While walking home, I remembered two more beggar stories, but now that I have the chance to actually write them up, I forgot one of them. Here's the other one.

I'm walking along, and this older woman (60s-70s-80s) who might be Asian or Native American (they look the same when they get old) asks me very politely "Excusez-moi monsieur, avez vous un cigarette s'il-vous-plait?" I don't smoke so I say "Sorry" to which she replies "I fucking hate fucking chinks you fucker." I laughed. For the next couple of months, every time I'd remember this story, I'd laugh. But more recently, I started feeling sorry for her, so it didn't seem to funny anymore. Oh well.

Here's another fun beggar story, but it's not the one that I had mentioned forgetting earlier. If you've seen me in real life, you will probably have noticed that I allocate a very minimal portion of my budget to clothing. I'll try to only buy shirts that cost $10 or less, and then I wear them for years, even when holes bigger than my fist start to form in them. Because of this, some people incorrectly deduce from my appearance that I must be poor.

So one day I'm walking down the street, sort of in a bad mood, so I'm looking at the ground. In my peripheral vision, I see a beggar getting up and approaching me. I try to sidestep him to get around him, but he's watching my movements, so I stop and look up into his face, expecting him to pester me for change. Instead, he hands me a bill and a bunch of coins. I'm dumbfounded. Do I really look that bad today?

Actually, after a slight pause, the beggar asks me to go into the Tim Horton near Concordia (we're right outside of it) and buy some soup for him. I say okay, and I head in, wait in line. When it's my turn, I ask for a soup, and the guy asks me if I want free bread with that. I'm guessing the beggar wants whatever he can get, so I say yes. So he gives me the food, and I give him the money, and he gives me some change. I head back out and I give the food to the beggar, and I try to hand over the change. He tells me to keep it. I sort of half laugh and say "Come on, I can't take this..." to which he just looks at me silently. I'm thinking "Uh oh, did I piss him off or insult him or something? There was an implied (from a beggar) at the end of the sentence... maybe it was too obvious?" but he then takes the money back, and we silently go our separate ways.

I still can't remember that last beggar story I've forgotten, so I'll tell a few street musician stories instead. I very rarely give these people money. Usually, I'm not really digging their music, and so I don't want to falsely give a sense of approval. There were two times I gave money to street musicians (that I can remember).

The first was in downtown Montreal, where there's this guy playing drum beats on a bucket (this was years ago, but he's still here today, so you might have seen him too). He sounds like a pretty decent drummer, and I'm kind of into drumming, so I drop a few coins as I walk buy. He starts shouting at me to wait up, so I turn around, and he's trying to hand me a card. I take it, and I try at small talk. "You're pretty good", I say. I forget what he says next, but the conversation basically proceeds with him telling me he used to have the world record for the biggest drum set, and he shows me a picture of him and this huge drum set, and he says it's a 100-piece kit. Then, he tells me he got kicked out of his girlfriend's place, and asks if he can move in with me. I'm stunned. "Uh... I don't think my mom would like that..." to which he replies "Oh, your mommy, huh?" And I say "Yeah...", silently thinking "Don't you realize I'm only like 18?" So we go our separate ways. I still admire his drumming skills, but I've never spoken or given money to him again.

The second time was in Japan. There were these two guys with two guitars and both singing at the same time. The harmony was really beautiful and moving, easily better than the vast majority of my mp3 collection, nevermind popular North American radio. So I gave them some yen. I have no idea how much. They looked kind of surprised at the amount, and I don't know if that's because it was too little, or too much. I wish I had gotten their names, so that I could google for recordings of more of their work.