The wind kicks up and quickly fills the streets with blowing dust as a monsoon brushes the city. Open lots and construction sites are the main culprits in creating the brown-out conditions when we have these small localized dustups. Big storms that originate in the south kick up the top layer of the desert and under those circumstances a wall of dust half a mile thick blankets Phoenix. For a moment the blowing dust looks cool and then the reality that people might freak out while driving as visibility falls grips you, bringing you back to normal paranoid driving.
Zhou Yiyang and Luo Jia
Meet Billy and Rocky. Ok, those are their adopted western names, really they are Zhou Yiyang and Luo Jia from Xiamen, China. Billy and Rocky are studying to become pilots. For approximately 11 months they will live and study in Tucson, Arizona, to obtain their pilot’s licenses before returning to Xiamen. Gautam, an old friend of ours is one of their flight instructors; he brought them up to Phoenix for their brief visit. We had the chance to exchange blog addresses (here’s Billy’s) and I learned that, just as in Japan, Korean culture is very popular in China right now. The guys were surprised to find out my wife and I enjoy the films of Chan-wook Park who made Oldboy and that we loved the film Na Shan Na Ren Na Gou from Huo Jianqu, also known as Postmen in the Mountain. Good luck guys and enjoy your stay in America.
Storms in the Distance
As storms form in the distance with nearly clear skies over Phoenix, sunset can offer some spectacular clouds glowing for our viewing pleasure. If only we had the sound of crashing waves to accompany these sights, we would truly be in paradise.
Fire in the Sky
We have been having great luck with spectacular sunsets here in Phoenix, Arizona. There are a fair share of so-so and even ho-hum sunsets, but on many an occasion, there are skies that make you stop and say – wow!
Street Play Part II
A local Hindu youth group performs a street play for family, friends, and anyone else who happens to wander by Indo Euro Foods this afternoon. The play is presented in Hindi without subtitles and there are no scenes involving pyramids, snowcapped mountains, or rapid costume changes, so it might be difficult for the casual passerby to pick up on the real context of the play, but it was nice to see their enthusiasm for conveying a positive image and message to a welcoming audience. This was a repeat performance; last August we had a similar show in front of the store, but this time Caroline was able to understand a few sentences. Next year she just might be able to follow the whole thing!
Sunblock
Mysteriously, this sky patch followed the sun all day. From sun up to sunset, it never changed shape but always stayed just in front of the sun-blocking the people of Phoenix, Arizona, from having the opportunity to see the sun in all of its shiny hot glory. The news never mentioned it, people wouldn’t talk of it, they went about their business like it wasn’t even happening. Personally, I think it’s a bad omen. If this continues tomorrow are we to assume Al-Qaeda is using a new WMD to block the sun denying us our way of living with tans? You betcha.
Barcodes
In my spare time, I am trying to help set up a friend’s grocery store with barcode scanning for her checkout. The days of placing price stickers are alive and well in many ethnic grocery stores across America; I am trying to modernize at least one of them. Missing inventory control, reporting on selling frequency of items, or any quick ability to identify costs of more than a thousand items from multiple suppliers, it is now high time to move this little shop into 21st-century gear. I had hoped the product distributors would have the basic barcode product data readily available – wrong. I am entering the data on each and every product manually. The cool thing is I am learning yet ever greater detail regarding the Indian diet, like not eating from bloated leaking packages.