A Small Observation That Relates To How Things Are Different In Different Places

I still can't read - the pre-school eagerness with which I shaped the sounds of street signs and autistically bellowed them to the world has not translated into my adult life it seems. Basically I cannot bring myself to memorize kana because it is so astonishingly boring.

The intention remains, but like many of the less base intentions in my life, it languishes for want of self-discipline or any impinging deadline (if you can do something anytime you want, why not do it never?)

So anyway, one consequence of this is that I choose toothpaste mostly at random. My latest batch is peach-flavoured... I saw myself flinch in the mirror when I realized. (The previous tube was a more pleasing eucalyptus).

Still, I suppose I should be grateful that I bought actual toothpaste, and not testicular moisturizer or some such awful unguent that might end up in the same supermarket aisle. As an illiterate and a cultural outsider it is extremely easy to buy the wrong thing. A few examples of the mistakes I've made:

* Cheese instead of butter. (could happen to anyone yeah)

* Useless half-size lengths of cloth instead of bedsheets. These are about as long as a regular single-size bedsheet but only half as wide, being therefore pretty useless. Also they cost twice as much as an actual bedsheet - what are they forrrrr??????

* Vile potting mix instead of coffee ground. (The mistake may have occurred at the factory in this case)

* A hateful sugary nougat instead of peanut butter. The jar had a picture of a peanut on it - what am I to conclude? But this loathsome confection is suitable only for the baiting of cockroach traps, being alluring only to vermin. Alas, the roaches are wintering elsewhere and I have no-one to spar with.

...and there are many more. But I am now so accustomed to making do with whatever I accidentally buy that further examples are lost in a haze of other such everyday occurences as stooping to walk through doorways and explaining to people that I am not American.