![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A day off...
Jul. 14th, 2013 10:22 pmIt was a day when truly nothing was going on around the area.
The French members of the standdown team appeared to be sleeping off a late night in town last night (a sort of eve-of-le-quatorze-juillet celebration, I imagine), so the three remaining members of the UK prop team, three Pinkertons, and I took a van into town.
I got off at the main post office, intent on mailing some letters, only to find out that the only branch of the post office open on Sunday was the one by the market (a stimulating walk away), which I knew from experience closed at 3 pm. So I walked.
Along the way, I took note of the fact that the bookstore was closed on Sundays and the gift-and-knicknack store was closed on Sundays, which I don't recall being the case before.
On the way back, I had intended to buy some packaged green tea, but the packaged stuff was suspiciously inexpensive (about 25% of the price of the "gunpowder" green tea that goes by the name of "No. 95," which in turn is half the price of the gunpowder green tea from Samarkand).
(The tea is described as "gunpowder" because, in the course of processing, the leaves end up scrunched up in small spherical granules that presumably resemble old-time gunpowder.)
When I got to the new commercial center not far from the Arbat,, it was pretty apparent it was open for business. The ground floor houses an auto parts store and a restaurant. The next floor contains a liquor store, an appliance store, a store that sells a lot of computer-related stuff, a Beeline cellular store, a small grocery store, and a jewelry store (a "real" one with "real" prices, as opposed to an amateur production).
On the next floor up, there's a 4-lane bowling alley (with AMF equipment, including automatic scorekeeping), and separate rooms offering video arcade games and billiards. One of the lanes was in use, and it was apparent to me that three of the four people bowling had apparently never been exposed to the game before.
It was a fine day off, it was.
The French members of the standdown team appeared to be sleeping off a late night in town last night (a sort of eve-of-le-quatorze-juillet celebration, I imagine), so the three remaining members of the UK prop team, three Pinkertons, and I took a van into town.
I got off at the main post office, intent on mailing some letters, only to find out that the only branch of the post office open on Sunday was the one by the market (a stimulating walk away), which I knew from experience closed at 3 pm. So I walked.
Along the way, I took note of the fact that the bookstore was closed on Sundays and the gift-and-knicknack store was closed on Sundays, which I don't recall being the case before.
On the way back, I had intended to buy some packaged green tea, but the packaged stuff was suspiciously inexpensive (about 25% of the price of the "gunpowder" green tea that goes by the name of "No. 95," which in turn is half the price of the gunpowder green tea from Samarkand).
(The tea is described as "gunpowder" because, in the course of processing, the leaves end up scrunched up in small spherical granules that presumably resemble old-time gunpowder.)
When I got to the new commercial center not far from the Arbat,, it was pretty apparent it was open for business. The ground floor houses an auto parts store and a restaurant. The next floor contains a liquor store, an appliance store, a store that sells a lot of computer-related stuff, a Beeline cellular store, a small grocery store, and a jewelry store (a "real" one with "real" prices, as opposed to an amateur production).
On the next floor up, there's a 4-lane bowling alley (with AMF equipment, including automatic scorekeeping), and separate rooms offering video arcade games and billiards. One of the lanes was in use, and it was apparent to me that three of the four people bowling had apparently never been exposed to the game before.
It was a fine day off, it was.
