January 10th, 2016

9:04pm

Ah, I'm still a little bummed about the 9th (i.e. the day I talk about on the tenth... the tenth itself could have gone better, too) 

I had food with Sherry (I think that's how you spell it) and Tom- or rather, just Sherry, having lost Tom after he went to the bathroom before we found a set seat. He either thought we were meeting somewhere else (I'm pretty sure Ii saw him in the same Food Bazzar area as us...) or he ditched us to promote a "date" atmosphere for Sherry and myself. Of course making sure that atmosphere didn't appear was a key reason behind my inviting Tom along with us.

I'm afraid I can't remember exactly what I ate, other than the grilled cheese sandwich (plot twist, it was sweet). I distinctly remember sitting there eating every last crumb, each pinch of the chopstick coming up with a motes worth of food, but that describes all of my meals.

The thing that got me down was this one class, there was this one grammar point- and this wasn't a particularly difficult grammar point, I hadn't even given it a second thought, I wasn't nervous about it or anything, but it had to do with when to use some particular connecting word in a sentence. I off-handedly said I didn't know the exact rule for why you add this word or not, and then a little later this student said I should watch some grammar videos on youtube. He wasn't trying to be a dick, I'm pretty sure he was trying to be helpful, but the best way to get me hot under the collar is to question my competency- especially when you may be right about me. I immediately felt myself get defensive, and I reminded myself he didn't mean anything by it. Regardless, I hopped up and essentially created a rule on the spot for the situation. Whether it was right or wrong, it was an impressive display of bullshitery.

I stewed about it for the rest of the day, clearly.

I stopped at Chinese Wal-Mart after work and wandered around for an hour or so, figuring out the best deal for laundry detergent, a proper blanket and scouring the food area for some way to drown my sorrows in jelly beans.

Still no sign of a cheap watch anywhere, which is insane. All our cheap watches are from China. Do we have them all??

The bread and pastry section is massive, as is the meat and fish section. They have tanks of fish... well, okay, I remember one fish swimming around, but I was mostly looking at the frogs and turtles. I'm sorry you're going to be eaten, turtles! You deserve to practice ninjitsu in peace. These turtles also had sort of a weird elongated nose, like they had a mole-thing going on. It was also harder to tell where the shell ended and the turtle began compared to canadian turtles. That, and they were pretty big.

I guess you could say I like turtles.

There were a couple of bulk bins of stuff- no oatmeal, pumpkin seeds, or raisins. I did find those things, but in small pouches and expensive (oatmeal), also expensive (pumpkin seeds), and weirdly green (raisins). And let's be real, those weird green raisins were also probably expensive.

Examining the chip selection, there was original, lime, some kind of meat flavour, okay, sure, and tomato style, which, hailing from the land of ketchup chips I can't judge, and, instead of salt and vinegar, they had shrimp flavoured chips, which makes it official. I'm in a land of monsters. Just awful, awful people.

If I get disappeared after this post I want everyone to know I'm a martyr to the cause of salt and vinegar chips. Circulate a petition. Help these people.

I decided to get some bulk donuts and these sugar orange slices that looked as though they could be similar to watermelon candy or fuzzy peaches or the like. I found the place with bags near a sort of scale station, which I figured out is where you're supposed to take the bags of stuff once you fill them with stuff- they get weighed and a sticker seals them shut, as well as affixing the price onto the bag.

Besides one bin that had a scoop inside, there was a bucket with a couple of scoops sitting between the bulk options, clearly meant for whichever bin you'd like to use it for- cross contamination city.

I dug into the orange slices and... no, no, no, the hardness nooo it's hard candy! Why? Why! I wanted something I'd enjoy, not this life saver-like tongue cutting garbage.

Once you dig a scoop in, you're committed, that's my philosophy. So I have a small bag that will last my a while. Consarnit. Every time I pop one into my mouth I think about how good an orange shaped candy akin to fuzzy peaches would be. Patent pending, patent pending, patent pending.

The doughnuts conformed to my expectations of fried dough covered in a sugar glaze. The Chinese seem to be doughnut masters, actually. I can't complain about the donuts.

This place is going to ruin my health.

I found some fruit, and decided to take some precious, precious bananas with me. It was a large bundle, and they were fairly ripe already. Without Simon to help me in my banana eating endeavours I was definitely worried about wasting some. But I could eat multiple bananas, it's fine.

Or it would have been, except I didn't realize that I needed to take the bananas to another weigh station to get checked and have a price attached. After waiting in line (though in China, it's still a Wal-Mart line up, it took awhile) the cashier waved at the bananas, pointed back at my other bulk options, indicating that I needed that set price sticker. I waved off buying the bananas, there's no way I was getting out of line.

I walked home doing bicep curls with my new detergent. It wasn't that heavy.

Desperately needing to do laundry, I examined the laundry washing machine in my bathroom. I, uh, got it to work. I think it was the longest setting,much longer than I probably needed, and the thing would violently shake at times during the hour so it was doing its work, but my laundry seemed to be getting washed.

In the meantime, I reclined. I ate doughnuts. I crunched into an orange slice that tasted of sugar and regret. I shaved. Finally, my laundry was ready to escape its centrifugal prison. 

Everything was wrinkly as all get out, and I had no "real" laundry rack hanging around, so I've currently got most of my laundry either sitting in the window looking partition between the bedroom and the sitting area, or up where a curtain would go to separate, again, the bedroom and the sitting area. And I've got some laundry laying flat on the kitchen counter. 

I'm in no hurry whatsoever to move these items. Yes, yes, I do live like a squatter.

Well, a squatter with a nice blanket.

I'm listening to my collection of songs, it's reached the section full of Kamen Rider songs. I could sure go for some Kamen Rider. And jelly beans.

It's 10:25pm. I'm going to listen to a few more songs then fall asleep with no alarm set. It's my day off tomorrow.

Good night