandwich, monsieur.......

I was thinking about second chances. I've had a few in my life. To answer that I had to bring up another issue, which might seem unrelated:
Is ignorance truly bliss? I used to think so, but now I wonder. I hate pain - an existence without all of life's evils would be bliss indeed and yet without trials and tribulations we would not emerge fully 'formed'. Yadayadayada, I hear you say - old adages and twisted cliches. Ponder for a while - the knowledge of tragedy consumes the entire history of humanity; yet that same history is a marvellous paean to second chances - I know for certain that God gives second chances. I'm quite a resentful person and I tend to hold grudges, but I know that deep within me is that young 7-year old who tossed and turned at night after a quarrel with friends/parents/anyone else and would make that 11pm telephone call just to 'set things right'. With age, my 'loss of ignorance' made me eventually feel that true outward emotion is a waste of time and physical energy, a somewhat shoddy excuse for being aloof and detached. "Do not let the sun go down on your anger, forgive and forget, live and let live" - used and abused, these don't mean anything on their own. Knowing despair and hope, nightmares and dreams, and feeling burning joy in the deepest sorrow - it's miraculous we don't burst from the (thankfully physiologically contained) adrenalin rush. The cynic, I bore (in more ways than one, I like to think) - but the young lady lost a wallet, I lost a pair of gloves. Minor tragedies in the grand scheme of things, but she found a second chance on that cold night.
As for my second chance - in life, I hope - in hope, I trust - indeed, I trust that someday, it too shall come. I hope. I trust. Until then, I shall simply live.

Forgive the preaching - it's meant to be 'thinking' but I tend to get a little 'up myself' when I feel I'm coming to understand something.