I was up until 8AM which is stupid, but that's how late I was up. At least I practiced the shakuhachi a bit.
I woke up around 4, which is just about right (for a while, long ago in my trumpet days, I remember getting my before-bed practice in until 9AM).
Once I got out of bed I got cold right away, of course, so I turned on the heater and made a cup of Ty-Phoo to wash further down the aspirin I'd taken with some water and turned the computer on and just in general started up for the day, and realized that while it had rained, it was not raining now and in fact, was clear, if cold.
My original plan for the day (if it was not raining) was to have packed two FedEx things I can take with me without needing the trailer, drop them off at FedEx, then ride all the way up to Dai Thanh on Capitol to buy a Swing-Away can opener which they sell (my 99 Ranch cheapie has packed it in) then actually go one more major road East then turn North to check out Seafood City which is a Filipino market but actually is almost a Filipino mall, with a food court.
Rain and my sleeping in stopped all that, but I still wanted to go to H Mart, which I figured I'd hit on the way back. So I did that. It was really cold out there ... kind of reminded me of my time in ... Korea.
I first looked around by McDonald's for the bum, and thought I saw them in a corner inside, with their "nest" of stuff by a pillar by the front. OK they're inside warming up, that's a good idea.
I went into H Mart and spent about $56 on groceries. $25 of it was some beef, as I took inventory before leaving and had one package of beef left in the freezer. It was just mainly ordinary things, an onion and some (expensive but healthy) broccoli and seaweed and those Chinese spicy peanuts and they had my favorite kind of Xylitol gum again and I got some mackerel because it's a very nice fish and probably healthier than salmon.
They had one model of can opener which for all I know might be the best can opener ever but it didn't appeal to me. Maybe I'll get an earlier start tomorrow and go to Dai Thanh after all, I thought.
After checking out I loaded the bike up and took a look around the parking lot esp. McDonald's. It seems there's a regular set of bums who hang out in and around there but I didn't see the recipient of my smart phone.
Maybe ... I thought as I left the parking lot... maybe they used the phone to call their parents or a friend or relative who came and scooped them right up and they'll live a good life now. Which, I thought, is on par with thinking your 20-year-old dog who went to the vet and never came back, is living his best life on a farm somewhere.
The phone's no problem. I might have gotten a hundred or a hundred and a half on Craig's List for it, but I didn't relish the idea of dealing with the kind of people who buy phones. And, it cost me nothing. I wonder if I actually endangered this person, perhaps severely, by giving them the phone?
"Doc Gurley" an excellent but forgotten doctor/columnist working with the homeless in San Francisco, had discussed this. Give a homeless a nice jacket or pair of shoes and you may have put a fatwa out on them because they may be killed for these things.
A personal example would be humorous if it weren't so sad. I was at Caffe Frascati downtown one evening and they were closing. They had a bunch of the sandwiches they sell that were leftover for the day with a little sign saying they're $1 each. "I'll buy them all", I said, "I'll hand them out to the homeless". "In that case, you can *have* them all" the guy said and bagged them up.
I got on the light rail and got off at Santa Clara to distribute the sandwiches. There used to always be a big crowd of homeless there because one building had these openings that were kind of curved, good for lounging in, taking shelter from the wind in, etc. I handed the sandwiches out, to much appreciation. The light rail driver even waited for me to do this and get back on - I'd assumed I'd just get on the next train.
The *very* next day, those curved openings that had been there for years, were all boarded up. Intersections have cameras, so do the light rail trains, plus any number of random people with cameras on their phones. The blatant display of kindness was noticed and not to be tolerated. And it wasn't.
Maybe, after the train had left so I couldn't see, there was an epic street fight over the sandwiches? Does a sandwich equal a stabbing as one of the various equations of the street? Did I do more harm than good?
Coming back, naturally, it was nice and cold and I found myself behind, thankfully at some distance, a street zombie on his zombike. I rode slowly and even "missed" a light to put distance between myself and them, and even turned in at the dept. of education site and rode partway toward the back, then turned around and came out again, just to avoid the brain-eater. And I was successful - I'm pretty sure I heard this creature make some sounds getting into the bum camp that's on one side of Coyote Creek. It was probably more intent on getting into the beer or booze in the bag it had then jumping me.
I made my way back here and figured I'd check the dumpster a machine shop and others, on the other side of the complex, occasionally toss something pretty good in. But it was the same stuff from last time I'd looked. But! - I had noticed, from behind the gaggle of cars and one large truck, just a flicker of the head of a zombie, walking along.
The zombie made a curious whistling sound, just for a moment. I waited for the zombie to come back out from behind the cars but it did not. And it didn't come out the way it had come. A small pickup truck with a couple of Asian guys came along, going toward the front of the complex, going the way I'd come in. I followed them out to the front and around, and back around to here. Halfway back in I think they wondered what the hell was going on, and they stopped at which point I sped ahead, stopped here, took my gloves off and turned the bike lights off and the Asian dudes went cruising by as I was opening the door and putting the bike inside.
If they got the impression something was "hinky" they were of course correct. If the zombie I'd spotted just the head of, momentarily, around/over one of the cars, had just kept on walking I'd have felt a lot better although still taken the long way home as it were. But that the zombie walked in, and then apparently hunkered down by the cars, pretty obviously for no good reason other than to jump someone who might have some treasures on their bike as well as the bike itself, it perfectly logical in the world of zombies, bums, scumsuckers, and street skells.
And for me, it's a very minimal expenditure of energy to simply take the long way around, or in other ways avoid zombies. This is why zombies tend to prey on other zombies the most. If you're a slow-walker you're not gonna catch much of anyone but another slow-walker.
Once I was back here I had what I think is a pretty good idea. I'd just go to H Mart to lock the bike, and walk over to Ross and Home Goods and look there for a decent can opener. And I might find other things. That saves a long ride. So I packed two things to take to FedEx because I might as well carry something on the way out.
Dinner was the last of the salmon I had frozen, in soup with the hot curry from the hot curry ramen I had. I took the packet out of the other one too and put the noodles along with 3 other packs of noodles out in a plastic bag for the bums. The noodles themselves, dry, make a pretty good snack if you don't mind eating terribly unhealthy things.
Then I "played with my food" in other words, cut the two mackerel filets into two pieces each to freeze, and took the beef, which is was in the form of flanken style ribs and trimmed the meat off the bones and then weighed it out into four portions of a bit over 3.5 oz. each. I put the bones out for the birds.
This is why it's so easy for me to cook up a dinner, I like to have the meat or fish prepared and in the freezer in portions, easy to take out and thaw a bit and go right into the broth. The beef ended up being very expensive, much more so than just getting beef cut for shabu-shabu at Nijiya. At least it will be a change.
No comments:
Post a Comment