Yesterday, I went and got a few bits and pieces for my room, including a cushion from Miniso as there is nowhere to sit in my room other than a rickety chair, and there is a lot of floor. I also bought a spoon for my avocado dinners. Then today I went again, intending to buy a shower cap, a plate and a water bottle, but found myself consumed with disgust. It is curious to walk into a place like that, a little carefully designed temple of Japanese style (despite being Chinese), complete with the salespeople greeting you with Arigato, and feel consumerist giddiness overcome one. Same with everyone else in the shop, and particularly, perhaps, because it was so very different from anything else in Oaxaca. It did make me miss east Asia, but what a contrast it is here. Anyway, today I bought nothing from Miniso, and instead purchased a mosquito device and looked at fans for the room. On the way back, as I was passing through teh Zocalo, I paused to watch an elderly couple salsa to music leftover from an event earlier in the afternoon. They were small and spry, and the woman was dressed in a very glorious fashion, with camouflage print leggings, over which she work leather fringes extending all down her calves, and her lipstick was silver-green. The clouds burst and I took shelter under a narrow canopy running along a wall. People dashed for shelter and water gushed from the cathedral. Then the clouds really burst and the canopy could not longer keep away the water so I dashed and dove into a doorway where I found myself with the dancers and their middle-aged daughter (I presume) who had Down Syndrome. The doorman of the hotel, for that it what it was, beckoned us all in and closed the door and so we dried off. The hotel itself was an older one, the walls covered in green onyx that reminded me of the bathrooms in my grandparents’ house in Karachi, and with reddish wood and gold fittings everywhere (not similar to my grandparents’ house). When the rain stopped I ventured out and am now back. On the way in the doors of the other rooms were open so I peeped in and was slightly miffed to see that they all have small sofas. Well, I suppose they have only one room, rather than a full suite as I do.
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