"Jaded."

The other week I caught up with a college friend and someone else who lives in the same town, a guy who I know from my Ph.D. program, and it turns out that they went to high school together, or rather were a year apart in high school and vaguely knew about each other from that period in their lives.

Anyhow, the guy from my Ph.D. program was interested to know the biggest different between me then and me now, and my college friend said that pretty much a lot was the same with me, only now I was a bit more "jaded" about the world, where I was still enthusiastic to go out and engage things and learn about random stuff, but I was just "jaded" now, somehow.

I think, for example, when he was quizzing me about city politics and whether they were really changing, I pointed out how it seemed to me that wealth inequality and social tension would continue to increase for the foreseeable future, given the magnitude of the problems and the lack of any real major solutions on the table, not to mention how the stuff being sold as the most progressive thing possible like the push to raise the minimum wage a buck or two was actually just barely making things tolerable, in terms of being able to make ends meet for like 90% of the population.

Anyhow, later that night I mentioned that to a bartender I know who works downtown, that a guy who knew me for a long time had observed that I was now "jaded," and he was like, "Buddy, they call that 'life.'"

Addendum (2 of 2): Amharic.

I'm very interested to see what Amharic is like, when that phrasebook finally comes in.

Amharic is from the same language family as Hebrew and Egyptian and from phrases I've learned from coworkers I've already noticed a few similarities here and there in the way that the language works - like, for example, it has separate male and female forms that go with the word "you" - but I wonder what else I'll notice, when I get to see the grammar written down about more extensively.

It's kind of silly, but it'll be fun, and that kind of random residual knowledge never really hurts anything.

Addendum (1 of 2): Spanish.

The one little phrasebook that I loaned my one (pensive) (Tibetan) coworker was Spanish-from-Spain Spanish and not Spanish-from-Mexico Spanish, but I pointed that out to her, and told her that words and a little grammar might be different here and there.

I remember that I saw that in the phrasebook when I bought it, but I like the series, so I decided to buy it anyways.  I had the one for French when I travelled in West Africa years ago, and it was extremely handy.

Resthome Coworkers and Languages (2 of 2): More for Me.

After my one (pensive) (Tibetan) coworker asked me for Spanish language book recommendations, just for the heck of it I decided to find some cheap (Tibetan) and (Amharic) phrasebooks online, so I could take them into work and have fun with them.

The (Tibetan) one arrived right before I was bringing in the (Spanish) ones for her, so I took that in, too, and I had a lot of fun with her and another (Tibetan) coworker who were working that day.

I already knew a few of the greetings, but I was able to look up topical sayings like "The weather is windy" and "This room is cold" and they got a kick out of that, and they also helped me with my pronunciation.

Later, too, at the end of our shift, I saw both of them sitting down, so I pulled out the little phrasebook and asked them in Tibetan if they were tired, which made them laugh.

From everything that I can tell about Tibetan, its pronunciation and grammar seem easy, though all the words are short and seem alike to me.

Resthome Coworkers and Languages (1 of 2): More for them.

My one pensive (Tibetan) coworker asked me for advice on learning Spanish, since she also works in an upscale grocery store in food prep and her coworkers there largely speak Spanish in the kitchen.

First off, since she used to be a teacher back in India, she's very educated, so I quickly quizzed her on English vocabulary like "carnivore," which she knew, so I told her that it would be easy for her to memorize words like "carne" for "meat" because of similar vocabulary in English and Spanish due to Latin and French words in English.

Second off, I told her that I had a few good books that I'd bring in the next time that we worked, so I did, and she's currently looking through them and thinking about getting copies.  One is a nice little phrasebook that's set up well, and another is a larger, clear grammar, in case you want to dig in deeper on any particular aspect of the grammar.

Isn't it kind of cool, that this (Tibetan) woman from India who knows Tibetan and Hindi and English, is now learning Spanish?

What a wonderful world we live in.

Secret Pleasure of Texting my Coworkers.

You know what I love?

Texting coworkers from my one resthome job about shift changes and whatnot.

It's supercool that I work with people from all over the world, and we're known to each other, and I have texts from (Tibetan) and (Ethiopian) people right there on my phone.

That's really what living in a city should be, but I didn't have that before, working in academia.

Crack of the one resthome resident who wants to die.

The other week, the one resthome resident who wants to die ordered dinner in her room just like she has a lot of times before, only this time she ate the most I've ever seen her, all the soup and all the salad and all the entree and all the dessert.

"Wow, you ate a ton," I was like, when I went to go help her clean up.

"Yeah," she was like, "I'll be a well-fed body."