a day in the life of...

Tuesday 21st September 2010:

Yesterday I took a leisurely stroll to Safeway (kind of like a Pick 'n Pay) to pick up a few things. The sun was out and it was a good day to go for a walk. Who knew that you can now buy apple slices in a supermarket?!? These goodies are ready-made (i.e. sliced) individually wrapped and ready to go. In what world, I cry, do we not have time to slice our own apples??!!! In what world are we wasting that amount of plastic in order to package a single apple slice??!!! Ours.

After getting what I needed (which, I might add, took a while to find: I was asked by a shop assistant if I needed help finding something, and I politely replied that I was fine and would manage to find what I was looking for - hoping that I would discover its location on one of the display boards above the aisles. Needless to say, I wandered around for another few minutes before I eventually stumbled upon what I was looking for. You see, the things I was looking for were... well, let's just say Safeway calls them Feminine Products - or something along those lines. The shop assistant who asked me if I needed help was (you guessed it) male. And call me old fashioned, but I didn't REALLY feel like asking him where I could find "feminine products". Anyway, he ended up walking past me (twice) while I was standing in front of all the "feminine products" deciding which ones to buy. Gotta love how life has a knack of doing things like that.

I then grabbed a Chai Tea Latte at Starbucks on my way out, and headed back towards campus. I would like at this point to make special reference to Revolution Cafe in Grahamstown, South Africa: There just isn't anywhere else - probably in the whole word, but certainly in South Africa and America (America being Starbucks) - that makes a better Chai Tea Latte than that little restaurant in that little town. I have yet to find a better Chai Tea Latte!

Anyway, I decided to wander into the State Capitol park (right across the road from campus, where the capitol building is located), and found a bench to sit on and have some alone time! It was nice to just chill a bit and think about things (whilst drinking my less than satisfactory Chai Tea Latte). No sooner had ten minutes passed than a guy named Sean, who is in my French class, cycled past and stopped to say hi. An hour and fifteen minutes later, we said goodbyes and parted ways! Turns out we had a lot to talk about! :) But it was definitely one of those unexpected moments or conversations that leave you feeling like a more enriched individual.

After dinner (there's that word again), I went to an address given by a guy named John Perkins who has just written a book called 'Hoodwinked' and also wrote a book called 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' (which was on the New York Times bestsellers list for seventy weeks!) He is a fascinating man who spoke about what we (as a human species, but specifically as the USA) need to do in order to change the current state of the world, especially in terms of the current environmental damage and social injustice. It was a truly thought-provoking address, and was given by someone who really knows what he is talking about (as an "economic hitman", he used to work for big corporations and seek out countries with coveted resources. These countries would be given "loans" (that went into the pockets of a few) by corporations who knew full-well they would never be able to pay them back. The corporations would then extract the resources that they wanted all along as payment for the loans). Scary stuff.

Unfortunately I was unable to stay for the question and answer session, as I was meeting some friends to go downtown for movies! Willamette is located right next to downtown Salem (as in, we are basically IN downtown Salem), which is really awesome as this means that most of the coffee shops, restaurants, shops, bars and businesses are within walking distance. This includes Cinebar - a really nifty movie theatre where you can have a full meal served to you while you watch a movie. In front of each row of seats there is a long table on which you can rest your meal, popcorn, drink, etc. Waiters come in during the movie to check for order slips and then bring you whatever it is that you want (well, if it's on the menu). Myself and a French girl Stephanie decided to order some popcorn together. Little did we know that we would be receiving a whole giant bowl of popcorn! Talk about giving new meaning to a "large popcorn"! We watched 'Inception', which is an absolutely PHENOMENAL movie that everyone should watch. It is brilliant on so many levels and will completely blow your mind.

And there ends a day in the life of Hanna B. I crawled into bed around 1am with the feeling that it had been a GOOD day.

'Til next time...