Wednesday, 17 August 2016

Customers Only

           


            As of June 25th I was almost a month behind in posting my journal entries on my blog, on newz4u.net and on Facebook. The journal for most days was up to date on my computer, but it was the event reviews that were holding me back. In particular the Shab-e She’r event for May 31st took ages to research and write from my notes.
            I cooked the rhubarb that I’d gotten from the food bank with the contents of a little bag of sugar that they’d given me a few months before. I forgot about it while it was cooking and I caught it just as all the water had boiled down, just saving the sugar from burning.
            My bike ride took me again to Leaside. I took Sutherland east to Millwood where it turns north and then I took it to Eglinton, then I went east to Laird and south along that. Laird seems to be the only stretch of Leaside that has any stores, so every restaurant, specialty service, school, supermarket, plaza and big box store is stretched along it, mostly on the east side.
            I had to pee really bad as I headed south and didn’t feel comfortable waiting until I got back to Yonge Street. Most of the restaurants on the west side seemed to be closed, but a sushi place that I was passing had some people dining at the window. As I got off my bike to look for a place to lock it I noticed that there wasn’t a single bike stand anywhere on Laird. I reflected at that point on how I also hadn’t seen any other cyclists so far throughout my travels around Leaside. The neighbourhood has the feel of a suburb even though it’s part of Toronto. I walked into Kintako Sushi and was greeted with smiles until the waitress found out that I just wanted to use the washroom. She told me, “We not open to public for washroom.” I responded, “Yeahhhh …?” and hesitated a moment and then a woman that seemed to be in charge nodded and so the waitress said it was okay. I went to the washroom but it was lockupied, so since there was no room to wait in the narrow space in front of the washroom door I went back into the little restaurant. I noticed that there was only one couple in a booth and that there were three times as much staff as there were customers. I would have thought they would be hungry to have customers that would want to eat there considering how empty the place was. Turn people away that only want at that time to use the washroom is the potential loss of a future customer. It turned out that it was a kitchen worker that had been using the washroom. The waitress told me I could go in because I’m sure she wanted me to finish and leave as soon as possible. I noticed that there were incense sticks in a little vase on the back of the toilet. I’d never seen those in a restaurant washroom before.
            I ate the rhubarb that I’d made with some yogourt. It was pretty good. I wonder why they don’t make rhubarb-flavoured yogourt.

            I watched an episode of Hawaiian Eye from 1961 that co-starred George Takei as a spy posing as a street urchin in Taipei. 

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