My favorite time of year in Da Nang as far as weather is concerned will soon be coming to a close. I relish this time of year where it is cool enough during the day to never sweat unless you are exercising and at night it is sometimes a bit chilly warranting the use of a sweatshirt and jeans. It's just lovely.
The days are mostly overcast and gloomy but I am just fine with that. If I have to use the lights in my house in the afternoon in order to not be a sweaty mess everywhere that I go, I'm for it!
Well every now and then the sun breaks though and I went up to the roof to "enjoy" it I guess. Mostly I was just trying to read a book outside of my own condo and give Nadi a chance to get some fresh air without the constant threat of being turned into a tarmac road pancake because of how people drive in this country.
I guess she doesn't look super pleased to be up here but trust me, she enjoys it. She walks from rail to rail and sniffs the air and then after walking around the pool a bit will seek out some shade because she has a coat on that she cannot remove. In a few months it will be unbearably hot up here at the pool and I hope by that time the landlord here can use some of that inflated rent that we pay to her to sort out that fucking umbrella.
You know how they say that owners and their pets end up having a lot in common with one another? Well Nadi squinting the entire time that she is up here is definitely a characteristic that I possess. I have phototropic eyes, a condition that is actually called "photophobia" but I decided to not call it that because such a name makes it sound like I am afraid of having my picture taken, which is kind of true in a way as well because I am just not photogenic at all when I know the pic is being taken. The only good photos that exist of me are the ones that I was unaware were being taken.
So we sat up here and I wore my unbelievably overpriced prescription glasses that have the auto tint on them and I read a lot of the book that I am reading right now called All the Light we cannot See or something like that and since nobody else came up to the pool the entire time that I was there it was actually a very relaxing place to be. The construction noise that is ever-present is easier to put out of your mind up here because we are pretty far away from it up here. If I tried hard enough I could actually hear the nearby ocean a bit too.
So after about 10 chapters of the book I started to feel like I had been in the sun long enough and it is good thing I pulled the plug on that when I did because a day later I realized that I had a "farmer's tan" where my shirt was outlined on my body. Good times. It's been a while since that happened to me.
Later on I felt like trying out this new Korean restaurant that opened near my house and ordered some take away because I like to eat near my dog so I can see her extremely jealous eyes as I pick apart succulent meat slowly and right in front of her face as she drools. Don't worry, she gets some of it in the end.
So here is my beef soup with rice that I ordered and good lord.
Look, I'm not captain environmentalism and I can't stand Greta Thunberg or whatever her name is... but this is just a crazy amount of plastic for one meal. I get that they are trying to keep everything separate in order to have the maximum flavor explosion available for you when you get home but this is just irresponsible.
The tray on the bottom was something I didn't even know I was going to be receiving when I ordered.
Don't get me wrong, I love free side dishes that I didn't know I was getting for the price of admission to soup-ville but do we really need to have all of the packaged in their own plastic container? Vietnam tries their best, but they have a terrible track record for plastic disposal and is one of the biggest polluters of any country on earth despite being a relatively small country. All you have to do is look at this one takeaway to understand why that might be.
I like plastic, I think it is very useful but this is just a crazy amount of the stuff for one person to have with one dish. All of the smaller plastic containers were sealed with a wrap that is made of (drumroll!) you guessed it! Plastic.
I filled up an entire bin bag with the trash from this one meal and again, I am no environmentalist but this is kind of obscene to have this much waste go into a single beef soup takeaway. I will have to keep this in mind for the future but still, I can't put myself into the head of someone that would look at all of this and not have a problem with it. Even if plastic was easily recycled and outside of bottles I don't think really any of it is recycled here, this would still be entirely too much stuff for one person to be receiving. I can't even imagine how much crap would be produced if I was ordering say, lunch for the entire office. We could probably block the entrance to the building with all the garbage.
Oh well, I guess this is why I encounter so much of this trash whenever I am walking on the beach.