I'd made an appointment at my bank for 4PM, so I was sure to wake up in time to have coffee yadda yadda and got over there in plenty of time. In fact I took a little walk around the area and discovered a bunch of twisty little alleys and passageways leading to San Pedro Square. I walked around in the building and there are some new restaurants, but everything's gone up in price. Not that it's good for me to eat restaurant food anyway.
The bank deposit went fine, and I headed for Dai Thanh to get coffee and come cooking oil and some powdered unsweetened coconut milk to try in coffee when it's hot coffee weather again, and some cash also. As I was putting the things in the bike bags I heard a female voice asking me for a dollar. "Do you need food? Because I'm going around the corner and you can come with me and I'll get you something". The voice belonged to a dumpy middle-aged probably Vietnamese lady who's homeless, would like a $1 serving of rice, and can't walk over because she has to stay by her stuff (a pretty small pile but why give up a prime spot in the shade?) She said she'd like rice and pork even more, and I said I'll see what I can do.
The restaurant guy was kind of hard to communicated with, and I settled on two beef skewers for myself and two egg rolls for her. She was happy to get 'em, and the whole thing was only about $6. So she was able to get something a bit more rounded than rice, and I was able to keep to my "keto" way of eating. I ate the beef skewers over in a little park that was on my way.
Then I rode up to Big-5 where it seems a lot safer to park my bike than going to Target, and walked over to Wal-Mart to buy some basic stuff like TP and paper towels and zipper bags and so on.
The weather's cooler, and it's just so peaceful and ... dead. No buskers of course. People are going on, but in a much more understated way. With restaurant prices up by half again, there are fewer people eating out, and paying more to sit in outdoor areas. People like myself are probably just cooking at home and only eating grab-and-go inexpensive things which is how my spending habits have changed.
I remembered to stop at the Amazon pickup place and got a lot of bubble mailers there. So far no one's batted an eye at my gathering them. I ended up so loaded up that I went right home from there.
And got back here just in time for a Hitler v2.0 speech. Ugh. So I took a little trip over to the blackberry patch to empty my "compost" bucket into it, then came back and got my getter-stick and went over to the dumpster by Grill-'Em where I got tons of Romaine lettuce and a fresher tomato than I had at home.
When I got back the orange balloon was still expelling gas so I just turned off the radio. He must be on some prime drugs to be able to go on for so long; I think the scheduled time was 45 minutes. But then I think 1.0 was similarly able to rant for extended periods of time until Germany was half owned by the Allies and he was cowering in his bunker.
I made a nice salad of Romaine lettuce with some tomato and shallot, and it came out great. One thing about these free veggies is, I always have veggies. I throw out a lot, too, because they're scrounged but at least the stuff I toss out goes into the blackberry patch.
Before I knew it it was late, but I got a practice in, a bit over an hour. It went a bit better this time. Last night I watched most of a documentary about Wynton Marsalis, and one thing his Band teacher said stuck with me. Wynton was never first chair, not until he was well along. But he was a kid who, if he was told to work on some aspect of his playing like his attacks, he'd go home and practice that for hours and be better at it the next time. It was sheer hard work.
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