Children of the Sun

Yo!

We're finally into summer 2022. California heat really is something this year. I've been living here for ten years and this has to be the worst heat I've ever personally experienced. This heat is unfit for man nor beast. However, that doesn't mean that 105 degree heat is something that is impossible to face or experience. Humans are tough creatures and are made of tougher stuff. And if you're not now, you will either evolve or become a dinosaur in the process. The dinosaur me would've just sat inside my room under AC playing video games all day today.

This brings me to a random question. How does climate change affect the human mind and behavior? Surely there's a correlation between 105 degree heat and people being extremely irritable. Not to mention that climate change will probably completely change the way we think about food, transport, receive, and eat food, what with certain crops/meats probably not going to be available forever in the future due to inevitable food shortages and the war in Ukraine. 

In terms of the physicality of 105 degree heat I did a test run. I decided to go out around 230 pm and stay out till 8 pm. Not outside the whole time but walking here and there to the market, to get coffee, and the library. I'm on foot walking in 105 degree heat. I needed to go to the market to buy lunch, then the coffee shop to eat lunch, drink, coffee, and chill for some hours using Wi-Fi, and then I had to go to the library to pickup some ordered books. The walk to the market itself is like 2 miles there and back again, and the places in between are like a .5 mile, so altogether that's something like 2.5 miles of walking in 105 degree heat. I have to get my head examined. 

What's the result? Well, I surprisingly felt really good. Concentration during the day was good. I did a lot of reading at the coffee shop under their AC. I was well focused and temperament was nice and easy going.

The warmth of the sun provides a free energy like no other. In fact, I think more Americans need to be exposed to sunlight more often because being stuck indoors in quarantine the last 2.5 years has made us cave dwellers who lack vitamin D, which you get free from being in the sun. 

There are cons though of course. My appetite just wasn't that strong. I ate a small salad, some crackers, and a tea and that seemed to hold me for the entire duration of 230-8, but I ate dinner at home around 9 pm. The high heat level just doesn't generate a strong thirst for hunger. Water, drinks, yes, but solid foods, not so much. A result of a high heat diet might include more fruits and veggies and less heavy beef or pork, but more chicken, for example. 

Another con, though, is that some of the more sugary foods and snacks seemed to affect me a lot more, it was a lot stronger. For example, I had a can of Coke from the gas station and for a while the usual mild sugar rush from soda seemed to be a lot less mild and more dramatic. For example, maybe if you want more fruits and vegetables, you have to really cut out the sugars, because they don't balance each other and/or mix well. 

These are just some random notes on a day walking in the sun. 

The sun's warmth is free energy. 

Been creating content on this site since 2014. Please check out my plague journal, about the covid years, beginning on the day covid began in the United States. You can find the entries here.

Live performance! Jazz! 6/2/2022!

Hey there everyone, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLEgf5UJNNQ

Check out my latest jam session with Jason [a] and yours truly on electric guitar. This session we decided to jam out and see where it would go. Enjoy! 

For those curious I used a Hagstrom Les Paul and a Rogue Rocketeer guitar through a Marshall avt 275.

Happy Summer

Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, 

I haven't written a general what's up blog in a while, so here we go. I'll describe in detail what life has been like on the job, more personal lifestyle details and fun, and the harrowing social current events of our time. 

First, work is getting a lot better. We're getting better pay with the better contract [there was a fight between the union and the company over wages], we seem to have the personnel to run the shifts, and generally, the employees seem to be happier and to be doing better, bit of a caveat there, but for the most part retail grocery is calm this spring season. Not to mention sales are up even though prices have skyrocketed due to inflation. There's actually a noticeable difference in the amount of groceries we're ringing up daily as there's a lot less visibly and physically. People just don't have as much cash right now. Also, only one recorded covid case this month. The guy was horribly sick. He came in one day to tell the bosses he was taking some time off, and his face looked like death. Scary. The threat of covid within the job is still lurking at the corner. 

Second, more personally, I've just been having a blast, living life to the fullest, and loving every minute of it. This goes more to the heart, the capacity of happiness that lies within yourself is more important than actually being happy all the time or often. Remember, it's not happiness that's the main focus, it's your capacity for happiness, meaning, what can you do daily that can ensure that you can increase and/or regulate your capacity for happiness daily? 

For everyone this question is mostly existential. For me I do it by reading books and playing the guitar. For others it might be art, or wrestling, cooking, or football, or cars. You have to really learn to love your life and what you do on a daily basis. The problem is that, especially right now, at this current juncture and state of worldly affairs, its seems that spring can really hang you up the most. Meaning, almost everything out there in the real world [not on a computer or phone screen, not this], has the potential to really bring you down and bum you out. The only real answer to this lies within the last paragraph-the capacity for happiness. 

Lastly, right now things in America are horrible. The recent school shooting has left all of us virtually bruised, beaten, and battered both mentally and physically. We don't need to see the pictures or the livestream to feel the harrowing effects of school children being gunned down by a crazed eighteen year old, the impact of the deaths has hit the virtual reality systems just as much as it has hurt us in the real world. Which brings up the question, when will American politicians stand up to the gun lobby, the NRA? Can we really consider ourselves the good guys of the world, the best country to live in, the most sophisticated, the most everything, if we can't even protect our schoolchildren from being gunned down during class? There's a glaring dilemma here that goes beyond myself, you, the NRA, and the politicians themselves. This goes to the heart of what makes a society of human beings civilized, sophisticated, and safe from harm. Meaning if we can't get this done, maybe we don't deserve to be in charge of what happens to Ukraine or anywhere else in the world. Take care of your home and hearth before going out to police the world. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd5VVELfWC8&ab_channel=whoisthisguythen

And for those pointy-headed intellectuals, catch up to what I've been reading on my Goodreads account, https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/56122996-orlando-furioso

In addition, for those interested on reading about what it was like to work retail grocery at the beginning of the pandemic, look no further, check out my covid plague journal here, http://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html, a compilation of posts about covid, dealing with covid within retail grocery, and within America itself as a young person. 

Live Performance! Jazz! 5/25/2022!

Hello, everyone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3NyHISwV8g&t=1097s&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

This is a livestreamed performance from yesterday featuring Jason Tomas on alto saxophone and yours truly, Orlando Figueroa on guitar. We played some improvisations and jazz standards. Take a listen to the music, leave a comment, and make sure to like and subscribe to my channel. 

Thank you!

Spring Break 2022!

Hello, good readers of the ofigueroamusicblog. It's been a pretty long time since I've updated, so here I am, ready to share more information on what it's like working at the job still under covid conditions and more. 

First, the working conditions have improved since I've last posted. There was going to be a possible strike but the company ended up giving in to most but not all of the demands from the union. We've also since added more staff to the front end. And inspiringly, I got promoted to cashier position after many years of toiling in the vineyards. 

However, this doesn't mean that the working conditions are optimal. We're still working under covid conditions, there are still a few covid cases every now and then, and most of the customers aren't wearing masks while they get extremely close to our bodies and faces. Covid has been extremely brutal for workers in the retail industry. In addition, now that the weather has become a lot hotter, the masks have become really hot again, but again, I can't take it off, unless I want to risk the wrath of possible covid exposures. 

I've mostly been chilling by myself and occasionally with a few friends. It's funny because, two years later, still under covid, I find myself only really going out to dinners with family and friends. It's my favorite social occasion. I've since left a lot of my many much more casual friends/acquaintances, to focus more on doing my own thing, which involves a lot of reading, guitar, and studying languages, mostly Spanish. 

I started the morning by reading Machiavelli's Mandrake, a comedy play about a young man who tricks an old scholar fool into letting him fuck his beautiful young wife. Talk about uncomfortable reading. In a way you could say c'est la vie but if it was your wife or your girlfriend what would you do? What if you never find out like our old scholar dude? It's certainly a funny story. Maybe the ends do justify the means, because in the end the wife wants to do it again with the young man, and even befriends him and gives him a room at her and her husband's estate. Talk about the ends justifying the means. 

I also found time to read Seneca's Agamemnon tragedy and start reading The Dawn of Everything, A New History of Humanity, a deep thinker for ya, anthropology and sociology.

Lastly, I even found time to jam with my friend Jason who plays the alto saxophone. You can find our most recent live recording here.

Although work has been the norm throughout and around all this activity, I'll be able to rest easy knowing that I'll be getting the better contract raises, and although I'll get less hours as a result of getting paid more, in that process I'll actually get the same and/or more money for less hours of work. Not too shabby! I found 100 rupees! 

Although I haven't gone anywhere in a few years and things have stayed relatively the same I feel like I'm on a grand spring break adventure for the moment. 

If you're looking for a reading adventure look no further than the beginning of my covid plague journal where I write about the beginning of the pandemic and the working conditions at the gig. There are many posts in the plague journal now after these two covid years. Read all about it here.

Let there be peace and love in the universe as well as within your life. 

This Is Your Life on Retail: March 2022

Hello world.

 

It's been a long time since I've blogged. I've been busy dealing with the vicissitudes of life. Here I'd like to continue my dialogues about what retail work has been like at this current juncture, amidst the pandemic still going on, corrupt corporate policy and abuse, and the war in Ukraine. 

First off, a general rundown on the gig. The daily grind as a cashier at a multimillion dollar company has become much more difficult. There's not much staff to help you with, well, anything. Management is always absent from the front end so most of the time you're on your own. 

There's no baggers to help you bag the large orders that come down your line nonstop for eight hours straight. 

The union has finished up its voting for the strike authorization vote but it remains to be seen if there really will be a strike. I was skeptical about the vote to strike authorization because it seems that most of the public has given up on retail workers at this point. We need your support still and our fight isn't over even at this stage of the pandemic.  

At the beginning retail workers were heroes. The customers supported us as much as nurses even because of the pandemic. But now, the customers show us a lot more of the contempt hidden in their hearts for the unskilled labor. It's very easy to hate unskilled labor. Nowadays, there's always a yelling going back and forth throughout the day between cashiers and customers. Something about a dollar off most of the time that could be easily resolved but management will only agree to things if they just want people to go away so they don't have to deal with it. 

The union asked the company for $5, $1 extra per year for five years. Even that alone won't be enough for the workers to live on in California. The company said no, so they've been reduced to going down to $3, $1 per year for three years. That's an even worse proposal. But if they could get it, it would still be a victory for the workers and a victory is a victory, no matter how small.  

I'm not surprised by any of this. In fact, most of the stuff I mentioned here has already been mentioned in a lot of my other blogs about retail during the pandemic. 

And yet covid is still happening there and now the customers don't have to wear facemasks. Today at work, I had to work at the only cashier station that didn't have a plastic shield shielding me from customers and their maskless faces. Thanks a lot you corporate guys.

As Loki says in the show, "trust my rage." 

For those who are interested, compare this post about working conditions today with about a year ago, you can read it here.

Thank you for the support. 

The song we sing, did you know, we're listening. 

Live Jazz Performance! 2/24/22!

https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/503683607883879

Orlando Figueroa, Guitar

Jason Tomas, Alto Saxophone

Recorded on a brand new Fender Squier with better tuners on them, given to me for free from a customer at work, going through my Marshall avt 275 on the clean channel setting. This was recorded yesterday, 2/25/22. Enjoy, thanks for listening.