Recent conference revelation.

At the one conference that I went to this past fall, a presenter who was presenting some very good linguistics research mentioned some interesting things that he had found while reading a dictionary.

“Aha!”, I thought, “I’m not the only one!”

A self-directed put-down.

The other month, I was chit-chatting with the one (younger) (white) bartender with the (pussy-hat energy) at the local brewery, and she was telling me about her social science-subject matter college writing class, and while she was doing that, she put herself down and said that she never has any original research ideas.

And, I said that at her stage, much of your reading is just to gather basic information and orient yourself with facts and in fields, and so it’s hard to have an original idea like that, except maybe if there’s some new group and you “cut and paste” existing ideas onto it by analyzing this new data.

And, that pacified her a little bit, but not entirely.

Later, I also thought of how it’s a lot easier to have original paper ideas on a dense literary text where you just explicate that one text, and so the next time that I saw her, I told her that, and that her feelings might be more the result of the type of writing class she chose to take, than anything having to do with her ability, and that seemed to make more sense to her.

I also told her about a great strategy I had come across for making effective papers about a dense literary text -- you find a point in the text where something doesn't seem to make much sense to you, and if you can figure out what's happening and why, that's the paper right there, to present to someone the problem that you had stumbled upon and then solve it for them.

Soup-present.

Because I had cooked up a huge pot of “unstuffed pepper” soup and the one (gay) (Colombian) grad student who I know was preparing to defend his dissertation, I messaged him if he wanted to pick up some soup so he could have a few quick and easy dinners from that that coming week.

And, he did want some, so he did come by and pick some up.

Now, the soup is the same ingredients as a stuffed pepper – tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and ground beef – so the idea is that you cook up some white rice and pour the soup over all that and it tastes like a stuffed pepper, only it’s a heck of a lot quicker to cook than actual stuffed peppers since you don't have to go stuff all of them individually and bake then in shallow pans.

And, he texts me, and he says he loves it, but he decided to cut up pieces of ham and cheese and tortillas into it.

Like, that makes two types of meat in it – ground beef and ham – and why would he have tortillas anyways, I thought, since I thought that (Colombians) liked arepas.

I guess if it works for him?

But, it’s nothing that I would do, and I told him that he was desecrating my soup.

True crime-worthy line.

In my continuing routine about the break-up of my one (younger) (taller) (Latino-American) coworker at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I was asking him how it went where he took the new girl he’s interested in to a house-show where his cool ex-girlfriend might have showed up.

And, as it turns out, she wasn’t there, and everything went smoothly.

“That really would have made a good true crime reenactment, though,” I was like, and I then put on my announcer’s voice: “This alternative girl was fuming, since her ex-boyfriend showed up, with an alternative girl.”

And, he doesn’t watch too much true crime, though his mom does, he said, but he did have to agree with me.

. . .

(. . .)

Happiness.

I’ve been so productive the past few years, but it hasn’t necessarily increased my overall level of happiness.

As I’ve been telling people lately, though, I think I’ve finally figured out why – I haven’t been completing the right projects!

“After the next one, I’ll finally be happy,” I’m like. “It’s gonna be the next one that does it, I just know it.”

. . .

(. . .)

Have I been sucked into a new dietary trend?

This fall at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, a customer was deciding between entrees, and she vocally decided against one “because I need more protein”!

It seems to me that counting daily grams of protein must be a new dietary trend – I started taking daily protein powder, after all, since my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker took me aside as a friend and said that I wasn’t getting enough.

I mean, I’ve seen like bodybuilder-type people count protein for a while, including a visiting (Puerto Rican) (STEM) graduate student who came into the restaurant and asked me to load up his miso soup with tofu bits so he could get his daily grams in.

But, this is different, it’s like extending out into normal people who aren’t on strict daily regimens to radically increase their muscle mass.

I’ll say one thing, though – it’s a hell of a lot more tolerable than that pseudoscientific anti-gluten shit that’s been going around.

Those people are just weird and picky and inconsistent and annoying.

Happenings on a weekend double-shift…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) A six-top of (college-age) (South Asian-American) (females) come in for a birthday, and they’re confused with what to do with the cake – the two who arrive first give it to us and tell us to bring it out at the end, and then they say it should be out already at the beginning when the birthday person arrives to surprise her, but when I ask them if they wanted it trayed up to eat first, they decide against that, and they then decide that they want it out at the end, again – and finally everyone arrives and they have a big meal and I go to take a picture for them when they’re in the middle of eating, and all of their plates are neatly aligned down the center edge-to-edge all the way down, like I’ve never seen happen with a table before when they eat family-style.

“Are you guys engineers?!”, I was like, pointing that out.

(They were.)

. . .

2) A customer requests her fork, because she unwrapped her napkin and found two spoons in it, rather than one fork and one spoon.

(Perhaps because I had word puzzles set out to look at, while me and other people were wrapping silverware?)

. . . 

3) A (master’s student-age) (South Asian from South Asia) couple come in on a date and after some time when I approach their table for any beverages besides water or anything else they might need right away, they look at me like dirt, and they say they need more time, and the girl is like “We just started looking at it,” and it’s partly a communication-functional thing where they don’t have the right words to respond and say they don’t need any help right then – like, “No thanks, we’re good for now” – but it’s also this attitude thing on their part, where they don’t like me being out of place and they don’t like me approaching them tableside on my own initiative.

So, I don’t wait on their table for the rest of the night, and my one (Chinese from China) coworker takes it over, and he says they’re pretty normal with him.

But, he does start reflecting at some point, that behavior like that could be a refraction of the caste system brought over here to (the United States), and I tell him that that’s what my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker were saying easily over half a year ago, about stuff happening like that.

(The couple leave like a $1.65 tip on a $53+ dollar bill, too, to round it up to $55… We should have made sure to keep an eye on them, to challenge them…  What a really shitty combination, caste system condescension and cheapness, two subpar manifestations of a broader lack of being “with it” with cultural norms that they should be aware of and adapting to.)

. . .

4) During my hour break between shifts, I’m getting cold brew coffee at the local brewery and doing some work online, and out of the corner of my eye I’d seen the one (older) (curly-haired) (white) customer-lady who comes in with her husband and is a bit like the Lovers skit from Saturday Night Live, and after a while she comes around to all of the tables with a plate full of cookies and cupcakes and dessert-bars and whatnot for people to get, since she was part of a table celebrating a birthday and she wanted to share leftovers with everyone.

And, she comes up to my table where I’m unmasked, and I’m like, “If it’s not Thai food, I don’t care,” and it takes her a few seconds to recognize me, and then she’s like, “Heyyyy!”, and I then pick out a few cupcakes and stuff for me to eat along with my coffee.

And, I comment that the roles are reversed now between us, that is, customer and server, and I say that she’s doing great, and after she goes over to some other people by the bar near me, I call her back and tell her that she is doing great, but she needs to lift out from the core when she holds out the plate of desserts for people to pick from, otherwise she’ll mess up her lower back.

(When I leave, I wanted to leave a dollar bill like a tip on my table and direct her to go get it, but she had already left by that point… She must have brought the desserts around to share as one of the last things she did before saying farewell and taking off from the birthday party.)

. . .

5) When I had slid in my laptop into my bag at work and accidentally let it drop in the last inch because I thought it was already setting in the bottom of the backpack and had let it go, I then began to worry about it a lot, especially whether it would even work at all the next time that I turned it on.

And, not only did it work, but my messed-up keys on the laptop keyboard began working again, so I no longer need to use an external keyboard that I had bought as a work-around to get more life out of my computer before I have to go get a new one again!

(“To make a thing work, sometimes you need to shake it,” my one [chubby] [Thai] coworker solemnly observed, when I told her about that unexpected turn-of-events.)