I grew up in the humid jungles where the natives would poke holes into each other's noses for fun and profit.
"Barbaric," my gardener would comment, as he harvested my cherry trees, and I sat sipping chamomile tea from the silver tea service. I would withold my opinion, for it is hard to converse with a mad scottish gardener in a wheelchair, harvesting cherries with mad scottish abandon.
He had come here many years ago, in a ship, after convinced that he had bought the royal charter for these lands for 5 shillings thruppence, and a peice of his mother's haggis. "You can't trust half-Japanese real estate agents with wooden legs" was his life motto.
He would often teach me useful things he had learned in his travels across the world, buying dud real estate. Like how to make green curry with a pen and a peice of twine. The days were balmy when I was young, with a thick, lugubrious verve, that covered everything in laziness, and seemed to speak to each of us in creole French.
I was always a very calm person. I liked drinking tea from a teacup. It had a sort of elegance. I could sip it on the porch, while I watched my gardener wash and dress the trees up in imported flemish cotton. He was quite mad.
Occasionally we would be visited by half-Japanese wooden legged traders like --OutpostMir--. "You want bengalese tigers? I got tigers. Very cheap."
"No thank you, you one-legged half-Russian freak." I replied politely. If you weren't rude, he would sometimes bite your leg in frustration. "Would you care for some tea?".