So I wonder how long–that is how many minutes–I could use this transcription program on my cell phone before it would stop working . For example–sitting in the Tim Hortons in Kamloops, and various thoughts cross my mind–and I think perhaps it would be nice to jot them down.

It’s a working class crowd the comes in at 6:30 to 7:30 in the morning . The people seem friendly enough . When I was young enough to come to this sort of place for breakfast–I was around 19 years old–I never felt part of this crowd. In those days I was a tag-along who would tag along with any employer who may wish to stop and get a breakfast coffee.

I was suspicious of the motivations of people around me. I didn’t understand where they came from or where they were going, in terms of their life direction.

I never knew what each day would hold and I felt unsettled and anxious.

Looking around me now the people all seem comfortable and at ease with themselves.

Now it’s a few days later and I’m sitting in a shopping mall before the stores have opened. I’m sitting in the main center of the mall.

Sometimes they have entertainment here, but today they’ve set up large television screens so people can watch the World Cup of soccer matches.

One of the televisions isn’t working and a technician came to see if he could fix it, but he couldn’t, so he adjusted a ribbon on some stands surrounding the monitor… I guess those are there to keep people from trying to adjust the monitor themselves.

There are 5 men here besides myself, one is the technician, one is an old Chinese guy reading a Chinese newspaper, and two are watching the soccer games.

I’m waiting for an automobile service depot to change the oil in my car.

I’m sitting on a large sofa covered in white leather. This is in the Brentwood mall, a mall–I once learned–a good friend of my father’s owned a part of.

The company that owns the mall–or perhaps it is the company that owns the property on which the mall is situated–is doing extensive renovations and additions to the mall.

In this time in which we live, in 2018, it is difficult to know precisely who is responsible for large- scale infrastructure projects, when those projects take place in the private sector.

Very large and very tall apartment buildings are being constructed on the property on which this mall is located. In addition, stores and public spaces such as performance halls and libraries are being constructed.

Construction began approximately two years ago, but prior to that time the mall existed in a different and static form for approximately 20 years. Who, precisely, made the decision to add-on to and to change this mall? Was it one person? Was it a committee? Were there people in government? Were there people in private industry such as bankers?

Four men are watching the TV screens and each man has a drink in front of him. Coffee or water.

The time currently is 8:44 a.m.

The rate at which things happen seems to have sped up thanks to smart phones and computer technology and the internet. For example, when we were on the road we managed to book hotel rooms in just a few moments thanks to our smart phones.

But other processes such as writing an article still take a long time. We don’t write articles anymore. I think this is because of the disconnect between our lived experience of things speeding up thanks to smartphones, and remembered experience of the length of time it would take to do things like write articles. On some level we know that we can’t write articles as fast as we can do most of the other things we do, so we have simply given up writing.

Then again, perhaps I’m not writing articles because I don’t feel the need to be a good little worker-bee anymore.

In the “recommended readings” section of the Kobo bookstore, one recommended book I saw recently related to productivity–that is–the book was about ways to be more productive.

But I don’t need to be more productive. At least I don’t feel a need to be as productive as I felt, say, when I was in my thirties.

Although this is a largely empty shopping mall–empty of people–the ambient sonic environment is quite noisy. In addition to the sound of soccer announcers and the sounds associated with advertisements coming from the three television sets, there are a number of loudspeakers mounted in the walls surrounding me, and from these loudspeakers soft rock is continually playing at a high volume.

These two different sound sources combine to make a meaningless din.