Chapter 339

I woke up around 11, took a shower, packed my stuff and went to the jiu-jitsu gym. This time it was a gi session headed by a Polish purple belt, and it was really worthwhile, with a chain of sweeps from X-guard. I unfortunately twisted something in my shoulder during the live rolls at the end and had to sit it out a bit.

Afterwards I grabbed a quick noodle lunch with two girls from the gym. My fried noodles had mushrooms, and I dislike mushrooms, they make me gag. I still ate the whole plate. Then I bought some goodies at a small imported grocery store and rode to the train station on the leafy streets of Shanghai, a city that’s really growing on me. Everything went smoothly, there’s an enormous volume of passengers going through that station but they manage to make it work. I had a bit of time to spare, and saw that there were two Tim Horton’s in the station. I peeked in curiously, and briefly considered buying a donut, but I’m getting fat enough as it is even with all the exercise I do, and also the last time I had a donut I nearly couldn’t finish it, not used anymore to huge amounts of processed sugar. Weird to think the teenage me would split a dozen with a friend on a regular basis (and no, I wasn’t smoking the Devil’s lettuce).

The ride took an hour and 15 minutes, and upon arrival we all had to fill out a form saying which area of Shanghai we went to, and hand it to nurses dressed in plastic burkas. It’s weird that we’re all so used to that now, it will soon be two full years of that stupid pandemic and there’s still no light at the end of the tunnel.

I drove home, listening to the album Massive Killing Capacity by Dismember. It was pretty bland, run-of-the-mill Stockholm death metal. Then I got home, and the girlfriend asked me if I wanted to eat dinner.

“I ate on the train, like I always do, even if I just had a meal before. Do you know why?”

“Because you want to annoy people?”

“No... it’s because when I eat I can take off my mask!”

So yeah, life hack for you, and it applies to airplanes as well. Have an open bag or container of a given snack in front of you at all times (in my case, a box of raspberries), and nobody will bother you for not strapping a useless little face diaper in front of your mouth. I had to put it on for a few minutes when entering and exiting the train, which sucked balls, but hey, #weliveinasociety.

I did laundry, took a hot bath, watched a few videos, and went to bed early. And thus ended my weekend. It was a fun one.