6:57 PM View

 This will be the second last view from the dining room of my Jiangyin, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China apartment for the year of our Lord 2023.  I’ll take the last view photo before I go to bed which I hope will be many, many minutes before midnight.

The trip, the journey, that I bragged about in the previous epistle to my rare readers, went off but with one hitch.  It took us about 30 minutes to get a ride using the app.  My son Tony gave up and only joined me because I was able to phone him before the didi arrived.

We went to Heng Long shopping plaza.  We had our last meal at the KFC where we were able to get our food without having to wait long.  Then we bought drinks, snacks and my fried peanuts at the grocery store. Surmises surely must have been exchanged by the locals on account of the sight of a gangly grey-bearded foreigner making his way through the aisles. We were then able to quickly summon a didi for the trip back to Casa Kaulins Jiangyin.

The didi drivers appreciated me telling them “Happy New Year”, 新年快乐, in Chinese.

Now, I am listening to a Meghan Murphy podcast with her squishy guest Jonathan Kay.