Up against the wall, almost out of view, seldom considered and often taken for granted – the electricity meters. As a kid, I could watch the little sliver of a wheel turn inside the box and when someone turned on a high voltage power-sucking something-or-other another, the wheel would race around and around, making me wonder if it could ever spin too fast. Today I am denied that childhood pleasure as meters are going digital. With an intrusive prong, the invisible meter reader whom I swear I have never seen even once in 43 years, is able to jab the meter to download the undecipherable codes blinking on the LED display. I want the silver disk back where it belongs.

With no regard to the warning not to photograph, make a recording, shoot videos, or otherwise capture images in my local grocery store, I threw caution to the wind, risking who knows what for the chance to bring you this shiny picture of the ugly, genetically modified, prepared and over-processed fluorescently packaged stuff we Americans call FOOD. I tend to make it a practice not to shop at these giant conglomerates that have become bastions for the boring masses, instead opting for small markets, farmers markets, and ethnic grocery stores where usually I get to know the owner and find great tips and good conversation from my fellow shoppers. But it does happen that I need something I can’t otherwise find, such as Woolite or that colored watery stuff we put in our dishwasher to stop water stains. Other than that, these stores are off-limits, just like Walmart.

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.

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.

Caroline is our live audiobook, here she is reading to us a book titled “My Name is Red”. The book had a slow start and the style grated at me for a while, but finally, I started to find a groove. The book is a murder mystery and I would prefer action and adventure. We finished Moby Dick while driving about and have taken in Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft written by Thor Heyerdahl along with a great little book about rafting the Tsangpo river in Tibet called “Hell or High Water”. On the upside, this sure beats listening to Caroline’s eight-track tape collection of Abba music.