Pawn shop blues

I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from my postings. The typical response goes something like this: “Bram, I hate you. While we’re slaving away, stuck in our cubicle cages, you’re living the life on Rotary’s dime. How can I a) join your cult of lazy non-wage earners? and b) sign up for your newsletter? By the way, did I tell you that I hate you?” Thanks, guys. I was really touched.

Well, it’s not all fun and tomfoolery. For example, after my weekly shave today, I had to help my roomies de-filth-ify our apartment. Bathroom duty, I guess, is the obligatory rookie chore. No harm done, except that the last time it was cleaned was when they broke in the last rookie, about a year or so ago.

We deep cleaned the whole joint, which gets pretty filthy since we leave the windows and balcony door open all the time. The Pacific breeze that sweeps through the whole apartment is something I’ll definitely miss. From the roof, I can catch a glimpse of the ocean.

We don’t even close the windows when we leave. It’s great but can really jack up the air conditioning bill…oh, wait…the breeze is our A/C. Fortunately, nobody can break in with all the bars on the windows, but I sometimes feel like I live in a pawn shop.

With everything wide open and us living on a lively road, the noise can be deafening. I think in order to qualify to live on my street, you need to have at least one crying baby, an over-protective 5-lb Yorkie or a combo of the above.

Most Latin ears seem to be acclimated to the noise pollution. They're just so use to it that even in normal conversation, they sometimes over-compensate. For the first couple weeks, I thought my roommates were always angry at me. I eventually learned that they didn't hate me - they shout their thoughts to everybody. It took me a while to get accustomed to these Venezuelans screaming a buenos dias to me.