Philosophy of Kids.

During my friends’ visit, they gave the kids each $10 so they could buy something at a souvenir shop.

At one off the main shopping drag he kids went around and around for like 30-40 minutes looking at this thatand the other, and 2 of the 3 were satisfied with nothing till my friend the dad announced they were leaving in 2-3 minutes, and they had better pick something out.

“I really dislike this part of raising kids,” he confided in me, like about 30 minutes in.

“Then why give them money and encourage commercialism?”, I was like.

“It’s like any relationship,” my friend the dad was like.  “It’s all about compromise.”

Tricky Kid.

When my friends and their 3 kids visited recently, we had the kids play in a downtown park under the supervision of one parent while I let the other parent in to the art museum for free to meander around inside and see it.

(Independently, both parents said that their favorite thing was being able to go to the bathroom by themselves.)

While the mom was inside – she went second – me and the dad took the kids to this giant reflective sculpture in the park, and the kids went nuts playing with their reflections.

When they tired of it and we were all standing in the crowd looking at the reflection and waving at ourselves, I told my friend the dad to have the kids cover their eyes, and then I went and stood behind them in the crowd and we played “I Spy” and they tried to look at the crowd through the sculpture’s reflection and find me.

The winner then went and hid in the crowd (the dad made sure the kids covered their eyes, and I watched the kid who went to hide to make sure they didn’t get too far away or even get lost), and then the process re-started with the winner of that round.

After the oldest son (8 years old) won a second time – he had won first, then the youngest daughter (5 years old) won – my friend the dad had the middle son (6 years old) be the person who hid.

And, when the middle son went to hide, instead of just standing somewhere in the crowd like everyone else, he went and found a really really fat tourist, and then stood behind that tourist peeking out... 

Then, when that tourist shifted or went to walk away, he would scramble and go run and find another fat tourist and hide behind them, and peek out from behind and look in the reflection at the other kids to see if they were noticing him yet.

Tricky kid!

It took like 5 minutes for the other kids to find him, when (in the reflection) he was peeking out from behind this 300-pound (white) man in a white straw hat, orange polo, and sunglasses, and with a big camera around his neck.

Lucky Find.

The other week I was biking to the regional library to go see if a “museum pass” was in for when my friends and their kids visited, and as I started to pedal after being stopped at one intersection, I saw a $5 bill lying in the crosswalk of the less busy road in the intersection.

I stopped and picked it up; the bill was a bit moist because recent rain had left the pavement wet, but I folded it in two and slipped it in my pocket and figured that the dry fabric there would siphon off the moisture and make it usable.

That kind of thing very very rarely happens to me.

In fact, I can’t even remember the last time that something like that happened.

Late night bar meeting --> Vatican gossip.

So Monday night I got fucked up at 7 bars, and at the 7th and last (this shitty Irish bar in the a white yuppie residential neighborhood), I was sipping my Miller Lite when an older bald (hispanic-looking) gentleman with an arm crutch on his right arm comes hobbling in and sits up at the bar a few seats down from me.

He was having a big of dinner, and somehow we started speaking, and it turns out that he's from the Dominican Republic, originally, so I asked him if it as originally called Santo Domingo, since in an Opus Dei memoir that I'm reading a numerary who was in Venezuela went there with 2 others to start a colony and ended up in the middle of a revolution and had to go to the American embassy and ended up on a ship to Miami with all the Americans in the country.

As it turns out, the guy had studied to be a priest at one point and had lived in Rome for 5 years, and his uncle is a cardinal.

Highlights of the conversation (I even got a 2nd beer):

- Years ago in Rome he was at a dinner with his uncle, another cardinal, an archbishop, and a bishop - and one of the bishops was Bergoglio.  Bergoglio didn't say much, but when he did speak, it was gently, yet "black was black and white was white"...  He said he's almost certain it was him, since the man looked like him, with big ears, but a more drawn face, since he was thinner then.

- His uncle the cardinal says that the 1st day of the conclave Maradiaga went around to all the Latin Americans and said that Bergoglio was the one to pick, to represent the 1.9 billion Catholics of their continent.  I ascertained that it was indeed during the conclave and not the conclave period, and the guy was like, "Yes yes, it is not supposed to happen, but it always does, that is the way things work."

- He said that Benedict's papacy was a result of how much money Germany gives the Vatican (according to him, it's the 2nd biggest funder after the U.S.).

- According to him, American and Italian cardinals perennially butt heads, since Americans expect respect for their $, but Italians are like, "Who the fuck are you?".

- Francis is stirring things up, esp. at the Vatican bank, but he probably won't get assassinated, "since things don't work that way any more."

. . .

Latino Revenge?

In an email conversation with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend we were talking about how whites will soon be the minority in California, and I wrote:

I hope they start to oppress the white minority voting rights.  It will drive Republicans in Texas crazy.

- to which he responded -

no [my uncapitalized name]! that is not the way to do things!

- and then quickly followed up with a 2nd email -

they should follow the republicans lead and start deporting them to their countries of origin. 

. . .

Mongolian-American bartender.

I’m always amazed to find (male) Asian-American bartenders; there just aren’t many of them – maybe because of stereotypes, where they can’t be a guy’s guy who a guy would want to hang out with, or a guy who a girl would want to hit on?

Anyhow, the other week I was at the bar in this one (Mexican) restaurant, and the bartender was Asian-American, oddly.

I talked to him some when he was mixing drinks near me, and it turns out that his parents are Mongolian and won the immigration lottery and came to the U.S. with him and his brother when they were young, and they’re still here now, but the parents finally decided to move back to Mongolia, now that their children are set up and have a better chance in life.

He also said he has a business degree from a local state university branch, but it’s “too generic” and he’s having a hard time finding a real job.

Update: Childhood friend.

My mom said that the other week she ran into the mom of this one guy who I used to be friends with in kindergarten and 1^st and 2^nd grade.

“He’s still in Florida,” she was like, “He’s finally getting used to it.”

(Though he’s been there 5-6 years at least, working construction and doing subcontracting!)

She also said that he’s wanted to settle down, but has had a hard time finding the right girl.

He had been dating this one girl with 3 dogs for a while, and had invited her to move in, and when she agreed, he even levelled his backyard and fenced it in and made a playspace for her 3 dogs.

Then, she decided not to move in.