And the Living is Easy

There is no disputing that life here (my life, anyway) is pretty easy. I have no chores and my errands are easy to accomplish.

I was a little concerned that moving back to a city would mean that daily life is a little more complicated. That certainly was the case in Paris. But not here. My goodness ... you can get anything you want everywhere. The shops don't close early and they seem to be open seven days a week.

This morning I needed to run some errands before work. I managed to go to drop off the laundry, get keys made and buy an orchid at the florist, all in under 20 minutes. Beat that!

The laundry is across the street from our current apartment (and yes, we are moving again this weekend) so that was a piece of cake. In at 12:45 p.m., out at 5 p.m.. 36 hong kong dollars. The I crossed back to the apartment and cut across the alleyway, past the always-crowded hot pot restaurant and over to the hardware store. (see photo).

The hardware store is probably the size of my sister-in-law's sewing room, nee walk-in closet. It offers faucets and light bulbs on the outside, and switches and keys and all sorts of other things. It cost me 20 hong kong and 5 minutes to get 4 keys made. Granted, getting keys made in SoCal isn't difficult, time-consuming, or expensive. But it isn't always easy to find a place that will make them for you.

And in Paris, it's worse. They don't really do keys there ... Keys are proprietary and expensive. You must prove you are the owner or legal resident of an apartment before you can get copies made, and then they take 10 days and cost upward of $50.

Then, I went looking for a plant. I went to two florists, actually, before I decided on a lovely pale green orchid as a gift for the guy whose apartment we're borrowing.

Total time, about 15 minutes.

It's amazing to have everything at my fingertips, so to speak. Supermarket, laundry, restaurants galore, stationery shop, framers, florists, butchers, green grocers, bakeries ... everything in one square block.

I could get used to this.