A Glimpse into the Every Day

I walked to a nearby restaurant to get dinner for about $3 (if counted in USD). The meal I had in mind was that milkfish soup. That's a safe bet because I like milkfish with its fresh and somewhat tangy flavor, and usually it doesn't have any bones in it. It really doesn't taste fishy, so it's a rather refreshing dish to eat.

As I approach the restaurant I come to a large intersection where I have the option to wait at a light, or climb up some stairs to cross above the traffic. I opt for the stairs and as I get to the other corner I realize it probably would have taken just as much time to wait for the light and would have involved less climbing. Well, conserving steps isn't really a concern for me.

At the restaurant one of the ladies asks me what I want. I say, there's a soup and it has that white fish in it. The lady says something back to me and I just say yes. I then ask about leafy vegetables (always a good way to make the meal more nutritious). She says you can find the types of leafy vegetables on the sign above you. The only word I recognize on all three signs is the "tsai" or vegetable part of it. I ask her to repeat her sentence because the place is noisy and she was talking fast. I caught what sounded like what I remember to be spinach from the past, so she makes a couple of marks on the menu, I see the price, and I count out some cash.

When I get my food I realize that the fish didn't seem to be the kind I had in mind, but still tasty. The vegetables turned out to be cooked cabbage, not cooked spinach. The soup also turned out to be mostly broth with a few pieces of fish in it and plenty of ginger. Less substance than I was hoping for, but still not a bad meal.

I took it to a park to eat.

In the park a group of middle-aged to elderly citizens gathered without my realizing it and started swinging arms back and forth, over and over, to the rhythm of a recorded lady counting higher and higher. At one point I hear her say what sounded like "disgusting" and realize instead she must have been saying "twenty seven" because the voice was really doing noting but counting. (Twenty seven is erqi and disgusting is erxing, and the tones are similar.) Passers-by seem to start swinging their arms as well as they listen to the rhythmic counting from the speaker.

As I finish consuming the meal before me, I check my watch, 7:47. My phone is dying and Rex has been calling at about 8:15 every evening from boot camp, so I hurry home so as not to miss his call with no cell phone battery.