Free Book.

This afternoon, I went to the Old Carrefour to get my haircut.  There is a salon there, the PiaoMiaoFang Hairdressers, that the wife has a discount or VIP card for.  PiaoMiaoFang is actually a chain.  It used to have a location near Mianhua Xiang but that has lately been shut down, supposedly for renovations.  So off to the Old Carrefour location, via bus, I went.  If you have been looking at AKIC Spaces Live, you may have seen the entry I did for the last time I had a haircut because I choose to go from having medium length style to a very short style.   And it made for some good before and after photos.  The problem with the short style, I now know, is that my head is not perfectly symmetrical and so a week after getting the last haircut,  I had schizophrenic hair.  One side was standing up; the other was drooping down.  The problem was not corrected today.  I should have had them shave my head.  But the stylists at PiaoMiaoFang seem not to have heard of electric shears.  My stylist today picked at my hair with a pair of scissors.

From Carrefour, I walked to Nanchang Temple Market.  Two things happened as I was there.  I saw a violent argument between a male customer and a female shopkeeper.  Everyone was standing about to watch.  I wanted to myself, but I could not do so discretely.   So I went to the bookstall that I know has a cache of English language books.  The owner called my old friend (lao pengyou) when he saw me.  I choose one book from his cache and he didn't charge me for it.  Free book!!  I can remember one time having a book seller in Canada  give me a free book as an appreciation for my loyalty.

The book I got for free?  It was called The Genius of the Irish, a collection of short stories by famous Irish writers, and so despite the title it was a fairly long book.  At 294 pages of small type it would have easily been five hundred pages in an easy to read hard cover edition.  Not bad for a country that is noted for its love of violence and political cronyism.   This cache at the stall I talk of has a lot of books about Ireland.  It also has a lot of Danish books but I had my wife tell the seller he should burn them.

I took the bus home from the market.  Just my luck that school was coming out.  At a stop near the school, 20 kids and their grandparents got on the bus.