mintcar

Tunes: Jay-Z "Me and My Girlfriend," John Mayer "Your Body is a Wonderland" (haha, I know...<3)

An interesting thing happened to me tonight. I was filling up my gas at Shell and there were three people sitting on the concrete in front of the station: a woman and her two young sons (the boys wearing Starter jackets many times too big for them). When I walk past them, the woman tells me she really needs to see a doctor, but the last bus just left from the nearby station. She asks me for a ride to Sutter (the closest hospital with an emergency room) at Eureka Rd, about 4 to 5 miles away. I tell her I really wanted to help her, but I also asked her what was wrong, because she didnt look like she was sick at all. (Plus, I was hesitant about taking these three in my already crammed vehicle) She didnt want to tell me what was really wrong with her, so I called a taxi for her on my cell, waited twenty anxious minutes. Her youngest son, about nine or ten, asked me for money to buy some candy. I asked them if they had eaten dinner; the boys said no lunch or dinner, and the mother said they had cream cheese and some bagels. After the cab came, I gave the driver twenty bucks and told him to give the change to the lady. After they left, I was still wondering if she really needed to go to the hospital, if I should have stayed there with them. The boys clearly hadn't bathed in days, the mother couldn't feed them, and when I asked her where they lived, she gave a vague "We just moved back." How honest were they? Could the mother not answer my questions because she was embarassed or because she was lying to me? She never offered to contact me in the future, but without a doubt, they had been desperate.

Other interesting encounters:

*Serena--beautiful nine-month-old Taiwanese baby with the biggest eyes! She wrinkles her nose whenever she laughs! When I came home last night, I saw all these baby toys all over the family room, and a crib in my parents' room, and for a second thought my parents had another kid, but it turned out to be one of my mom's friends' daughters; my mom was babysitting her. My mom told me Serena's adopted dad was white and mom was Taiwanese; her biological mom was from Taiwan, and no one knows who her real dad is. I wondered if, later in her life, her friends would think she was hapa or not. :)
*Art dealer I met in Border's Bookstore, in the computer section--I was looking for a 3ds max book (for lame architecture 132) and this old man asks me where to find a really basic computer book, because he just bought a $2000 Dell laptop, "It should be arriving in the mail soon, so I thought I should read up on how to work a computer!" "What exactly is Microsoft?" He was telling me how people were buying art from him and reselling it on E-Bay, so he thought he better get in on it himself. He was so nice!
*Boy in a white ~'76 Mustang who gently rear-ended Taco exiting from the Border's parking lot--I huffily stopped my car and checked the rear bumper, but there was only a little white paint on the bumper--no dings! I yelled to the boy: "It's okay!" and hopped back in the car.

Last bits: I watched "Spirited Away," the newest movie by Hayao Miyazaki, and Hoku as a dragon in flight really reminds me of this caterpillar shaped kite I had when I was little! Also, I'm not going to China anymore this winter...more to come...