A memory of an alleged attempt at human trafficking…

…from a (young) (heavyset) (blonde) artist who lives in the college town that I now live in:

During early high school when her parents' marriage was rough, her mother and her went to New York City for a long weekend for their major yearly vacation and there they stayed at an out-of-the-way hotel, and when they were in the empty restaurant dining room, this (middle-aged) woman was like one of the only other people there, and she ended up joining them and spilling her guts out to them, and when the (artist-to-be) tried acting mature and told her mom that she was going to go outside for a cigarette, her mom was like, “Wait, I’ll go with you,” but this lady laid her hand across her mom’s wrist and forcefully was like, “No, let her go, she’ll be fine,” and so she went out to the drive to smoke, and while she was doing that her mom needed to run up to their room to do something, and as she went past the front desk she told the desk-clerk to keep an eye on her daughter outside for a minute and the guy said that they don’t do that, and as the mom rushed up to the room, she was outside, and this guy had parked a car outside and was calling to the (artist-to-be) and as she came up to him, he grabbed her hair and tried to force her into the back of the car and all the time he was like, “Come on, get in, you called this cab, you’re just drunk!”, and then the mom looked out the window and saw something and ran down, and as she called out to her, the (artist-to-be) was like able to break free and walked to her, it was like a trance but now it had been broken, and the guy hopped in the car and drove off, and the woman from the restaurant was nowhere to be found, and later she realized that even though it seemed like she hadn’t walked that far from the entrance, when her mom called to her, she was like most of the way up the U-shaped drive that led to the front door of the hotel, and she must have walked that far while smoking or while going out to the man while he called to her, he was like practically parked on the street out there that ran in front of the hotel’s drive.

. . .

(She said that she read later that human traffickers always work in twos, and I said that the man’s lines sounded rehearsed like if someone saw them and overhead what he was saying they would just think she was drunk and not try to intervene, and she said that she hadn’t thought of that, though I also said that I thought most human trafficking was like within family units or with vulnerable people and wasn’t like off-the-street abductions or whatever, to which she had nothing to say, in response.)

Other bought goods.

So, the one (worked-out) (STEM) (Brazilian) had an ab wheel and also resistance bands, and he SWORE by resistance bands as a method of working out, he had gotten into them over the past 3-4 months that he had been here, and he said that after like 6-7 weeks of a simple workout, people were noticing the difference and asking him if he had lost weight, was going to the gym, etc.

So, I bought them off him at price, and I have to admit that I was very surprised that a decent set of resistance bands only sets you back like somewhere just less than $40, including shipping, which is insanely cheap and which also makes you wonder again why nobody talks about them all that much.

Anyhow, I am now one of the biggest evangelists ever for resistance bands.

I started off slow – he was doing like 4 sets of 15 reps 3 times a week, whereas I started out with like 2 sets of 10 reps 2-3 times a week – and already after like a week-and-a-half, I could see the difference in all these little muscles all over my body.

I gradually upped reps and weights, too, and now when I’m up to like 3 sets of 15 reps and I can do it with good form, I just go to a higher weight and less reps and start all over again from there, which is also more time-effective on my life, when you’re back at those relatively low numbers of reps.

I mean, I was originally thinking that anything would be better than what I have now, so why go nuts with it like he does?

And, even with that little albeit regular effort, I still showed results mad quick.

I’m like an addict now.

People should really talk about resistance bands more… They’re just amazing.

I wish that I had known about them years ago!  If I had, imagine where I’d be now!

In comparison though with the abs wheel, he just did that like once or twice a week, and he says don’t worry about forcing yourself to go down low, you will get lower with time as your abs build their strength up.

After-effects of some inherited food etc.

Pumpkin coffee makes me woozy, and the frozen fruit gives me squirting diarrhea.

And, the ginger-and-pumpkin bathroom spray sits unused on the top of my toilet, since at no point do I want to try to deodorize the bathroom by creating a mixed smell in there of ginger and pumpkin and shit, somehow that seems like you’d make a bad situation worse, like, it would be way more unappealing than your standard unadulterated shit smell.

Some inherited food etc. …

…from the one (worked out) (STEM) (Brazilian), when he gives me his groceries that he won’t use any more because he’s moving back home because his time here has finished:

An unopened can of pineapple, which he removes from his refrigerator and at which he shrugs when asked if canned pineapple needs to be refrigerated;

A container of vanilla frosting, and a container of chocolate frosting;

A bag of pumpkin spice coffee;

A ginger-and-pumpkin bathroom spray for deodorizing your bathroom;

Two cans of food pantry-brand cream-of-chicken soup;

Two small thick plastic bags of food pantry white rice; 

Two packs of heat-and-eat chicken chili;

Some dried garbanzo beans, and canned;

Several packs of spaghetti, one opened;

Some cocoa-and-coconut protein dessert balls, and some protein granola;

Frozen strawberry dessert cups; and

An opened bag of frozen blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries, that he had been using for smoothies with a small blender that he had boughten.

. . .

(He also had some various medications and toiletries like lotions and haircare; he seemed particularly attracted to grooming products branded at men.) 

Two eggs in a recent egg carton:

1) One egg seems stuck in and so I work it out from the cardboard carton and crack it, revealing a mostly empty shell and a small pool of white, gummy candy-like substance sitting at the bottom of it.

. . . 

(Apparently, it had subtly cracked somewhere farther up the eggshell, and the rest had drained out some time ago.)

. . . 

2) With another egg from that same carton, the top comes off it when I go to remove it, revealing a single yolk settled at the bottom, and no white around it whatsover.

. . . 

(Apparently, a sort of similar phenomenon had also happened to this egg, although its bottom half was also firmly stuck into the carton to the point where I had to tear out that section of the cardboard carton so I could remove it and throw out what was left of the egg, thus also ruining my chance for carton-reuse, which I do by bringing old cartons in to the university butcher shop so people can repack larger flats of eggs into something more manageable, which those patrons have requested and which the butcher shop managers facilitate by accepting donations of old reusable egg-cartons.)

. . .

 

. . . 

A reflection on (Brazilian) academic exchange.

Before he left, the one (worked out) (STEM) (Brazilian) was telling me more about the “sandwich” year that’s typical in Ph.D.s there, where you go abroad for a semester or two early in your dissertation to work with people in your field, and how it’s such a well-known thing that it’s even listed on your resumes, like where you did your Ph.D. and also where you spent your time during your “sandwich.”

And, he said it’s been typical for a while but Lula really took funding it more seriously, and there are exceptions like someone he knows spent time at a university in (India) and the topic and approach there ended up not being relevant at all to their project, although it seemed like it would be going in, but with his work, (Americans) use different types of mathematics and parameters in modelling the stuff that he models and they do it differently than the way that you’d learn it in (Brazil) from the schools of thought there, and so from his point of view, it’s just hugely worthwhile and he’s just a big, big believer in the system.

And, I can see why the program is effective, and also why it’s a good way for a country with a young university system to invest in its human capital and build up its home-grown knowledge base.

On another, related matter, he was also saying that I should try to teach or work in (Brazil), since “Brazilians love the U.S.”

Another day at work at my new job:

1) As I’m tapering off training, I get assigned a small table of a(n older) (white) couple in the quiet and dimly lit lounge that’s good for dates, and the lady seems high-strung, and she wants to get an Irish coffee, but she says that she’s had it here twice, and the one time was good and the other was not, and she wants to know if the bartender who made it last time is on and I run around and check and she is and so I go run back and tell her that I put the order through, but as soon as I say that she’s like, “Oh no, I don’t want her to make my coffee!”, and so then I have to run around and cancel the order although it’s already in progress, although the (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager is making it, so they end up bringing it out to her anyways.

“Looks like you got a winner,” my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manger) coworker is like, when I apprise her of the situation.

And, she says that we get a lot of “those kind of white ladies” in here.

The entire management team also remembered who this lady was from last time, too, because she kept insisting that they didn’t know how to make an Irish coffee since an Irish coffee always has cocoa sprinkled on the whipped cream on top, except it doesn’t, they were saying.

“That’s it, I don’t want to hear any more about this,” the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager was like, when a group of everyone was talking about this lady and her history and how you make an Irish coffee, just hashing out all the details.

2) Four (South Asian) students come in and end up getting individual meals, and when I collect receipts, it’s $0 tip, $0 tip, $1 tip, and $1 tip.

And, I really want to take a picture of all of those receipts and text it to my one (chubby) (Thai) ex-coworker and to my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) ex-coworker and be like, “See, Indian here too,” only, I don’t want to get caught doing that at my new job and lose my job, so I don’t.