Cultural Convolution

Sunday morning, I woke up around 8am as usual. Everything was normal. I sat on my swivel chair and went through the day’s rundown of things-to-do with myself: 1) I need to finished the “How to be a star at work” book for the leadership training thing before this afternoon as a friend of mine was waiting on me to lend it to her (that was like two hundred fifty pages of material), and 2) Watch the Steelers VS Browns game at 8:15pm. Yes, that was supposed to be the highlight of my Sunday.

hmm… I seemed to have plenty of time to procrastinate reading.

It was also Chinese mid-autumn festival that day. I wanted to buy some moon-cake from the Chinese grocery store. So at 12pm I set out to do my shopping.

The wind was pretty strong at that point but I didn’t really feel how bad it had already gotten inside the safety of my Yaris (which was christened as “Joseph” randomly by Nathan recently, to match my GPS “Richard”). I have about 6 bar out of 8 bar of gas.

Somehow I decided to refill the tank. — I didn’t know that was probably the smartest thing I’ve ever done in the whole day.

I got out of the car. I was almost swept off my feet by the wind. It was the craziest feeling — I had to hold on to my car for support. I tied my hair up with a scrunchy and went about my business at the gas station. It was around 12:05pm. The other guy in front of me had trouble keeping his car door open because of the wind. After standing in the wind for a whole minute looking at the sour face of the other guy, my sense of insecurity started to surge. “Gee, it’s crazy to go shopping at this weather. I need to get indoors!” I said to myself.

But I decided to go buy one, or two, or a dozen more thing before I go so I drove towards Walmart down Colerain a min away from the gas station. Again, had trouble keeping my eyes opened in the strong wind. But plenty of people still out doing their Sunday shopping. Kids were running around the parking lot playing with the shopping carts and stuff. Pretty calm picture.

Ten minutes inside Walmart after a whole lot of dawdling in the make-up aisle and the electronics aisle, I decided that if I was gonna stay home that day I should probably buy some food.

“All Walmart associates…blah blah blah.” Some announcement was made over the lousy public announcement system. It was repeated again. I couldn’t hear what was the content of the announcement because of how blurry it came out. It sounded urgent. So I thought I should definitely just get some food and get the hell out of there.

And poof! The lights at the back of the stores went out.

Picture this: you are standing in between these huge thousand feet tall freezers at the back of the store with another woman. All of a sudden all the lights in the stores and the freezers go out. Your vision was blinded by the whiff of white smokes seeping out of the refrigerators and you look right, a pair of equally surprised eyes starred back at you. I assure you that you will feel a chill down your spine, your arms and your legs and your whole body…

But that’s not the most terrible part. The backup power generator kicked in. Now the whole store now appeared like a phantom dance floor because of how unsteady the electricity was. The lighting flashed in and out and in and out in ominous cycles of death. I could imagine Gozilla crashed through the ceiling of Walmart and trampling over me at that point.

“All Walmart customers… ..xxxxx(white noises)…tsssttkk (random clicking sounds)…check out NOW! We have …. xxzxzxzx (more static )…..only10 minutes of backup power.”

At the end of that announcement and the beginning of a repetition, the great sprint to the check-out counters begun! Tens and hundreds of shaky walmart shopping carts rushed towards the cashiers at the same time. The carts rattled, the kids stumbled, the babies cried. The whole walmart has become yet another war-zone.

The women in my same aisle followed the direction of the commotion and sprinted out. Her last words to me was, “Just get something and go!”

I didn’t understand why a total stranger should be so passionate at delivering that advice. But I took her advice and grabbed two bags of food stuff.

I soon also found out that the warning wasn’t meant for me but her young daughter who was still lingering in between the freezers trying to pick her pop-tarts (So to speak. I mean I couldn’t really see much in the semi-darkness.)

After a whole lot of internal cursing at the 90 year old grandma who just wasn’t getting the gravity of the situation and tried to do the check out as slow as she possibly could, she finally got to me and the credit card machine was still up (yeah, like everyone else I have like two bucks of cash in my wallet) I paid and left the premises for home.

The drive back was supposed to be to a short one. Two turns. At most take 5 minutes in rush hour. It took me 20 that day. Because Ike had struck down a power line somewhere while I was shopping idly for eyeliner… and within nanoseconds, the whole Colerain township was dead.

Dead.

…except for a few amazingly ignorant car owners (I am guilty) that got caught in the middle of the storm on the streets.The traffic lights were out when I got to Colerain ave. Those that were still on, you couldn’t even see them because of how strong the wind was that those couple hundred pound equipments were fluttering in the wind no different than a shoebox would if tied on power lines. Diners were trickling out of the restaurant and store owner gathered around the storefront to check out what’s going on. But it was pretty dangerous to be outdoors at that time (around 1230pm). Many trees were struck down and their branches were flying all over the place. You and your car could get hit if you were unlucky. I wanted to take photo of the street because of how crazy it looked but I decided against it based on the current traffic condition. Luckily people here were pretty civilized. One by one we all got to go and turned at the place where we wanted to turn. I got to my street safely but now I had another problem. —— As the electricity was out, I couldn’t open my garage door.(Yes, I did all the dramatic gesture of throwing the remote and cursing when that happened) Now where the fuck do I park my car?!

Couple weeks ago in a new article on Hong Kong Yahoo!, a teenage girl who was about to go to college was hit by a toppling tree on a random street in a regular, calm sunny day. The epitome of shit happens. She was killed almost instantly.The headline resonated in my mind for a good few days after reading that sad unfortunate news: Dad cried:’Could she not run faster?!’

That rather cruel headline appeared in my mind when I got near to my usual parking spot across from my apartment. Just when I was thinking another tree branch shot passed my eyes down on the road in front of me. I shuddered.

Eventually I found an open spot down the street where there was no big tree or poles or any type of poorly erected thingy around. Again, only a few houses down, I had to struggle to keep my feet on the ground to get to my house. A metal hook thingy got blown off where it belonged and was laying helplessly in front of the door.

I knew I need to get inside now.