With the weed scientist

My old friend Tibbo, we go back 45 years, has been visiting Tijuana regularly because he has a contract with the local professional soccer team to oversee the maintenance of their playing fields, him being and agricultural engineer. Always very good to see him, always good for a laugh and a drink or two hundred. This time I agreed to take a Saturday off work in order to meet up with him. I am loath to take Saturdays off, because it's the one day of the week I can be sure will be profitable.

But OK, Saturday I took the bus into town and walked to the Hotel Nelson, were we have met before; at the outdoor café on the sidewalk just under the silver arch that is 50 meters high and resembles a miniature of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis Missouri. The corner where this venerable old hotel stands is always very busy at the weekend. Musicians, prostitutes, pickpockets, police, taxi drivers, shoeblacks, fake-silver jewelry vendors and assorted beggars and drug-addicts all roam and congregate, vying for a share of the gringo tourist largesse.

So we sit there like fucking tourists, being importuned every few minutes by different specimens of the types described above. At first it's just me and him, but other friends soon arrive, the first of which was Turi, who was actually my brother's friend back in the day, same age group, but now we both belong to the old farts age group and he's good company.Very simpatico.

We sit and drink and presently there arrives a friend of Tibbo's I was introduced to I forget his name, but I'll call him the weed scientist. He's an engineer of some description, somehow into forensics, who regaled us with tall tales of having stayed at the U.S. embassy in Kazakhstan hired by the government to set up a forensic computer program to help identify massacre victims. Or something.

As he monopolized the conversation it transpired he makes his living curing terminal cancer patients with different varieties of cannabis extract. But as he got deeper into technical detail he lost me and I became impatient for the conversation to take a different turn. I actually wanted to talk about pop music, silly me. And both you and I know that I am a depressive. Because I used to fall on my forehead a lot when I was very small, and as the weed scientist expounded on his very dark vision of a world controlled by big pharma and big bad government, I began to get the dismal feeling I have been living my life all wrong, putting my health in the hands of quack doctors who are instruments of big pharma.

But I have faith in my doctor and I do not believe he is some kind of big pharma robot. The weed scientist could have shaken the very ground underneath me to the point I would have thrown myself at his feet begging him to take over the direction of my health if I had continued to sit there, but I said 'excuse me a moment' and took my leave. By then other friends had arrived and I would like to think my departure remained unnoticed for at least a few minutes.

I wanted to think about something else, like maybe a plate of chicken chop suey.