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.
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