day 9 - wednesday the 20th, 2007
well today i had the experience (again) of ordering food without looking at the menu. well there didn't happen to be a menu at this little roadside establishment. so anyway, my friend orders two of the "chopped beef with beans and rice" but he uses his famous "cruzian talk" so it sounds like: "nee twofde chopbeef witdat dirtyrice mon... andde benah". yeah no shit. just like that. say it yourself. we all understand you.
so i order one as well and the time comes to find out how much it all is and we are trying to tell her that mine is separate... so she says: "nine" well, my friend and i look at her and then at each other because we thought she meant his was nine or it all was nine or she starts speaking German... but no, she means they each are nine... so it's $27 before we order drinks. i blanched but meekly paid and walked back to the car to drive home.
seriously if i wasn't so concerned with how polite i was trying to act, i would have not paid and left. so we got back to the house i told the guys i am living with: "this is an excellent $4.00 meal but at the price i paid, it tastes like shit." i mean there should be a recourse of action. there should be... but there is not.
my friend Lawrence is a bum and is on the board-walk from 10 in the morning until 8 at night. he owns (or at least he carries around) a black plastic bag and a hand woven palm-frond basket. inside this basket are carvings that he makes out of the coconut husk (sometimes with the nut as well). so he asked me if i could buy him some black and white paint the next time i was in town. i said i would and bought him a pint of each. each one (what would be $2.49 or less) was $6.79. i swear.
but economic law says that it CAN be that much because all other costs and services are that much and people will PAY that much. look, I did, and i am bitching my ass off. wherever there is a society that can become self-sufficient within the confines of it's sheltered environment, that culture will develop an economic eco-system that reflects the temper of the natural eco-system. damn, i sound like a text-book. quick someone quote me.
anyway... i have had the roughest time gaining employment... yet i have had four people look me dead in the eye and tell me that i have a job with them... oh i thought i had a job when i came down. nope. like the tide-pull and the shifting sand, so are the cruzians opinions of what exactly work is. so, i guess these four jobs of mine that i have been hired into, will i have to list them on my resume? i mean i really haven't pulled one hours (or for that matter, one minute's) worth of work...
(sigh of exasperation)
whatever. ok well last night we went to the casino. this is a custom of the guys i live with. to go and blow your money on an off-bar night. well. Otis Pleasant (the bar-owner) sits in front of a slot machine and plugs away pling-pling-pling. most of the time he gets no credits back but sometimes he... well he spends that too. so lets just say that $20 in quarters lasts him 30 minutes to go thru.
well my other room-mate waits and shows me around. this room-mates name is rob, and he reminds me of a guy i know named badger. as a matter of fact they are remarkably alike. kinda spooky... ANYWAY, djrobdotcom used to work at the casino. his boss... no joke is named bill gates. not, of course THE bill gates... ok, there is only one casino here and it goes by the quirky name of DIVI CARINA which is pretty sweet considering most places have names like "Paint Store"... hmmm... i wonder what THEY sell? anyway so as i get the tour we find the free bar. FREE bar. come and drink as much as you want while you piss your money away. the more you drink, the more you spend, and if you get too drunk, you could stay at the attached hotel underneath us.
bleh.
ok, so how much did i spend? all of my ex's will have the answer first...
but let me break it down for you. i just piss people off with this...
1) i walked over to the slot and played $1.00.
2) $.25 at another slot
3) got a couple of freebies by just walking around and looking at the screens (score!).
3) got two drinks. the drinks are free here.
4) got a couple of free plays from rob.
5) played $2.00 of my own money on the bar-counter video-pokers.
6) played one hand of black-jack with rob ($10.00 ante) but doubled my money and stepped back.
7) waited for rob to lose $40.
8) went to the crappers. placed one $5.00 (nickel) on the pass line when the point came on.
9) played a six when i counted that they were due to come up soon. won that.
10) pulled off the table when my turn came to sling the bones.
11) done. i had $56 in chips in my hand. not a bad night.
so, how much did i spend? $13.25... $3.25 on a piss-away and $10.00 invested... but i did get 5 free drinks. hopefully the casino will have me back one day. i'll wager that they want me to.
