Bar Conversation with 2 Polish Women.

The other month I was at the bar in an Italian restaurant in a yuppie neighborhood, and the 2 women a stool down from me to my left were speaking Polish, so during a pause in their conversation, I asked them if they were Polish, and they were, and it turned out that they were there for dinner before going to a screening at a Polish film festival happening at a venue a few doors down, and then we all began talking.

One woman was older (like mid-50s?) and the other in her late 30s, and both thought that Americans were “stupid” because they didn’t care about NSA surveillance.

“Something like that,” the older woman was like, “only benefits those in control.”

(I wonder if she was reverse-translating a phrase from Polish, “those in control”, it’s quite an evocative phrase and I love it.)

They also both thought that America was a bomb ready to explode, since the rich were ripping people off and Obamacare was happening and the poor were sucking the system dry.

“Not people like us,” the older woman was like, “We work.”

She also made the prediction that the country would become destitute from the rich fleeing to South America for tax laws there, and she said that in those countries there was hope, and jobs.

“And Europe is awful,” she said.  “The EU disguises major problems.  Europe is falling apart.”

They also offered me some bruschetta, and I had a piece, eating it up and holding my hand below my chin since I didn’t have a plate and didn’t want pieces of tomato to spill everywhere.

I then tried out some Polish on them, saying “Thank you for the bruschetta,” which caused them to ooh and ah, and then after that, I repeated the phrase again, only adding a bit, saying “Thank you for the bruschetta, beautiful,” which I delivered with a wink.

I then went to leave, and said “Nice to meet you” and “Good night”, and the younger woman was like, “Look at how much Polish you know!”, and then I confessed that I only know 5 phrases, and had already used 3.

“What are the others?”, the older woman asked.

“Hello,” I was like.

“Oh, that is a good one,” she replied.

Then, I added, “And, Give me the cheapest beer.”

“Oh, you know too much,” she was like.

Student Bar Conversation: Chris Christie.

The other month I met a friend of a friend at the student bar, this (very tall) (black) guy who’s about to retire from being a bus driver, and me and him ended up talking politics.

“Christie can never be president,” he was like.  “He’s too fat, people won’t go for it.”

Then, after a quick beat, he was like, “And have you seen a family picture of him?  His wife is big-boned, and all his kids are fat.”

He then made the prediction that if he lost enough weight to be able to become president, he’d die during his 1^st year in office.

“It’s just not normal to lose that much weight that fast, when you’re so fat,” he was like.  “He’ll die from it.”

Appreciative Swiss people.

The other day I met a Swiss grad student.  I asked him if he spoke French, German, Italian, or Romansch, and he lit up, since I knew the national languages of Switzerland.

He also was surprised that I knew about their draconian minaret law, and that they have very strenuous requirements for citizenship, where it takes years to earn it, and which causes a lot of social tension.

I said I just read the news, and he was like, “Remember, many people here think that my country is Sweden.”

Moments in my new neighborhood:

1) A (lower class) (late 20s) (fat) (white) woman in a sportsteam-logoed jacket and pajama bottoms is walking her fat mean-looking dog, and as it stoops to poop on the middle of the sidewalk, she gives a small but not severe kick to its side and starts calling it stupid... 

Some older people who happen to be walking up the street towards her but are still a bit away yell to her that she shouldn’t do that, and she yells back that she doesn’t care.

(Oddly, I felt viscerally more appalled by this than how the yuppies treated some of their dogs at the bakery outside my window at my last apartment, but I think much of that being more appalled was a reaction to her class and not the substance of her actions...  It’s just as bad to leave a small dog chained up in subzero weather whining piteously, and shifting from paw to paw because the metal grate it’s standing on is too cold.)

2) Three young middle school-aged girls (2 white, 1 Mexican) who are a bit dirty looking are always skulking around together in a pack up and down my street. 

One time one sped by on a bike as I was unlocking mine from a signpost, and she cried out, “Nice bike!”.

Another time they were huddled together walking down the street shiftily, and I could tell a few of them were smoking cigarettes.

3) On the main strip of businesses across from the Citibank branch, someone slapped a sticker on the door of the free hispanic newspaper box, and on it in pen were written irregular letters:

[FEMALE HISPANIC NAME] WHO LIVES ON [ADDRESS A FEW BLOCKS AWAY] HAS STDS    WATCH OUT

. . .

Winter gas bills.

My first gas bill of the year came in, from when I’ve been relying on gas for heat (my last 2 apartments had radiators, and the landlord threw in the cooking gas as part of the rent).

The bill was $37, though who knows how high it’ll go, since I only used gas for heat for part of the month.

I wonder what the gas bill will be like in January or February if the weather’s really really frigid and I have to use the gas for heat for the whole month.