I haven’t slept much all night, and jet lag has always been a test for me. Early in the morning, when I heard the birdsong outside, I woke up and started writing in my journal, which helps me not to forget something.
After a while, Aunt Zheng and John started to prepare breakfast, because today is the weekend so everyone is at home. In American society, the concept of the family unit is very strong. For example, various forms of consumption and sales of phone cards by telecom companies will be sold at a more favorable price on a family basis, and Americans are happy to do so. People will go home to spend time with their families after work, without much entertainment. On weekends, the family will go to various activities together. It is this family unit that fits together one after another like cells to form a huge country.
Both John and Aunt Zheng are Christians. Early in the morning, they were all dressed up, I thought they were going to church today, but they didn’t. Now they can participate in online church gatherings, especially when the COVID-19 is severe, many people choose this way to worship online at home on weekends.
You can see that they are very religious. Even in front of the tablet at home, they are meticulous. Aunt Zheng would occasionally tell me some stories from the Bible.
John and Aunt Zheng are retired, but they are not idle either. John also occasionally goes out to work, distributing food to a local charity. Aunt Zheng will give church lessons to some friends.
I couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night and got up at 6:30 in the morning. Although the jet lag has not yet reversed, I decided to go with John to experience his usual work. Today he will go to the kitchen factory, put the ingredients prepared by the chef the night before into the oven, bake them on time and leave, and then someone else will complete the next step.
We then headed to a family by the sea to replace a light switch and fix the washer and dryer. It’s hard for me to imagine how an old man who is almost eighty years old can carry such a heavy electrical appliance. Fortunately, there are trailer tools, so this is not as difficult as imagined. It didn’t take long before we successfully moved the two huge machines to John’s pickup truck, helped the family fix the lamp, and the day’s work was done.
John drove me to the seaside neighborhoods where he grew up as a child, with sandy beaches along the way.
Today’s weather is not very good, but there are quite a lot of people near the beach. John sat in the car and waited for me. I took a Gopro and walked around the beach alone. The waves came up one after another. Someone was chasing the waves in the distance, accompanied by the laughter of children playing. A seagull dives into the sea in search of food.
In the past few days, I have been waiting for the arrival of the bicycle battery and debugging my bicycle in LA. The cargo side has squeezed a lot of goods because of the National Day holiday in China, and the schedule for my battery to be put on the plane has also been delayed.
The original time may take a week. Spend twice as much. The rear tire of the bicycle and the connecting tube of the trailer collided when going through the U-shaped bend.
I wanted to lengthen the connecting tube to increase the distance between the tow bar and the wheel, so I took the tow bar connecting piece and asked John if there was a place where I could do it. For this accessory, he made a few calls and told me that there is a place to make it but it is very expensive, and it costs 400-500 US dollars.
I was surprised by the price. John also thought it was a bit expensive, so we thought of other methods, welding a section on the original accessories to increase its length, contacted a nearby workshop online, we rode there, and came to this store to discuss the final 200 yuan with the boss.
The US dollar transaction is at least half cheaper than reprocessing one, but their work schedule is very full and it takes a week to do mine.
I fill out the form and come to pick it up at the same time next week. I feel that the labor cost here is completely different from that in China.
If it’s 50 yuan in China, it can be done in 10 minutes, but no one here is willing to work overtime and give up time with their families. It’s more about respecting everyone’s labor.
A week has passed, and the extra battery has not yet arrived, so I temporarily said goodbye to John and Aunt Zheng.
A friend Phyllis who met in the northern hemisphere eight years ago introduced her friend Steven to receive us, so Harry and I came to Alhambra, another area in Los Angeles.
Steven received us very warmly. It is a pleasure to meet Chinese people in other places thing. He has been in the United States for more than 30 years.
He studied, worked, married, and lived here. From the beginning of adapting to the environment here to fully integrating, the past is like yesterday.
Steven’s family also has a big dog. Not long ago, there was a little friction with the neighbor’s dog. We were worried that it would also fight with Harry, so we stayed in an AirBNB near their community. This is a house with two floors. The lower floor is the living room and the kitchen.
There are only two rooms on the second floor. I live in Room 2. When we arrived that day, there was a couple living in Room 1 next to me. As soon as I walked in, I saw a white girl cooking. We said hello. At first I thought she was the landlord, but she was also a resident.
She saw me taking Harry, so she said that I also brought a cat. She and her The boyfriend was here for vacation from mid city. After talking about a tall, thin black man with blond braids coming down the stairs, we also said hello, and I asked them how Los Angeles felt?
They looked at each other and said it was great, they checked out tomorrow and went south to San Diego, I said I might go there too, but not tomorrow. After speaking, I went upstairs and took Harry to my room, tidied up briefly, and fell asleep in a daze.
In the morning, I was awakened by a quarrel. It turned out that the couple next door were arguing. I looked outside with sleepy eyes. It was just dawn, and the jet lag was finally reversed. Thinking that the quarrel between the couple was normal, I continued to sleep.
Unexpectedly, the noise behind it became more and more big. The girl yelled to call the police, and the police really came after a while, and there were many people outside the window shouting “Kevin, Kevin, come down…”
But there was no movement upstairs, and the sound outside was still constant, so I couldn’t sleep anymore , So I went to the window, opened the curtains and looked out to see what happened.
The scene in front of me was really shocking. Several police officers were standing next to the wall of the house on the opposite side of the building, facing my window sill with live ammunition. The scene was like a movie scene.
“Are you Kevin?”
“No, I’m Cari.”
The policeman made a sign to come down quickly and told me to go downstairs quickly, and then realized something was wrong, and hurriedly took Harry downstairs, before he even had time to put on his shoes, and when he went outside, he saw the girl crying.
Then I talked to a policewoman. The police took us to a safe place. The other policemen were still confronting the people in the house.
When the girl saw me, she hurriedly said sorry for disturbing you.
“It’s okay, you How are you doing? ”
The police came to take notes and asked me if I saw them arguing. I said I didn’t see them but I heard them.
The girl applied for a legal restraining order, requiring the person to keep a safe distance from her. The person never went downstairs , the police never forcibly rushed into their room.
It took a full two hours. The girl applied for an order, and both the girl and the police left the scene. The black man saw that they had all left, so he walked out of the room. Packed up my things and drove out of there.
The whole follow-up process was chatting with an uncle from Dongbei in the previous house. Before the police asked me if I wanted to leave here, I could take it to a safe place or find my friends, and I would come back after this person left. I said I needed to go upstairs to get my luggage.
The police then walked ahead with loaded guns and shields, and slowly went up to the door of my room on the second floor, but they never broke into the door next door and packed up their things. I went downstairs to the house opposite, Uncle Dongbei there.
Because just now, this uncle was also watching. He doesn’t speak English, and he has been complaining about being disturbed early in the morning.
He has lived here for many years, and such a thing has never happened before, so I put the things in his place. , We recorded the whole process like watching a movie. Fortunately, no one was hurt by this incident.
When I got here I took Harry to a specialist ophthalmology veterinarian to see Harry’s eyes, neither bad nor bad. The doctor patiently explained that the problem of Harry’s cornea was due to the detachment of cells in the back wall of the cornea and loss of replenishment activity due to aging.
The whitening of the eyes was thought to be caused by cataract, but in fact it was the accumulation of water in the cornea that was not discharged. Fortunately, the condition is mild, but it is a senile disease and cannot be completely cured.
The doctor prescribed some medicine and told me how to deal with some situations, so I finally felt relieved. I went to ATNT’s American Telecom to apply for a mobile phone card to ensure that I can have Internet navigation on the road.
The sunny and less rainy weather in Los Angeles has created a unique climate here, and most plants are sun-loving and drought-tolerant. A thunderstorm last night was indeed rare, and it was a long-awaited event for the trees and flowers on the mountain. The sky cleared up early this morning, and the blue sky with the sun shining on the earth became more translucent. Harry and I went for a walk in the nearby Almansor Park.
The green grass had an uplifting atmosphere against the sunlight. The lush trees turned over in the sun, and the green grass was lightly scented with flowers. Looking at the scenery in front of us was pleasant, no wonder Everyone loves the California sunshine.
Walking past the rugby practice field opposite the basketball court, some people are playing and some are running. Life lies in sports. Walking to a pond not far away, there are big Canadian black-faced geese grazing and walking on the grass, and other waterfowl ponds are happy to rest in the pond.
They have no timidity towards people, because they already know how to deal with humans, from time to time Seeing the local residents often come to feed them, the small animals are also happy. Walking around the playground, the championship honor is hung on the barbed wire fence of the baseball field.
Not far in front, there is a sculpture of the local Chuangqi resident, baseball player Ralph Kiner, in recognition of his contribution to professional baseball and sports broadcasting Achievements and contributions made in the competition.
Pets are allowed to enter the park, but they must be kept on a leash. Occasionally, strangers will greet you on the road. We also greet every passerby with a smile.
