Crisis resolved, but another problem just came back. No, it's not Mike. Thank God.

So the good news is I found a little produce market near my house that still has Hass avos for $680/kilo. Whew! But when I said I had gotten used to the temperature here, that was before it decide to drop to 34 degrees at night. And when I say that, I don't mean outside - recall that few buildings have heaters here, which means my apartment is 35 at night. Fortunately, I have red fleece pants and a blue thermal that make me look pretty silly (Perttu once bought me breakfast on the condition I wear them to the restaurant), but they keep me warm.

I live between two different worlds: when I go out the door of my building, if I keep going straight, it's one block to the mall. If I go the opposite direction, it's one block to the beach. I actually like them both, but for different reasons since they're pretty different places: like there's a big open space in front of the mall doors, but it's hard to actually hang out there because they don't put any benches or anything there (although lots of people hang out there anyways). But that makes sense, because the whole idea of the mall is that it's a hip, cool place - to come inside and buy stuff, not hang out in front with your friends. I mean, you can do that, and meet people, and laugh and cry and fall in love - as long as you're buying stuff while you do it. I saw a big group of teenagers hanging out in the food court, just sitting around, and mall management kicked them out - even though one of them had actually just bought a drink from one of the restaurants and the food court was half-empty. I guess they were below the allowable spending threshold (like when I used to get stoned with my friends and go to Denny's at 5am, and they would be kicking out the goth kids who would only buy dollar coffee with free refills. But that's OK, because the greasy John with coke-bottle glasses and a gravy-stained white-collar shirt who is with - but not really talking to - the call girl dressed in an old purple 80's prom dress are still at the table behind us, and the passed-out homeless guy that has filled all the chairs at his table with 20 or so grocery bags is still at the table next to us, and the waiter that is so strung out that he has to come back and ask us what we wanted three times even though it's just three milkshakes is still talking to us. GOD I miss Denny's at 5am...). Where was I? Oh right, the mall. It's a temple of commercialism, and don't try and think otherwise, or they'll boot your ass. But the mall does have central heating, a ridiculously large grocery store, and cute girls inside. So I like it for those reasons.

The beach, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of the mall. I was walking along the beach the other night, trying to figure out why I liked doing that so much. My last walk was at night, so there was no one out, and the waves were extra big - sneaking in through the dark and setting themselves off like rows of blasting caps, startling me with an exploding white sheet of foamy water, crashing down the line just like a scene from a documentary about the making of the Panama Canal or something. They made me jump more than once as they broke me out of my meditative tranquility, before settling down to a pattern of smaller waves for just enough time to lull me into another peaceful state - until the next big one comes. I think I like walks on the beach because they are basically walking meditation - also why I like them even more at night, when they're empty, the moon is out, and the lights of Valparaiso are twinkling on the hills across the bay. The beach is the opposite of the mall because unlike the mall, which is just one long ego feeder(who looks good, who's got the nicest fanny pack, does my hair still look OK? What should I buy to get the girls to talk to me, am I defined better by a Lacosta kind of look or a Pac Sun kind of look?) the beach can destroy your ego - an endless horizon, a field of stars overhead, water from half-way around the world and light from half-way across the galaxy, on a million-year-old field of glittering yellow-white sand. I don't know, it's more like it's not really offering anything, like the desperate commercialism of the mall, but it's not demanding anything either. You're allowed to just slip away, inside your own head but really someplace else. But the mall does have manjar (caramel) soft-serve ice cream...

One thing that is funny about the mall by my house though is that there is a university housed in the upper floors - University of the Americas, a private chain university, with dozens of campuses, and a new location coming soon to your area! That makes sense though, I guess. Anyways, last time I was in the mall, art classes had just gotten out, and I was watching palid, skinny students, dressed in frumpy black coats, thick glasses, and big fluffy scarves, clutching still-wet easels close to their bodies while they wound their way down the escalators through the shimmering white world of wholesale soullessness housed in a mini-galaxy displaying a complete lack of creativity, where everything is tested in focus-groups and discussed in meetings, so that each American Eagle and Ruby Tuesday will display a maximum attractiveness to Joe Average. And I thought, "man, those guys must want to shoot themselves in the face every time they go to class." But hey, here's to being poor, marginalized, and creative!

Jason and I were in line for a bar the other night, and there were maybe 20 people in front of us. Not many, except that they were letting in 4 people every half hour. Then the bouncer saw us, clinging to the very back of the line, and waved us over and motioned us inside. Being a gringo, and being presumed attractive to the other clients and presumed rich for the bar owner, has many perks.