I’ve been thinking about day-to-day life framed by moments of beef. Or rather, Beef: the brilliant Netflix, 98 per cent Rotten Tomato-rated show (it was 100 per cent at one point — who are this dissenting 2 per cent and where can I find them to convince them otherwise?), about a road rage incident between two strangers that spirals into a litany of irrevocable chaos. After a night of intense binging, two lines had been weighing heavy as Monday drudge began. ‘I’m so sick of smiling, dude,’ says Danny, a down-and-out handyman played by Steven Yeun. ‘I hate pretending I don’t hate things,’ says Ali Wong’s Amy, a privileged entrepreneur who finds dissatisfaction at every turn. I feel you both.
And so as I jostled in a painfully long queue at the Chinese visa centre, stressed by the minutiae of everything — what if they don’t accept my phone selfie with my stupid pushed back fringe? What if they comb my Instagram and find my pro-democracy Hong Kong support posts? What if they don’t like my co-habiting with child status? — things were at simmering point.
