Kinda feel crappy

 Up around 4 in the afternoon. Maybe it was too much sake last night or the unfamiliar fish'n'chips, but I had the shits. At least I got some practice in last night. And doing breathing exercises whenever I think about them. 

My left shoulder is pretty sore from the shot too. They always choose the left because most people are right-handed. But I'm left-handed so it means the arm I use more hurts. 

They've convicted Officer Chauvin, a literal chauvinist, for as Pres. Biden says "A murder that took almost 10 minutes, in broad daylight" and I hope many know that Chauvin killed another guy the same way about a year earlier. So people are celebrating and even I feel better about taking part in some of the protests but I hope people are not celebrating too soon. There's still the sentencing and the sentence may well be an all-expenses-paid vacation at Mar-A-Lago and 3 new Klan outfits. 

There needs to be national-level licensing and certification for cops just like there is for EMTs and nurses and so on. 

I got going a bit after 6, taking the bike with trailer over to Fry's, where I bought their last 3 sealed boxes of "small" bubble mailers. They'd marked all sizes down to $15 a box now and I think the guy gave me a refund because he charged me a bit less than $40 and that's including a flashlight that was $2. I talked a bit with the guys, how Fry's used to be really good and I bought everything from DVDs to lunch there but over time, it ended up being very overpriced compared to other places. An example being my kettle, which I use every day but I'd spent $40 on it from Fry's and it turns out you can get the same one for $20 everywhere else. 

I said I assume they must be Fry's old-timers to be overseeing the store now, but they said they're in another company that was hired to sell everything off. That explains my being able to use my card there, it never worked on the Fry's system (they're using Square) and in fact that saved me some money over the years like the time I wanted to buy a certain Fluke multimeter that was about $170 and my card didn't work and when I checked online they were about $120. 

After dropping the boxes off here, I took off again for H Mart along the same route I followed to go to Berger Auditorium. I wanted to check up on some blackberry plants I'd seen growing, and I think they're first-season or something as they seem to be in growing mode and I didn't see any flowers. 

I rode past Berger and it looked like they're keeping up giving out vaccines. It's good to see. I checked out a bunch of the small businesses along Oakland Road - how does Fastenal stay in business? They're idiots. And there's a little homeless "town" along the river next to the golf course. So I'd taken a "scenic" route to H Mart.

I got eggs, sake, these Chinese "Spicy Peanuts" I like, a $2 package of cooked, chilled, marinated mung bean sprouts, and saw some little clams, cockles I think, that were also cooked, chilled and marinated and since this all goes well with beer I got a beer. 

On the way back I checked behind a place I'd wanted to for ages but never did. It turns out there's a cosmetics dealer in there and behind there is a mother lode of well-made small boxes. So now I have a source for those. The electric lighting place hadn't been throwing as many away and the drone place has been keeping their trash locked right up. So I'm really happy about this new place. 

I got back and set out a nice meal with bean sprouts, the cockles (or they might be part of the ark shell family) peanuts and beer, and the cockles were indeed really good. I've eaten clams, scallops, mussels, and oysters but I've never eaten a member of the cockle, lucine, tellin, or ark shell family. And when I was a kid there were tons of cockle and tellin shells on the beach there in Hawaii Kai along with tons of quohog clam shells of all things. I could have really eaten well when I was a little kid if I'd just known. 

I eventually got some fishing and foraging skills but I'm learning now how much there is that I didn't know. That's why I like watching Bush Tucker Guy on YouTube and Outdoor Chef Life and all those fishing/foraging people especially those in Hawaii because that's where I'll be in a few years. 

I need to clarify in my mind how I'm going to live there. Am I going to be a busker or a begger or a "freegan"? My main "nut" each month is going to be rent wherever I'm living, but then I should have a ton of free time to fish, forage, busk, play shakuhachi for hours a day, maybe learn to make the things, etc. 

I've sure been through some experiences here on the mainland. I'd not have been able to put it into words at the time but I think I left because I honestly thought there was a white culture here on the mainland that was analogous to the Asian cultures, especially the Japanese, culture I saw around me in Hawaii. And I'd been welcomed to participate in, in Aikido classes, invited to Obon, etc. I had no idea. I was thinking one of the most highly evolved cultures ever, would have a white counterpart. There might be pale parallels in such cultures at the Amish or the Hasidic Jews, but there's really no comparison. 

And that besides finding out that I'm part Asian myself. I'm sure my mom put "white" on every census form, but she was 2X as brown as me and I'm brown. It's been hard for me to accept. One of the first cracks in the "I am white" armor that was inculcated in me was Tubgirl. I'm sure everyone's seen that picture by now. What amazed me when I first saw it was that she's really all white, all over. Forget what she's doing, look at that amazing (lack of) coloration. I've got parts that have never seen the sun and they're my darkest. 

And I realize now that in Hawaii, "white" is defined if anything by how you act and carry yourself as what color you are. I can see now that a lot of the hassles I got for being "haole" was the way I carried myself, the way I looked at people, and so on. The time some kids threw rocks at me, I didn't have to throw rocks back (to near them, not to hit them but they probably didn't know that) I could have made a game of it, catching the rocks, after all, they were just small and medium sized kids. They couldn't throw that hard. But no, I had to throw rocks back, to miss them narrowly but they probably thought I was aiming for them and just an average thrower, and they ran off and got their parents who came around in a van looking to whup my ass - I hid out in the Ching Tong Leong Store for a while then went back to the bus stop I'd been waiting at and took the bus home. 

It's like the situation with the "micros". One time I was waiting, under the kamani trees, at the bus stop by Pat's In Punalu'u, and there was an old white guy waiting there too. I made some complaint about "the Samoans" and he told me that "the Samoans" all grew up watching American movies with people like John Wayne, and in those movies, there are always tons of fist fights. So they think that's the way it is here. And in truth, in Samoa, under Fa'a Samoa, their customary way of life, it's peaceful. I'd been taught that if someone throws rocks at you you throw 'em back, but that's the Western, barbaric, way.  So these poor "micros" are allowed to come to the US due to our bombing and drowning their islands, and they land in Hawaii because it's closest and most familiar, and life's so different they lash out. So everyone hates 'em now.