Late night shopping

After going for a post-work run, and then going back to the office and working some more (until I noticed I was literally dripping sweat everywhere) I went home and wobbled until our new washing machine arrived. Then, as we needed to buy some blocks to elevate the washing machine above the drainage pipe, we went over to the Mustafa Centre.

Normally I would be thrilled to go to this emporium of everything, but our taxi driver was a jerk. Well, he had one of those special taxis where the acceleration only comes in jerks, one every half second, all the way to Mustafa by way of extreme nausea. Thus I fell out of the taxi feeling ready to die, whereas my wife was ready to shop, in paroxysms of delight at every bag of rice, pillowcase and bottle of detergent before her.

I've written about Mustafa before, but it's worth repeating that this is a very dangerous shop, the kind of place where you go in for one simple thing (plastic blocks) and leave an hour later with five boxes of Kleenex, a triangular cushion with attached bedroll, two elephant-embroidered cushions and some slippers. Very quickly, our apartment is going from minimalist to crammed full of stuff. I suppose in some sense it's not that we have minimalist chic: we just don't have much stuff.

Well, moving here proved we have a lot of stuff, but in comparison to some of the other apartments in our block, which have been practically filled with boxes of indeterminate stuff, we're almost devoid of possessions.

Except for my wonderful, wonderful triangular seat/bed/cushion thing.

Tomorrow, I get up early for a nine hour extravaganza of insurance; that's right, I'm going to spend all day in a classroom learning about loss ratios and underwriting and such, and then have a written test. With a pencil. I wonder if that's as exciting as I think it is.