Oh what a beautiful morning! (about 3 years ago..)

Saturday morning. The eclectic sounds and smells of the street outside drift inside my bedroom window at some ungodly hour in the morning, forcing me to awake many hours earlier than I had hoped. There goes the garbage truck again. The sound of Fur Elise chiming outside my window on what sounds like an out-of-tune pipe organ is almost worse than chewing on tin foil with silver fillings in your mouth, while grinding your nails on a chalkboard at the same time. However, one learns to accept this “musical” interlude as sort of a vital to the day.

Today there seemed to be an extra amount and assortment of sounds and smells leaking into my room. Clearly there was something special happening on this particular day. However, not knowing how to read the local paper or understand the news on television, usually I was quite slow in finding out the happenings of the world, particularly the own city in which I lived in.


Upon first looking out my window to see what was going on, all I could see was the usual site of the garbage lady adorned in a robe and a mask covering her entire head. She was chasing some man up the street with a bag in her hand, most likely because he had put his recycling in the compost bin or vice versa, and she was mouthing off something pretty nasty to him. This had happened to me many times in the past so sometimes I had resorted to putting my garbage out in the middle of the night when no one was around. Shhhh...Though it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps that was my bag of garbage she was running around with and this man she was chasing was simply the poor victim of my wrongdoings. Oh well, they can sort it out.

The clattering and clanging was definitely getting louder. It sounded like a big brass band was approaching my street. Finally, there is was. A big float made its way along the street with crowds of people and smaller vehicles swarming around. A group of people were sitting on top of the van, each with their own respective instruments¬¬—a pair of cymbals, a triangle, a loud speaker, and a several other unidentifiable things. One man was waving signs with his picture on them, and making a speech as the truck moved onwards. I finally pieced together that this was some sort of election. Wow, at 7 am I hardly found this to be appropriate, but on the other hand I was not the least bit surprised. All I knew was that I had zero intention of leaving my house today, no matter the circumstance.

I decided to make some coffee and just hibernate in my room with some earplugs for the time being. It was then that I realized I was out of milk. And coffee for that matter. This was a dilemma. Either I bypassed my daily burst of caffeine, or would somehow have to brave it by making a trip to the grocery store. I was suddenly in a real pickle. I needed to be back home by 10am for my landlord. Was there enough time?

Coffee. Hmm. Was it really absolutely necessary? Could I make do without for this particular day? After a long and careful debate with myself over the matter, I decided that yes, it was absolutely necessary. This was going to be problematic. I would have to go undercover.

Generally I have grown accustomed to being stopped on the street for every which matter. The dermatologist on the first floor of my apartment consistently tries to persuade me to have my freckles beached, the watermelon juice man believes I would be more beautiful if I permanently straightened my hair, and the ladies standing outside the post office 24/7 are still trying to convince me to try their diet and meal replacement shakes so that I can lose 20 kilos in a week. Today, I simply have no time. I’m on a mission.

I adorned myself with clothing to cover my whole body, including gloves up to my elbows, put on my oversized motorcycle helmet, aviator sunglasses, and just for the hell of it, grabbed my old sars mask and put that on too. Now I blended in with the crowd. Out the door I went. To market, to market to buy a big coffee... and earplugs.

Smack that ass!

To continue on with the subject of bodily fluids from my last post, a friend and I were recently forced into being observers of an interesting situation. There was a man perched on a curb by the side of the road, smacking his ass while peeing...on a car.

Having lived in Asia for quite some time now, I have observed many individuals, young and old, hitting themselves, presumably most often for circulation purposes. I have also observed some individuals peeing in public spaces, though slightly less common. I have not, until this day, witnessed anyone doing both at the same time. Hitting oneself...circulation...urine...perhaps there is a scientific reason behind this. Anyone?

Pee in the apple juice bottle

This story need not be drawn out to any great length. The story is simple. A young boy had to pee. He stood with his mother in very close proximity to a toilet. Yet even so, between the two of them it was presumably decided that they would not walk to that toilet. They would instead reuse the apple juice bottle she held in her hand.

Moments later, the boys pants were around his ankle, his penis inside the bottle and the container full of a liquid that was certainly not apple juice. The lid was replaced, the boys pants were pulled up, and the bottle was deposited into my waste paper basket and so concludes the story.