Nothing To Write For Sunday

Image by Nicky from Pixabay

I have nothing to write for today. I thought I would come up with something during the course of the day, but nothing comes up. Now it is almost midnight and I think I should still write something even if I have nothing to write.

I went to two Asian grocery stores this morning, HMart and 99 Ranch, and was astonished to find that all the vegetables are over $2.50 a pound, even the good old Korean cabbage, which was less than $1 in pre-pandemic days. And there were only very few customers. I guess most of the customers went to the local American stores for better price. Two or three weeks ago, the price dropped and I was pretty happy about it, but then it went all up again. I wonder what has been happening? Probably it is due to flooding, drought, or supply chain issues.

I went to Walmart and bought a pack of Veggie Grillers, which cost $8. And it turned out it’s delicious. I usually don’t go to Walmart for groceries, but I guess due to the price increase elsewhere, I would go to Walmart more often from now.

I cooked while listening to some stories of immigrants living in New York, but I couldn’t get into it. Somehow my mind was just not there. The problem is that I am like most people who only like stories about unrealistic life of upper middle class people living in New York. The true immigrants of New York, like those described by Bernard Malamud, struggled mundanely and had very trivial concerns.

After having the delicious Veggie Grillers for lunch, I tried to read some poems but didn’t feel anything and had to give up. Then I read some essays with clever quotes and remarks, but still my heart was not in it. I could have written another post of “A Tale Of Two Cousins”, but somehow the motivation was not high enough to overcome the unwillingness.

One of my friends told me this story about a new owner of an Asian restaurant here suing the previous owner. What happened was that the previous owner exaggerated the figure of the sales in the past two years, making it look like the restaurant was more popular than it really was. After the purchase, the new owner faced with all kinds of challenges and couldn’t make ends meet. The suit eventually went into a negotiated settlement and the previous owner took the restaurant back.

I have to say a lot of small businesses have taken a hit during the pandemic and may never recover to the pre-pandemic level. Asian restaurant business is especially so. I don’t know who would buy a restaurant now, giving the possibility of another pandemic coming up in the future, and considering the price increase of all the food items which add to the operation cost of a restaurant. Also people go to restaurant less frequently nowadays, at least in the Asian community here. I know it because when I drive past local restaurants, I see much less parked cars.

Why can’t I be more optimistic and more positive? I really want to stop being melancholy. Some people have the cute sadness and the sweet gloom, which make them more interesting, but I have nothing like that. I have the bottomless sulkiness nobody likes. However I do think even the most sulky person deserves happiness and has a way to achieve happiness.