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the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

St. Catharines, 2010.11.02

I'm back in the city of my birth. And I had a good experience.

Heading out in the -2C weather at 08:00 I did some grocery shopping. I used up the dregs of the Canadian money I had in my pocket to buy the goods, and in fact was 60¢ short. I'd already chatted with the cashier a bit about having lived overseas for five years and not remembering how to do things now that I was back. And it turned out that her daughter in law has two brothers who married Japanese girls.

She waived the 60¢ that I was short. I told her I'd be back within a few days and would get the money back.

On the way back it occurred to me that it never would have happened in Japan. People there never budge on a single yen.

rand()m quote

It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row