A couple, probably well into their 60s, if not their 70s. They’re both reading a single broadsheet paper, different parts, each holding their side up with the “outer” hand. In the middle, their hands are clasped lovingly together, assuring each other they are still here, still committed to their relationship, to each other. My cynicism took a break for that half hour.
Things are totally settled now, I’ve run down my list of obligated-to-visit people, I don’t have any pressing items that need to be bought and there’s not a whole lot going down to distract me. Right. Looking around the house, I realise that perhaps I’ve been neglecting something. Namely neatness. There’s a pile of dishes in the sink, the laundry basket is kind of full - but more tellingly there’s shirts scattered all over my room and they don’t look like they were artfully placed there. There’s dust bunnies accumulated in the empty rooms. Shoes really need a polish. The single plant I have, a shoot of bamboo, is sitting in mostly green water. The grass outside needs cutting before it starts to gets rampant. There’s leaf-litter everywhere from the big stupid gumnut tree right out front. The study room looks like a literary bomb hit it, with books and magazines strewn about the place. Things generally need to be straightened out. ...
6:45 - Alarm goes off. I reach out and switch it to the radio 7:04 - Swear, get out of bed. Do the whole morning thing. 7:59 - Start breakfast while watching TV for weather & news. Out the door by 8:09. 8:16 - At station waiting for 8:24 express to city. 9:15 - Log in to computers, read overnight email from London & NY. Catch up on bloglines. 9:45 - Start looking at work. Synchronise with overnight work from others, move into “work” mode ...
Um yeah don’t mind the ramble below. One part of the Kinokuniya story I didn’t mention was buying the first volume of MegaTokyo, a web-comic that’s broken out into paper. There’s always an element of satisfaction to be had by reading in hand as opposed to on the screen, and I suppose that’s why I preferred to pick up the paper form, as opposed to reading online - I knew it’d make me like it more. It’s totally backwards from an economic perspective, since I was putting down cash for something untested, but some days you just feel like jumping. ...
A few things I thought of over the weekend: There are 793 billionaires in the world. So if we take into account the mafioso and the drug barons who wouldn’t be on that list, let’s say there was a round figure of roughly a 1000. That’s… 0.0000166..7% of the world’s population. One billionaire per 6 million people, give or take. I want to be in that “club”. Seriously. That’s a bloody exclusive club. Millionaire doesn’t mean anything any more, dammit. ...