“Hey man, you got any change?” I hardly even notice the grimy homeless man with his hand out as I walk past him on Guad. I’ve grown so accustomed to the street beggars that they’ve merely become a part of the background noise of Austin, along with the car horns and people handing out flyers. Though we have no idea what circumstances led these people to a life on the streets, we tend to suspect the worst in their intentions and keep our money. Suddenly a young Middle Eastern man approaches the beggar, holding a brown paper bag. “Here,” he says, “I bought you a gyro.” The homeless man looked taken aback, as if offended. “I’m not eating this garbage!” Wow. I guess beggars can be choosers.

homeless man from google images

As I was walking past the medical center on Guadalupe Street on my way to class, I realized I needed to drop my puppy off at my apartment. I was already late, and left with no choice but to take the bus. So I put my little lady in my schoolbag and rushed to the 672 Metro Bus station. I made a narrow slit in the zipper to ensure that she could breathe.

However, since my bag was too stuffy and congested as it was filled with textbooks, my puppy moaned, growled and scratched my bag all the time. “Oh gosh, my bag would be torn into pieces,” I said to myself. The passenger sitting beside me remained silent, but I saw him looking constantly — and curiously — into my bag.

As the bus stopped, we were both poised at the exit, ready to get out. He said what amounted to his only sentence to me: “It’s illegal to put your baby child in your bag. I will sue you.”

There’s a market in West Campus on 23rd and Rio that makes the best potato samosas in West Campus. At any hour of the day, I can walk in and warmed, spiced samosas will be ready for me to devour within seconds. Though I’ve never bought anything else from the little bodega, the young man at the counter always chuckles to himself and asks “How can I help you ma’am?” when I walk in. “One samosa please,” I reply, and slide $1.50 across the counter before he can pick up a paper bag. This is our little routine at least three times a week. Sometimes, to keep him on his toes, I ask for extra chutney.

Samosas: the only food group that matters (image from tumblr.com)

It’s Sunday afternoon. As normal, I entered “Smoothie King” to enjoy my drinks. I ordered a small size, but when I drank half of it, I felt I was so full. As usual, I did not drink it up.

My friend and I went to outlets at weekends. Arriving at noon, we were all hungry. We then entered “Austin’s Steak House” to enjoy the food. However, when the waiter brought the dishes to the table, we were surprised because each plate was so huge that we definitely could not eat them up.

After lunch, we went shopping. Outlets was so big that we nearly lost our way.

Personally, I wear clothes for M sometimes L size in China, but here, I only need size for S.

About the food, the inability to finish each dish leads to the waste of food and money, the waste of resources or energy. Somebody may ask, why not pack dishes and enjoy them in your dormitory? But packing also needs resources. Actually, the waste of resources or energy is present everywhere. For example, I always wonder why the indoor temperature here is so low. Is air conditioner free?

About the shopping experience, I cannot help but thinking, sometimes too many choices will lead to confusion and uncertainty. The shopping mall is so big that our desire for various goods booms. We don’t know what to buy but we want to buy everything. We were lost physically and psychologically in the mall. Besides, why does every shop lie horizontally with each other? It takes time to walk from one shop to another, under the intensive sunshine. Why cannot each shop lie vertically with each other? This can save more land resources probably and save customers’ time to walk from one shop to another.

About the clothing, since I know I only need S here, it is highly possible for me to put up weight, and actually it does happen. I was satisfied by the delusion that “Oh I only need S size here,” so I had more food everyday. The lack of self-control leads to the weight gain. The “bigger” creates delusions.

Yes, everything is bigger here, at least for me. Maybe it’s not a bad thing, and maybe I need time to adjust, but I don’t feel good about this. The “bigger” leads to the waste of resources, the confusion, the lack of self-control, and the delusion.

Appropriate is enough, enough is good.

I’m intimately familiar with the long, gray stretches of I-35. Last year after Thanksgiving break, I spent six hours in driving rain on the highway, driving back from Dallas to Austin. The road, if you spend enough time on it, becomes like a person; narrow, battered shoulders, a torso that stretches 200 miles long, vessels that sprout from its limbs into cities like Waco and West. At its head, the road dissolves into Austin, a tangled hive of lesser streets. In the heart of the road, halfway between Dallas and Austin, you can find I-35 at its most repellent: barren, hemmed by construction, mottled by gas stations and fast food. The belly of the beast.

https://pixabay.com/p-1149529/?no_redirect

                         The musical genre known as Pop Punk is a relatively recent innovation in the music industry, with the majority of its most definitive development taking place within the past 40 years, and the pinnacle of its mainstream success occurring within the last couple of decades. The introduction of the mixture of catchy pop lyrics alongside blaring punk rock-style guitars and drums resulted in the revolutionary creation of an energetic, intoxicatingly catchy musical genre that has caught fire nationwide, with much of the credit deservingly being given to the exploding commercial success of Pop Punk poster-boy Blink-182. The band’s multiple chart-topping albums, in addition to countless radio replays of insanely popular hit singles such as “All The Small Things” and “Dammit”, have catapulted the Pop-punk trio into the international spotlight, effectively giving the Pop-punk genre its largest mainstream success to date. The astounding popularity and commercial success of Pop Punk powerhouse Blink-182 has revolutionized the nationwide perception and mainstream popularization of their musical genre, with much credit deservingly given to the astounding success of various breakthrough albums such as the explosive, angsty “Enema Of The State” and their self-titled masterpiece “Blink-182.”

Austin Craft Beer (from Google Images)

When I moved to Austin, I was saddened by the homeless population residing within the city. However, after a few months of struggling through my first year of college, I became immune to the heartbreaking narratives scrawled on cardboard in sharpie. The most common tidbits were, “Anything helps” / “God Bless” / “U.S. Veteran” and even the cliche, “Will work for food”. As a UT student, I thought I had seen every cardboard solicitation I ever needed to. But last Friday, at the stoplight of the southbound Riverside exit on 35, I saw a man, with a big smile on his face holding a sign that said: “Why lie / I need a beer”. I chuckled and thought to myself, “Hey man, me too.”

The entire population of Austin every Monday (gif from Google Images)