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.  

Expired

 Ken came over Wednesday night, I got my check, yadda yadda. Since Thursday was rainy I stayed in, or at least planned to but actually did a shipping run anyway. 

Yesterday (Friday) I went to the bank to put my check in, all the numbers agreed, so that's all good. But I withdrew some money too, and for that they needed an ID and it turns out my drivers' license is expired. Oops. This has happened before, in fact the last time I needed to renew it. 

Thank goodness I carry my passport card with me. Having a passport, even an old one, has been a big help from time to time. Especially when traveling overseas, haha! But as a form of ID, and even an old passport is proof of citizenship. I never thought things would get to the point where ID is so important, although I guess it could be forecast from how people were thinking even back in the  80s. 

So, I need to get over to the DMV and get that thing renewed. I'm qualified to drive a car and a motorcycle, and I'd kind of like to keep those ratings because I have this dream of maybe finding a Honda CT70 when I'm back in Hawaii and putting around, and it being larger than 50cc would make it a motorcycle. 

But at the same time, at this point I'd be kind of OK with just having a state ID since I've not driven a car since 2012, can always drive one in an emergency, and frankly hope to not ever drive one again. Even the cheapest junkiest car costs more than a LOT of bikes and bike stuff. 

The highlight of the day was that I stopped at Nijiya for a can of coffee and a musubi, and mentioned something about odd coins to the guy there and he told me about an old lady who pays with all these dollar coins, and got them out to show me. He said, "This also came in," and pulled out a beautiful silver quarter.  I said I'll buy it from him; how much does he want? He said 5 bucks, and since my change was $14.77, I took the $10 bill and said, "How about $4.77?" and that was OK. 

Between this and the silver dime I got in my change at the Ace Hardware, I'm beginning to think people are digging out their old change jars etc. and silver coins "in the wild", absent for some years, are back. Cool. I've got a buffalo nickel, 4 silver dimes, a couple of "wheat" pennies, and some weird French dime-sized thing. And now a really cool silver quarter.  

 

Tairyu

 The highlight of yesterday was that I was on YouTube and happened to catch an "ask me anything" session with Shawn "Tairyu" Head, who's a hell of a shakuhachi player. 

I asked some great questions. Although he's actually composed for the clarinet, it appears his background is in classical violin and viola, and he was working, playing in orchestras. Considering how competitive those instruments are, I'd suppose he has no lack of work ethic. 

I was able to ask about the smoothness of a shakuhachi bore (smooth is generally good and louder, contradicting the woo-woo Monty Levinson trades in) about the Shakuhachi Yuu (actually a bit hard to play, but consistent so that a teacher playing one can tell their student playing one, "do this" and will get the same thing) and PVC shakuhachi (surprisingly good for what they are, and not discouraged). 

I was even able to ask how he got into the shakuhachi, thinking (since he was wearing a chain with a cross around his neck - ew) that maybe he'd grown up in Japan, son of missionaries or something. Nope he'd lived in the most boring flyover places, and had simply fallen in love with the sound, which he'd heard on anime and Samurai movies. I was amazed and mentioned growing up in Hawaii and not knowing about it. He said that's not surprising at all, that in Japan maybe 5% at most of people have seen one "in person" and it's generally, "Oh, my grandfather played that". 

So regardless of his wearing a symbol showing he's a member of a cult that wants to see me and people I care about dead, it was a real treat and a big help to me. Maybe as a Buddhist I should wear a swastika around my neck haha. 

After packing and hunting for things all day I did a post office and FedEx run, and at FedEx they said about today, Veterans' Day, "It's not a holiday for us!" so I'd be wise to make another run today. Then I photo'd the 35 things I had lined up and listed 15 of them and by that time it was midnight and I was pretty sleepy so I went to bed around 1AM. 

I woke up at 8 maybe, then again at 10. I've got a guy welding and grinding on some things... looks like stands for signs or something, made out of heavy steel pipe. The empty space in front of the roll-up door here is just too tempting for these guys I guess and he made a good alarm clock. 

 

Middle of the night practice

 I got busy enough getting 35 things photo-ready that by the time I'd had dinner and was ready to photo and list them, it was something like 1 or 2 AM, and I decided to put things aside until the next day. 

Since  I was up so late, I was up to see the illegal night club start up, and put in my little report with the police online.  I got involved in practicing the Hall flute, going through the book of Xmas carols and that went well. I'm working on the proper way of holding the flute, where the right hand thumb, base of left hand first finger, and chin are the "pressure points". 

After a while the cops showed up and roused the rats out of the sinking ship, haha. 

I also did some shakuhachi practice, so all in all it was a fairly productive night in that regard. I need to come up with a set of Xmas songs, and also work on Auld Lang Syne for New Year's Eve. 

 

You guys make it my business

 Saturday was spent taking things apart. I have a shelf that I want to clear and have it all where circuit boards go. There were two large HEAVY power supplies which I'm not sure I kept much of anything off at all, then a big frequency synthesizer that also got taken apart, that took a while. 

I got to bed at a decent time, I want to say half after midnight or so. I was awakened by some idiot parking right in front of here and having his car alarm go off, which he didn't seem to be able to shut off so I opened the door and helped by shining my big flashlight on blinking mode in his face haha. Then, since it was around 3 in the morning, the illegal night club was having a night and there was other noise, so I did the usual, called the cops and told the operator about it, and filed an online report. 

Eventually the cops cleared everyone out so that's good. They've made an enemy, and as long as they keep making it my business, I'll do whatever I can to mess 'em up. 

I watched the 2nd half of Angela's Ashes, good movie, and finally went to bed around 10AM and woke up around 1PM then again at 5PM. To make the number of items listed that I want to, for this week I need to list 35 things.  So I've got those lined up .... 

All this BS has kind of kept me from practicing. I think it's a good thing that the 6-hole flute is so darned easy to play, and there's so much material. It turns out (I read somewhere) that most of the Christmas carols are in G, and here I am with two G flutes. My thinking is I'd get an A also, but they come in all sorts of keys. 

The idea is, at the very least, to put enough time in that when I'm finally out of here, I'll have some kind of "base" to work from. For instance on trumpet I can, at this point, not play it for a year or three and then pick it up and sound OK right from the start and sound pretty good once I've been playing again for a bit. This probably goes for any instrument. 

But the thought of playing a trumpet in the tropics is ... not good. Not only is the Pacific/Asian culture in Hawaii such that there's an actual saying, "no make tan-turan" or literally "don't play the trumpet" meaning don't make a big deal of yourself. But the trumpet, being a closed tube, is a huge bacterial culture. That's why trumpets even here, in warm/damp places like Santa Cruz stink like hell. I suppose with fanatical cleanliness it could be a bit better but yuck, just yuck. 

Meanwhile a shakuhachi or simple flute are pretty easy to keep clean. I'm probably more fanatical than I need to be, brushing my teeth, flossing, then chewing Xylitol gum before practicing, because this level of cleanliness is needed for trumpet. The high air pressure, plus the lips being right on the mouthpiece and because they're vibrating, at the very least there are going to be skin particles coming off. 

This being November, I need to work on being ready to go out and play Christmas carols all I can in December. Right up to and including Christmas day. That will be my experiment to find out how the public likes the flute vs. the trumpet. 

I never got around to mentioning my plan if things suddenly turn to shit here. If that happens, the plan is to get a storage unit and grab everything that's mine and stick it in there, no sorting just get it all in there, and find a decent/cheap hotel to stay in while I sort out the stuff and get my ticket to fly back to Hawaii. 

Tom's said I could always stay at his place but it's pretty crowded. Because he was stupid and  associated with the local scumbags, the city inspectors have him under a magnifying glass and he's scared to sleep in his own place, sleeping in his camper truck instead. And he's got his wife living in there too. So yeah I'd be better off at the Motel 6 by the Denny's or something. 

 

 

Pearl Harbor Day

 Of course I won't call it that around Japantown! And haven't I spent a lot of time around Pearl Harbor! For one thing, Jack Wheat's surplus place was right around there, plus the junior college I went to, plus the good old Bowfin submarine, where I was a tour guide for a year or two. Memories of the place even go back to when we went with my older brother's Boy Scout troop, and it was pouring rain, and this hot cocoa machine there got jammed up somehow and kept dispensing cup after cup of hot cocoa. 

When I get back I want to really explore the place though. 

Last night I could not keep my eyes open and kept starting to doze off in my chair, so I went to bed at half after midnight. I woke up around 5:30 in the morning and made myself go back to sleep until a quarter to 8. It's only been getting down to 70 degrees in here but for some reason unless I'm moving around it feels quite cold. I guess I'll be well adapted for life back in Hawaii. 

 

Toot toot tweet squeak

 Let's see I did a shipping run yesterday, found a lot of firm foam pieces at the medical surplus place that I went back with the trailer to get - two loads. Then I settled in and found some things to get rid of, mainly a lot of big rolls of wood veneer strips no one's wanted for years and I wanted the shelf space. But to get to them, I had to get this other thing down and part it out first, then I got the veneer rolls outta here. Plus I found 6 aluminum boxes that turned out to have holes drilled in them (a customer told me about this and I sent him a new one that wasn't drilled because I'd sent him, unknowingly, one with holes). 

So I had some metal stuff going out and Lo and behold there was a bum looking at the fridge and two dishwashers that have been sitting around here forever, so I gave him the metal and then gave him an OSH tool bag I never use any more and a bunch of socket drivers we never use so he'd have a kit of tools to take apart things like the fridge and dishwasher since they're all put together with these little hex head screws. 

Ken came by his usual time and I got my check and we had the usual hour or so of talking. I told him about my voting adventure, and how baffling and complicated the voting by mail system is. I don't think Ken actually voted, and since Prop. 50 won by a landslide he didn't need to. 

One hilarious thing: In the mail Ken brought me there was a letter from Medi-Cal saying they won't cover weight loss drugs like Ozempic. They had a list of them, and I showed Ken, laughing over my favorite weight loss drug name, "Zepbound". Like, you're bound to look like a Zeppelin if you don't take our drug... In truth, you can change your diet and get a little exercise and get the same effect as those drugs without the cost and side effects.  

Once Ken had left I decided I should get some practice in, and I ended up playing more than an hour on the Hall flute. I tries out tunes in the Christmas carols book and it was really great - everything I tried, I could play no problem.  If I'm going to get out there and busk Christmas carols I need to practice every day 

After practicing, I found the movie "The Wind Rises" by Studio Ghibli, a movie I've wanted to see for years. It's dubbed into Chinese with Chinese subtitles, but it's still an amazing movie. I watched the first half of it and then went to bed. 

I woke up around 2 this afternoon, had breakfast and packed 4-5 things and did my usual drop off trash, drop off packages, go to the bank routine. Then I went to Walmart for things, and got back here. Now it's the time of year when it's going to be dark from something like 5 in the afternoon on. 

Last night I actually joked around with Ken about how fast things would fall to pieces if something happens to him, just to see what his reaction is, and his reaction, since I'd likened it to when someone pours gasoline into a Styrofoam cup (instant meltdown), to talk about various interesting chemical reactions he's done. 

I've given up getting any information from him on how long we have left on the lease. I am coming around to thinking I should leave here in 2 years rather than one, so that I won't have an interruption in medical coverage - I'll go from Medi-Cal to Medicare, since I'll be 65. 

I'll also have that much more time to get  better on the shakuhachi and the Hall flute.  In about a month I'll find out how the glass flute appeals to the public compared to the trumpet. It's sure a neat little gadget, and even as a beginner on it I have far more range than I did on the trumpet. There are songs I could play in practice but unless I was just starting a busking session, I could not play for the public; my range would go away. There are songs like Danny Boy where that high note would come out OK when I was fresh, but generally be a strain and eventually sound rather awful because I could no do it. 

Ultimately I'm not all that sure if I was getting tips because I sounded good, or because I sounded desperate. After an hour or so I'd start sounding like someone stepped on a duck. I think the glass flute might appeal to the public pretty well because it's got a nice sound for homey, folksy tunes as Christmas carols are. I was delighted to find out how easy "Silent Night" is to play on it, a song I liked singing in elementary school and also a song I could generally not pull off on the trumpet.  

What I like is it should be fairly easy to carry the Hall flute with me. I should be able to make a case for it out of PVC pipe and I could keep it with me fairly easily and fit busking into my errands. 

 

Election day

 I was up at 11, packed a couple more things, and did my post office and FedEx run, stopping first at my favorite lunch truck for some good old lunch truck spaghetti and a diet Pepsi. 

By the time I got back here, cleaned up and shaved so I'd look as much as possible like my passport photo (and I brought my passport) and was walking to the light rail station, it was a bit past 4. What's to worry about, I thought. I have 3 hours to get there. 

3 hours ended up cutting it close. I took the light rail to the Milpitas BART station and checked the buses leaving there. None of them are ones that go by Ohlone College. So I called for a cab, which did eventually come, at just before 7. The ride was quoted as $51-odd, and I gave the guy $60. It was a fair old distance too. 

During the ride, the driver, a nice old Sikh guy, and I talked about ways to get back. He'd be off duty; been driving since 7AM. I might not have very good luck with the cab company and I said I know as it's a Santa Clara County cab company. I said I might take a bus because if the bus gets me to one of the BART stations then I can always go on BART back to the Milpitas station. 

We got to the college and it was easy to find the voting area as it was right out front next to the on-campus Starbucks. The voting was easy, it was only two things anyway; Prop. 50 and Measure B. 

While waiting in line I started sussing out people to talk to, to be able to bring up the subject of my having $50 for anyone who can give me a ride back. I made some small talk with the guy right behind me, a skinny, quiet guy with long hair. Quiet enough that I decided I'd not broach the subject with him. 

Done voting, I went out front and started sussing out people again, and who should come up from behind me and say he'll give me a ride but the skinny guy. Fair enough! 

We got in his Prius and had plenty of time to talk about our occupations and situations and some funny stories and observations. He'd "done NASA work" but was laid off, and is jobless. Not in dire need but getting by selling his deceased dad's stuff and getting money from his mother, now out in flyover country, who'd sold their house here in the Bay Area. 

I could not describe an easy way to get to Milpitas BART, and the guy's navigation thing couldn't deal with something that vague, so I said he could go to the intersection of First and Brokaw, which is easy to find and not at all far from Milpitas BART. So we did that. I gave him $100 which he really appreciated. I may have done him a real solid, and he sure did me one. 

Now, I could just walk home, but I'd planned to go to Whole Foods to get a couple of things, have some food and a near-beer, and watch the election results. And that's just what I did, hopping on the light rail again to go down there, except for the election results. The guy at the bar said a guy'd come in there with a Trump 2025 something or other, and so the rule was no politics in the bar. Fair enough! 

I finished my food and beer and rode the light rail back here and that's it. I'd not missed what may be the last election until this horrible regime is gotten rid of. 

Apparently Zohran Mamdani has won in New York, he's their new mayor. That's great news.  And Prop. 50 passed. If anything even better news. 

A quiet night

 Which I was up all of, getting back to a daytime schedule is harder than I thought it would be. I practiced, so at least there's that. At the concert I was getting out some nice clear tones so that's a good thing. 

I have a theory that as a shakuhachi is played and cleaned, the bore gets smoother over time and that's part of the "increasing skill" of the player. I'm going going to experiment on the "enhanced" Shakuhachi Yuu I have though, but the factory stock one is fair game. 

The illegal night club was quiet and a cop car drove through periodically.  I set my alarm for 2 in the afternoon, and went to bed around 8AM I think, so we're talking 5-6 hours of sleep. Still not enough. 

I packed as many things as I could after eating something, and of course it takes time to find the things also. And got 'em to the post office and FedEx, and then spent a bunch of money in H Mart on sugar free 7Up which is 2X the price it is at Walmart, a tub of Sky Flakes and a little can of liver pate', a jar of kim chee, such things. 

I only found a couple of boxes on the way back and stopped and said Hi to Tom, since on Monday night the place next to him tosses out packing stuff so I kind of need to stop and check there. Tom's doing OK, and about to call it a night so we didn't talk much. I think he's up at 6 in the morning or maybe even earlier. 

I got back here and put things away, and got some boxes of fluorescent tubes and a box of big incandescent bulbs, that are unsellable these days, and loaded those up along with the same sort of thing I'd put out in the parking lot a week or so ago and no one had picked up, and took everything over by the bridge to drop off. Someone will take them, or not. 

Liver pate' on Sky Flakes crackers is a pretty good meal, but I remembered I had "The King" surimi in the fridge so I made a "crab" salad with that, and that was dinner.  

 

Trying to get back to daytime schedule

 I was so tired last night it was a struggle to stay up until 10PM, when I figured I'd go to bed and wake up around 6-8 in the morning. That part went OK, but then I woke up at what the wall clock told me was a few minutes after 3 in the morning, but since the time shifted back an hour, was a few minutes after 2AM. 

Just the time the illegal night club starts up, usually. And it did. I put in my little report online and whether it was coincidence or not, pretty soon the cops came around and there was the "rats leaving the sinking ship" thing where tons of clients of the nightclub/brothel came streaming out. 

Then the power went out because of course it did. I figured some disgruntled "john" or another had messed with the electrical switches etc. on the side of the building, right where a horde of them were walking around, and decided I'll go to bed and figure things out in the morning. 

So I went to bed and was just dropping off to sleep when the power came back on so I turned off the lights that were on, and went back to bed. And slept in until 11:30 in the morning, actually 10:30 in the morning because of the time shift. 

 

Shakuhachi "concert"

 Yesterday among other things, many other things, I went to Low's and returned the light that was too bid, and got a couple of LED lamps that are not too yellow, and put one in the fixture I have here in the office that had a yellowish one, and in the other, took the lamp I had up in the loft and put it in and put it here in the office. Between the overhead light, now yellowish due to Ken's "improvement" and my two "daylight" lights, the office had decent light again. 

I got back here and my day's work was getting things ready to list, which went into the evening as it takes a lot of time to take those old oscilloscopes apart. The problem here was that I was up past 2AM and the illegal night club operated but with a smaller crowd than they'd been having, and the honest truth is that if I'd gone to bed at a decent time I'd have slept through the moderate amount of noise. 

I practiced, and that longest song, "Always With Me" is still  in progress. All I could do is try my best. 

I woke up at 8 and was over at Nijiya at 9:30. I got a little package of gyoza and a can of coffee, and ate and drank at the table out front. I went back in and bought a bunch of senbei, and went over to the event at the temple. 

It was interesting, I picked up the calendar I'd paid for at the office, and it was lots of short speeches and such things. We actually had some local politicians there and Buddhist Churches Of America people, and so on, so that was impressive. The lunch was amazing. So. Much. Food. I had some char siu, soba, poke on rice, potato salad, and importantly, some cucumber pickles. I ate fast, as I'd noticed everyone else had their music stands set up. 

Once I had eaten, I used to bathroom and rinsed my mouth, then went out to the bike and got my music stand, music, and shakuhachi. I set my stand up with the others, and after everyone had eaten, there was an announcement and we were on. 

It went just like practice/rehearsal. We played the songs in order, and I didn't miss too many notes. Plus on that long song, when I got lost I was able to jump back in. Poor Paul Endo, playing next to me, hadn't been able to get any notes to come out in practice, but he got some out this time, and when we were done I told him he'd sounded pretty good. Overall it went well. 

We went off the stage as the choir went on, and they sang some neat stuff. Then it was more speeches and things, and then we had the hall for another hour to socialize. We each got a set of 5 Rinban Sakamoto trading cards which is a pretty hilarious idea, and I especially like the one about his shakuhachi playing since it shows his whole career, starting out under a teacher at the Mo'ili'ili Betsuin Temple, where I may indeed find myself playing and learning, not too long from now. 

There was so much food, and the food *they* had being friendly to older people's teeth, they hadn't even put my senbei out, and I got it back so I have lots of senbei now. And I came back here because it's enough excitement for one day. Last night and the night before I got 4 hours of sleep so I need to get to a schedule that gives me a full 8 hours of sleep and it's not that safe to be out riding around until then.