Well, the most exciting thing about the mystery food was the fact that it was a mystery waiting to be uncovered!
Mike bought a pack of them at the local sunday morning street market a few weeks ago. If I’d consulted him before I wrote yesterday’s post it wouldn’t have been half as interesting as a ‘mystery food package in our freezer’. There was no label on the package, so I haven’t worked out what they’re called, and will only be able to point if I see them again!
Today’s background music is hits from the 80s, and Xanadu (Olivia Newton John) that was playing when I tuned in. The backing sounded really like ELO and prolly was. One of the family music whizzes will probably confirm this. I Ioved their music. Aerosmith coming up …
We seem to have had a lot of cloud this autumn. Though humid, autumnal and dank, with intermitten flashes of sunlight, the weather’s meant to turn fine tomorrow and the weekend … but what does “weekend” mean these days? With Mike retired it had come to mean less of a change in activity and routine, certainly; but until The Plague forced us into seclusion, we tended to choose to do certain things on a saturday or a sunday, anyway.
For some years I have been playing mahjong with a group of expatriate women of a wide range of ages, from many different countries, here for different reasons. We currently have someone from UK, The Netherlands, Japan, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, South Africa, 2 from USA, and one Aussie. As people come and go the mix varies, and only one other person is still in the group who joined about the time I did. In real time we meet at someone’s home on thursday morning at 10.30, and over brunch have a general chat/catchup before settling in to play for 2-3 hours. We still meet at 10.30 am thursdays, but of course, for the duration of this isolation it is over Skype. We’re getting used to this now, and during this morning’s chat we found ourselves laughingly agreeing that the one main marker for the week for most of us is ‘Thursday, 10.30 am, mahjong”.
Everyone looked pretty well held together this morning, despite some weighty problems that surfaced in the conversation: someone desperately needs documentation for a job change and transfer to another country in a few months’ time, and another friend has family on the other side of the world, but can’t renew her passport and has had to accept that she just won’t be able to go if any one of several family members with health issues passes away. Someone commented: “In a way that might be easier than having to decide whether to stay or go – the decision has really been made, and you can’t go.” At least none of us is stuck like these poor passengers at the Indian railway station in Varanasi !