A driving Hogan's Alley

 After my beef and vegetable soup, it seems like I had more energy and I packed a few things, got the things that I have to pack out of the warehouse, sorted out a bag of clothes someone on the other side of the building threw out, finding one pair of shorts that are 100% keep and 6 or 7 others I'll have to try on. 

I also went through the big haul of stuff I got last Wednesday from the EMT training place, sorting into stuff to keep for ourselves here at the shop, stuff to give to Ken, little packets of various creams, little packets of various pills, and finally cough drops because this haul had a ton of 'em. 

I emailed Jesterboyd about sending this stuff to Ukraine, but no reply so far. I can stuff a medium flat-rate box with stuff once a month anyway and send it to him but no reply yet. The guy seems pretty busy. 

(I could also see if the Peace & Freedom Center could use the stuff. I already dumped a big load on Tom, so he's got a "drug store" at his place since he's always getting owies himself plus he interacts with a fair number of bums.)

I also got some practice in, since I'd not practiced for a week. With my bruised or fractured or whatever rib on the left side it hurts to breathe deeply but the practice went OK especially for having taken a week off. 

I finally went to bed at 7AM, went to sleep for something like 2 hours, told myself this is ridiculous, and went back to sleep until about 3:30 in the afternoon. I had the craziest dream. 

I was driving our old station wagon that we had when I was a kid, down to some country place south of here, because I had to go to some office or something, in a place with a red roof that was owned by Mormons. I drove there and it was closed for lunch or something so I got back in and drove South of there. I did the kind of left turn I might do on my bike, that's highly illegal in a car, and right in front of a cop. I pulled into a parking space that was there, and the cop pulled in and turned out to be some middle-aged overweight Karen type. Uh-oh. Just then, some aimless chick shows up with one of those little white floofy terrier dogs with a round face. The cop's gonna let me off if I can give this gal a ride to where she needs to go, because she (the cop) is overwhelmed by how cute the dog is. 

So, OK. The gal gets in and the dog meanwhile has found one of those silty mud puddles where the mud's like paint. Now the dog's squirming and wiggling all over, and getting mud all over the (for some reason, in reality the car's internal trim was all black) light blue internal upholstery etc. of the car. I'm trying to contain the dog and get the gal to clean him up with a towel that's there, then eventually another one that's my pale blue-green towel that I've had since 2001. 

The dog's doing crazy stuff like deciding to hide behind the accelerator pedal, and finally at the cost of mud everywhere I get the dog into the back with the gal and I'm driving back North to get to the Mormon place which must be open by now. But now I can't find it, although I know it had a red roof and I end up way too far North and have to come back around. Meanwhile the town's a regular Hogan's Alley with drivers doing crazy things, pedestrians doing crazy things, farmers on tractors zipping by way too fast, etc. 

I woke up glad that was all over with. With all my hurts it hurt to change position in bed and that's probably why I had the crazy dream. 

9:30 at night. I've packed the overdue packages, still have some to go and my back hurts like hell. I probably overdid things yesterday. I also think I probably messed it up turning over in a funny way in bed, due to all the pain I'm in. 

If I had one of those belts like warehouse guys wear I think it would help but I don't have one. 

It's storming like crazy out there right now. At least the next few days are still forecast to be dry and I'm never out early enough to worry about the frost we'll have overnight. 

Today's soup was pork with veggies, with a packet of ramen broth. 

Midnight. Still raining out there. Packed some more stuff. Man my back hurts, and I thought about what the hell could be going on. I remembered injuries I've had in the past that didn't hurt that bad the first day or two but then were painful as hell, because at first the area was numb. The hurting like hell came on when the nerves woke up again. 

I called Ken  and said I don't think I'm strong enough yet to do a package run much less two, can he come by the next day and pick them up for me? He said Sure then remembered he has to be somewhere and is not sure when he'll be done. I'm to call him at 3 and see if he can come over. If he can, great. If he can't I'll just have to do it. 

Unfamiliar Fishes II

 I ended up reading the 2nd half of Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell. There's so much information in the book and so much "I gotta research that". And the names .... names I grew up hearing from all the Hawaiian ones of course to names like Castle and Blaisdell and Wilcox. 

I spent some time looking at rents back home, of course it's not cheery. Some places as low as $450 or $500 but a ton of them up around a thousand. I know Social Security will give me a thousand, and I can sign up for food stamps too, but I'm kind of counting on my monthly check to keep me living under a roof, and busking money or other things I do to keep me fed. 

I worked over my letter to my older sister's husband, the lawyer. Going to go over it another time or two then mail it. I like to think I'm a more reasonable person than I was 20 years ago and that they are, too. I like to think that 20 years apart from each other has been a long enough "time out" and that I can correspond with my older sis again. 

Having someone there comes with a whole network and Hawaii is all about networks. For all I know the apartment in Makiki might still be in the family, although they'd not live in that little thing, they've got a big house to live in. 

I need to network with my Buddhist sangha too. I've spilled the beans to Rinban that I plan to go back to Hawaii in a couple of years. I have to whisper a word here and there ... 

I got to sleep at something like 7AM or so, and am not sure it was anything like actual sleep. I had 15 things packed so I found another 16 things to pack, put everything in big plastic bags, one with FedEx stuff and two with Post Office stuff, and by the time it got around to 3 in the afternoon I called Ken. 

"Hey, I'm just calling, you're coming over to pick up the packages right?" "Yeah I can do that!" "When will you be over? I'm gonna need an afternoon nap and I want to be sure to be awake when you come by" "Oh, about an hour". 

So Ken did, in fact, come by in about an hour. I'm sure he forgot our plans we'd made for him to come over, so I'm glad I called - he was probably still at the house because he doesn't often show up at his day job until something like 4. 

I was happy to tell him that the post office has given up on the chute, and they're back to using those big cloth bins to just dump the packages into. "You can just dump 'em in", I explained.  I also told him that tomorrow will be rainy but I'll just stay in and pack things and then Wednesday will be clear and I can ship the packages out then. 

I ate some cheese with a mustard/Kewpie mix and a bit later some peanuts and chocolate, very little of each but at least that's something. And tea, Ty-Phoo to start the day and jasmine after that. I think my headaches were due to a combination of not drinking enough fluids and by drinking coffee, somehow. 

So I will see how it goes, not drinking alcohol and also not drinking coffee. As I explained to Ken, I was in the market one day and thought if I got a couple tall cans of light beer it might make my headache go away. And it did, and I thought if I just kept things limited to 5% or so of alcohol, things would be OK. And, I concluded, they were not. "Because you start needing more and more to get the same effect", Ken said. 

Soon after Ken left, I got my bedding down from the loft and tried to sleep for 2 hours and kind of did, woke up at 6, and went back to bed and slept for about another two hours. I think that was more like real sleep, as it featured some interesting dreams. This is kind of like guard duty over in good old Korea, 4 on and 4 off. 

A big story right now is Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, has gone full idiot. I was reading Dilbert from the very beginning, thanks to a programmer friend whose house I lived in, and being a programmer, he loved Dilbert. 

Now, Scott Adams was always a complainer from the beginning. He kept his identity a secret while he worked (for AT&T I believe) and his bitch at the time was that he "had" to start a comic because he "didn't have the height or the hair" to get into Management. He took one of those mail-order art classes and worked out a simple style for himself, and the thing practically wrote itself because he had people sending him anecdotes from their workplaces from early on. 

For a while there, there was compilations of comics, books by Adams that were actual books with a few strips, etc. I remember mints sold at 7-11 a "Manage-mints" and "Achieve-mints" and so on. I loved Ben & Jerry's "Totally Nuts!" Dilbert ice cream, a nice vanilla with off-grade nuts, and the off-grade ones are much more flavorful. There was also a Dilbert TV show and I bought a little color handheld LCD TV at Radio Shack just so I could watch it. When I got a Prius I discovered that electric cars have a lot of torque and seriously considered getting a Dilbert "Still pumped from using the mouse" sticker for it. It had Dilbert doing that hand-on-bicep thing. I'd probably have had to get some vinyl and cut it myself.

Scott Adams has apparently said the Dilbert TV show was dropped because Adams is white. Uhh, no, the truth is, it was pretty niche. Real nerds found it hilarious but real nerds are actually pretty rare. Even here in Silicon Valley, the biggest/richest employers are things like Safeway and Kaiser Health and so on. In fact, a Dilbert style show about medical workers would do better just because of a larger viewer base and relatability. And in fact such shows have, from Dr. Kildare to Scrubs. 

But now the guy's really gone off the edge. Saying all whites need to get away from all blacks. And a bunch of other crazy stuff. Back when I was a real asshole in my early 20s I made some comment at work and a co-worker said, "Why don't you move to Russia? They're all white there". So, Adams, pack your bags. 

I got a few things packed and had what I guess is my first real meal since last Thursday night. I made beef vegetable soup. It was shabu-shabu beef that I cut up and freeze in 4-oz. packages, onion, carrot, broccoli, and the soup from a ramen packet - this one was different than the last one, lighter and a bit more "chickeny". I guess if I'm going to use soup packets I'd better start labeling them. 

The soup base I come up with when I just "wing it" end up too salty. I'm actually OK with buying packs of Sapporo Ichiban ramen and giving the noodles to the birds (or bums maybe) and even at $1.20 or so a packet, it's worth it to me. Then I'll have soup that has no noodles but has veggies. It's just so easy to prepare. The trouble with ramen is not only the carbs in the noodles but while the seasoning packet might have 1000g of sodium, the noodles will have another 1000g. 

Egg flower soup

 I just finished a bowl of egg flower (AKA egg drop) soup I just made, 500ml water, boil, add flavor packet from ramen noodles, stir in one beaten egg. 

Actually the flavor packet I used was some kind of fancier-than-normal one, had miso in it and I was pleasantly surprised. I have a bunch of these packets because I kept eating the noodles dry as a snack - which is really unhealthy.

The last time I ate was something like Thursday night so I'm taking it slowly and carefully. Also, carbs are really bad for alcoholics when they're drying out. I actually had a couple pats of butter earlier in the day, too. 

This is feeling harder than the last time I got off the sauce. Maybe it's this damned cold weather. 

Come to think of it I think I'm less bad this time. Last time, I had "brain zaps" - sort of flashes of light in my peripheral vision. And I was not able to sleep for a couple of nights. This isn't that bad, it's just that the cold weather is bugging me. 

But I'm also about 2 years older, and from all my readings about alcoholism on reddit I know drying out gets harder each time. 

Interestingly, I'm getting off coffee too.  It's just too much fussing about, with the filters and the grounds and all that. Maybe not caring so much about coffee is an old-person thing. 

I'm just amazed at all the old-person stuff I do now. Like, I have two different little boxes of Japanese chocolate and a Korean chocolate bar and they're just sitting where I keep snacks. 

And an hour or two ago I ate "all the cheese I wanted" where that actually meant, one slice. Classic old person. At least one old-person thing I did was pretty cool: I took the blood stain I had on the sleeve of my shirt away with some hydrogen peroxide. By the time you're old, you're expected to know how to deal with all kinds of stains. 

OK so I have 15 packages packed and will pack some more when I get up tomorrow, Ken will come by and pick them up (I'm putting the packages in big plastic bags so they'll stay dry) and take them to the post office and FedEx for me. Tomorrow and Tuesday are going to be very wet and rainy, but then it's supposed to be clear on Wednesday. 

So if Ken wants to do a package pick up Tuesday also that's fine and if he doesn't, that's fine too. After all, the whole idea of this business is for it to be pretty hands-off for Ken. Assuming I'm going to be feeling OK on Wednesday and can literally get back on the bike. 

Drinking's like aviation

 Long periods of boredom interspersed with moments of terror..... 

I'm OK I'm OK I'm OK ... then OH SHIT!!!!!!!

Trying to dry out now. 

I pissed my chair so needless to say I pissed my pants. Donald Duckin' it until I finally went up into the loft to get my 3-parts folding mattress (was afraid I was gonna piss it). Slipped on some undies in the process of so doing. 

Now I've got to wash my sweatpants real quick and .... yeah that ain't gonna happen. Glad I kept my flight suit. It may not be stylish but it'll keep me decent. 

Your hitman buys you dinner

 Still corresponding with Dave. He told me he had a hitman after him, and they went to dinner. The hitman talked with him for some hours, decided Dave was a good guy and would not be bothered again, by anyone, any time. The hitman even paid the bill.

This the thing about Hawaii. It may have Louisiana level corruption, but as I told Dave, a New Orleans hitman would have just capped his ass and fed him to the gators. Lucky you live Hawaii, eh? 

This last "eh" is pronounced halfway between "eh" and "ah". It's the loco' styoh' eh?

I'm the last to know what's going on but somehow I've taken an "alcoholiday" and ... didn't list, nor did I pack, or ship .... I have an excuse in that it rained but I could have had things packed and ready to go .... 

I packed a few things that were overdue and ... refunded the buyer or something that's mysteriously disappeared as so often happens around here. The laws of physics do not apply.... 

Supposed to rain and rain, over the weekend. I dragged my lazy ass to pack the few things that were overdue (like library books!) and took 'em to the post office. 

On the way back I stopped at the Pho place where Tom said he kept getting insuffiently warm broth. Ordered a no. 16 and got it plenty hot. Devoured my Pho with all the basil and baby dragons er, mung bean sprouts at always, and at the till give 'em the rounded-up amount of a $20. "Merci ong, I said, repeatedly, the best Viet-Francais I could come up with. 

I came back by way of H Mart where I bought, big surprise, a carton of sake. I looked around for the bum and found him, in front of the sandwich place. I flipped him a $20 and told him Look out for me tomorrow, because I'll have the phone for him. 

It was dry?

 I drank, practiced a bit, drank some more ... 

I woke up at maybe 1PM and it was dry outside. What the hell. I got myself together and chewed gum to get ride of my dragon breath, and got out of here around 2, went right to the bank. 

It was super cold, and the ride downtown was a slog because the wind was coming from the South. I deposited my check, then went over to the Amazon place where I only got 4 or 5 bubble mailers but that's still 4 or 5 happy customers. 

I went to Nijiya and locked the bike, and went into Kogura's to look around, Nikkei Traditions where I'm happy to see they got a bunch of new Reyn Spooner Aloha shirts in, so I'll need to buy one. They're about $100 but I'm gonna need one. At least kukui nut leis are only about $12 but I suspect they're not from Hawaii at all. The nuts are way too small. 

I got a piece of peanut butter mochi at Shuei-Do, and looked at the offerings in the poke place. I was irritated by the raggae music they play in there, they play in all Mainland "Hawaiian" place and told the gal there, Why don't you play some actual Hawaiian music? That my dad was a huge fan of Hawaiian slack-key guitar and because of this I know there's a ton of material out there, hours and days worth. She sounded open to checking it out, so I gave her some names off the top of my head, the Makaha Sons Of Ni'ihau, Cecilio & Kapono, any of the Beamers... now I'll have  to find a good list or make one and print it out and drop it off there. 

Also they make butter mochi and Shuei-Do makes butter mochi, so now I have to get some from each place and see which I like better. Butter mochi became a thing after I left home, so I'm out of the loop on it. 

Finally, I went into Nijiya and got a big bento and some extra smoked salmon sashimi, 2 big bottles of sake on sale, some interesting dried/smoked little fish, and a bottle of beer. I had to go in a 2nd time for the beer as I forgot it and how can you have a big bento without beer (or, frankly, hot green tea). 

Finally, I stopped off at the temple to see if I could buy a ticket for a dinner the boy scout troop is holding. I got there the same time as the UPS man which was funny. You have to use the intercom to announce your business, so I said the UPS man was there. A gal came and opened the door and took the packages, and I asked if I could buy a ticket for the dinner, but she said they were sold out. "Oh, well ... but they met their goal! That's good!" I said. As I turned my bike around, following the UPS man, I said, "UPS started out as a bike messenger company" but he gave no sign he even head. Poor guy, probably pretty overworked. No Fun Facts about UPS for him. 

My plan had been to stay home, and read the 2nd half of "Unfamiliar Fishes" by Sarah Vowell in bed, listening to the rain. Instead, while really cold, it's stayed clear. 

Gonna rain

 I got in here, safe from the wind, and messed around with things, got some practice in, the usual yadda yadda. The first line of Shinran Sama sounds good, maybe I should try playing the rest...

I woke up at about 3 after having a crazy dream involving the Royal Family. Don't worry, royals, you're just peachy in it. Nice folks.

I packed 5 FedEx things to go out. Amazingly the wind is giving it a rest. But looking at the weather report, which I live by, it's 100% going to rain tomorrow so I'm probably not going out to go to the bank or anything. Or maybe  I will, drip and dry. I'll not know until then, I guess. I suppose I could put on my rain togs and walk out to the light rail and do it that way. 

"Do it the hard way... " - Chet Baker. 

I packed 5 FedEx things and made the run up there. It was cold but not really windy, and I could see the clouds starting to stack up. Beautiful sky, really. I went over to H Mart and left the bike with its load by the bike racks and went in and got a carton of sake and some small cucumbers. I went back out and looked for the bum. He was sitting down by the end of the front of H Mart. 

I asked him some things, Does he know about the various services in this town? Showers and day centers and food banks? Does he have a smart phone? (No.) Does he know how to use one? (Yes.) I told him I've got a smart phone that's not the latest and greatest but is a pretty good phone, and I'll give it to him with a charger and everything. Not sure when I'll be by there next, probably Friday at soonest, but I'll find him and give him the phone and charger etc all together in a package. 

If anything then he'll have a means to find out what's around, maybe communicate with friends, etc. He said he's been out on the street about a year. He either needs to get himself under the care of a state-assigned guardian or he needs  to learn how to work the system. 

So here I am, within a week, complaining about the guy and now I'm giving him a phone and will probably give him some other stuff too. I come across clothes all the time for instance and of course I don't pick up stuff that's not my size, but I can sure keep my eyes out for stuff his size. It just isn't hard to do. 

I guess I ought to get a package of rolling tobacco and papers for him too. If he's gonna smoke, he can save a ton of money by smoking rollies. 

At least he said the spicy potato chips and dip went down well. 

I picked up a lot of small-medium sized boxes and OTC medicines from the EMT training place and some other good boxes at other places so I had a good load on the trailer when I got to the "Liquid Chicken" truck. It was on the other side of Bayshore and the traffic was so heavy I had to go up to where the 880 freeway crosses, cross with the light, then ride all the way back. I gave 'em about $6.50 in change I'd accumulated and in exchange got a bowl of fries on the bottom, a cut-up chicken tender on top, and then on top of that shredded cabbage, tons of pickles, and salad dressing. 

I got back here and tucked in, and have enough fries left over to make "beefy fries" tomorrow. 

Ken came over, I got my check, we talked quite a while, and for tomorrow the snow level may be as low as 500 feet. So defo a stay-in day. I told Ken that I might not even deposit the check this week at all, as getting packages mailed out is higher priority. He said, "You appear to not be strapped for cash" and I said I've learned over my life to always have savings because disaster is always right around the corner. 

The truth is, we're in full-on winter until either March 20 or Easter depending on which you prefer. Ken told me about big trees down in a lot of places and it's certainly cold out there. 

 

Windy!

 I got things ready to list but did not list them, mainly hunted things down that need to be shipped, about 20 of 'em. 

Then practiced, and watched more of "The Abyss", an excellent British series on the rise and fall of the Nazis. Fun Fact: The Nazis were able to build the Autobahns so quickly because they were already planned and laid out by the Weimar government. 

I can pretty reliably play the full 2 octaves and whistle up that top Ro pretty well. And not giving Nori No Miyama any rest, but at least messed around with playing the first line of Shinran Sama. Thank you Rinban, for effectively saying, "You're beginners, but you're going to play the full range of the instrument right off!". 

The wind is howling out there so I'll have to wear safety glasses and my mask when I go out. 

Also I'm'a drop this here: 

 

Can't make it bigger for some reason. I've shown the stats showing people are leaving states like California in favor of stupid states like Texas and Florida. But there are a ton of us Boomers retiring and I know for a fact that Boomer ethics and politics suck. All that leaded gas ... I remember a guy, named Guy, Guy Logan in fact, showing me how to siphon gas when I was about 13, the proper way to do it being to use a length of garden hose and to "prime" the operation by sucking with your mouth, Guy got extra "cool" points for casually spitting out the mouthful of gas he'd gotten by over-sucking a bit... Guy was cool. I crashed one of his mini-bikes and he didn't even pressure me to pay for the broken magneto.

I woke up today at about 1 which is earlier than I've been. And no headache! I might be pretty happy with coffee out of my life and will have to taper alcohol out too although if I have to drink, sake seems to be the best way to do it. Mainly I'm working on being really good about drinking enough fluids. Starting the day with a mug of water then one of Ty-Phoo tea, and I just tried the jasmine tea I got, and it reminds me of the stuff my co-workers drank all day. It's light and aromatic and you can drink a ton of it since it has hardly any caffeine. 

The wind was going crazy out there. I packed 20 things and got going at a quarter to 6. Interestingly, all but one package were for the post office, and the lone FedEx package was a really small one. The chute at the post office has been out of order for weeks, and they're back to just having 1-2 of those big cloth bins you toss everything into. 

I rode back to H Mart and left the bike and trailer in front. The beggar was there and I had a bag of some coffee, tea, vit. C tablets, and 3 bags of spicy potato chips with me, and asked him if he could use some potato chips. He sure could. I said, "Those are pretty spicy without some sour cream to dip them in, but if you can watch my wheels, I'll get you some". I dashed in and got a big tub of "lite" sour cream since they didn't have the regular kind. There were two tall Asian duded right there in front of it, discussing something. I commented that "Anything called 'Lite' is generally crap - Oh, well, it's not for me" which got a bit of a laugh. 

I also grabbed two packets of sliced Swiss cheese and two cartons of sake for me, and checked out using my card - a bit north of $45. 

I handed the bum his sour cream and had a chance to talk to him a bit - he'd aged out of foster care I believe he assented to my saying, and he really doesn't have any family. Also, personal hygiene is well into the negative. Quite a whiff when I got close. What happens to lost souls like this? Do they just decay until they die? 

The wind had been vicious. I was glad I had a new pair of shooting glasses to wear, and I had to shift the bike down a few gears to make it against the wind. And I didn't always, as a couple of times I had to get off and walk it to make it against some gusts. 

I stopped by at Tom's to give him the rest of the goodie bag, containing coffee, tea, coffee filters, and some vitamin C tablets I cautioned him to "only take on a really full stomach". Then I got back here. 

It's such a nice feeling to be back in here while the wind howls outside. I'm in a pretty nice situation here. I'm saving something close to half of what I make, no one bothers me, I have the run of a huge place, the neighbors like me, I choose my own hours, I can cook whatever I like, and am part of a sangha and get a shakuhachi club meeting each month for just what I pay to the temple each month, which is $30. 

The drawbacks being I have to work on what Ken's interested in (electronics surplus) rather than what I'm interested in (playing and learning shakuhachi, nature and healthy living) and ... this place will never be home to me because it's not home. It's just a place. Sure  I could rent a small office in Japantown and turn it into a shakuhachi studio I just happen to start living in in a year or two. I'd have my sangha here and the network of shakuhachi people here. But it's just a place. It's not home. 

But as a comfy hidey-hole, for now, it'll do!

 

Homeless help

 I start my day by "dropping a dime" to the homeless complaints email for the city of San Jose. The bum who pretty much lives out in front of H Mart, I'm convinced now is a bit of a lost soul, probably aged out of foster care, and is deserving of being assigned a guardian by the city/state because I'm pretty sure he's a bit developmentally delayed and not about to "just go out and get a job". He told me yesterday he "has no family". 

I've actually had good results emailing to that address in the past so I can cross my fingers and hope. This guy isn't your usual burned-out zombie. Sure he asks for cigarettes, but that's the tobacco industry's last stand, to try to keep the underclass hooked on them by practically handing the things out where they can to this segment of the population. 

The guy's annoying because he bugs people for money right at the door (this is a no-no in begging circles, and years ago Trader Joe's ran me off for doing this, but I'm not developmentally delayed and have enough of the gift of the gab to simply say "OK!" brightly and shove off for greener pastures). 

Now, I just hope the guy can get help and he might be kind of handy for watching my bike while I dash into H Mart. 

I practiced last night, and due to the prompting of Rinban, I practice the full scale, two octaves (and three of Ro) up and down, before working on songs and just noodling around. It was being complacent, just doing those exercises in otsu, the lowest octave, and calling it a day. 

But no, Rinban is having us learn songs, and learn songs we will. I found a lot of Jodo Shinshu stuff on Youtube. often played on things like electric bass, piano and shinobue, all sorts of odd instruments, but it's there. It's great for those of us who have to hear it to be sure of playing it right. 

Today's a holiday but not for FedEx and UPS, so I packed a few really large packages so I'd not have to make two trips tomorrow. It was surprisingly warm out, not windy, actually kind of nice. The UPS one was just a few inches under their length and girth limit, and I even noted that in pencil on the white edge of the label. 

I stopped in at H Mart for more sumo-sake and some spicy peanuts, paid for 'em and got right back out to the bike quickly, so I didn't see if the beggar was there or not. I got away from there and over to FedEx and dropped off packages there, then headed for home. 

I stopped at the tire place for some large boxes, picked up 4 bags of spicy potato chips at the produce place (could have had tons of red bell peppers... I wonder how hard it would be to set up a dehydrating setup to preserve windfalls like that?) and got back here. 

Surprisingly, I'm not interested in drinking coffee any more. It's so much easier to just boil some water and make a cup of regular tea, and so far I like "Ty-Phoo" from England best. I'm finding I feel better without coffee and I just kind of got tired of the routine, the filter and grounds, all the fiddling around it takes. I know, I could just get a Mr. Coffee but I'd rather just drink tea. Ty-Phoo is Ken's favorite also. 

Tea's cheaper than drinking sodas, and I've gotten a couple types of green tea and jasmine tea, this last one being the type my Vietnamese co-workers used to drink all day and urged me to. 

I find also that sake feels a bit healthier to drink than beer. And the trouble with makgeolli is, that one kind I like tastes so good that it's easy to drink a lot of it. I think a lot of this comes down to sugars. Beer's for a fair amount of 'em, makgeolli has also, soju's sweetened, and sake's just a straight rice wine. Sure it's got some sugar in it, but because it's brewed from rice there's probably a lot less "fusil oils" than you'd find in grape wine, or whatever the hell it is they use to brew soju. 

I think getting off coffee is a big step, though. I've done it in the past, when I had a French press and I got tired of all the fol-de-rol of dealing with the thing. 

After my FedEx drop-off, I went over to the "Krispy" chicken place and got two thighs. I had $7 left on me and that order is $6.50 so it worked out just fine. The thighs are a little smaller these days, and they're no longer giving out fancy napkins with their logo on them, but at least a couple thighs are still only $6.50. 

That's how things are now. Just slowly degrading. The internet winks out fairly frequently these days, but so far it's always come back. I just need things to hold together well enough for the next couple of years. 

Secret Plans

 I used to do this: Take one of those composition notebooks and write on the front, "SECRET PLANS". Then write stuff inside. Not enough stuff, I didn't know as a kid the technique of forcing oneself to write every day so it was mainly doodles and stuff. 

Well, yesterday I went out shopping and visited Walmart because that's the traditional to do on a Saturday which is why the markets are always super busy on that day. Sunday is the traditional day for "projects".  So that is what I will do today. 

I practiced last night needless to say, working a lot on scales, long tones, and good old Nori No Miyama. I'm getting better! I also found the Twin Cities Buddhist Sangha's version of Shinran Sama on YouTube and was able to follow right along as they sang and played it, so it maps perfectly to the Kinko notation I'm using. 

As a busker, I've never bothered with having printed music in front of me while I play since I'm not going to look at it anyway. But busking with a shakuhachi, I might benefit from having printed music in font of me both to help me keep on track but also, the music stand will make it more obvious I'm playing music, and the music being in Kinko notation will seem like magic. 

I'm old enough to remember "Oriental" being an acceptable term for people, as well as rugs. I grew up believing that Japanese was too difficult a language for a non-Japanese person to learn. Even in 2003 when I was back in Hawaii, seeing a white guy working in a shop in Waikiki speak Japaneses had me astounded. When I was little I thought Japanese was the language of birds; too good and esoteric for most mere mortals. 

I got out of here around 5, after dropping off trash I rode straight over to Dai Thanh and ... they're very busy so it's going great for them but they didn't have "Chinese Donuts". And the jasmine tea I was able to find in tea bags is the same Yama Moto Yama stuff I can get at H Mart. 

Because I didn't want to be shopping and exploring the place while hungry, I went to this little tea and snack place in the same parking lot and got an order of fries. I thought for my $6 I might get some kind of really neat fries but they're just the same ole Ore-Ida crinkle cut ones Mom used to bake in the oven. Ehhh... I ate the smaller ones with the ranch dressing I got and put most of the fries away for later. 

I then went to H Mart where the beggar was still there, bugging people for money. "Sorry, I don't have any money on me, just a card", I told him. "Could you at least buy me some cigarettes and a drink?" he asked. Like... WTF? I don't even know what cigarettes cost these days, maybe $10 a pack? And I suppose "a drink" meant something alcoholic. I talked with him enough to find that he doesn't have any family, and to tell him he's chosen about the worst place to beg, that a liquor store and "health" food store like Sprouts would be better. 

When I came out with my groceries including a carton of sake, I hung the bag on the handlebar right away and got outta there and organized my load in front of the Hawaiian place where there's good light and no beggars. 

Then I went over to  Lowe's and got what I think will be a good "stain" type of paint to make a Shakuhachi Yuu look a bit less like a hunt of plastic. Plus a bucket and some hardware to make a laundry thing I thought up, to avoid having to wring out the clothes which is annoying at best and when I've got a cut on one of my hands I can't really do. That came to a bit over $30 so I had to put it on my card. 

The bright spot there is there's a street food guy who got threatened by the psycho who owns Intex Auto Parts (street vendor was on public property) and I've got cash on hand to go over there and buy some tacos or something from him if he's there tomorrow. 

I got back here, unloaded and made a run to the tire place for some large boxes, then got back in here and made a dish of the fries from earlier and whole garlic cloves, steamed/fried for a bit, then stir-fried beef on top. It was really good. 

When I think of modern washing and drying machines, one thing I'd never thought about is, you can operate them one-handed. I say this because while the cut on my right hand is healing nicely, I just got a cut on my left, not a bad one but not one that makes me want to wring laundry. So I need to get to work on my gadget, although I won't really need it for a day or so because it seems I always let laundry sit and soak for a day ... or a week ... 

 

Books

 I practiced last night, listed 10 things, drank a bit but not as much as I've been, and went to bed, Woke up at about 2 this afternoon and got going at about 3, with two bags of books. 

I got $10.75 for the ones they wanted at the used book store, then went over to Whole Foods not only to use the loo but to buy some chewable vitamin C tablets like there were tons of in the 70s, about 34903743 different brands of the same thing, a vaguely orange or fruit flavored tablet you can chew up. 

Good old chewable "Acerola" vitamin C tablets are kind of rare now, and expensive it seems. I finally decided on some gummies and got in line to pay for them. I got talking with the lady behind me and we both agreed Whole Foods has downgraded from how nice it was at one time. I said when Amazon bought them that was one downgrade, then described how Amazon first eliminated all my reviews, years' worth, because of "suspicious activity". Then when Prime went up to $180 a year, I wanted to cancel it and found I could not log into my account to do anything, and would not be able to until I spent $800-$1000 dollars on a smart phone, so I reported my debit card as lost so Amazon can't charge me any more, and I don't even use my Prime discount at Whole Foods there any more, although I probably could. 

I was telling her about my discovery that the Walmart on Monterey Highway has the same stuff Whole Foods does but a lot cheaper, when it came my turn to pay for my thing, and I realized I was headed over to Wal's anyway, so I went out without paying. 

I took my load of books over to the little free library/pantry on 7th. There were volunteers with a table set up with information and sort of care kits with things like socks and granola bars and so on in gallon zipper bags. I went right up and put my books on the top shelf, and had a lovely talk with the volunteers about how it's presumed that poor people don't read but how can they if they can't get a library card etc., so I think I made them feel pretty good about putting all those books in there. 

I went over to Lee's and was going to get something small but ended up paying $7.50 for a sort of plate lunch thing of char siu on top of chow mein with vegetables. I got their last soy sauce packet too. Hard to believe a Lee's would be down to their last soy sauce packet but I guess that's how things are now. The guy working there and I had some good laughs. 

I went over to the college to eat at my usual bench. Of course I spilled the requisite amount of noodles and things on the ground because if you can't do that, why eat away from home? Slopping food around is half the fun. And left what noodles I didn't finish for the birds anyway because a bird's gotta eat, especially when it's getting down to freezing overnight. 

I went over to Walmart and got my soda, olives, Febreze, etc. I was going to get chewable vitamin C but thought I'd better not as I had $20 on me and didn't want to use my debit card. I have a tube of "Airborne" to go through first and that will last me until the next pay check. 

I got a ton of bubble mailers at the Amazon place so that's good. Those things are handy. Then I went to Nijiya for things, including some chicken karaage and tomago, which I just ate as I write this. 

I had the bike pretty loaded up when I headed home. At least it wasn't windy. It was grey and wintry looking all day, but other than that kind of nice outside because of the lack of wind. 

I even found 9 books on the way home to start on my next batch. 

Metering

 I listed 11 things last night then just sort of crumped out. I've been following a "As long as it's 5-6%, I can drink ad libitum" policy and .... it's not a good one. If I put 100ml of soju in my cups of diet 7-Up, well, it adds up fast. So I had maybe 400ml of Ozeki "Sumo" sake at 15% to go to bed on which is probably less than I've been drinking by a significant amount. 

So no more beer, no more makgeolli. No more soju because that stuff's rank on its own. I'll taper down on sake because with sake I know where I stand. Instead of 100ml hiding in soda, I've got a little 80ml beaker and can drink it *beside* the soda.

I woke up at 2PM and it was like 59 degrees in here. It was supposed to rain last night but the expected storm, according to the radio, slid off to the South and missed us. But it's still cold. 

I packed some things and had some from yesterday, so 16 total. I took those up to the post office and dropped them off, then  went to Pho Thien Huong for a nice bowl of Pho. It was really good! They've changed it from large and small sizes and different prices to, all the types of Pho are $13. It was as large as the large size at Pho Bel Air and had more meat.With tip it was about $15, for a bowl of Pho that would probably be close to $20 at Pho Bel Air. 

I went to H Mart and did some shopping, the 2-liter bottles of "Sumo" sake are a dollar cheaper here than at Nijiya, and I bought one but no makgeolli or beer or anything else. 

I went by Tom's just to say hi, and we ended up going in his truck to the shady liquor store on Oakland Road where he got a 12-pack of Budweiser and a couple of TV dinners for later. 

Tom then swerved into an area behind Fastenal, which he said is a "dumpster area" and we ended up next to a place throwing out windows in frames and all sorts of stuff like that. I let him play with his windows (he picked up 4) while I checked out another dumpster where I got a lot of heavy duty zipper bags. 

We went back to his place and had a few beers and shot the bull about all kinds of things. One of Tom's hangers-on, a guy named Colin who's probably smart enough but has something wrong where he cant' talk very well, was around and asking a bunch of inane questions about how to insulate the van he's living in, that he's got parked in front of Tom's. 

But other than that, it was a pleasant visit. We talked about various adventures with people we knew in common, and how crazy it is in the Santa Cruz mountains. And music and a bunch of things. 

I finally got back here at about 9:30 which is like being out until half past midnight in the before times. 

Shakuhachi club meeting

 I packed some things to mail last night plus found and packed up the pieces of ivory I'm giving to Monty Levinson. So, 9 things. I was so tired out by things in general that although I had 20 things all ready to list, I didn't list them. I did practice though, tired as I was. 

I woke up at 2:30 or so. Maybe closer to 3. The laundry I'd done last night - with no wringing due to the cut on my finger which is covered by a Band-Aid but wringing would be hard on it - was dry enough for me to not only wash head/hair and shave but to clean the rest of me a bit and change into clean clothes. Warm comfy sweat pants and t-shirt, two light sweatshirts, and then my jacket on top. It's cold out there! 

Getting everything done took some time and I left here at 4. I went straight to the bank and deposited my check, then went over to Whole Foods. I got my usual buffet food and a light beer (4.2% alcohol) and relaxed and ate and drank. 

I was going to go to Wal-Mart but I looked at the time: 5:37. Did the shakuhachi club meeting start at 6 or at 7? I didn't know! I figured I'd better get over there. 

I rode over to J-town and got some things in Nijiya, including one of those milk carton type packages of sake and some diet soda to mix it down to 5%. 

I was feeling twitchy and as I put things away in the bike bags I realized I'd look pretty stupid trying to drink some of that sake from the carton, so I went back in and got a "One Cup Ozeki" and than sat on the long bench thing up on the corner, behind the memorial thing I call "the spike" and had my coffee and sake. 

I went over to the temple and tried the door. Locked. So they start at 7, not 6. I sat in front and practiced Nori No Miyama and after a while Rinban Sakamoto came by and said something like "Approved" and unlocked the doors and we went in. 

It was pretty much the same group of students. Me, the saxophone guy who's name seems to be Kevin and who knows a lot about the various Buddhist temples scattered around the US, two little old ladies who are very good study-ers, and another guy who turned out to be a reverend over at the Jodo Shinshu temple in Palo Alto. He had an actual bamboo shakuhachi. 

So we did our scales over two octaves, up and down, a couple of times, and then played Nori No Miyama which I did well at, then we jumped into a bunch of other things. Keven really struggled to even get sounds at all. He kept pushing things too hard. I think you can just "wing it" on sax once you've played it at all but you can't get away with that on the shakuhachi. You have to practice consistently. 

We got into trying to play other songs and really, we sounded awful. I did my best, everyone did their best, but it was so bad it was funny. But at least we did our best. Who cares if we sounded like that scene in The Music Man? 

It was pretty interesting because we got into whether to meri, which is to lower the note by changing the angle of the shakuhachi, or to "shade" which is hold a finger near the hole to lower it, or to half-hole which is just what it sounds like, etc. 

After we were done with playing, we had a great time talking about shakuhachis and what's best for a student etc. Rinban and I both talked up the Shakuhachi Yuu, and he said it's actually modeled after "a famous shakuhachi". He knew all about Monty Levinson's enhanced model, and had even been to Monty's place, up on the top of a mountain. We talked about how super-intelligent Monty is, and Rinban told us how Monty had originally gone where he is to study solar power under a National Science Foundation grant, and then asked himself "What am I doing here?" and got into making shakuhachi. And how it was only because of the Whole Earth catalog that he was able to make a go of it. 

The reverend from Palo Alto had two bamboo shakuhachi in fact, both given to him. He's a pretty good player. He'd learned from Rinban on the old PVC pipe model and a teacher in Palo Alto had felt sorry for him blowing into a plumbing pipe and given him a bamboo shakuhachi "Worth about 2500 dollars", said Rinban. I smiled a little, knowing I have a trumpet that sells for about $3500 new sitting at home. 

But Kevin is probably going  to get a Shakuhachi Yuu, and he's going to find that it won't magically solve his problems if he doesn't practice. 

I'd also gotten a chance to tell the group about the Twin Cities Buddhist Sangha that have put up a ton of these Jodo Shinshu songs on YouTube so you can hear them even if they're not done on shakuhachi, you can get the tune. 

Interestingly, I also suggested I make a flyer for the club and get some of the local stores to put it in their windows just like I see for spaghetti dinners and so on, and Rinban was not keen on that at all. He wants the club to be word-of-mouth. Considering how bad we sound, I guess the idea of even more students this raw is daunting. 

Rinban really loves the shakuhachi and in fact the whole group does, with the possible exception of Kevin. I got to pass mine around, and the reverend from Palo Alto even tooted on it a bit as I encouraged him to try it. I feel honored. 

When it was time to go, it was really cold out there! I was glad I'd layered up and had my hat and gloves with me. I took a little ride around Japantown just to see what was open and what's going on, and then rode home. 

I'll have to work on those actual songs, a lot. No more just grinding through that page of exercises in the Koga book and calling it a good practice. 

Rinban Sakamoto is a wonderful person who, if I can say I love anyone, it's him. It's due to him I learned about the shakuhachi. He's good at so many things, makes the PVC shakuhachis and our music stands and all kinds of crafty things, he's a decent shakuhachi player and a good singer, and they trust him with being the head guy (which is what rinban means) of a very large and important temple. 

But he is not a band teacher. We really ought to be doing things the way they're done in a school band where you have a method book and you learn some notes and then here's a song you can play with them, and then some more, and here are some more songs using and reinforcing them, and so on. Sure, "Hot Cross Buns" and "The Old Grey Goose" are pretty simple and boring but to a new student it's a kick to take that instrument you're learning and play a recognizable song with it. 

Maybe someday I'll have to write a book like that. 

Instead we're jumping all over the place. I'd love to see a method book or series of method books for the shakuhachi the way there are ones for trumpet and flute and clarinet and so on. I would like the shakuhachi to become popular as it's so simple, takes nearly no maintenance, is pretty easy to make yourself out of PVC, a quite good student instrument, the Yuu, is about $200 and a very good one might be $2500. This is cheap compared to almost all instruments. It's about on a par with the ukulele except it's darned hard to make your own ukulele. 

It's very healthy to play it, too. Trumpet might be kind of healthy, but I never got the impression it's helping my body the way the shakuhachi does. 

 

Interview with a Vampi, er, the landlord

 Yesterday was hell. At least I got some practice in. Now I think I should have been grinding away on Nori No Miyama from the day after the last shakuhachi club meeting, because it's all I can do to get in maybe an hour a day, after everything else is done and I'm tired and ready to go to bed. 

I woke up at 4 in the afternoon. I was really tired out. I called Ken to ask him if the landlord was coming over tonight or Friday, and Ken said today, at 6PM. Great. 

I "sanitized" the place, putting my half-washed clothing upstairs along with some other incriminating things, and wanted to get at least the one large thing I had to ship, out of here. So I hurried, cutting my finger, and got that packed and was out the door a bit after 5. 

The drop off went fine, and then I went to Five Guys and got a burger. The guy at the register is this guy with an amazing voice, and I told him so. "I want to hear you on the radio a year from now" etc. Seriously, that guy's got a gold mine right there in his throat, and I'd love to read someday about how this great singer was working in a burger shop where people kept telling him about his voice... 

I ate outdoors and then swung by the EMT training place (nothing) then the tire place (got one big box) and was back at the shop a few minutes after 6. Ken was there, but we had to cool our heels for half and hour, maybe 45 minutes, until the landlord's representative came by - She was actually very nice, and we had a fine time showing her around and explaining what we do, and then a big of a fun brag-fest where Ken talked about his rocket days and I brought up how I'd built the prototypes for those credit-card terminals we all use. 

Fun, fun. Ken got a big sheaf of papers that's some kind of weird additional thing to the lease, and Ken's worried about that. We were able to clarify a lot of important things, though so I guess it's what business types call a "very productive" meeting. 

It was supposed to rain tomorrow night but now I don't see any rain in the forecast, just cold. That's nice. I got my "enhanced" Shakuhachi Yuu today too, as Ken had brought it along with my other mail. I don't notice a big difference in playing from the one I already have, but I'm tired as hell, I need to do a serious A/B test, plus I suspect even more now that the plain one I have has had some things done on it by Monty. 

In any case I'm not taking the fancy one to the shakuhachi club meeting tomorrow night. I'd gotten it because I thought I might be jetting to Hawaii in two months' time rather than two years', but Dave, the guy on Oahu, is pretty hopeless and all through his own doing and won't accept help. At least I have an interesting pen pal. Two, really, as all this stuff with Dave has me talking more with Pat on the big island too. 

Ken and I talked a bit after the landlord's representative lady left, pretty largely about the future of this place. The way I see it, if I'm leaving in 2 years that gives Ken 2 years on his own to sell all of this stuff off. He says he loves his day job so he's not going to leave there. I mentioned a guy I know down in Los Angeles who might be able to buy all this stuff here in one swoop - a million dollars. 

Hail, fellow - well wet!

 I was up around 3, with my headache pretty bad. I had a mug of water and then one of tea, couple aspirins, and loaded the bike up. 

It was a record load, 2 Whole Foods bags hanging off each handlebar and the saddlebags full of small bubble mailers. It was all post office stuff as the plan was to make the post office run first, then come back and pack this big heavy beastie of a thing and take that and the other FedEx stuff to FedEx. 

Coming back from the post office I went into H Mart for some soju and a can of Mr. Brown. There's this beggar, I think mentally disabled, who hangs out there all the time now, bugging people for money. I told the security guard about this ... person .. and the guard went out front and stood around, not chasing the beggar off but at least keeping the hustling from happening. 

I drank my Mr. Brown on the lee side of the California Fish place, out of the wind. It was real hat and gloves weather out there. 

I got back here and packed some fluidics connectors a guy wanted quick - he said he can't even get them from the manufacturer for something like 2-3 months so he really wanted these. He paid enough shipping that I could send it 2nd day air and we'd still make a nice profit on the shipping. So that's what I did. 

While I was packing the big beastie thing, I heard a clatter outside. It was hail. So it stormed and hailed for a while and I finished my packing and then put everything in plastic bags. I rode out around 6 maybe, maybe closer to 6:30, and the storm had passed but it was really wet now, with lots of standing water. 

The damned beggar was still in front of H Mart, bothering people. I ran in for a bottle of makgeolli and said something more to the guard, then took the several boxes I had to FedEx. I loaded up a cart they lent me. 

I was out onto Brokaw Road when my phone rang. I ducked back into the parking lot and answered it, it was Ken. FedEx had called him and said one of the packages is actually UPS. Oops! I went back over and picked up the package, and went over to the UPS that's on the other side of Oakland Road. It was 7:00 now and that UPS closes at 6:30. Some Indian guys were standing around outside, working their phones. I started to tell them about places downtown, and one of the guys said there's a UPS at the Doubletree hotel that closes at 7:30. "Thanks!" I said, "There's no way I'll make that so I'll just do it tomorrow". 

But I had a look at the time when I got to Fry's Electronics, and it was 7:03. I could make this, I decided. I'd just been to the Doubletree and remembered seeing a UPS place there. 

So I rode on over, they were open, and I dropped off the box. Then I wandered around trying to find this sushi place but was one street over. I'd never been on this part of Skyport Drive and followed it around, wondering if it connects with First. 

I passed by a red lit-up sign saying VIC'S. And I thought I'd seen tables outside in the passage way this VIC'S would be in, so I circled around and it turned out to be an Ike's Sandwiches. I've lived here for 10 years and never eaten at an Ike's so, time to try it out. 

Since my eyesight is not too good I had trouble reading the hand-painted menu on the wall and asked theme for a paper menu - no go. So I asked if they had any sandwiches with pastrami in them and the guy suggested a "Paul Ruben" so I had that. 

With tip that sandwich was a little over $17, but wow what a sandwich. By this time I was so tired and hungry, with all the packing and riding and cold weather. I joked with the guy about how some people follow the "OMAD" or One Meal A Day diet and "sometimes the one-meal-a-day is compulsory". 

But really, That sarnie is probably just about a day's calories, and I could get by on a one of those a day and a couple of eggs or something for breakfast and that would be spending $20 a day or $300 a month. It's pretty do-able. Not saying I'm gonna do it, but if I were an office worker around there it'd be a pretty solid plan. 

I got back out on the road and found it did connect with First, I stopped for some boxes here and there (rained on once but will dry out OK) and got back here. Thanks FedEx for telling Ken who could tell me that I'd dropped off the wrong package so promptly! Thanks nice Indian guys! Thanks Doubletree for being awesome and having a UPS! Thanks Ike's! 

Yes I did practice old Nori No Miyama last night and I think I'm improving. That shakuhachi class is the one little ray of sunshine in my life right now. I not only practiced the song but did a lot of noodling around, which is a good thing to do also. I can do at least the first part of "Iron Man". I can do "Iron Man" on trumpet after all, that song is rad. 

I've got our Ebay sales, a sort of 30-day running average they keep, above 10 grand. As I've noted, I think 6 grand is what it takes just to keep the place running and it's only anything over that that's profit for Ken. 

Ken will be here tomorrow night and for some reason, the landlord wants to come over and talk to us, mainly to Ken. That is ... not good news as far as I'm concerned, but Ken says the landlord said something about an end-of-year gift or present or something. 

I think two more years of working at this place is about all I can stand, and I hope I can be ready to jet to Hawaii ahead of time. 

But just to keep things interesting, I emailed Monty Levinson and asked him if he takes apprentices. Do I want to live in the wilds of Willits? I pretty much doubt it, but I want to see what he says. A rented room and a bike are all I'd need, or buy a van and kit it out to live in and park at Monty's place or something. The guy's one of the best shakuhachi makers on the planet.

Hydration or the lack thereof

 Last night I hunted down the 20 or so things that had sold as of last night, to have them ready to pack today. 

I also practiced the shakuhachi, working on each line of Nori No Miyama and making pretty good progress on it. In the shakuhachi scale there are actually three Ro's, the bottom one, the one next up, then the high one which is really the bottom note of the third register. 

It's one thing to twaddle through the page of exercises in the Koga book, playing them in otsu, the bottom register and then kan, the next register, but to play this piece is harder. And play it I will, until I can do it well. 

I've chosen this one piece because it seems about the easiest of the ones Rinban wants us to learn, and also, if I can learn one piece for each session of the shakuhachi club, IE one a month, then at the end of my time on the mainland here I'll have 24 pieces under my belt and that's plenty to busk with. I'd say I know Hinomaru pretty well, then I'll know Nori No Miyama, so that's 2 so far. With 24 pieces I can do plenty of busking. 

I drank less than the night before, but I did drink last night, a bottle of makgeolli and 500ml of my diet 7-Up and soju mix, mixed down to about 5%. When I woke up my headache was bad. Bad enough that even with tons of packing to do, I'm not going out. 

Instead, I drank a mug of water and a couple of aspirin, and then a mug of tea. My headache is largely gone but I still don't feel too great. I have a theory that, with my years of heavy drinking, my sense of how hydrated I am has become distorted, and that my headaches are due to being dehydrated. 

I will have to taper down the alcohol, and get in the habit of drinking regular cups of water - no lime juice, no fuss, just down a cup of water when needed like I did when I was a kid/young adult in Hawaii. 

I also am re-reading Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell and about halfway through. It's not a piece of great writing but there's a ton of information in it, probably mostly right, and it sure brings up memories. Names I remember from those of our neighbors on Portlock Road. The heiau above Waimea Bay that I, as a kid, thought was peaceful, quiet, and a bit boring. It wasn't boring for the unfortunate people who got sacrificed there, I guess. Things about the "Mission Houses Museum" that I thought must by the epitome of boring, and that now I want to go see. 

I was so ashamed of coming from a "backwater" like Hawaii as a young adult. I guess a parallel might be someone who comes from the middle of Kansas and gets away to the big city and never breathes a word about where they came from or their encyclopedic knowledge of corn farming or ranching. They think everyone will think of them as a hick. And these days, you'd fascinate the city slickers with your corn-farming or ranching knowledge... 

These days, to me, there's no more fascinating place. Even the "history" of my own family there is interesting. I guess my dad moved us there because my grand-aunt had been at least passing through, as part of her eventual job of Grand Poobah Of All Military Libraries In The Pacific, since the 1920s or 30s. She'd settled there, in 1309 Wilder Avenue no. 1402, across the street from the Scottish Rite Masons building and just down the street from Punahou School. Visits to her were a very regular thing to us kids and I suppose she's really talked the place up to my dad. 

We'd started as typical Mainlanders. Moved to a bigger house than we'd had on the mainland, had just bought a new car, the bigger house was in a ritzier area, and so on. Typical mainlander's mistake, treating a move to Hawaii as a move up in expenses/status/consumption. We ate, with few exceptions, food that was shipped in from the mainland. 

But we kids "went native" as much as we were able to, even in the Portlock Road days. We'd spend hours whooping it up at the beach, wore as few clothes as we could get away with, treated shoes as very optional. And we were very enthusiastic converts to the religion of Yick Lung. 

I feel very fortunate that our childhoods coincided fairly well with the heyday of Yick Lung. Yick Lung of course was those little packets of Chinese style preserved fruits and seeds and peels and so on. There were many, many different kinds, and they were sold in a number of different sizes of bags from the little bitty 10c bags to large ones costing over a dollar. My mother was very controlling about food but somehow could always be talked out of a dime or a quarter for some Yick Lung. 

As we became poorer, my parents never stopped being "mainland" but we became more "local" just to survive. And I, I realized with juddering clarity now, became the most "local" of all. I, who held all things "local" in utter contempt! I, who expressed more than once my disdain and even hatred of "locals". But I'm the one who became a competent reef fisherman, able to bring home a stringer of fish reliably. I'm the one who learned to dip-net for smelt in the Punalu'u river where it met the sea. I'm the one who learned to forage and gather things, find and string kahelelani shells to buy my first good surfboard, and while that gig lasted, find and soak and strip, curl up and pin, dry, haolekoa pods for $1 a bread-bag full. 

Out of all of us, I, with my teen-years dislike of "locals", am the most "local" looking. I have dark hair, green-brown eyes, and tan the darkest. I'm the one who looks like they're "something". And except for my mom, my siblings didn't care for my stringers of fish. Nor would they curl haolekoa pods with me, nor could they be bothered to pick up a single kahelelani. 

My older brother, blonde and grey-blue eyed, had options like robbing tourists, working at the airport, and eventually joining the Navy. The two younger ones, one brown-haired, freckled, and with big blue eyes, had that just-stepped-off-the-plane look and as soon as she could, stepped on a plane and into the Army. The youngest, blonde and blue-eyed, got in with the most powerful gang in the islands, the Christians, and is now married to a chief of ... the 2nd most powerful gang in the islands, the police. 

I'm just amazed that all these things I thought were so parochial and boring, even embarrassing, are actually interesting and considered cool now. 

All I know is I can hardly wait to get back to the place. I really intend to be in a position to do absolutely nothing for a year when I get back. I figure it will take me that long just to acclimate. I'll fish, pick shells, practice shakuhachi, visit all the museums, and eat lots of good food. 

When I came up here to the Bay Area after crashing and burning in my attempt to retire early in Hawaii in 2003, part of my reason was the mainland is a big place and I could go anywhere. Now, places I figured could always be some sort of a backup are a hard No. They're all affected by natural disasters, man-made disasters, or too many Nazis. In addition to almost all of the mainland being more expensive and much more difficult to get around. 

For now, I need to be practiced enough on the shakuhachi for busking starting in April. It really is a seasonal thing here. 6 months on and 6 months off. It's still the cold, dark-early part of the year now and rain is forecast for this Thursday, the very day the next shakuhachi club meeting is. 

 

Livin' after midnight

 I got 20 things ready to list last night, including taking apart one instrument that we might get $20 for whole, but $100 or so in pieces. 

But in the end I was too tired and it was too late to bother listing the 20 things, and decided I'll do 'em on Monday. I have a ton of stuff to pack anyway. 

I woke up around 4 and tried to think of reasons to even get out of bed. I finally decided a trip to Wal-Mart would brighten up my day... 

I got going from here around 5:30 or maybe closer to 6. I stopped at Nijiya first for some jalapeno peppers since theirs seem to be the freshest, and got a salmon flake onigiri and a small can of black coffee. The onigiri was the kind that the nori is in it's own plastic wrapping which is wrapped around the rice, and you open that up and wrap the rice in the nori so the nori is super nice and fresh and dry when you eat it. It was delicious. 

The food and (more) coffee made me feel a bit better, and rode over to the "SoFa Marketplace to use their loo and hung out for a few minutes at The Fountainhead talking about election night 2016 when I was there for hours, drinking beers and talking with various people. The guy said he thought it was a party and I said it was far, far from a party. Although if Hillary had won I'd probably have spent a lot of money on beers for people. Instead it was a night of disgrace and I told him how different people were confiding in me, non-white people saying they were really worried now, some European visitors showing their dismay and my agreeing with them. 

But it was late! I went by the Amazon place for bubble mailers, then on down to Wal's for some shopping. I actually got a lot of needed/wanted things and it was only about $31. Of course the line was slow, slow, slow. I had fun talking with a Mexican lady behind me about various things we did in school like bringing a box of Jello and sharing it around, resulting in lots of kids with red or purple etc hands. And the little trick of taking a gummi bear and sticking it to the wall. "I did that too!" she enthused. 

One reason the line was slow was the lady being checked out had a lot of things and, apparently, not enough money. The guy ahead of me, a little Mexican cowboy type, gave the lady in front a dollar so that seemed to end the penny-counting. Then Senor Caballero checked out, handing over two $50's and two $20's for his groceries. These guys are better to do business with than just about anyone. I think it's considered disgraceful to quibble about money and in all my dealings with them myself, there may be a small amount of bargaining and then they pony up with aplomb. 

I paid for my stuff and loaded up the bike and headed out. I was pretty heavily loaded so the ride home was a cruise. I stopped to look for books and found some, and had a nice longish talk with the guy who hosts the little free library on 5th. I think his wife even came out onto their front steps to make sure he was OK, which is good as that's a neighborhood with nice houses but also a zombie problem. 

Yes, the undead were much in evidence. So of course I practiced basic zombie avoidance. They were out, rummaging through trash cans, no doubt doing drug deals and fighting and all the activities they love. Well they can just do 'em without me. 

I got back here and when I was in and all buttoned up for the night it was about 8:30 which is equivalent to 11:30 at night in the Before Times. 

This is how dead San Jose is

 I woke up at around 3:30, did the usual wake-up routine of black coffee and disappointment, washed hair, few peanuts to go with the coffee. 

I got on Reddit and this is standard procedure for San Jose: There's a big art show going on in Japantown, and except for people who are real die-hards as in, the exhibitors themselves, their relatives, their students if they have any, etc., no one else knows about it until the day it's happening or after it's happened. 

San Jose has less than on jazz club now. Going to Cafe Stritch was fun. Especially as they were at their best around the time we were moving to the new building and there was so much I had to do, that it was a real relief to bug off to the jazz club and have a beer or three, maybe dinner or a cup 'o' fries with mayonnaise to dip 'em in, enjoy the music and watch the 20-somethings who had somehow taught themselves Jazz Age dancing, do their thing. 

Now the place plays jazz once in a while and it's just not the same. I haven't even been in since it changed ownership and has the dumb name "Mama Kin" now. 

Honolulu has 2-3 jazz clubs running hot every night. Art shows, those are nearly continuous. And everyone's hooked up with info, it's in the newspapers and the magazines, there's word-of-mouth because people actually talk to each other there. 

Here, even the tried and true method of having flyers put up in windows is more miss than hit. It's to be expected in a town where you're just supposed to work work work. In the last day or so I saw a thing where the income needed to buy a median house in this area is $330k. It's from $125k to maybe $140-odd in other nice California areas like San Diego and Los Angeles. And I looked up what it is for Hawaii and it's $150k, high but still about half what it costs here. No wonder everyone here is a workaholic with no social life. ($150k for Hawaii is criminal, but it's still do-able if you have two people who chose good jobs, Gov't and Unionized, making $80k each.) 

If I were ready to busk with the shakuhachi I'd jump on today's art festival that I've only learned about now, just as it's ending. Even though I can get to Japantown in 13 minutes (I've timed it) I'd not get there in time. I'm not ready to busk yet but I'll have to figure out how to know when "little" things like this art show are going on. 

Shakuhachi busking is going to be very different then trumpet busking. Places where a trumpet would be most unwelcome would welcome a shakuhachi if anything. 

Oh fuck, I scroll 2 more posts down on Reddit and there is, or was, a "Love And Thrift" thing going on today also, I'd have totally taken the $100 cash I have on hand and checked that out. Might have been all hipster stuff but I'm due for a new pair of Doc Martens. 

I left here at about 5:30 and it was cold and windy, real hat and gloves weather. I went over to Lowe's first for AA and AAA batteries and a gallon of Windex. Then I went over to H Mart for some odds and ends. I ended up at a checkout at H Mart that was tap pay only and my card doesn't work that way but then I remembered I was going to use cash anyway. I wonder if I'll have to start treating H Mart as a cash-only store again? I've had to do it in the past.

What makes this cold, windy weather a nice thing is it keeps the zombies holed up. Going to Lowe's involved going along a small street that's just thick with zombies camped in the brush. I did see one zombie getting their Mad Max bike trailer out, but acted as if I didn't notice it and went on by. Coming back the same way, there were zombie rustlings in the weeds as  I went by there but I tried to look like a very strong rider, not worth giving chase, and nothing came of it.  

Definitely not leaving early

 Well, my pal on Oahu isn't going for my going over and helping him out in any way. Originally he's sounded like he wanted me to come over ASAP. 

My Big Island buddy (OK I'm tired of these names) Pat told me about Dave (Oahu guy) being into a lot of right-wing conspiracy stuff (I asked about it because Dave's latest email referred to the NWO which is pretty funny) and how Dave's not only really right-wing and anti-Semitic but anti-Chinese as well  which is pretty funny, said Pat, given he's 100% Chinese himself.  I wonder if you can be "dying of whiteness" even if you're not white?

In other words, there's no way I'd be able to work with, and certainly not live with, someone like that. But even so, it sounds like he's refused help from everyone else also, and won't even let Pat and another friend buy him a new smartphone which he kind of needs (I've also offered a laptop or to find him a tablet). 

So on one hand, Dave's circling the drain, and on the other, if anyone tries to help he paddles harder for the center of the whirlpool. 

So Pat and I have decided that we've each done our bit or tried to, and it's enough. As far as I'm concerned I've done more than enough even talking with him. I have zero respect for those who think "Teh evul jooz" are out to get them.

The thing is, you have to "plan your work and work your plan". Having plans is great - I just revert to my original plan of leaving in a bit less than 2 years. I worked a bit of my plan today and had time to make the post office and FedEx run and get some things at H Mart, and then get rained on riding home - but by that time the packages were all sent so I didn't mind. I didn't get too wet. I was going to hang out at Tom's a bit but it was too rainy and blustery to feel like doing anything but coming right back here.I guess we're still in Winter, after all. 

It's such a nice feeling to be inside while the rain goes plip-plop and drip-drop. 

 

Probably not leaving early

 Last night I told Dave on Oahu what Pat on the big island and I have been thinking, that I ought to get over there to be a helper ASAP, and that Dave should be able to provide me a room to live in. 

Dave replied with a long email about his struggles to live alone, his sister putting him in an adult care home and his escape from there. I replied that between two houses and a condo, maybe he could live in one, I could live in another one, and we could work on selling the third. I don't think this is going to fly with him at all. 

So Dave's got his whole "Oh woe is me" future laid out and he's determined to follow it. The guy who owned the place in Gilroy I lived at was like that. He was a hoarder, and on the surface of things sounded like he wanted help with things but he really didn't. He *liked* things to be miserable. 

I got going at about 3:30, went by the temple to drop off my pledge money, then went to the bank and did my bank stuff, Then, since it was a warm day, I parked the bike at Whole Foods, got some buffet food and an Anchor Steam beer (a bit under 5%) and then walked over to Target. 

Somehow I managed to screw that up and turned a street early, so I walked on the bike path which you have to these days anyway, and managed to get through the large concentration of bums everyone on Reddit was talking about, and got to the shopping center. 

First I got some tea, sardines, and a salami slices thing at Cost Plus World Market. Then all I got at Target was a couple of rolls of Scotch tape refills. 

The walk back was cooler. I rode over to the Amazon place for bubble mailers, then went to Nijiya for various groceries. 

I got back here, checked at the medical place for things but just got some packing foam, and called it a day. 

Big plans, possibly.

 I woke up around 3, found 9 things to pack, and took off at about 5:30 which is really late for me these days. 

The post office went well, FedEx went well, shopping at H Mart went well (this drinking, even keeping it at 5% or 6% concentration, is bogus. I got a big bottle of soju to mix down to 5% with soda and hopefully will taper myself off. This sucks.) 

But, what a night of the zombies. One zombie was staggering around on the curb, preparing to walk right into traffic, and I said half to myself and half to it, "OK little zombie, what are you going to do?" and that made it halt just long enough for me to get by. 

Then on my way back, I forgot to turn at Junction and overshot, and Lo and behold, there was a raving, staggering zombie ranting to itself and I swung 'way wide across the street and put on a burst of speed and that threw it off. I was contemplating the action of this warmer weather on the physiology of the undead when I spotted yet another zombie, staggering along the median strip of Zanker, and maybe it had zombie business (Zombusiness?) to attend to because it just kept staggering along. 

I was glad to get back in here. Night-time is zombie hours. Long gone are the days of busking until midnight or later down at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Gone are the peaceful nights out riding around when the day's too hot. It's get out and get back in, and only be out when there are enough workers, non-zombies, around that might call the cops or just take a tire iron to a misbehaving zombie. 

The big plans are, I just emailed Dave on Oahu and said if he can give me a safe, stable, room to live in for a year or two,  I can come over mid-April. Moving over that way will cost me tens of thousands of dollars less than doing it lone-wolf style as I'd been planning. 

I also ordered an "enhanced" Shakuhachi Yuu from Monty Levinson so I'll have a very good shakuhachi that I can play in the tub if I like. And I got Monty's address and am sending him a couple pieces of ivory I have from my scrimshaw days. I asked what I wanted for them and I replied that I'm just giving them to him. 

I got back in here, set up the bike with the trailer and step-stool and fished the medical place dumpster. Just packing stuff and one lone, random, stick of RAM. Oh, well. I swung back around here and the machine shop was throwing out a hee-yuge box from a Samsung TV. So  I scurried back here and put the bike and stuff away, and walked back around with my cardboard knife and took the two large side "panels" of the box back here. I used cardboard under my folding futon because the carpet here.... well, this used to be a machine shop and there's all kinds of weird oils and shards of metal are always working their way up. So I put cardboard first and then the futon. It's also handy for baths, the cardboard catches almost all of the water and partially soaks it up then I just let the cardboard dry out. Eventually the cardboard gets worn and I just keep an eye out for new stuff. 

 

State of the union

 Well, I drank more makgeolli than I needed to last night, listed 10 things, didn't practice, and woke up around 3. There hadn't been enough things sold last night to bother with taking to the post office today, so today's a stay-in day. 

I replaced the vacuum cleaner bag and washed the thing out, a messy process. Got done with that and Biden's giving a state of the union address. It's a rouser. People criticize the guy, say he's old and senile yadda yadda. But he sounds all of 40, and this speech is a long one. He's handling hecklers, and well too. He's not just reading off of a script either, he's thinking on his feet. I'm impressed. 

Then of course some loony Republican lady spewed some blather that didn't touch on any of the points of the president's address. As is tradition. 

Well, the expensive flute is gone. I'd put it on Craig's List last night, rebuffed a few texting scammers, a Chinese guy emailed me to call him and we made a deal that he'd come by and look at it, and put a deposit on it then come back next day, because he figured the banks were closed  (this was about 5PM). 

So the meeting time rolled around and there he was with his daughter, the standard willowy, quiet Chinese teenage girl who, once she put the flute together and played it, showed she's a whiz at the flute. I'd listed the flute at $1500 which is unrealistic given there are nicer flutes going for less on Craig's List, and on the phone the guy and I had agreed on $1200. So I was all ready to write out a receipt for whatever the deposit would be, and he had all the money - his bank turned out to be open until 6 or something so he was able to get it, the bills so new the serial numbers were in order and really liked to stick to each other. It took a bit of doing to verify there were 12 in the bundle. 

I'm pretty sure that's my easiest Craig's List sale ever. 

I might get right onto liquidating all the things I can, as soon as I can because I don't like the situation my Oahu friend is in. He seems to have tried at least something like the Adult Protective Services there in Honolulu, without much in the way of results. The thing is, his situation now, where he's got 2 houses and a bunch of electronic test equipment and all that, isn't going to hold for two years. Or even one. From the sound of it we're talking about months here. 

I think the guy needs someone to be actually there. Someone who can literally speak for him, to make the run to the phone store to get him a phone that works all the way, to get one of his cars running (according to my Big Island friend he has more than one) and so on. 

In return, if I can stay in one of his houses and not have to pay rent, it negates a lot of the fanatic saving I've got planned for the next two years. My lone-wolf plan called for landing in Hawaii and holing up in a hotel for a week or weeks or even a month or two while I find a place to stay. That gets expensive. Being able to step off the plane and give a cabbie Dave's address would make things tremendously easy. 

I keep thinking of Fred. Fred (I never learned his last name) was a guy who hung around the Nichi Bei Bussan store in Japantown a lot, and was super smart and well-read. He was great to talk to, and he was kind of surprised that although I talked some dirt about Hawaii as a place to live while working-age, I'd turn right around and say it's a great place to retire, and there are a lot of things where Hawaii's excellent from geophysical science to the study of Asian cultures. I thought Fred was a lot older than he really was; it turned out that not only being obese he had diabetes and the last time I saw him he was really ding-y and not well at all, and then I heard he'd died. That's when I learned he'd had diabetes and how young he really was. 

If I'd only known, I could have been his friend and could follow a "keto" diet together and I might have kept him alive. I doubt it's easy to convince a Japanese guy that rice isn't good for him but I could have done it. The guy needed a friend, a smart friend to spend a lot of time with, and I could have done it. But instead, like everyone else it seems, it was "not my business" or "not my kuleana" as we'd say in Hawaii. So there went Fred. Smart people are really rare here and it's awful to lose one. 

So the result of my thinking is that I may, if I can arrange with Dave to land and stay at his place, I might make plans to leave here right after I file my taxes so around mid-April. 

My lawyer-in-law

 I did some practice last night, and in the continuing saga of my helping my Oahu friend, I'd told him I'd call my brother in law the high-powered lawyer and see if he knew anyone from his public service hero days. 

So I woke up at 3, and remembered my promise. So I called up the guy I once referred to as my lawyer-in-law. He sounded good, which is good, and said mostly he's a divorce lawyer these days so unless my friend is getting divorced ... He heard me out, though, and said it sounds like a case for Hawaii's Adult Protective Services. Of course! - was my reaction. I said it was great to hear him sounding so well, and I hoped my sister is well, which he said she is, and I said that I'm due back there in a bit less than two years now and I hope we can all be friends because we'll all be on that island together. 

He sounded very professional and even more so than 20 years ago when I saw him in person. He's been through a lot, as we've all been through a lot - served at a JAG lawyer in the Army and I bet they see some things. It was his sister manning the phone when I called, so in a way I "met" her also, and she sounds nice and it's neat that he's got his sister working there now, in his semi-retired one-man operation. 

Adult Protective Services, of course. See, it takes what the State Of Hawaii has designated a "super lawyer", price of Punahou School and Santa Clara University, and no doubt his Army unit, to come up with such simple, clear thinking as this. Geez. It's the silliest thing since the time I, an Olympic hopeful, got seen by the hotshot doctors at the Olympic Training Center to find out I had ... a nickel allergy. Or the Space Shuttle people having to have Richard Feynman tell them that  O-rings get stiff when it's cold. Any electronics tech could have told them that, and their own engineers were trying to tell them that, but no, it took Feynman. 

So I've emailed my Oahu friend and told him the latest, and will go from there. 

So now I know my sister is OK, her husband is OK. I was worried that one or the other's health may have turned for the worse because we're all old these days and things happen. He'll pass on to my sis that I care about her and that I'll be back in the island in a couple of years. And I suppose I've made a good impression, stretching myself out to help a friend. 

I packed 11 things and took off at about 5. The post office was easy-peasy, then I went to 99 Ranch and got some curry flavored ramen and a couple little cans of pate' and got $100 back. I asked for a $100 bill because "It will go in a gift card" and the nice lady actually sorted through all her $100's to find the nicest one. Of course the gift is for me, for "oh shit" savings. 

Then over to H Mart for a few bottles of makgeolli and because I felt silly just buying that, I looked around and finally settled on a "spicy dried tofu" snack. 

The ride home was like ... WTF? Has everyone's boss gotten on their ass and said No more working from home? There's a ton of traffic out there. I stopped by the medical place and saw essentially a whole "Metro" cart with wheels, disassembled. I tried calling Ken to see if we needed any more Metro stuff and he didn't answer, so I decided to get it anyway. I went back here and put things away and got the trailer out and went back and got it. I also got a big box of data tapes. 

I did some re-arranging and threw out some anti-static mats we'll never use and no one's going to buy, and made room to store the Metro cart parts. 

RIP, MLK's Mom

 It rained all through yesterday and last night. I did a little practice, watched a lot of YouTube, got things out that need to be shipped, yadda yadda. 

I woke up around 3 in the afternoon and it was .... raining. Then it stopped, then it started ... 

On the radio they're talking about the mothers of MLK, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. Here's a zinger: MLK's mother was assassinated, shot in the back, by a young black man who'd joined the "Black Hebrew Israelites". Shot. In. The. Back. The damned MOTHER of one of the greatest Americans. 

Boy oh boy. Those Black Hebrew Israelites show up once in a while; the last time I came across 'em it was a guy with a little stand, barking away on Santa Clara street. Frankly I thought he was just trying to sell something, which I guess he was. I came by a bit later and he was still there, now going back and forth with a young skinny white guy. "Hey," the white guy called out to me, "He hates you because you're white". I said something like, "He can do that, he doesn't have to like me". And something like, "Hey, I'm from Hawaii, not being liked for being white is just Tuesday afternoon to me". 

The Black Hebrew Israelites are a big pain wherever they go. But now I can retort to them, "You guys killed MLK's mom". And as far as I'm concerned it's a personal grudge, because while MLK has become this sort of 2-dimensional figure, with a holiday named after him and endless sound bites of him saying "I have a dream!" if you really dig into his writing and his speeches, he was immensely intelligent and clued-in. He was really, really 'akamai as we say in Hawaii. That's why they killed him. He was starting to talk about the real issue, which is class and how the real enemy isn't Whitey, it's capitalism. 

Well, with rain all day yesterday and rain all day today, obviously there was no busking going on. I guess this is just how this time of the year goes. When I lived in Gilroy, I learned that there were 6 months of the year with work and 6 without. During the 6 without, you just live cheap, draw on supplies you'd stored up during the working months, and enjoy the free time. If you're hustling crafts, it's the time to manufacture your stock of craft items for the year. I guess if you're a busker it's the time to practice and learn new tunes. 

It's the time for me to work on "Nori No Miyama", brush up on my "Hinomaru" and take a look at the other tunes, because the next shakuhachi club meeting is only about 10 days away. 

I waited for a large squall to drift by, then packed two things and put them in plastic bags then in Whole Foods bags and took off for FedEx. I got there a half-hour before they close at 6, then went to H Mart for a good bout of shopping. I got my now-usual makgeolli, including one new "crispy rice" flavor to try. I like the Kong flavor, with its notes of cacao, but I have to try new things. There's also an acerola flavor that I guess would taste like those chewable vitamin C tablets from the health food store that I had growing up. 

It was cold going out and back but the nice thing is, it makes the bums hole up and it being Sunday the traffic wasn't as bad as it's been. Rain or not, I really had to get out because I had trash to dispose of as well as shopping to do. 

By 6:30 I was back here, had put things away, and done a "burn" of a batch of sensitive material, anything showing any identity or addresses, really. I use one of those things people use to get coals going for a barbecue, and when it's full of crumpled-up sensitive papers, time to light 'em off. I call it my paper shredder. 

 

 

Long-term vs. short-term

 Last night I fiddled around with things and got 10 things prepared to put on Ebay but in the end, didn't do it. I did some shakuhachi practice so that's good. 

It was really foggy overnight and I woke up at about 1:45. I checked the weather right away and thought I might have a window of time to make an H Mart run, but then it started raining and has stayed wet. 

I also "played with my food" by which is meant I portioned out some beef (1/2 lb, two servings) and put it in the freezer, and "flensed" a bunch of salmon skin trimmings I buy cheap at H Mart. It's not only cheaper, but some of the tastiest meat on a salmon, and it's just a matter of cutting the long pieces into smaller pieces then filet'ing the meat away from the skin. That made 5 servings out of about a pound and a half of trimmings so it was about 4 oz. of trimmings I put outside for the birds. 

On the radio they were doing a piece on the "Russian Imperial Movement" and its links to white-supremacist groups all over the world and in the US. They interviewed an American Nazi 2.0 guy and the guy was almost likeable. He understood global warming, and the problems of capitalism. He wanted to see US presidents from Bush to Obama, I believe even Trump, "put before a tribunal". 

As always, the guy's big bugaboo is "The Jews". These guys get so close, and yet are so far... To these guys, "The Jews" are a sort of timeless, ageless creature; there are no poor Jews, etc. 

I guess I can say the guy was almost likeable because his line of thinking is a better-articulated version of my thoughts when I came over to the mainland from Hawaii in 1986. I wanted a tribe. I wanted a family like one reads about in books (now I reflect how many of those books were written by Jews) where people care about other family members. I wanted the kind of folk-feeling I grew up seeing among the many Asians in Hawaii. I thought if I moved to the mainland, I'd be closer to family members and I'd find an organization to join. 

Where I was living during my last few years in Hawaii, was a room in a house on a lot with two houses. The one in front was lived in by a white guy, who I guess owned the thing, and who was a John Bircher. I tried talking with him, and he emphasized that the Birchers were vehemently non-racist. Their big bug was Communism, and as Communism didn't sound too bad to me, it seemed that I'd not be barking up the Birch tree. The guy seemed to hold me in some veiled contempt because in my early 20s I wasn't already a home-owner like him.

But on the mainland, Huntington Beach, considered a skinhead town, was just up the street. So I did some sniffing around and it seemed that not only were they scarce, but that they were unorganized and 99% interested in fighting other skinheads who happened to wear a different color of boots than they did. I thought a proper skinhead organization ought to be out helping little old ladies cross the street and improving parks and such civil-service type things. 

But enough about my boring experiences. The thing is, the difference that some almost "smell" about Jews or Asians, is the underlying cultural assumptions. Asian and to a great extent Jewish culture, thinks about things in the long-term. The family is not just a group of individuals who happen to live together but part of a long chain that you're a momentary part of. Your fortune, or lack thereof, are the fortune or lack thereof of your whole family, extending not only side-to-side over however many members but also extending far into the past, and into the future. 

Western culture is all about the short-term. Family means next to nothing. In Western culture, if you're a millionaire and your sibling, child, or parent is homeless, it's perfectly OK, even admirable, to do nothing to help them. Western culture is always waiting for Doomsday, or the Apocalypse, or the Rapture. Why think for the future? Live it up! There's that family saying: Raised by wolves. This is esteemed in Western culture. Wolves have no history. 

In Buddhism we talk about kalpas, a kalpa being roughly the time it takes for an entire universe to be born, live, and die. Hinduism deals in extremely long times also, and ages. I believe the present age is called by them Kali Yuga, an age of violence and strife. I'm not too informed on Daoism but I believe it also deals with vast times. 

But in Western culture, with Doomsday coming any time now and some groups even desirous to bring it on faster, why think about the future? And if it's each individual's responsibility to get into Heaven or not on their own, why care about each other? If they're a sinner, you'll be helping a sinner and if they're fated to go to Heaven, they're going there anyway no matter what you do. Predestination, individualism, and social Darwinism which wraps these idiotic beliefs in a wrapper of being "scientific", these are deep, unquestioned beliefs in the West. 

So you live in a small town and you're on your own, working whatever job you can get, friends aren't helping you, family's not helping you, and a Jewish immigrant comes to town. He works scut jobs too but he saves his money. Presently he buys a small business, maybe it's just the trash-collection route, anything. Other family come along and instead of the guy kicking his kids out to sink or swim in their teens he actually helps them get educated, learn the ways of business, and by working together they come up with the seed money to buy, say, a hardware store. More years pass and now they own the town's department store. To your average Western-culture person, this is something akin to witchcraft. 

So they come up with theories about Jews having different genes or being on cahoots with the Devil, or whatever sounds good. And there's nothing secret about their "powers". Anyone can start thinking long-term and working together and thinking about not just themselves but their kids, grand-kids, etc. 

Asians don't really have a place in Christian mythology like Jews do, so the West's excuses for why they do better is that they can get by on less, work harder, etc. As someone who's worked and out-worked quite a few of them, it's not that. It's that Asian parents will bust their asses to get their kids educated and set up in life. And rather than it being something to laugh over, Asians will not let a family member be out on the street, homeless. 

And both of these groups that scare those of Western thought so much, place great value on the simple concept of saving some of the money they earn. While Western culture seems to greatly discourage saving money or planning for a "rainy day" or for an opportunity. 

I'd have been a natural saver, as I was into finding and collecting seashells and loved organizing things. But it was drilled into me, over and over, that any money obtained must be spent right away. Actually saving money is odd in Western culture and saving money as a kid would have been considered truly bizarre. That I was able to save $10, carefully collecting pennies I found in the street, a quarter for an odd job, etc. in an old cigar box for my first BB gun was an example of how weird a kid I was. And it would not have been possible even a year or two later, as we were falling out of the middle class rapidly and any money saved, even a dollar, if not spent right away would be taken by siblings, parents, or one of the various "hippie" hangers-on Mom started allowing into our house. 

Eventually I drifted out of shell collecting because if I'd collected many, even they would have been stolen and sold if I didn't get out and hustle and sell them myself. Save nothing! Think only of Now! 

And so, living "paycheck to paycheck" is the Western way of life, a precarious way of life where everyone's one step from homelessness, a situation you can expect no help escaping. 

Meanwhile, your typical Asian or Jewish household is going to have some savings. And if you can save some of your money, suddenly a lot of fear goes away. But Western culture, as fond of war as it is, needs a large majority of people to be scared and thus prone to listening to demagogues. 

So this skinhead fellow ... if someone were only able to explain to him what he really hates, and hates because he fears, and fears because he envies. That's the root of it right there - envy. Anyone living the dog-eat-dog Western way would envy someone who has a family and a community that gives a damn about him.