'Robbery - just outside our door

So around 10:00 PM Sung and I were just relaxing in our apartment when we heard a whole bunch of yelling outside, commotion that we aren't accustomed to hearing.  Sung went to the window and said - "Michael is being robbed"!  Michael is our downstairs neighbor and my heart started pounding through my chest. We rushed outside but it was too late, the car was speeding away.  I guess there was a group of 5 of them all standing outside of our front gate and a car had passed by them and circled the block and then came back.  As soon as it came back two guys jumped out, one with a knife.  The two girls and one other guy ran away and Michael and another teacher Greg got the brunt of it.  They started beating on them and demanding their phones.  Greg didn't have a phone or anything so they hit him even more to see if they could get something out of him.  Michael gave them his phone which I guess made them happy enough and then finally took off.  The girls had run to get the police (who are a block down the hill) and they arrived on the scene about 2 minutes after the car had taken off.  Michael and Greg conveyed the story to the police who listened but didn't offer any kind of further action.  It makes us re-think a lot of decisions we've made in the past.  No more walking up the hill at night when it's dark.  No lingering outside our front door even if it's for only a few minutes.  This city really is pretty crazy.  I hear a new robbery story every week and I try not to let them get to me too much but this one was way way way too close to home.

A Microwave - Finally!

We finally broke down and bought a microwave last night.  In the morning I like to make my tofu breakfast which consists of toast, peanut butter, sliced bananas, warmed tofu, topped off with a spice mixture of cinnamon, sugar, curry, and cayenne.  Without a microwave I have to saute the tofu which means more dishes to wash!  I already do enough dishes (no dishwasher of course) and just warming up the frying pan takes a while and then the tofu sticks which means using oil which changes the taste of the tofu.

The other night Sung and I were warming up pizza in the toaster oven and I lined the tray thingie with aluminum foil so that cleaning it would be a little easier.  And the pizza ended up sticking to the aluminum foil - ugh!  I think that was the last straw, we both looked at each other and said - let's get a microwave! It will mean less dishes and it will be so much easier and faster to warm stuff up.  It takes 20-30 minutes to warm up leftovers in the toaster oven and now it will take 2 in the microwave!!  With no extra dishes!

So now the problem is that we only have one available plug for the microwave, toaster oven, and washing machine and even with the extension cord we can only run one at a time.  This works out more or less okay since the microwave is super fast!!

Our $91 microwave, cheapest we could buy at Mega.

The tofu breakfast - I love it because I don't get hungry half way through the morning, it's the best sustaining breakfast ever in my opinion.

AND last night we found CRUNCHY peanut butter which we're both really excited about!!!  First crunchy in 7 months!  $5.20 for a 16 oz container, expensive but not outrageous.  I tried to bring some back from the US for Sung a couple weeks ago but my checked bags were overweight so I just grabbed a bunch of stuff out of them and stuck them in my carry on bag and of course the peanut butter got confiscated by TSA!

 

And I just made curry cauliflower in 10 minutes - delicious!  With the stove the water would just about be boiling in 10 minutes!  Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.  :)