GARBAGEMAN- Meet our garbage collector, Ka Mado. He goes around the neighborhood pushing an old steel cart collecting sacks of garbage that he brings to a collection point in San Isidro.
There are times he rides on his motorcycle, which I think he has two or three of, to collect sacks that he missed. He owns an e-tricycle too.
(Amazing, here I am a decade into the teaching service and all I gotta show is a 14 year old hand me down Suzuki. Life is unfair.)
Anyway, what amazes me most is how he maneuvers his e-trike in our narrow eskenitas which has no standard width. Ours is wide, about two and a half meters plus, but at the entrance and in the sharp corners it can get to a little more than a meter add the portruding external shelves of sari sari stores and it gets narrower still. It puzzles me how, but he does it all the time.
Ka Mado is an interesting character, a big guy, a former soldier, and obviously financially well enough not to work. From what I heard, he has a daughter who works "abroad" that supports him.
He is the bogey man that mothers use to scare their children. He indulges them, puts out his complete set of dentures that makes him look like the Joker, pops his eyes, open his arms wide, and ran after children. I often see one or two of girls petrified with fear, but he always stops when he knew they have had enough. He smiles and stroke their hair, to comfort them, that he meant no harm, it was for fun.
He sings Tom Jones hits using a broken microphone from the trash. Sometimes he dance to a music only he can hear, converses with himself, does traffic enforcing when he sees the need.
My wife is afraid of him.
I have had a few conversations with him and he is quite a talker. He tells stories of events, people, some I know of, some I don't, and some I think didn't happen and didn't exist at all.
I like him. I always have this kindred spirits with weird people. People who do things not caring what other people think about them, do not care about the opinions of others.
Some may call him crazy (some say its warshock), but to me, he is a hard working, kind man who entertains a lot of people with his antics. A gentle grandfather to his grand daughter.
He is nice and respectful towards me, smiles and greets me no matter what and where his mental state is.
Of course no one dares tease him because with his built, he could knock any one down with a straight jab.
ARITHMITIC- I am buying vegetable and giving them to the vendor. She is quoting how each item cost for a kilo, puts them on the scale, throw out numbers at me which she then adds up mentally. It's amazing how they do that. Hmmmm...I am so poor at math that didn't check the numbers though. Too lazy for that.
EARLY COFFEE- I went to bed at 9. Read a chapter or two of Steinbeck's "Cannery Row". I am re reading the classic because it is one of the funniest novels I have read and each chapter could stand alone, like a short story (Anyway, not doing a book review here.)
Sleep early, wake up early. Got up at four, buys the menu for today, brew coffee, blue tooth speaker out playing Tarregas and Bach, waiting for the sun to come out.
It's the quarantine ritual that I will miss once things get back to what it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment