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Harmless Good Deed for the Day?

Friday was kind of busy, but I did one thing (finally) which I think nobody can criticise. After visiting a workplace in town, grabbing lunch at Govindas, & visiting the Perth library to renew a book so I could read it on the ’plane to Adelaide, I wandered down to the Perth Underground railway station to catch a train up to Joondalup to finish (most of) the things I needed to do then.

Sitting on the northwest end of the platform, I noticed a lady (maybe late 30s, turned out to be from Ethiopia, tucked in the right-hand corner there near Sudan, Kenya & Somalia) was sweltering in the heat, & carrying a load of present-like shopping.

Now, I had packed a “recycled” 1.25l softdrink bottle with rainwater to hand to Mwikisa (Zambian fellow boarding with Mardie) when he finished his shift at Joondalup Hospital at 15:00 <1>, so I handed her this, a most welcome gift. Her reactions were simple, pleasant, uncomplicated thankfulness.

Mwikisa did get his drink (which was most welcome also) ’coz after a complicated run up to Joondalup <2> I dropped in at Woolworths & grabbed a $1 bottle of Ginger Beer for him <3>.

Now after all of this fluffing around & indirection, it so chanced that I rolled up at the hospital door at precisely 15:00.

En route again <4> I’d managed to pick up some necessary items of stationery, which will have eliminated more running around on Monday, & give me extra time to walk Mwikisa through some IT basics like copying files around, ripping CDs & burning CD/DVDs.

Footnotes:

  1. we were going to look at laptops for him, he’ll probably grab a $1200 Toshiba; I’m pleased because it was his decision, not a hand-held one from me
  2. the trains stopped at Whitfords Station while workers reattached the line under Moore Drive near Clarkson, so I took an indirect run & dropped off some CDs to an op-shoppy thing in Caridean Street off Hodges Drive en route
  3. also en route to the Joondalup Library to renew & hand in some books.
  4. no, there aren’t many trees in the way, that’s just English borrowing en Francais

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