oddities

Walking home from buying my smoked pig face dinner, I had occasion to reflect on how unremarkable remarkable things have become since I came here.  

Scene 1:

From a... call it a bistro.  Sunset light turns the world a glowing peach/orange.  Clouds to the E.  From the W, across the street, a lightning bolt of sorts shoots from a transformer at a power pole at one end of the block to a power pole down the block behind me. 

I can see six blocks in each direction.  I watch the one streetlight flicker out.  A waiter arrives, lamplight flickering up his nostrils.

Ah, good, dinner.

Scene 2: 

I'm on the back of a mototaxi, driving down the local red-light street toward a private teaching gig.  It's an utterly unremarkable Thursday.

There's a waterfall of sparks that lights the street as they cascade two stories to the sidewalk and bounce.  

It's an unprecedented string of firecrackers.  Except that it's coming from a power line.  

Scene 3:

A kid, maybe 16 or 17, texting on a cell phone while standing in line at Tesco Lotus, wearing CalTrans orange robes with bare feet.

Scene 4:

A guy sitting at the table in front of the chop shop up the street.  Another guy--each is in their early-20s--has his feet planted wide to contain his swaying while talking to an older guy in a business suit still sitting on his idling bike.  On the table, in front of the guy, is a glass full of, presumably, the local rotgut and soda, bottles of which constitute a forest on the table.  The seated guy doesn't need to stand up to weave.  

The brown robes make me wonder if monasteries have the same "quick, we gotta get him to bed before the authorities see!" as dorms.