In my mind, the t-shirts of my childhood were always striped, and in nice "boy colors" like dark blue and light blue.
Today at my supermarket on a sales table I found a stack of striped t-shirts and I threw caution and budget to the winds and purchased one.
I look at it and I am reminded of the little guy I used to be with freckles on the nose and scabby knees. No t-shirt is going to turn me into him, but it will give me bittersweet memories, and that is worth the price of the shirt.
Besides, today I also got the visa that makes me a legal resident for another year, so that is worth celebrating too.
A striped and much loved t-shirt.

I feel that I have finally come back to a normal life, well as normal as my life has ever been.
I have had a bout of the Dengue fever; for those of you who don't know it, it is a mosquito borne, malaria like infection.
First you have tremendous headaches, followed by fever and night sweats--one night I sweated through four t-shirts..not damp...wet--and aching of bones that sometimes would leave you incapable of moving.
Followed then by a red rash, like a minor sun burn, that signals the beginning of the end of this dreaded thing.
All that takes place within seven days.
And such seven days they are, and seven nights I will never care to re-live.
There is no specific medicine for this, you take painkillers for the headache and body ache and just slog it trough.
And mine was the simple version, the more complicated ones you can die from.
So I feel good now that the headaches have gone and the bones don't ache so badly anymore and my mind can concentrate on more important things like writing this post.
I am back.