New Year's Eve Eve

 After last night, I went to bed around 6 or 7AM, I could not get motivated to do much, but held out too long against going to bed, but finally did. 

One thing I did differently was I had some crackers with butter on them just before bed, and was generous with the butter. When I got up, I didn't have the headache I've been having. That's interesting.

I slept in until about 4:30 in the afternoon. I decided to just pack what I could, going from the stuff that's been sitting here longest. I amazed myself by being able to get everything out. One of the orders was a complicated one of a bunch of optical stuff, and I had to make up a "worksheet" of how much they'd paid for shipping and how much it actually cost, and refunded the guy $50 for shipping overcharge. It was one of those weird orders where regular FedEx wasn't available, only their economy service which just hands it off to the post office, or their 2-day service and I chose that. 

I sent everything by FedEx because by doing that, I didn't have to leave here until 7, giving me time to pack everything. And their economy service, which just hands the packages off to the postal service, doesn't cost much more than the postal service. It's useful at times like this. 

Once I had things sent, I rode up to 99 Ranch and did some shopping, and then went to Paris Baguette where I got a couple of pastries and a coffee. It was nice to relax and eat yummy pastries and listen to the family at the next table talk in a mix of English and Chinese with an American accent. The Baguette is a bit spendy but it's a great place to relax, hang out, study, be a family, etc. This is what the American places have completely forgotten. 

I rode back down to H Mart and got a few things, and got a few things for shipping, namely a sign that's laminated onto foamcore and a couple of small boxes. 

Interestingly, the train signal was going off, but while there was dinging and the red lights flashing, the gates were up and there was some guy dancing around and motioning cars through. The guy didn't have any safety clothing on, or a flashlight or anything, so I don't know if it was a crazy homeless guy or what, I just got on through there. 

I rode back here, put things away, then took the last of the stuff I put out last night, two tubs stuffed with junk the scavengers didn't want, put them on the bike trailer, and took them over by the bridge and dropped them off. So now the area's nice and clean. 

 

2.0

 After getting everything else done, including listing 20 of the 30 items I'd photographed, (I put the other 10 aside for now) I got a good practice session in, and used one of the 2.0 reeds I'd gotten a box of. It makes a big difference in sound! So yeah I was ready for the step-up. My facial muscles felt more tired, but that's it, and I'm up to page 15 in the band book now. 

Unfortunately, New Year's Day and the day before it will be rained out. So I guess I don't have to worry about working up to page 18 or so in the book when I'll learn the C in the staff note I need to play Auld Lang Syne. I'll just be staying in. 

I got up today and am glad I practiced before going to bed because my headache was bad. I packed 6 or so things, some large some small, and was about to head out when I got a call from Ken, who wanted to come pick me up and we'd go to the new storage place and pick up a load of small stuff to put on Ebay. I said I have to go mail stuff, and we agreed that I'd be back here at 7:30, ready to go. 

So I took the things and mailed them, got two tea eggs at 99 Ranch and a couple of things at H Mart including a coffee that I thought was black coffee but actually it had non-sugar sweeteners in it. Blech. I sat there by my bike at H Mart and ate the eggs, and drank just enough of the coffee to rinse my mouth. 

I picked up 5 boxes of a certain kind that I like to use for circuit boards, and got back here. I had time to get all ready to go, and got another call from Ken. He was running late because he'd gone to Walmart and picked up a bunch of things and then realized he'd left his wallet at his house, so he had to go back and get it. 

He came by a bit later and after moving some things around in his hoarder's dream of a truck so I had room to sit, we were off. Ken started going on about how I haven't seen the new place ... I had to correct him and say I certainly have, was with him when we put the first stuff in there, and was there with him at the side of the freeway as we picked up the plastic rolling rack he'd had fly off of his truck. Geez. 

We got there and Ken had trouble getting the lock to work and I said he ought to check to make sure it's the right unit and it wasn't, his was the one just to the left. 

We started getting tubs of stuff to put in the truck and right away I barked my knuckle so now I had this thing bleeding and kept having to put it in my mouth and feel the flap of skin that was loose - lovely. Plus my headache really hadn't given me a break all day and wasn't now. 

Once we had 6 or 8 tubs loaded I said, "This is enough; this is a good load" and we shut the unit and I'd made sure the tailgate on the truck was fastened (or Ken would happily drive down the street with stuff falling out the back). 

He'd learned his lesson though, and didn't go on the freeway. He took surface streets, and got fairly lost, with my having to give directions like he was here, to the shop, for the first time. All the while he regaled me with stories of how good he is at having a sense of direction. 

We got back here and loaded the stuff into the office here and then he wanted to just rest and have a cup of tea which I fixed for him,  and we talked about stuff for a while. I asked if he felt like going to Denny's and he said he still had Christmas leftovers at home. I had some ice water and the last bit of a can of peanuts while we talked, and eventually Ken was ready to go, and went. 

As for my pay check, I told him he didn't pay me last week so it would be a double one, and he said, "I didn't pay you last week?" and I said he sure didn't, and showed where I keep track on the wall calendar, with little boxes for each week that I check off. 

The thing is, Ken's short on money and his workplace is "out" for all of this week so he can't bug *them* until next week. I said I don't mind waiting until next week, that this is why I save a bit of money etc. As long as he can catch up because then it will be a 3X pay check. 

So far I've always been paid, even if sometimes I've been very glad I'm not paycheck-to-paycheck like Ken is. This is the nature of high tech, and as mentioned Ken has to bug his boss to get paid, so I can bug him to get paid. High tech isn't nearly as smart a thing to go into as something that's government, unionized, and preferably both. I make a bit over $20k a year, Ken's promised in the past that my pay might go up to $30k a year but that dream's long gone, and I bet if I did the lowest job at a hospital or at the post office or the DMV, I'd make $40k a year. 

I just need to keep chugging along until mid-2027 when I'll be turning 65 so I'll have Medicare, and can make the move back home and forget I've ever heard of electronics. 

But for now, this is the time of year when everyone kind of withdraws and you don't see them until March or April or so. It being rainy on both Christmas Day and New Year's Day is just happenstance, but the normal thing to do this time of year is to hide as much as possible, not be out doing happy things like busking. 

One thing I've got to say for the clarinet is, the case it comes in is so small that I'm pretty sure it will fit just fine into my "Chrome" messenger bag that I used to use a lot, and have had sitting in a box for some years now. That makes it a bit easier to carry around than the trumpet was,  and thus easier to just happen to have with me to fit an hour of busking in, here and there. 

So to finish up the working for today, I went through all of those 7 or 8 tubs of stuff that were piled in the office and kept only the things that can be sold, and as  I went  I pushed tubs of the stuff I'm not keeping out the door, so by the time I was done there was a nice group of tubs and junk out there and the first of the scavengers already picking over it. That tired me out so I'll list the remaining 10 things I have photographed, later. 

 

What a weekend

 For starters, I realized today that the last time I'd gone out to mail things and it had been wet, I'd come back here and rinsed the plastic tub and its lid, that I used to carry the packages in to keep them safe and dry. They'd gotten all kinds of junk on them from the bike tires. 

So I'd rinsed them, and leaned them up against the front of the shop here, and then was just thinking about getting warmed up, and well, out of sight, out of mind. So naturally at least after a day or so someone had decided they weren't wanted by me, and took them. It makes sense because I put stuff out for the scroungers all the time, and I'd gotten the tub and its lid by scrounging, myself. I liked that tub, though. 

Since it was wet and cold, and then dry and colder, I stayed in on Saturday and Sunday.  

Boxing Day

 What a funny name for "the day after Christmas" but that's what they call it in Commonwealth countries and it does roll off the tongue rather nicely. 

And it was wet, of course. Still, I go out and delivered packages to the post office and FedEx. I got wet but it wasn't too bad.  

I got some good practice in last night (early this morning) and need to, because to play the version of "Auld Lang Syne" I downloaded, I need to play the C in the staff, which it about 8 pages ahead of where I am now, I guess because you have to press down a bunch of stuff to play it, and there are low notes the writers of the band book felt are more important. 

I was wrong about Marvin Naylor stopping blogging. He'd just changed the format of his Wordpress page so that it looked like he had. When you go there you get pictures of his first and second book and only the most persistent will scroll down 2 screens' worth to find the blog entries. But they are there. It's kind of amazing how with the advent of the internet, everyone's forgotten the most simple things that kids used to learn, running a school newspaper, before they were adults. 

He certainly know his street characters well. There's an actual "street culture" in the UK that's completely missing in the US. Marvin can get to know various characters because they walk around like the street is their immediate neighborhood and they have the right to walk on it, instead of being a place where they're prey for cars and talking to anyone is dangerous/insane, like it is for proper Americans. 

But now it's time I wrote down some other things that have been weighing on me.  Between finding out that the one guy who's head and shoulders above all the others in the English-speaking shakuhachi world is an ardent Nazi, Ranban Sakamoto leaving in a matter of months and thus the core of the shakuhachi club going away, and the general unsuitability of the shakuhachi for anything but shakuhachi music. my interest in the thing is just gone. I just can't see myself spending time on it when the clarinet alone is a huge "world" and adding in the soprano sax like Sidney Bechet did, is an even huger "world". 

And speaking of whom, I found an excellent documentary on him and the music in it was amazing. It "goes right through me" the same way really good shakuhachi music does. 

As a trumpet player, of course my hero was Louis Armstrong. But he and Bechet both had that same bluesy sound, but of the two I prefer Bechet, in the pieces that are not so "commercial". He was not so "commercial", himself. He was smart enough to get out of the US, too. 

But this all presents a problem in that, I had a very good reason to retire back in Hawaii because there's one good shakuhachi player who lives there and others who visit all the time, and it's that much closer to Japan, the home of the shakuhachi. But if my interest in that is zero now and I'm playing the clarinet, now I don't have any more reason to live in Hawaii as I would anywhere else.  

This isn't to say I shouldn't go back there, it's just down to the kind of pros and cons that have to be considered about any place. Such as, 

Pros: It's about 30% cheaper than here, the weather's pretty nice, I grew up there so I am at least to some extent a "local" and I can speak the local patois. I know where everything is and a million little details of how things work and little customs and ways of doing things. I can literally re-live my childhood fishing and surfing and finding seashells at the same places. Music-wise, no one tends to think "clarinet" when they think of Hawaii but everyone the world over loves jazz, and clarinet's a good busking instrument for there, loud enough without being too loud. Japanese tourists would get a kick out of seeing an American playing jazz, as opposed to the probably much more technically competent jazz whiz who's Japanese back home.

Cons: As a white/white-appearing person I'll always be a 2nd class citizen to some, and some of those in positions of power. The couple of friends I still know back there (who are still alive and have not left the place years ago) are useless, likewise the two sisters I have there who hate me in the one case because I'm not a Jesus-freakie, and to the other because I'm not wealthy and didn't go to Punahou School like she did. I could only hope that those two, at best, leave me utterly alone. Oahu is a small island in the middle of thousands of miles of ocean, and not the least "con" is, it's still part of the US. Which is at present putting people into concentration camps and is not even letting people leave who want to (stopping cars at border exits and if your papers aren't in order or you're less than paper-white, you might get disappeared). You'd think Hawaii would be far away enough from most of the US that one could lay low there but it doesn't work that way, and Gestapo raids happen there, too. 

Now, I *had* a plan to get out of here. It involved converting to a certain religion and emigrating to a certain small nation in the Middle-East, which has very good P.R. In fact, very-very good P.R. People wonder why this small, well-funded (by the US) nation pumps out so much P.R. when for those who look, there's plenty of info out there to thoroughly debunk their P.R. And the answer is that for enough of the time, at least on some people, it works. 

I was one of those people. I actually believed the bit about it being a liberal paradise, and certainly free health care and language lessons and nice beaches and walkable bazaars and all that looked good. Hell I even thought the letters of their language looked cool and this last was good because I was studying that language. 

Well, a lot of history happens in a short time these days, and simply by existing through a few years' time, I was able to see that the P.R. debunkers are pretty much 100% right. This small nation gets the US tangled up in all kinds of trouble, probably got our idiot-in-chief elected, certainly re-elected,  and this tiny troublemaking nation isn't even a good place for its own people. All that nice liberal stuff, the free health care and women's rights and the big gay festival, will probably be gone in 10 years. Their "Iron Dome" is more like "Tin Dome" and it's only a fire hose of US money that's keeping the place somewhat functional and defended. 

In other words, I was every bit as deluded as no doubt a few were who saw "Socialist" in the National Socialists' name and heard about a few of their social programs and thought they were nice people. The branch of that small nation's religion, to which I was in the process toward converting, is the most liberal one, and person to person they are indeed very nice people. It took me a while to figure out that for instance, when ordering food for an event, they'd order from the most right-wing genocide-funding companies possible. 

There's only so much I could take. As part of the process I went to religious services and their book is read through yearly, a weekly portion at a time. So one gets a pretty good familiarity with it, and there's really not anything peaceful in it. You'd be hard-pressed to find the few things in there that are not  sociopathic and murderous. 

So some months ago I told them I'm "taking a hiatus" and "I can tell I'm not going to retire in country X"  and that's that. 

And that *is* that. In the meantime I'm watching history happen. Major media outlets bought by ... those highly supportive or actual agents of, this small country. The US being told to jump and how high at every turn. The "little guy" finding out, realizing far too late but at least realizing, that they're being utterly screwed over by a president who's our most supportive, ever, of this little troublemaking country. And this little troublemaking country doesn't give a damn if their game is evident, because Hey, they've got the presidency, they've got the media outlets, they've got massive financial power, what's the little guy gonna do?  

So yeah, my retirement plan turned out to be utterly horrible and the ABORT button's been hit on that one. But it leaves me in need of a better plan. My old plan was going to have me out of here mid-2027 I figure, and right now the plan I'm telling people is that I'll go back to Hawaii in mid-2027 because I'll be able to go right from Medi-Cal to Medicare and won't have any period where I'm uninsured and any little thing could clean me out financially. 

 

Wet, rainy Xmas

 I guess I made good use of the day, by sleeping through it. It's very wet and stormy out there so needless to say I've stayed in. 

I have to post a correction; Marvin Naylor is posting to his busking blog again and his has actual busking in it. 

 

And some more rain

 And wind, making sure it was not practical to go out at all today, much less any kind of busking. 

I got my practice in last night, and the little tunes in the band book are coming out better and more easily. 

I've been thinking about some things a lot lately, and I might as well write them down. Firstly, there are only three other blogs I follow at all. One is "Ran Prieur" whose life has followed the trajectory that's ideal if you've got parents who will kick off and leave you stuff like money and a house. He's just fucked around being a "rebel" by writing a silly "zine" for some years, digging in dumpsters, and hustling donations online so he'd never have to work. His honesty was so refreshing that people ponied up and it was a pretty good racket. Finally he ran out of parents and got the money and house, and has settled into navel-gazing and the occasional vacation. He's not nearly so interesting any more. 

One of the others is "Rabb1t" who lived in a Toyota Rav4 in and around the De Anza College campus. Now, my memory of a Rav4 is something only slightly larger than the old 1980s Suzuki Samurai, but apparently they're sizeable SUVs now. His blog is so depressing I can't look away, basically. I have to admire that he's avoided most of the troubles of homelessness (drugs, other homeless) and has kept puttering along all these years. Maybe I should look into the price of a good used Rav4... 

Lastly there's "Street Musician Daniel" who I actually sent guitar strings and stuff to, and who used to keep a pretty interesting blog of his day-to-day busking in New Orleans. He's since gotten a free house and free everything else, is far-right Trumpist/Zionist/racist politically, and has given up busking for the recreational joys of crack. His blog is hard as hell to find; you have to do a Google search of it, which brings up a post from well over a year ago. Then click on the "masthead" to get his latest. Which he posts at the rate of less than once a month. He thinks The Illuminati or some shit are plotting against him to make people not read his blog, but really it's just that he's made it nearly impossible to find. I need to stop even trying to read that one, frankly. 

I'd include Marvin Naylor, who had a neat blog of his busking over in the UK, but he's gone over to just posting YouTube videos now. Lots of crankiness and dry humour in that one, so it was always a bit of fun to read. 

 

 

Finally a little rain

 We're finally getting a little rain. And wind. And there's even a warning of possible tornadoes?? 

Between the rain and the wind and my inexperience, I can be pretty confident in saying I won't be out tomorrow, Chrismas Eve, busking. 

I had one thing, only one, to ship out today so I waited around for a while and then another order came in, so then I had two things to ship. I took the things and a bag of change (all my change except pennies)  and headed out around 4. It looked dark and stormy but no rain. 

After dropping off the things, I rode over to 99 Ranch and first went to this Chinese herbs and medicines type place and got a bottle of this Chinese cough syrup that's supposed to work well, because I had a scratchy throat.  I paid the $10.80 for that in dimes. 

I spent more change on a couple small things in 99 Ranch, then headed for home. On the corner by H Mart, an old Asian lady came up and made motions, the universal motions of begging for something to eat. I had nothing in my pockets, and told her I had nothing. Then I realized I could take the change in my change bag, put it in a plastic veggie bag I had, and hand that off to her. So I did that, and that took care of the change problem. 

It was just barely starting to sprinkle as I rode home, and I got in here, did stuff, cooked dinner, etc. 

 

New mouthpiece is a win

 After doing a ton of things last night, found an interesting but not too interesting movie to watch on YouTube and got the clarinet stuff out and tried out the new Fobes Debut mouthpiece. It's harder to squeak on than the Yamaha one, and I think it's easier to go down to low notes too. I'd say it's a win. 

I did well over an hour's practice, not continually but taking little breaks, while watching "Searching For Bobby Fischer". That movie's a neat look into how people lived in the late 80s or early 90s, with no computers, smart phones, or who's saying what on social media. 

I went over the band book from the beginning up to page 10, plus some noodling around like picking out simple tunes. I'd say it's going well. 

The main thing is to keep up with reading music and not just be one of those lazy people who just plays by ear. And to practice every day no Ifs Ands or Buts. 

I got 20 things together to list last night before practice, and went to bed. When I got up I was ready to pack the 6 or so things that had sold that I had ready, and I got out of here around 3:30. I dropped off a couple of books at a new little free library I found, dropped off trash, and picked up a bottle of tea at Nijiya. 

Then I went over to Walmart for my "weekly Wal" and got a bunch of things. I'm going to hold myself to staying within my "allowance" again, so what money I took out of this last pay check is it. With Christmas right in the middle of the week I may get my pay check this week like I usually do, but probably won't deposit it until next week. But I can let myself take more money out. So I brought a bunch of quarters and they came in useful at Walmart. 

I visited Nijiya again on the way back, got a bento and some sashimi, and got back here. There have been all these promises of rain and so far it's been dry so I don't know what's going on. It's supposed to be a very wet Christmas week though. 

That makes for a pretty dismal forecast for busking. Even tonight, I rode a little loop around downtown, to see who I'd run across, but no Leroy and no Wendell. Yeah it's Monday night but it's Christmas week which to me means Be out there even if it's Monday because there are tons of people out walking around in a holiday mood. 

 

 

Time I got caught up

 Well let's see ... I watched two movies yesterday and overnight ... the movie "White Masai" after finishing the book. Then "The Andromeda Strain" which is actually better than the book. 

I did a shipping run on Friday and deposited my pay check, and Petition Guy was in front of Whole Foods there but packed up early because he was worried about rain. It turns out he needn't have worried, as the rain just went by to the North. 

There was a young guy there with a guitar he said he'd just got, and I told him about good places to play it. According to Petition Guy, the guy had had his car stolen in New Mexico and the police there had said something like, "It's a cartel and we can't help you". Or maybe it was, "It's *not* a cartel, so we can't help you". 

I'd have hung out longer and encouraged the guy more but I was worried about rain, and needn't have... 

I took a little ride around downtown and Leroy's still alive! I talked with him a bit, and he said Wendall, who plays the flute and comes out here this time of year from New Orleans, is around. So I left Leroy to get back to mangling the oldies with absolutely no sense of rhythm or "swing" and rode by the usual Wendall haunts but I didn't see him. 

Yesterday, Saturday, was just sleeping most of the day because rainy weather can make me sleep like that, then getting up and when the guys next door got some loud music playing I decided to get out of here for a couple of hours. I got things at Ross and Sprouts, then listed a bunch of things and did my movie-watching thing. 

I slept most of today, too. It keeps threatening to rain but it's all sliding by to the North. 

 

 

I ducked out

 Last night I sent an email to Rinban Sakamoto saying I won't be making the shakuhachi club meeting tonight or the performance at the temple service on Sunday. "Family stuff", I said and left it at that. 

I guess I am just plain done with the shakuhachi.  I doubt I could convince many people to play it regardless of how good an "ambassador" I could be, since it's just plain hard to play. 

An end-blown flute that tuned and has the same fingering as the pennywhistle would be neat, because  it would piggyback onto the huge amount of material for the pennywhistle, with the sound of a flute vs. a "fipple flute" AKA a whistle. But truth be known anyone who's interested in that fingering system and tuning and playing position is going to get into the pennywhistle and there are some really good-sounding whistles and whistle players out there. 

Plus all the people having fun with recorders so there's no crying need in any of these areas. 

I don't plan now to join the temple, since I'm never up early enough to go to the services on Sundays and I've been missing most of the things going on anyway. It makes the most sense if you're Japanese or married into a Japanese family, and want/need to do family stuff. 

I guess you can be in the SS....

 https://slippedisc.com/2023/03/vienna-phils-ss-man-is-still-honoured-back-home/ And still be loved as a trumpet player. Streets named after him, Leonard Bernstein worked with him, yadda yadda. 

So Chris Broad, being a Christian Nationalist, essentially the modern equivalent of the SS, is fine and dandy too. 

A big difference being, though, that trumpet is an instrument that's popular enough that tons of people play it and surely come from a wide political spectrum.  

The shakuhachi is a real "niche" instrument, even in Japan. Enough so that especially in the English-speaking world, one person can become the "face" or representative of the instrument. And loathsome politics aside,  Mr. Broad is head and shoulders above the rest to be that one person. 

Shakuhachi is probably the most gate-kept instrument on the planet, and I think it would be impossible to be really serious about it without in effect, working hand-in-hand with Chris Broad. His recordings of the lovely little "minyo" or children's/folk songs are both exhaustive and as far as I can tell, the only source for them to the student. 

With unlimited financial resources I could simply move to Japan, spend half my time learning the language and half my time the shakuhachi, dealing strictly in Japanese from a Japanese master (avoiding the two that gave Chris Broad his rankings) and in that way avoid working in any way with a Christian Nationalist. But I don't have those resources. 

So the only real answer is: Avoid! Avoid! I don't want anyone assuming that because I play Instrument X, I'm a devotee of far-right politics. There's probably a lot of overlap between younger, say below 40 years of age, shakuhachi players and "weaboos" who pine to live in Japan because they think it's a paradise due to being racially homogeneous. They never seem to ponder that Japan being racially homogeneous means the Japanese probably don't want *them* in their country either. 

 

Dry, and another week

 The deal is that from what they were saying on the radio, it was going to rain today starting around 4 in the afternoon. And I had a bunch of things to ship out, including a big order of a lot of things. 

So the plan was to get everything packed so when I woke up, I could just load up and go, get things sent whether it was 2 or 3 or even 4 in the afternoon when I got up. And I did it, too. Found all the hard-to-find stuff and packed the large order as a sort of "candy box" with the more delicate things in their own boxes inside the larger box. 

Then I just wanted to sleep so I did. I had a bunch of weird dreams haha and at one point, kind of halfway woke up because for some reason, the middle toes on my right foot were painful like I'd kicked something and could barely be moved. 

I woke up around 1:30 this afternoon, and my right foot's fine. That was really weird. 

Now the weather report is that it will be sunny and the only slight chance of rain, in the wee hours of the morning. It's a nice feeling to have everything all packed, though. 

So I'm having coffee and thinking about my plans for the day and I realized that I had my weeks wrong, and Xmas is not this Thursday, it's next Thursday. This Thursday is shakuhachi club and there's a new song we're supposed to learn but mainly I think we're going to emphasize practicing the two songs we're supposed to play at the end of the service on the 21st. 

After that, for me, I dunno. Some things have been weighing on me. Not the least is that Rinban Sakamoto is retiring soon and we've already talked about how the shakuhachi club is going to keep going. I think it will, in some form, because one of the ladies is pretty organized and bosses us but in a useful way, and she'll keep some sort of group going. 

But without him, my interest goes 'way down. He and I have gotten along like old friends from the start. maybe due to our both having lived in Mo'ili'ili but probably just a personality thing. 

Another thing that came up last club meeting was, Rinban Sakamoto mentioned that he's never, even after 40 years, been able to play the traditional music and has settled for playing popular music, as much as it can be done on a shakuhachi. 40 years! And the guy's been able to take lessons from very good teachers, like Masayuki Koga. 

Another thing that's really knocked my interest down is that Chris Broad, who's all over YouTube and who I was a real follower of, turns out to be a Christian Nationalist which means he wants everyone who's not straight, white, and a member of the same cult, to die - preferably painfully. That's what Christianity is about, but the average Christian is lazy and un-motivated and will do un-Christian things like be friends with a Black neighbor or actually help someone who's poor. Nationalists are serious about their plan for national racial/political cleansing and will comes down hard on less-than-ardent Christians also. For more on this see Germany 1933-45. 

I'm pretty sure the reason I'm kicked off of YouTube is that I called Chris out on this. The shakuhachi has such a tiny, niche, following that it's kind of weird that this guy who's probably its greatest ambassador on YouTube is SS-level doctrinaire, but there you have it. 

Assuming his playing is real and not enhanced somehow, he's a hell of a good player and quite likely to become "the shakuhachi guy" in the US at least if not in the entire English-speaking world. He's got a tremendous body of work out there, for instance recording a ton of the minyo, or children's/folk songs, many on a smaller, 1.6, shakuhachi on which they sound even sweeter. Due to him it was my aspiration to someday own not only a good 1.8 but a good 1.6 as well.  

As it is, if the instrument's to be political, I don't really want to be a part of that. 

Markus Guhe, a genuine good guy who lives in the Netherlands or somewhere like that, has also been playing for years and calls himself a professional shakuhachi player, has improved over the years but still does not, in my estimation, play well enough to be a competent busker. That's how hard the instrument can be. 

There are actual *reasons* the instrument almost died out, and it was only the wave of nationalism in Japan in the 1930s and 40s that brought it back to some degree. The work in : reward out ratio is very low compared to modern instruments. 

I guess what I'm arriving at is that while I'll always have my eyes open to finding a good shakuhachi and playing it a bit on the side, I think I should work on clarinet more and on getting my busking skills together on that. 

 

More parts!

 I woke up around 1PM. I figured I'd call up Park Avenue Music first, because they're a pretty easy bike ride away, then if they didn't have what I wanted, West Valley Music which is an hour by bus each way. 

Park Avenue had the goods. I had breakfast and coffee and went over there. For about $110 I got a Fobes Debut mouthpiece, a Rovner ligature (thing that holds reed on), a box of the light blue Rico reeds #2 strength, and a copy of the Rubank beginner book. 

For some reason, the people on r/clarinet rave about the Rubank book. I mean, in trumpet or flute, they'll mention that book among a number of others for beginners, but in the clarinet world, they really rave over the Rubank book and recommend little else for the beginner. 

I could have ordered the mouthpiece and ligature from Mr. Fobes himself, but he's apparently out of the ligatures, and I'd not get the things for a week at least. At least in theory I'm now a bit better set up to do some busking on Xmas eve or Xmas itself, but in reality it's forecast to rain those days. 

I paid for my goodies and somehow I got into the most fun conversation with one of the employees there, about all the fun to be had with those first-generation home computers, and various things that could be done with phones and computers. We had a great time talking about this stuff. But we both had to get back to work. 

I then went to Whole Foods and got some good ol' meatloaf and potatoes and got a near-beer upstairs which I was surprised to see open.  Then I went by the Amazon place for bubble mailers, then stopped by Nijiya Market because I don't know why it's just customary for me to stop there, and I guess I got something but I can't think what it is right now. 

I got back and unloaded things then hooked up the bike trailer and went back to a dumpster across from the big Goodwill facility, that was full of some really nice cardboard boxes, which I flattened and loaded up, and took back to the shop, unloaded again, then had time to pack seven small things which I took to the post office. I got a thing or two at 99 Ranch, then rode back here. 

 

$110

 That's the "melt value" of the 3 silver half-dollars and 4 silver quarters I bought today for ... $109 and change. The guy at the antique shop just had the ones he had in his display case, so they were in a computer inventory or something and I said what the heck, I'll buy 'em. And that's enough old silver coins to "have a dog in the fight" and thus make watching the silver price interesting.

The idea being, of course, the sell the coins (as well as a ton of other things) before leaving for home in mid-2027. 

I'd been up until quite late getting a batch of things ready to list on Ebay, and decided to call it an "early" night, going to bed around 4AM. Interestingly, the police had decided to park outside the illegal night club, 4 cars at one point, so they didn't even try to set up. Pretty hilarious. 

I woke up at 1 in the afternoon, had breakfast and got over to the antique store to buy those coins. The trip started out as always with a stop in at Whole Foods, and interestingly although it was a very busy day, there were no scam booth hustlers and the petition guy with his table was also gone. I was able to ask about their Christmas hours and they're open until 7 on Christmas eve, and not open at all on the day. 

So a bit of busking is possible there on the day before The Day, and on The Day I'm not sure where I'd go but downtown Mountain View and the area around Santana Row come to mind. 

 

 

More practice

 More practice last night (very early this morning!) and I'm a few more pages in, in the book and learned two more notes, a higher A and a lower B. I put in well over an hour. This is the thing, and it's a thing in flute also, that one can play for hours more easily than on trumpet.

Am I hitting the Christmas carols this year? I think .... not. I just have too much else to do. It doesn't matter as much, though. Not drinking any more has done wonders for my finances. 

In a year's time it would be neat to be where I'm putting all of each paycheck into the bank and living off of $200 or so a week from busking.  

My new clarinet is a Yamaha "Advantage" 200AD which apparently, and I sure researched, is the same as the YCL255, in a bit nicer case. I guess the '255 comes in a soft case? The 2000AD's are sold to music stores for their "rental fleets" and come with these nice, small, durable, stacking, cases. I could easily carry my "horn" in a bike bag or by putting the case into my messenger bag and carrying that on my back. 

So it's a good choice not only for learning but for busking. 

Since I was up past 6AM I didn't wake up until 2 this afternoon. I caught up with Ebay stuff and thought about what I could accomplish today. I decided to follow up on a hint of something from my prowl though the antique stores, and went back to the biggest one where one of the booths near the back has some silver US coins. The upshot of that is I got nine silver quarters for $70, and the "melt value" of those is something like $11.50 right now. 

Silver's going crazy in price right now and I want to get into it, a little bit. I've just found this one guy who has coins he inherited or something and is willing to make deals. So the plan is to buy some here and there until his little stash is gone, then sell the coins for, hopefully,  a profit before I leave for back home. 

So that's what I did today. I dashed over there and the antique store was very busy, but the guy was there and I was able to do my little deal and get out of there. He's got half-dollars too but I don't know how many and I figure it's a fun little thing to do until his stash runs out then just sit on these coins and have a "dog in the fight" watching the price of silver. 

"Do you want a bag for those?" I was asked. "Nope, they've done fine in other people's pockets and they'll do fine in mine!" I said, putting them in my pocket where they could float around with my other change. Silver coins *jingle* more, though, which sort of brought back a memory of my father's change jingling in his pockets when he'd come home from work and it was a happy sound because we were always happy when Dad came home. This would be maybe 1966, so there were still a lot of silver in people's pockets. 

Next I went to the big Goodwill on San Carlos, but didn't find anything I wanted, other than a book, "Nothing To Envy" about North Korea, which I've wanted to read for a while. That was $2.50 except I might want to subtract about 70c, the value of the crispy and really neat-looking 5 Yuan note that was tucked in it. I now have the coolest bookmark ever.  

I stopped at Nijiya for some things, and the guys there were still talking about my telling them that the little portrait of the guy with a pipe in his mouth on BOSS coffee products is actually William Faulkner. "You know, 'As I Lay Dying'" one guy said. It's a kind of cool thing to know. 

 

 

 

Pure Win

 After all the things I did yesterday, including spending a fair amount of time getting a batch of things photo-ready, including some high voltage capacitors, I actually got around to getting the new clarinet out and starting in on the band book. 

I learned C below the staff, the D above it that dangles just below the staff, the E that's a pinch (left hand first finger and thumb) F that's thumb only, and G that's nothing. 

I also learned how to make some insanely cool very high-pitched notes, easy to get if I put too much of the mouthpiece into my mouth. That stuff is fun!! 

I'm using a 1-1/2 reed which according to the folks on r/clarinet is all kinds of bad, not stiff enough to teach a good embouchure, yadda yadda. Well, I got a few 1-1/2's to start on and will soon get some 2's and work up from there. 

I also intend to get the Fobes Debut mouthpiece and Rovner ligature I've mentioned, the mouthpiece because those are universally recommended for beginners, and the Rovner if nothing else because the Fobes site sells them, and they're easier to fiddle with than the standard 2-screw type. 

If I can get the practice in, I can actually see myself getting out there busking at least for some Christmas carols.  

Even just starting out, with my "toy" 1-1/2 reed, I can see that some good tone is possible. I can tell I'm going to get a lot of music out of this thing. 

Now, how is the dang clarinet going to fit in, in Hawaii? Well, a guy I took the odd lesson from, Mark Sowlakis, told me when he went there (playing clarinet and sax) he always came back with more money than he'd left with. Hawaii's always had a jazz scene, and probably more of one than San Jose here. This boring town does not set a high bar. 

I went to Menlo Park to do some business, it's an easy 1/2-hour train ride there/back, and the only thing was that I'd chosen a Friday, and a Friday that's the last one before Christmas so the place was a bit of a madhouse. People buying presents I guess. I got what I came for and got outta there, then tried to find a place not inundated with high school students as it was late afternoon. Starbucks was out, for instance. 

I found a deli that's large, the old-style place with plenty of coffee drinks and pastries, but also sandwiches and wine if that's your thing. And it was bustling enough that there's no code for the loo, just go in. That was a relief, and then I felt obligated to them, and got this big tri-tip sandwich which was nice and juicy like Carl's Jr. hamburgers used to be. So that was my big meal for the day. 

I got back on the train and rode my bike from Whole Foods where I'd left it, over to the Amazon place for some bubble mailers and then to Nijiya for a couple things. They're not giving out their trademark white plastic bags any more. Booooo! It's paper ones now. Walmart is doing that too, these days. 

Traffic is nuts out there and it was good to get back here in one piece. It's cold out there and just as importantly, very damp which makes it feel colder. I really don't feel like being out doing things once it gets dark, which is pretty early this time of year. 

 

 

Western Bacon Cheeseburger

Yesterday I packed things to ship, took them to the post office and FedEx, then stopped in at The Baguette for a pastry and a coffee, and read more of "White Masai". The author's caught malaria, so I'm eager to see how that goes. 

But because of computers now, I'm reduced to being the kind of kid who hated reading in class and. would. halt. each. word. as. he. figured. it. out. reading in a husky voice. Good old times at Koko Head Elementary School. I might as well have been done of the dummies who lived for "shambattle" and serving as a JPO (Junior Police Officer) when school got out, just so I could yell at people. 

So I have to spend $10 on coffee and a donut to get any reading done. 

Done with that, I collected some boxes and decided to skip the storage unit. I've retrieved just about everything good out of there now. 

I got back here and listed the 20 things I had cued up, and waited for Ken to show up. He eventually called me and said he was running late, and did I want anything from Carl's Jr.? I said I wanted a Western Bacon Cheeseburger if they still have those, and if not, "something really stacked". 

He got here and we ate our burgers and I fixed him a tea. I put some Kewpie mayo on mine and just about inhaled it. This cold weather has me craving a lot more calories. 

I got my check (dated for Friday) and we talked about stuff; the usual. Ken had brought a couple of microwave ovens and some computer towers for me to take apart, and we talked about the storage situation. We'll be all moved out of the remaining storage unit at the old, nearby, place this weekend. As for the new place, Ken says he might get an auction company to sell off what he's got in there. I told him to bring any tubs of stuff here, because I'm finding a lot of neat treasures in the tubs of small things, and those won't bring much at auction. There are BIG oscilloscopes and racks and two huge lab ovens etc., that will do better. 

By the time he left, at almost 1 in the morning, I was still burping from the burger and by the time I'd recovered from that and might practice with the new clarinet, I was just about falling asleep at my desk and went to bed, around 3AM. 

In a day or two I intend to order a Fobes Debut mouthpiece and a Rovner ligature from the Fobes site, and for some reason the people on r/clarinet are really in love with the Rubank book. I've already got the first, red, book in the Standard Of Excellence series though. As I said to the gal at the music store, I actually worked through all three books (red, blue, green) in the series on trumpet. I still sounded like crap, but I worked through 'em! 

 

Life in the hermit kingdom

 I know it doesn't have to do with busking, but apparently now, tourists (anyone coming to the US who's not a US citizen so vacationers, business travelers, yadda yadda) coming to the US have to supply something like 5 years of social media history, undergo extensive biometric scanning, supply all family members' birthday dates, etc. Hell I sure don't know my siblings' birthdays, there being 5 of us, except for one and that's only because it kind of rhymes when you say it out loud. 

Having no social media history may be considered worse. 

And God help you if you're brown. Ken, my boss, and his wife have had fairly frequent vacations outside the US, and Suzy, being Mexican, has already gotten very different treatment than Ken or I. Years ago, pre-covid, I was at Ken's house and he and I were relating our funny anecdotes regarding neglecting registering our cars because who can be bothered to take a look at their own registration sticker? It was all lighthearted and fun, when Suzy jumped up and said she was a day or two late, got stopped, had to get out of the car and put her hands on the hood, and they just about got the cuffs out. 

I think it's lovely they got to visit Italy, their being Catholic, and that they visited the Caribbean, Ken being a SCUBA diver, but it may not go well at all if they leave the US and (try to) come back in these times. If it didn't matter that Suzy and her parents are/were US citizens then, it sure might not matter now. 

And here I am too old and unskilled and un-wealthy to go much of anywhere else, other than trying to optimize where I am in the US. And here I am wondering if the same restrictions will come into effect for domestic travel.  I've made up my mind that it's best to stay here in California until mid-2027, when I'll be 65, so that I'll go directly from Medi-Cal to Medicare, and will get a fairly decent Social Security payment, having waited three years past the earliest day I could apply. 

If these restrictions come in domestically, it's going to absolutely kill tourism in Hawaii. Imagine all those Japanese tourists having to do all of this. I don't think it will go over well at all. 

There's quite a bit of talk about this on a certain internet site, and of course anyone who might be a reporter or "influencer" is being kept out if they're less than adoring of the present regime. The consensus is that the regime wants to make the US a sort of "hermit kingdom" North Korea style. 

I  got things shipped and came back here and listed the 20 things I had cued up. Ken's coming over but midnight is like noon to him. No wonder I fight having a night owl schedule. 

 

 

The clarinet??

It's 8PM (which in San Jose California is equivalent to 11PM anywhere else) and I just got in. 

So, to wind down, I'll write a bit about myself and the clarinet. 

In high school I was chosen for trumpet, probably because Mr. Payton had one slot open, and probably just as much because he could give me an old trumpet with no lacquer left on it, that my mom's boyfriend would not be able to pawn or otherwise profit off of. The cool kids played the clarinet. They never tired of reminding us, too, as they were required to keep their mouthpieces in a little pouch they wore around their neck. At random one of them would take theirs out and blow, "WEEEEET!!" 

Other than showing I could blow a longer note than anyone else, I didn't go anywhere with the trumpet because I felt so embarrassed that we didn't have the $20 for the mouthpiece. 

Later, much later as I'd left Hawaii and moved to the mainland, to Southern California. Everyone told me I had to check out Venice Beach so one weekend day I did. There were drummers and artists and the sort of hucksters I knew from swapmeets back in Hawaii. Nothing that new. 

But then I encountered the moth. Regardless of a popular NPR radio show, that's my name for the guy as he looked like a moth. He had on a grey suit with a grey vest, and even a grey hat, inverted on the sidewalk in front of him, and a musical instrument. I stood there, in wonder, and asked, "Is ... is that a clarinet?" I was unsure. He said something like "Yep!" and put it into his mouth with a click. This was an old guy, and his teeth were worn down where the mouthpiece fit in. He started to play and I don't know what he played (probably old Big Band music from the 30s or 40s) but it didn't matter, as the TONE was fantastic.  

I stood there astonished, as passers-by dropped money in the hat. This is probably some guy who played for old movies, and knew movie stars, I thought. And: This guy has got life solved. Play wonderful music and people put money in the hat. 

I hated the job I had but was scared to death to lose it (jobs were just as hard to get in the mid-80s as they are now) and I *wanted* to busk very much, but didn't have the guts to try it, afraid word would get back to work and they'd fire me. I tried learning "a musical instrument" and for people of my age that meant the guitar, but ... guitars hate me. The feeling is mutual. 

Maybe 10 years later I was considering learning the clarinet, as a pal had bought two old metal ones at a flea market. I had no idea how useless those really were but had an idea that the keys probably needed actual pads under them, and such details. 

A few more years and I was living on my own again and rented a clarinet but was afraid to practice much, as I was concerned the neighbors in my apartment building would complain. 

Much later, and I had a clarinet, and could play some simple things. I was busking in Mountain View, and across the street a very drunk guy was being held up by two pals, the three of them staggering along. I played "How Dry I Am" and they gave no indication that they heard me (now I'm certain they did). I need something louder, I thought, and hence my change over to trumpet. 

But I know I can play clarinet because I was doing so, and found I'd get squeaks when I got tired after more than an hour, but that beats sounding like a duck after a similar amount of time on trumpet. (Actually on trumpet I can go on indefinitely as long as I give myself enough breaks but it *is* tiring.) 

"Louder" is always the #1 criterion for a musical instrument here on the mainland. That's what the culture here esteems. 

I liked the idea of busking with the Hall glass flute because they *can* get somewhat loud, but the transverse flute playing position is just not working out all that well for me. That plus I'm deathly afraid I'll drop the thing, and while it's a win for Irish music, having the same fingering system as the pennywhistle, it's not great for the kind of popular music I'd like to play. 

A week or two ago a really nice pro Yamaha trumpet showed up on Craig's List and I'm glad someone apparently bought the thing, because I was sorely tempted. 

The trouble I run into on trumpet is I feel like I'm carving the music out of stone.  I can play high-ish in practice but once I get out there, I can barely venture above the staff. Given that the trumpet doesn't go down as far as the clarinet does (and doesn't sound great at the bottom of its range) it makes for a pretty restricted range, and thus a restricted list of songs I can play. 

I may become competent on the shakuhachi in 10 years' time, and I may not. It's got such a wonderful sound, but may be an instrument I love more in theory than in practice. 

So it comes down to: I want a wind instrument (no need for an amplifier, plus they're fairly durable) that's held straight-ahead (which narrows it down to trumpet, pennywhistle, shakuhachi, clarinet, sax) that plays chromatically (trumpet, clarinet, sax) and I don't want to go back to trumpet ( now we're down to clarinet, sax) and the instrument should be pretty easy to carry around (clarinet).  

I did a lot of reading about clarinets last night, woke up at 2PM today and packed a couple of things to mail out,  and left here at about a quarter to 4. I got a can of coffee at Nijiya, dropped the things off at the post office, and was headed to Mountain View on a #22 bus around 5. 

I got to West Valley Music at 6, which is good because they close at 7. When the guy asked me how he could help, I said I wanted a student Yamaha clarinet, new or very-very close to new. "Yeah, we've got those" was pretty much his response. 

I was hoping it's the same as with flutes, where a given instrument might be north of $1000 online, but only about 2/3rds that in-person and I was right. I was hoping for a YCL-250, got a YCL-200 which is the same horn with a more durable case. With a cleaning kit and some reeds and a reed holder, it was just a bit over $800. 

Now I can play the thing and if in a year decide I want to upgrade or quit, I can sell it back to them for half what I paid, which is still no more expensive than renting. 

I told them that "I don't want to buy someone else's problems, and I'm a huge Yamaha loyalist" so I paid and rode the bus back to Whole Foods where I had the bike locked, with my new clarinet. 

The petition guy was there with his table set up, and we talked about the weather (he was OK since he was wearing 7 layers, while I was feeling the cold, wearing a mere 3) and I told him about my new "horn" but that I don't know if I'll be out playing any Christmas carols at all. Maybe. 

But what brought this all on? Partially, although I "should" be excited about the glass flute, having the same fingering as the pennywhistle, and being cheap and hygienic, etc., I've not been practicing on it at all because I just don't feel like it. That's a good indication that for me, it's just not a hit. 

But what really brought things to a head is, two nights ago I had a weird dream about trying to buy a clarinet, and the lady at West Valley Music had one but it was some weird new brand she was pushing with garish stickers on it, and meanwhile I found that somehow I had a "Benny Goodman Model" clarinet already. Just a weird dream. 

Well, I mentioned this to Tom and that, over at the big Goodwill on San Carlos that gets musical instruments in all the time, mostly what I'm seeing is junk and it varies so widely that you've got to just check it all the time. 

Tom said some disparaging stuff and I made my mind up right then and there to not discuss musical instruments or busking or anything of that type with him again. Thinking about it, I think he's mad at himself for not being the kind of person who will go out and do it. He was going to play trumpet, and he was going to play clarinet, and when I moved into what's his building now I found sax reeds in a drawer so he was probably going to play the sax, too. Meanwhile for all my switching around at least I've gone out and done it. 

But it really got me thinking and I decided to go ahead and get a clarinet and not talk with people who always have an opinion about a thing and never go out themselves and get any experience with the thing. 

 

Like it's 1997

 Hm, well, last Monday I woke up with a headache, and when I checked my email, a scary email. It looked like we were late with our December rent, and I figured Ken had just forgotten to mail the check, again. It was from our old landlord, which I thought was our current landlord. I looked them up online, and saw it's just a bus ride to Palo Alto to get there, so I called them up to say I'm on it, will get Ken to write a check and can hand-deliver it tomorrow. The bimbo who answered the phone checked and said, "We've not owned that building for years and what you got was mailed out by mistake". So the mystery deepened. 

I called Ken a ton but he never answered so I finally decided, "Tough, I'll see him Wednesday night". And I did, as he came over at his usual time. I'd printed out the invoice that was an attachment to the email, which appeared to be a bill for all rents plus late fees since 2023 or so. 

He said they've not been our landlord for years, this other one was, and I recognized the name. It's just that we'd had so many interactions with the previous one that I thought they still owned the building. We concluded that the old one had probably tried using AI, and AI did what AI does, which is fuck things up. 

Ken had *not* brought his checkbook, so he had to come over Thursday night to bring me my pay check, which deposited on Friday. 

Through all of this I've been taking a load of stuff from the old storage place, on the bike trailer, back here. I've been taking stuff I can list on Ebay easily as the first priority. 

It's been really cold and windy outside and I've not been even close to doing any busking. Since  I don't drink any more the financial pressure is off, and it's more about gaining skill and experience. 

I got two loads from the old place last night, and Ken was there, loading things up too. I told he he ought to prioritize things that require the trailer he rent, then the rest can be done with his truck without the trailer, and with my bike trailer. I said I'll continue to take a load a day out of there myself, and we'll be out of the final unit in a week. 

Then Ken will just have to $300 to pay for the new place, instead of the almost $700 for the old place. 

I didn't do much over the weekend. Whole Foods is being monopolized by the skinny white guy with his table, hassling people to sign petitions. But there's another sort of area I could play the Hall flute and perhaps add a nice Christmas touch and get tips ... if I'd only get out there. There are also other places like Mountain View and San Pedro Market. 

Plus I still have zero data points regarding whether the flute is more accepted by the public than the trumpet. I have a sneaking suspicion  that I could play the flute a lot of places where I'd get chased out if I played a trumpet. 

The highlight of the weekend was that I went through all the antique shops on San Carlos, looking for those little "10 years' service" type pins, as the tiny things are often solid gold or at least gold-filled, which means at least 10% of their weight is gold. But I found none.

I realized that it's not like it's 1997 any more. Everything in there has been checked and valued - often over-valued - by looking at prices online. A few things I made a mental note to check, turned out to be criminally overpriced. At least I got this idiotic pursuit out of my system. 

 

At least I'm not drinking any more

 Good God did that habit eat up some money! 

I've been very busy trying to get one load a day into here from the old storage place which is barely a mile away. The new place is far away enough that outside of an emergency I'm not going there and it will be up to Ken to get things from there to bring here, for me to list on Ebay. 

I started the day at noon, having been up until 4AM the night before, doing things (none of those things practicing) and I did watch a rather nice documentary on George Orwell. 

The day started with a headache, and an email from the landlord saying we're behind on rent. I printed out the statement and it appeared to be a record of all rents paid for the last few years. I called up the company and the lady on the phone said they don't own this building any more. 

So now I wanted to know (a) if Ken's sent in the rent for December, and (b) where he's sending it to. But he's not answering the phone. 

I packed a bunch of things including a large, long, delicate piece of lab glass that took special packing, then realized it was 4:30 and although I was fairly certain someone was at the office of the old place until 6, I'd better get over there. 

So I dropped everything and got over there. They close at 5, so I was right. I said we're out of the smaller of the two units we have there and the gal went with me to make sure there's no lock on the unit and we swept it out, so it will be ready to rent out to someone else. 

Then I got back here, finished packing that last thing, and took the things to the post office and FedEx. Then I took some time off to have pastries and a coffee at Paris Baguette, and read another chapter of "In Dubious Battle". Now, thanks to computers, I know what it's like to be someone who never reads unless they make a concerted effort to do so, and only reads a very little at a time. 

I rode back to the storage place and made up a load and took it back here, of the most hoarder-riffic assortment of stuff, gems mixed very thoroughly with utter junk that will be thrown away immediately when I sort through the stuff. 

I really hope to get some busking done this month, I really do. At least I don't drink any more. That little hobby ate up tons of money. $10 a day on that habit would amount to $3650 a year, but I think I was burning through far more money than that, since I was really not saving money so ... double that at least. 

I have a good savings rate now, at least. 

 

Met an old pal

 I wanted to get out in the sun and the daylight today. I'd run two loads of laboratory glassware (it's surprising how much I can carry on my bike trailer; about 6 boxes) from the old place to back here because a lot of that lab glass will sell relatively quickly. Lots of good pieces in there. 

I'd called Ken and told him what I'd done, and he said Great, that means he only has to break down some shelves and get a few more small things out and he'll be all out of that storage unit and he can stop paying the $300+ rent on it. 

Which is the idea. I need to get into the habit of swinging by the place when I'm out with the bike trailer and getting stuff out of the other unit, which if Ken hasn't already started on it, he'll start on it next weekend. 

In the spirit of that, I found some things here to put out for the scavengers, and labeled a ton of little modules we're selling, and pretty soon it was midnight and I put the glassware where it won't be in the way, and got things ready to list today. 

I slept OK and I think the illegal night club started to set up but I heard a police siren which means they were onto 'em and shut that shit down. 

I woke up around noon, and wanted to go out and do some things - hey it's Sunday after all - as a break from the dark and cold and gloom. I took off around 2 in the afternoon and indeed, went out and did things. I don't miss the nasty guy and his used book store on The Alameda at all any more, as I find plenty of interesting books at the little free libraries and bought two from Goodwill. The two books were $7 which is kind of steep, "Oh yeah they changed the prices" so they're charging a bit more these days but at least it's for a good cause and still far less than new price or what the price would be at the used book store. 

I rode back from there, and came to Christmas In The Park so I looked for the caricature guys. They were there all right, the Black guys from around Los Angeles. The guy remembered me and we caught up on things and talked some nuts and bolts about the caricature business. I'd skipped the whole Christmas season due to injuring my back last year. 

 

Finally some practice

 I did my 150 Ro (10 sets of 15) by way of practice on the shakuhachi last night, and was in bed at 1AM on the dot. 

But I could not get to sleep! I'd had a stronger-than-necessary coffee, and ate some lettuce and lettuce always gives me energy so .... 

I finally got up at 3AM and had some crackers with butter to try to get sleepy, and that didn't really work so I got out the Hall flute and started going through the Christmas carols in the book. I think if I'd been putting in an hour a day on the Hall flute I'd sound pretty good by now, and if I really get on top of practicing with it from here on out, I can go out busking with it without embarrassing myself. 

The Hall flute is not just a mere tube, but has a "Boehm taper" in the closed end, that makes it able to play a greater range. 

 

A long night

 Ken came over last night and I showed him how, on the little board with hooks I made, there's a key for the storage unit at the new place, *two* keys for the smaller unit at the old place, one for Ken to take if he needs to get in there (which he didn't take, of course) plus I've got the 3rd key in with my personal keys so there will always be one "master key". At least I managed to get a $20 bill out of him for the lock. 

He'd brought over a bunch of stuff to sort and sell, and after he'd left I sorted it out and along with some stuff we had listed that I de-listed to throw out, put a box of stuff out for the scavengers. 

I was up until something like 2AM because I was watching this, something like 14-part, minute-by-minute documentary about 9/11.  I can only liken it to Adam Curtis' "TraumaZone" where it's just raw footage edited together, with no dialogue, no Narrator's Voice Of God, etc. It sounds boring and yet I'm watching all of it, which is at least 20 hours of material. Maybe 24 as it's supposed to be "that day". 

This brought me up to the time the illegal night club would operate on this night if it did, and this night it did. About an hour later the cops came and cleared 'em out. 

In the meantime, this one guy who ... I dunno if it works for the cleaning place that's on both sides of me now, or just hangs around.  I get the impression he lives in his SUV, and does odd jobs for them. I believe he was doing some painting or similar low-skill work for the cleaning company in their new unit, to the left of me, and so had the Mexican music playing loud into the wee hours of the morning. I believe he's also an alcoholic, that reinforced by this leaving beer cans around and leaving a nice big pile of puke in the parking lot. 

I've seen him drinking until 6 in the morning and suspect he's deep in it enough that he has to have *some* blood alcohol level to not be all twitchy and shaky, hence the beer to "maintain". I know this because I've been there, but jeez, at least I had the decorum to, if I had to throw up, do it in the bushes. 

So it was a fun night and I stayed up until 4AM or so, but as I watched my 9/11 documentary at least I got the shakuhachi out and played my 150 Ro. Progress is slow, especially with how little I've been practicing, but I am making it. 

And this brings me to Shaun "Tairyu" Head, erstwhile Shaun "Renzo" Head. He turns out to be an arch right-winger, playing a tribute to this age's Horst Wessell, the execrable  Charlie Kirk. r/shakuhachi on Reddit, a Nazi site itself, alerted me to this. Now I feel kind of dirty for having participated in that question-and-answer with him, but for the most part all it did was support conclusions I was coming to myself about the smoothness of a shakuhachi bore, the usefulness of breathing exercises, etc. 

But this brings me to another thing. Mr. Nazi appears to be a great player, online. But this is online. What if he's using AI to enhance his playing? I'd not put it past him. His wearing a cross during the Q&A was a HUGE red flag, it kind of screams that he'd throw his own mother into a wood chipper if it benefited him, because that's what that religion is all about. 

Fortunately the creep-factor has been detected by many, and unless Nazi rallies and white-supremacist propaganda movies start featuring the shakuhachi, he hasn't got much of a future in the main shakuhachi community, and for that matter, the aforementioned rallies and movies will probably just use "AI shakuhachi" and anyone can do that. 

I didn't get up until 3 in the afternoon because I'd been up so much of the night, and some time after 5 in the afternoon I decided I'd go to Walmart to get things, and see if there's a place serving Thanksgiving dinner, and have that. I got to Nijiya Market 15 minutes before closing and got a little thing of sushi and a bottle of green tea, and ate out front. It was really deserted there and it was kind of surprising to see the market open at all. 

No problem, I rode down to the Amazon place to pick up bubble mailers and it was closed. I rode down to Walmart and it was also closed. Had probably closed at 6 and it was past 6 now. 

I rode over to San Pedro Square and everything was closed except for a couple of kind of expensive Asian places and O'Flaherty's and they were super slow, a football game on loud and what few customers there, were paying attention to that. Meh. 

I figured I had time to go to Whole Foods but it was closed. I rode back via Hedding and checked out Bay 101, which was open but not doing any Thanksgiving stuff and I don't trust the hygiene at M8trix so that left Denny's. 

My next-to-last and maybe last, Thanksgiving dinner on the mainland was at Denny's and it was even worse than that sounds. 

Before leaving the house, I'd listened on the radio to a bit about a guy who's one of the small number of Americans in Moscow, and how one Russian guy had figured out that for some reason, there's a market for turkeys on this one day near the end of November, so he raises them. The Russian guy said with confidence that it's because the Americans had an important military victory over the original people of their land, and the turkey was to celebrate it.  He's correct, even if most of us won't admit it. 

If I'm to have that last, actual last, Thanksgiving here on the mainland, I'm going to make a reservation somewhere good. 

 

Nov 25th

 Got up, nothing to ship. People are thinking about the upcoming holiday instead of buying from us, as I like to joke. 

I went over to the old storage place and bought a key - $18 and change. I went up there and checked the unit (the one Ken and I started in on moving stuff out of) and I hope it's just that Ken's been there, because a lot more stuff's been moved out. I locked it up and left. 

Then I headed downtown and got a bento and a bottle of tea at Nijiya, then went to the bank which instead of taking their break 1-2PM was taking it noon-1PM so I had half an hour to do other things in. 

Other things meant I went to Whole Foods to lock up the bike, and sat down and ate the bento , then hopped on a #64B bus back to the bank, did my business, then got on the CalTrain to Menlo Park for some more business. It went well. I looked around in the shops and then took the train back to Whole Foods, stopped at the Amazon place for some bubble mailers, and got back here, 

All this time I'd been trying to raise Ken on the phone but he's just not communicating. I got three keys with the lock so two are on the board with hooks with tags on them with the unit number, the key that *was* for that unit has a tag with the logo, cut from their biz card, and number of the unit in the new place, and I have the third key with me in my pocket for now. 

I wanted to talk with Ken about this but since he's not communicating, I'm just going to work on taking stuff out of the old storage, that's valuable and ought to be put onto Ebay soonest. Ken will save and hoard the most useless shit, like the 6 or 8 computer towers I'd planned to snarf out of there because I could take the CPU, RAM, and any interesting cards out and discard the rest. 

But there are scopes and analyzers and stuff that are the reason I want to keep the unit locked, because some of the types who are around that storage place know that the stuff is valuable and can take photos and look things up. 

The "grounds" for busking look fertile, at Whole Foods. The skinny white guy who's a hard right-winger is out there with his table set up, collecting petitions and getting into arguments with people so I don't know how long he'll last. Yesterday he was in what sounded like a big "we agree" pseudo-argument with a guy about Biden. Uhh, Biden's dropped off the edge of the world, for all practical intents and purposes. But this idiot things Biden's still president, I guess. All the crap Mango Mussolini is doing, that's Biden. 

In any case, there's a place I could set up a few yards from Mr. Annoying, and no one would consider us to be together. What I guess I worry a little is, I may not be practiced up enough to busk this Christmas season at all. 

 

Another inexplicably quiet night

 I went to bed at a bit after 1AM, and had trouble getting to sleep, such that I think I'd have heard the illegal night club starting up, but again, nothing. 

Maybe after my talk with the guys next door, with the one guy who can speak English well, my mentioning that I'm outta here mid-2027, among other things, that had made them decide to only have people come in on the other side of the complex, or maybe to just quit operations until I'm gone. Or the police have finally started the process of asset forfeiture against the building owner and they're outta here. 

 

We knew it would be bad but not this bad

 Yesterday I packed three large capacitors, in two boxes (one box for the biggest and one for the other two) and was just headed out the door, with the boxes on the bike trailer, when my phone rang. Because of course, no matter what time I left, Ken would call right when I'm involved in something, anything. 

I told him I'm just headed out with a $1000 order going to FedEx, give me half an hour. I dashed over to FedEx and dropped the boxes off, and only stopped at a couple places for a few boxes that I was going *right* past anyway. 

I got back here and Ken was sitting in the near-dark, because he only knew how to turn on the light switch right by the door, turning on the overhead light, which has 4 long bulbs, only one of which, the one Ken's fussed over the most, lights very dimly. He's not smart enough to turn on the other two lights, which illuminate this place quite nicely, and now I did this. 

I joked about how a "Real American" will shut off the power and sit in the dark just so the "lib'ruls" will have to too, and I closed the place up, made sure Ken hadn't left anything important in here, and we were off. 

Ken had wanted to rent the longest trailer Dahl's has, but could only get a shorter one. This would turn out to be a very good thing. We went over to the old storage and started in one the smaller of the two units. It ended up being very bad. Just hard. We got a good trailer load loaded up and Ken decided it would be just fine to put this big plastic rolling rack on top without tying it down.

I said we ought to just stay on surface streets, just poop along and it'll be fine. I knew the new storage place is on Montague, and was thinking it was directly North of us, a not-too-bad ride on the bike and an easy little drive. 

Ken jumped right on the freeway and gassed it. I said to take it easy and sure enough, the plastic rack flew off. Ken was like, "Oops, better back up!" and did so energetically. "Don't get crossed up with your trailer - " "BANG!!" Ken had indeed done so and the trailer had folded back around and hit us. Ken then, at least, stopped. 

I said to put the hazards on and we got out and I ran back to where the rack was, halfway into the rightmost lane and making people slow down to go around. My back might be shit but my aerobic health is quite good, and I was able to run up there and got it out of the flow of traffic. 

Ken ambled up and we picked up the broken-off pieces and he rolled it along as we walked back to the truck. I was all for leaving it there, other than that the base has some pretty good wheels on it. We threw it back on top of the load and at least in its broken state it caught the air less as Ken got back to driving, at normal speed, to the new place. 

Which turned out to be on Mantague Expressway all right, but 'way East well past the Milpitas transit center, and I told Ken that realistically I'm not going to ever make it over there on my bike. So he'll have to pull out things he wants me to take apart or list on Ebay, on his own. 

At least the new storage space can be driven right up to, and is huge and is only costing Ken $300 a month where the old place is over $600 for the two spaces. Moving the stuff is just plain hard though. It was continual slapstick comedy. Ken and I went off in search of a rolling cart at the new place and Ken found one while I only found them locked behind an out-of-order door, and Ken and I had to take breathers pretty often. Especially ken, who was literally getting out of breath. 

It was around this time that I saw that the trailer had come right around on Ken's side and put a big dent on the side of his truck. He's going to have a fun time explaining that to Suzy! We got down to the last several really heavy things and realized we didn't have our hand truck with us. It was at the old place. 

So we closed up and headed back to the old place, with Ken missing turn-off after turn-off and generally getting lost, but we eventually got there and got the hand truck and some more lighter stuff. 

It bears mentioning here that Ken refuses to spend $10 on another storage unit lock, so he's leaving the one unit that we've been moving things out of, unlocked. Things will *probably* be OK. 

We went back to the new place and with the hand truck we were able to move the heavy things in but it was, like everything else, hard. Ken fell down at one point and at least rolled instead of bracing himself (he broke his arm bracing himself some years ago). After Ken had rested a bit we got the last two things in, and had had enough. We agreed that we knew this would be bad, but not this bad. "I'll have to hire someone", Ken said.

Through all this I was able to fill him in on our new neighbors, the same cleaning company we have on the other side, and my plans to not leave home for Hawaii until mid-2027, and things like that. 

We finished the night by going to Denny's, since there's not much of anything else in this boring town. Ken "entertained" me by talking his endless stream of technical stuff, and I did my best to look intrigued. 

The truth is, as I told him confidentially as he'll forget anyway, is that working for him at $20k a year and the office to live in, works because otherwise I'd need to make about $50k a year and there are no jobs like that in this area. That at least I'm saving money,  and while there are alternatives in this area like renting one of the small offices I know of in Japantown and living in there as people do, I'd rather put that effort into getting settled in, back in Hawaii. So that my plan is to keep working for him until September of 2027, and if something happened in the meantime, to just stay in a local hotel for a couple of weeks while I arrange my plane tickets and sell off stuff, and leave. 

(Things that could happen include something happening health-wise or car accident etc., with Ken or his wife, as by far the most probable things, although Ken thinks I'm planning for Putin to do something awful. Nope. Not Putin. Realistically, as Ken Mr. Magoo's his way through life or his wife, Suzy, continues in her efforts to become wider than she is tall, and car accident, household accident, or health incident, will re-arrange things. If it weren't for Suzy, Ken would probably have his house solidly impacted with junk and be sleeping in an old van in front of the place. She controls his hoarding to a great extent. So without Suzy to manage him, he falls apart.) 

After Denny's Ken took me back here and I got some things selected to list, but decided to just take it easy for the night. I went to bed on the dot at 1AM but I swear I was awake until well after 2AM, so if the illegal night club was going to act up, I'd have heard it but there really wasn't anything. 

I woke up at 10:30 which is consistent with being up until 2:30 which is probably about right.

 

A decent night's sleep

 I went to bed at 1AM on the dot, and got to sleep pretty easily as I typically do. The result is, I woke up at 7AM possibly due to my neighbors doing their usual things, and went back to sleep until 10AM, at the price of some weird dreams. 

The main thing is that if the illegal night club got up to any hi-jinks, I never heard 'em.  

I do like reading the-Nazi-site-that-is-poison on hawaii and movingtohawaii, once in a while there's a breath of fresh air about Hawaii not being much more expensive than any non-shithole place on the mainland. But soon those little wisps of fresh air are drowned out by the roar of "It's so expensive!"

I was going to put a quote on here; the little bit of fresh air with proper attribution of course, but there's a reason the-Nazi-site-that-is-poison is the-Nazi-site-that-is-poison. Basically someone was saying that researchers on grants that are making less than they'd make at McDonald's are making it work there in Hawaii. And it's true, they may have family money but many do not, and mostly it comes down to living like a college student. 

When I was living like a college student because I was a college student, there were many others who were in their 50s and 60s who were also living like college students because they were college students also. And that's a perk of waiting until I'm turning 65 to move back there, because I believe I can "audit" classes at the University of Hawaii which gives me an excuse to be on campus and also enables me to use things like music practice rooms. 

The UH Manoa campus is kind of part of my natural living environment. I can stay that I not only have credits in the system but got to help, by building circuit boards, projects like DUMAND. One of the regular shakuhachi teachers based on Oahu does his YouTube videos around UH and it's one of those places where you can toot away on a bamboo flute without someone hassling you. It's for a class! 

 

Shakuhachi class last night

 It was actually great. There were a lot of people, we started on a new song which we're terrible at but once I find it on YouTube I can get a handle on it. One of the ladies made sure to thank me for the tip on cleaning the shakuhachi, as it really cleans up the sound. 

I'm not sure if I'd have gone if it was rainy, but fortunately it was dry. It's a real act of defiance to go to these things, since this is a "You're not here to make friends, you're here to work" area. And being working-class, I'm not supposed to have vacations or much in the way of time off at all. 

It's all the more depressing that I've decided that the best tactic is to retire and leave here in mid-2027 instead of mid-2026 so I'll transition from being covered by Medi-Cal here, to Medi-Care back in Hawaii. 

Since Ken wants me to help him move stuff out of the two units in the nearby storage, into one unit in another storage place he's found, any fun, what little fun, I'm allowed to have for the weekend I figured I'd better have today. So I packed 8 or 9 things, took them to the downtown post office, took my pay check to the bank, and went to Whole Foods for pizza and a fizzy water, and then some macadamia nuts, getting cash back so I've withdrawn from my account my "allowance" for the week. I'm right back to the plan of saving half of each pay check. 

After that, I rode back downtown far enough to get onto San Carlos and start riding along there, first checking out a packaging place which turns out to be closed. Then "Smart & Final" which doesn't have packing tape.

Then I went through the antique stores, not finding anything interesting. I'd wanted to go through them for a while, and this sure got that out of my system. I went to the Teen Challenge thrift store last, and got a copy of "In Dubious Battle" by John Steinbeck, a somewhat rare book I've wanted to read for a while. That was a dollar. 

I rode back over to the Amazon place for bubble mailers, then down to Walmart for the "weekly Wal" and got a lot of things. I also was able to get Ken on the phone and he finally, since was still at his house right in front of a computer, order packing tape. I said mainly it's the brown kind which is really hard to find, so that's coming in on Monday or so. 

I got back here and was able to see what all the noise was about on the other side of the shop, not the side occupied by the cleaning place but the other one. Which is also going to be occupied by the cleaning place. I had a nice talk with the one guy who speaks English OK, and among other things talked about the illegal night club. They'd been told a story by the criminals that I'd been waiving a machete around trying to ... hit them or something? I said I don't even own a machete. 

The cleaning guys are OK. They play loud music but not all the time and not late. They run a pressure washer but that's part of their job, cleaning things. It's an industrial area after all. What they don't do is pound on the door here at 2AM, have drunks pissing on the front of this place, etc. They're just basic good neighbors, with perhaps more music that has a lot of accordion and tuba. 

 

There is ONE shakuhachi teacher ...

 Within 100 miles or so of me. Needless to say, traveling to go to lessons with him is prohibitively expensive, based on the travel costs and time away from work, alone. 

Meanwhile in Honolulu (the island of Oahu, as we locals like to say the "city and county" and "cityan'county" rolls off our tongues so easily...) there are generally about 3 at any given time.  

I have decided pretty firmly now that I will leave for home in September of 2027. I will be turning 65, and thus will go from the health safety net of Medi-Cal, which is not means-tested, to Medicare, which is also not means tested. 

Hawaii's version of Medicaid, which I forget the name of right now, is means tested which means I could not have "wealth" beyond about $2500 and in the event of a medical emergency, I'd get cleaned out of anything over and above that first before Hawaii Medicaid would cover the rest. 

I think in the back of my mind I was thinking I'd leave (or have left by now) and just "wing it", but that last incident I had, which I still don't remember, was a real wake-up. I was at a community center for a thing, didn't drink any more than I normally was, that I remember, was picked up wandering and not making sense, they called Ken and Ken told 'em to call 911 and after I woke up in the hospital, Ken actually came by and visited at something like 2AM which was a pretty damned nice thing to do. And I still haven't gotten a single bill! 

I can sit here and say, "I don't drink any more at all, and I'll look out for myself" but I thought I was doing OK then, too. At the hospital they said I had a UTI, something that's known to make older people loopy, and I was in there 4 days. It would have been longer, too, except they concluded the bug I had wasn't the super bad kind. I think I'd have been in there much longer, with IV antibiotics, if it had been the bad kind. 

It's not like I planned to have a UTI, again  I thought I was doing fine. So surprises like this have to have a part in my calculations and as much as I dislike my job and this area (San Jose California is one big workplace where "you're not here to make friends, you're here to work!") and I'm also risking that air travel will still be a thing in two years and likewise that Social Security will be. 

I"m also gambling that I won't get "tagged" in my daily battle with traffic here. So it's a lot of chance-taking. Such is life I guess. This is something that might escape the thinking of my older sister, back there in Hawaii, who seems to want to live a "life" protected from EVERYTHING. I'm pretty sure that sending her to Punahou (extremely expensive private school for budding little geniuses and snobs) is what deep-sixed my parents' finances and send the whole family (except for older sis, natch) into a deep spiral of poverty and squalor. 

In any case, yes, Honolulu has, effectively, 100X more shakuhachi teachers than the whole of California at any given time And proficiency in it may eventually enable me to travel to Japan, perhaps to stay, depending on how bad things get here. 

After Ken left last night I got involved taking some stuff, well, merely out in the case of one thing that not only had screws so frozen I couldn't get them loose, but no parts I could use inside, and apart in the case of the second thing which turns out to be a real treasure chest. Lots of neat modules with APC 3.5mm connectors which are ... really valuable. High GHz stuff. So that was a win, but  I was up until 3AM and thus, didn't get up until 11AM. 

 

The beetles

 The place next door (machine shop of some kind) left a huge machine out "for the beetles" and when I came in last night I had to check it out. There were wires cut and it was obvious it was left out for whoever wants it. Since it had as part of its structure a huge block of granite, most of it was not for me. But I managed to "liberate" two circuit boards and a power supply. 

Later in the evening, others were picking away on it. When I woke up at 9 this morning, the last bits were being carted off. There's not a trace of it now. Amazing that someone apparently even found a way to cart off the big granite piece. 

 

A quiet Sunday night

 If the illegal night club set up on Sunday night, they weren't noisy enough to wake me up. They may not have set up at all. I'm happy not to know. 

Today I packed a few things that had to go out, and since I was awake at 8 in the morning, was easily able to get out of here early enough to take the things to the downtown post office. 

My aim in going down there was to check out this one Vietnamese market for brown packing tape. They had it, and I got it and a few other things. 

All good but I got a bit wet coming back, and what's worse is I had my cell phone in my front jacket pocket, where there was a sort of scoop effect so it was in one of the wettest parts of a rather wet jacket. 

The phone's been spontaneously setting its volume to zero all night and doing weird things like that. I'm leaving it open and had it in front of a fan heater for a bit.  It should dry out, and will behave better tomorrow but I have a feeling I may be looking for a new phone. I've had this one for, I figure, about 7 years at least and it was already starting to do odd things. 

(After about 6.5 hours of sleep...) 

I woke up at 8AM because I guess I'm set to wake up that time now. My phone is really not acting much better, and one of my errands today will be to get a new one. The big Verizon place is at the most notorious intersection for crime in this city because of course it is. What it probably really means is that pale people are not the majority there and there's a big shopping mall. What's nice is the #22 bus goes right there so I can park the bike at Whole Foods, walk across the street, and hop on the bus which on the return end will drop me off right in front. That's hard to beat because for the price of a fare I can avoid some dangerous riding. 

The thing is, there are three things I kind of have to have functional: My phone, my bank card, and my driver's license. Having my passport card saves me on the ID for now since a passport supersedes a Real ID. But I needed my phone to activate my bank card, and I need my bank card to pay for my phone, plus I need the phone to call Ken and call the cops, which I do a fair amount of around here. Plus Ken needs to reach me at times. 

So after some breakfast I washed my hair w/o soap to get it ready for a haircut, went around and found things that had to be shipped out, did the haircut and a shave, packed the things, and was out the door around noon. After dropping off trash I stopped at Nijiya and had a bowl of chashu ramen which was a HUGE meal; I'm not doing that again unless I'm really hungry. 

Then I dropped off the packages at the post office, and went to Whole Foods to lock the bike up, and walked across the street to the bus stop. The #22 came along and I was off on my ride to parts of its route that I'd not been on yet. 

The notorious intersection of Story and King is fine, it's just that the area is just about 100% Hispanic. The phone store there has nice people who are very helpful and it's probably the best experience with a phone store for me, ever. $275 later I have a new "super durable" phone of the type I actually wanted one of, before, and for some reason or another didn't get.  

I thought I'd have to order the phone and come back a day or three later to pick it up, so it was nice they had one in stock.  My old phone was acting better but when the guy tried to send me a text that was going to have a code number, my old phone went into reset mode and the guy was like, "Oh, never mind" and took the phone, popped off the back and got some number from there. What's funny is, when he popped off the back, a chip of the back came off. Yeah, it was new phone time. 

The ride home was OK, I stopped at the Amazon place for bubble mailers and Nijiya for a couple of things, and got back here. And was glad to be back in because the wind was cold! 

 

 

Too exciting a night

 I was up early yesterday, something like 7:30 in the morning. The guys next door were making some noise but since I'd gone to be at midnight I'd had enough sleep and besides, I reasoned to myself, these guys get up early for Mass on weekends probably, and are out cleaning people's houses. 

I got the idea to check out the Berryessa flea market, if nothing else to get a new safety vest. So I packed up the one thing that had sold and took it to FedEx, and rode over to the flea market. I looked around and it was OK for what it was. Due to the rain forecast it was very slow, and I saw it's a great place for, well, Mexican stuff. The people are very friendly, and I had a nice talk with a gal who was 100% native speaking in English and Spanish (somehow I can tell, even though I don't know more than a little Spanish, by accent and how smoothly they speak, when they're fluent in it). 

What a neat gift to have in life.  I'd love to be a native speaker in English and Japanese. I can learn some Japanese, and may find I have time to put some work into it once I'm back in Hawaii. But I'll never be native at it. The only 2nd language I can say I might be a native speaker of, is the local slang or "pidgin" (although it's actually, linguistically speaking, a creole) that's spoken at least by the old-timers in Hawaii.

I did get my new safety vest, so that's good. None of the other things I was hoping for appeared, and I realized I had time to go downtown and do stuff. So I did that, started out with Nijiya market where I got some chow mein with pork and cabbage and a can of coffee. 

I locked the bike at Whole Foods and rode the bus over to Santa Clara where I picked up things, and in the end only got sprinkled on, rain-wise. I rode the bus back and picked up the bike, picked up bubble mailers, and got back here. 

I ate the bento I'd picked up at Nijiya on my way back, and fiddled around organizing things, and watched YouTube, and went to bed at 1AM. Fair enough, I'd wake up at 9AM and since it was due to rain (it had started raining steadily) it would all work out great. 

Except I woke up a bit past 2AM because the bozos were starting to show up for the illegal night club. And not just a few; a regular-ish crowd was building up. When the constant car alarm started up I'd had enough and got up, filed my little report online, and then called up the non-emergency line to the police to give them the heads-up. 

Except due to changing my card number, my phone needed a payment and I had to do that, then do a bit more to get it on auto-pay. OK now I could call, and did. The operator was a good one and it was a cheerful call, despite the subject matter. I waited to see if the cops would show up and they did in not too much time and they rousted the nightclub out, and then it was quiet. 

By then I'd found "The Wind Rises" on YouTube and I had a good chunk of seared tuna sashimi in the fridge, and I'd only watched the first half of the movie before, so I settled in to watch that. The movie starts out great but kind of loses its way and doesn't mention that much about WWII - kind of paints Japan as the victim. Kinda like real life! I'm glad I didn't pay for it on DVD. 

I went to bed after that and slept in until about 1 in the afternoon.