Yesterday I was walking on campus when I heard a dry, crackling sound. Then I noticed small tongues of red and orange peeping out of a nearby hedge. The flames rose and the crackling grew louder. The hedge wasn’t large – only about 2 and a half feet high, but the fire leapt up to about four feet. The flames burned a black crater in the middle of one of the bushes that comprised the hedge, and the rest of the bushes seemed poised to burst into flame, too.

“Oh man,” I thought, “a burning bush. Sure, this one bush is being consumed, but the rest of the hedge is fine. Maybe the story will be ‘Andrew and the burning hedge.’” I was pretty proud of myself for seeing the big picture. And it seemed that nobody else had noticed the fire. I alone stood watching the shrubbery blacken and char. “What’s the message here?” I thought to myself. Bit of ash rose into the air, carried up by blurry waves of heat. I wondered if I should remove my sneakers. Would I need to take off my socks, too?

Then suddenly somebody pushed past me with a hurried, “Look out!” and dumped a water cooler over the bush. It went out with a hiss and one final pop. I went to class.

Tomorrow I’ll begin my fourth week at the sushi bar. It’s been an awesome experience. It’s value became even more clear last week when the sushi chef, Kaji-san, asked me how much I was spending on school. When I told him he asked me how much I was spending to work at the sushi bar.
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If you read my blog much over the years or know me very well, you’ve probably seen that I tend to move around a lot. For instance, I’ve moved four times in the last four years, and just my freshman year of college had more jobs than I can remember. I’m a sucker for new experiences, I guess. Or just don’t have a very long attention span when it comes to living or work. But I’ve held down my job at UC’s Disability Services Office almost two years now, and I passed the one-year mark at the restaurant last week.
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