Work changes, redux (1 of 2): First interaction.

So, I go into work at the (Thai) restaurant the other day, and who do I see in the kitchen, but my one (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) coworker who had said bye to everyone since he was leaving permanently for a new job.

And, there he was at the stove, just cooking like everything was back to normal.

So, I planned my (Spanish) a head of time, and when I saw him later, I was like, "Un hombre llamado [his first name] trabajaba aqui" ('A man called [his first name] was working here').

Then, I delivered the punchline.

"Tu cara es la misma, exactamente" ('Your face is the same, exactly'), and I said that with a very, very deadpan and serious mug.

Then, I turned to go back to work, and, in the first time that I've ever heard him laugh, he let out this extremely high-pitched giggle something like a Furby would make, like where his voice jumped up two octaves and he was like, tee-hee-hee.

A co-worker's habit, and perhaps talent.

My one (early middle-aged) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones brings in little tupperwares of baked goods a lot of times to the restaurant, which she leaves out on the shelf behind the register or, rarely, out on top of the ice machine around the corner from the register (sometimes people set food out there and wolf it down in between doing stuff out in the restaurant or inside the kitchen).

Anyhow, like a few weeks ago she brought in these little buttery folded things with strawberry jam in the middle, that she said were made from premade croissant dough.

"Try one," she was like, and I did, and it was pretty good, especially how the buttery flavor melded with the rich but not sweet strawberry jam.

Like last week, too, she brought in these little pancake things with cream in the middle, that she said are Japanese or maybe Korean.

"They look difficult to make," I was like.

"No," she was like, and she just explained that you make pancakes in a little pan, and then put the cream in.

Usually, though, she brings in these little sponge cake things that look like fat brown nipples, that she explained to me later are the (Thai) version of (French) madeleines. 

"Are these popular in Thailand?", I was like.

"Yes," she was like, only she explained that they cook them with oil, not butter, and that they tend to make them spongier than the (French) do.

Cookie tray rust solutions...

To bake potatoes on a cookie tray that got way too rusty inside, I simply flipped it over and set the potatoes out on the normal-looking underside!

Phillip Glass music.

The other week I was working on a writing project and the classical station on the radio had a Phillip Glass symphony on, and even though I was getting tired at that point, it was like this sudden burst of energy and I could concentrate again and time just flew by and I really amazed myself.

And, now I wonder how productive I could be, if I always played Phillip Glass music when I work.

I was saying this to my one (Thai) restaurant sound guy coworker, and he was saying that his dad is a big Phillip Glass fan, and when he first retired, he would turn up the sound system and put that on and just blast it, but then his mother put her foot down and made him stop.

"We should put this on when it's a lunch rush," I was like.

"Yeah," he was like, and he laughed, and then he was like, "Just lock in," and he stuck his hands out from each side of his face on each side of his eyes, just like they were horse blinders.

I was also saying that if there's a few stray customers in the restaurant and you throw it on, even if it's a nice day out, it's like one of them is getting a divorce and is trapped in his head.

I was also also saying that if it's the very end of the night and people won't leave and we want to drive them out, we should go and put Phillip Glass on over the speaker system.

Kale failure.

The other week I went to go get the remaining bunch of kale on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator in order to go and use it in this cauliflower, kale, carrot, and curry soup that I sometimes make, only when I went to open and wash the yellow-edged leaves, there wasn't just some mild water loss at the edges of the leaves, but areas in the center of the leaves were busted up some, and so a great many of them had started to rot from the center out.

So, I cut out and saved what I could, but I basically had to throw like four-fifths of the kale out, and my soup had a lot less kale than I had thought it would have.

I mean, you can and I do use kale leaves with water loss, but this was a whole different situation.

Two people the other day at the (Thai) restaurant:

A slightly grizzled (older) (white) man with a trimmed beard, and a (thin-faced) (late middle-aged) (white) woman with big-lensed glasses and long, long unconditioned brown hair tied back in a ponytail.

She asks some basic questions about the menu, but it seems like she has weird boundaries about being in a restaurant, where it's strange for her, or somehow uncomfortable.

Then, at the end of the meal when I go to run his credit card to pay for them both, it's not actually a credit card, but a debit card, and one disbursed by a plasma company, the name says at the bottom.

Pleasant Earth Day surprise.

So, since I try to live my life in an environmentally conscious way, I recently went online and tried to figure out how much bigger my carbon footprint is from my increased meat consumption from all the free meals at the (Thai) restaurant, so that I could buy some trees to compensate for it.

And, it turned out to be only the equivalent of like twenty-three trees a year, at a generous estimate!

I ended up buying well more than that, so that overall my life is carbon negative...

All of these new trees are on top of other ones that I've gotten for my birthday in years past, of course.