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a.
So, I saw a fire yesterday. Well, not a fire really, but I saw the smoke billowing out of a building. See, I went to call Frances yesterday at a public phone and was commenting to her how different things look during the day. I was listing the things that I had noticed as looked around:
"There's a Ferrari body shop beside the convenience store, a Chinese medicine shop, a big column of black smoke, a driving range..."
It's funny, it didn't even click that there might be trouble. I just thought that it was a normal thing to have smoke shooting out of the driving range.
After a few more minutes of talking to Frances, the emergency vehicles started to scream by (about 7 or 8 of them), toward the blaze. I almost got nicked by one of the fire trucks because the alley I was standing in was so narrow (the fire was pretty close to me).
The fire trucks here are not like the ones at home. They're red and all, and have the blaring sirens, but they also have this mellow, recorded voice that probably says something like, "Please move out of the way. We are approaching." I know I shouldn't laugh about something where people may have been hurt or killed, but it was humourous to hear that recording, during the panic. It was like having Bob Ross take the place of an Italian soccer commentator. |
b.
Today, I went to the post office to mail off a package my mother sent along with me. I was kinda dreading the post office, as I realized that I didn't even know how to ask for a box to ship it in, let alone decide whether I wanted to use registered mail or regular post. Bracing myself for a half-hour struggle, I slunk into the building, took a number and waited to be called.
The lady at the counter seemed mortified when I asked if she spoke English, and quickly scurried off to recruit a rather brawny-looking co-worker. He asked if I knew kanji (Chinese characters that are also used in Japan), but I told him that I could not read or write kanji. With that, we began the charades.
Soon, I was out the door and back on the street. I looked at my watch. It only took 15 minutes. I'm getting better at this. |
c.
I am enjoying sitting at home, doing nothing. It's not even 3:30 yet, and I find that I have done everything I need to do today. Less than an hour ago, I was watching TV, as I was waiting for the computer. I flipped on CNN to see what was going on in the world, and it was at this point that I really felt far away from home.
CNN is a strange channel. They keep time like an army drill sergeant, which forces me to do quick little calculations on my fingers to figure out what time it is, if it's after 12pm. "17:30. Uhh... subtract two, drop the one in front... 5:30. Goddamn."
Its multi-ethnic crew all have British accents, difficult-to-pronounce names and stories about places that are nothing more than a distant memory from 7th grade geography class.
Canada never gets a mention, not even at the end of the program, after they have talked about all the important stuff, like what's going on in the Middle East and the Japanese economy. How sad. |
