On wages and employment.

The other week, my one (pensive) (Tibetan) coworker introduced me to this new (Tibetan) coworker of ours who was following her around and she was showing her what to do, and she asked me if she looked like anyone in particular.

So, I looked at her a while and then I was like, "Are you guys sisters?", and it turns out that I was right.

Anyhow, her sister works full-time at an upscale grocery chain here in the city, and she's training at the resthome so that she can occasionally pick up a weekend afternoon shift and make a little extra money.

We were talking, and she was saying that not only does she make sandwiches and wraps and that I should stop in to see her if I was by her grocery store chain location, but she was also saying that she has worked there a long time, to the point where she's full-time now and gets a decent raise every year, so that she's at something like $15 or $16 an hour.

Which, is more than I make at the resthome job, and which makes sense, since her (pensive) sister is doing her best to get in full-time there at the upscale grocery store chain.

Recently, I realized that my job is one of the fastest growing in the U.S. and that's probably why I got into it sideways finally after applying for jobs for over a year-and-a-half.

Although it uses 'active listening' skills like you use with students, it really is separate from my training to be a college-level teacher, and by no means does it make full use of my skills or even have compensation enough to give me the minimum stability that I expected to have after preparing for a teaching career for so long.

Statistics say that average pay for what I do is like $24,000 a year, which is nothing, but at least it's a job I could get and at least it's a job in which I can pretty decently easily get forty hours a week of work, thanks to the expansion of health insurance under Obama, not to mention our aging population.

Though, I'm not looking forward to the next decade progressing, and I spend more and more of my day wiping baby boomers' asses.

New public transportation experience:

The other week when I was coming home from work on the subway, a (middle aged) (black) woman got up from the end of the car and moved some seats down, and then when I looked at her and then over to where she had been, I saw like a small roach crawling on the wall over at the end of the subway car.

So, I watched it a bit, and when the roach finally got onto a part of the floor where I had a clear angle, I got up and darted in with my foot and I killed it.

Resthome interactions.

The other week at the resthome, I was escorting the one resthome resident who wants to die, and we saw my one cool (Ethiopian) coworker, who's Muslim and wears a veil.

"How are you, [the resthome resident's first name]?!?!?!", my one (Ethiopian) coworker gushed, and it brought out a big smile on the one resthome resident who wants to die's face.

Right after we left, too, the resident told me, "She's so nice," and it made me think how wonderful it is to see interactions like that between people of different cultural backgrounds, and how America should always be like that.

Repartee with the one resthome resident who's ready to die.

A lot of times when people ask the one resthome resident who's ready to die how she's doing, she just says, "Wonderful," and then sometimes too after a beat she says something like, "I'm not a good liar."

So, the other day when I went in to help her and saw her for the first time that day, she greeted me, and then she asked me how I was doing.

"Wonderful," I was like, which made her laugh.

Then, I was like, "And how are you?".

"Very wonderful," she was like.

Rosh ha-Shanah punning.

Yesterday at the resthome, I heard myself telling a resident, "The rabbi's gonna blow the shofar at five-thirty in the dining room," and as I said it, I realized that the way I say it, "shofar" sounds exactly like "chauffeur."

British dialectalism: "Kitchen roll."

The other week I was at the new apartment of my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) to help her and her partner out setting everything up after their move, and at one point when I was in the dining room and she was in the kitchen, she asked me to hand her the "kitchen roll."

And, I looked around the dining room table, which was pretty much the only thing in the room at that point, and there sitting on it was some paper towels.

"You mean paper towels?", I was like.

"Oh, is that what you call them?", she was like.

Hieroglyph interpretations.

The other week, I was showing my hieroglyphic flashcards to my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair), and I was telling him my whole schtick about how fun and comforting it's been to start learning Egyptian (I forget that Donald Trump exists for hours at a time!).

"Hmm," he was like, and then began improvising off the pictures that he saw.

"The prince stomps on rat," he was like, for the sign combinations that mean "East" (a bud that can look like a rat, a foot, and then a row of hills that sort of looks like a crown).

And, for the sign combinations that form the inflectional ending "-kwi" - a dish, a quail chick, and a little man - he was like, "Always give water to quail chicks."

LOL.

British humor.

It's quite funny to think of Egyptians chipping away at stone forever, to tell each other to always give water to quail chicks.

And a prince stomping on a rat is like a ridiculous riff on ancient history and what people commemorate.

I could never make original (British) humor, but I can sure recognize it when I see it.  It can just be so weird and ridiculous.