Last year was pivotal in bringing the final touch to my new year's resolution for the then-upcoming global year, a week sooner than the end of December. I changed almost all my money transactions digitally, apart from very few necessities.

It reminded me of the tiresome days when we had to take a taxi to transfer or withdraw money from the bank, with all the paper works and the need for photocopies.

I transitioned digital at a bank branch just a hoot and holler away from my house, which opened a few weeks earlier.

If not for an urgent situation, I used to go to a branch twenty minutes away, an excellent reason to append the same with a long walk. It was accompanied by the biweekly visit to a farther thirty-minute walk to a supermarket, which I have been a customer of for the last three decades.

What makes the timetable clocklike is that I have to leave my house as nightfall approaches and no later than 5:30 PM to arrive at the bank branch 10 minutes before its closure. That has been strictly followed for at least three to four years, thick or thin, amidst the pandemic self-restraint at home and the bone-rattling cold and windy days of the recent weeks here in Addis.

Following a byway stuck to the roadside, wedged a small, old bookshop notorious for catching my wallet off-guard, preempting unplanned purchases of books, cutting short my supermarket visit twice a week for the insufficiency of money for necessities. Next is the once-in-a-requisite week visit to the "Gullit" sited close by, with its mouth-watering "Sumaro Gomen", a variant of Ethiopian collard green, with its always family-like, smiling, and welcoming roadside retailers.

I started to get worried Instantly, clouding the enthusiasm that had been prevailing. One pillar of my weekly routine is gone, with almost no reason to go to the bank. Moreover, a new supermarket has just moved into the neighbourhood. A neighbour I introduced to "Sumaro" is happy to pick up my weekly need from the market, as his office is nearby. As for the old bookstore, I can pass by when I go out to the movies. This all summed up that my usual walking route is not unavoidable.

However, I immediately started to ponder on the things I would miss. The passers-by smiling and talking, hand-hold-unfriendly conspicuous wide screen mobile brandishing boys and girls, the raw meat eateries, the abounding shop's householders busy with shopping and almost branches of all banks with their all-time active ATMs, all with imposing and drawing lively waves on the ambiance, and faces I am very familiar with.