10:00 am: Leave the house w/ my passport, Logan’s passport, and a copy of another friend’s passport in order to check at the post office for two packages that we are expecting.
10:05 am: Run into a lady that I have begun to love dearly over the past few weeks. She is one of the cleaning ladies for our apartment complex. She sweeps, mops and empties trash cans all day long, starting around 6 am, but not before applying bright red lipstick and painting her eyebrows on. After having tons of random, 30 second conversations over the past few weeks, she finally asks me what my name is, allows me to call her by her last name and the equivalent of Aunt, and then we end our discussion on the topic of how ridiculously hot it has been the last few days.
10:10 am: Arrive at the post office. I find the usual situation of a loud crowd of people all competing for service, and I am hesitant to elbow my way through to the front and to the guy I know is accommodating to my stuttering Chinese, but is busy at the time. My other option is to approach the not so accommodating woman who happens to be entering data into a computer, but without a crowd of people around her window.
After 3 minutes of indecision, I approach the woman.
“After you are finished with that, can you look for maybe two packages for me? One is for me, and one is for a friend of mine that has moved, but a package he was expecting did not arrive before he moved.”
She actually smiles, and quickly finishes what she is working on. Then she looks up at me, and without checking the back say, “There are no packages.”
“You are not able to look?” I reply. (There is a hint of sarcasm in the way this would translate; however I refrained from rolling my eyes.)
She gets up, consults another lady, who then tells me, “It isn’t a package, it is a letter.” (As if I don’t know the difference between the two words.) She does, however, allow me to sign and take the “letter”, which is actually a priority mail envelope..so smaller than a package, yes, but not simply a letter.
10:25 am: I leave the post office, head back towards my apartment, but stop to make copies first. 15 copies. $1.17 USD.
10:28 am: Cross the street to return to the apartment and pick up my bike before running another errand. At the entrance, I witness a man try to steal a woman’s wallet, although at first I am not aware that is what is actually happening. Here, he doesn’t run up to the woman w/ a gun and yell for her to hand over her wallet. There are no guns, so what you see is not a production of yelling and force and fear. Rather, I see him simply walking behind the woman, and then suddenly, but so subtly, he inserts what appears to be a long pair of tweezers into the pocket of her skirt. She feels it, grabs her pocket and then turns towards him. With the umbrella she is carrying to protect her skin from the sun, she hits him, and undoubtedly curses him too. As he simply walks away, her two friends have to refrain her from following him across the street and wounding him….both his body and his pride. Thief: Fail. But I have no doubt that he will try again, sooner rather than later.
--da
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