I am coming home from work. A wrinkled old lady sits with a small basket of apples on the side of the road amidst a pile of empty and bundled cardboard boxes. She is selling the apples, the cardboard she collects to sell at a recycling depot. I like apples, but the stacks of boxes about make an air of unclean, and I walk past without looking down. She keeps her eyes downcast.

On reflection, I feel bad. This poor old woman is trying to eke out a living-- selling apples instead of begging-- and I pass her by without acknowledgement because her 'store' isn't sparkly clean.

I go back and ask her how much the apples are. "A thousand won each." she says. It's a good enough price, and under her wrinkled old hands the apples looks good enough. I can just wash them when I get home. "Or 1500 for a peeled one." she says, and gestures across the sidewalk to another, slightly less old and wrinkled lady who is squatting in a phone booth scraping the peel off an apple with her teeth.

"Just four of these ones, please." I say, pointing at the apples in her basket, "I eat them with the peel on."