A story of two tables...

 ...at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) After overhearing a bunch of (white) (STEM) graduate students talk about some PI who seriously "traumatizes" everyone he works with and it's an open secret that the department just lets go on and on and on, I mention later that I overheard them and give them the term "academic bullying" and several easy initial resources, and one (fatter) (woman) writes it down.

(At the end, a[n athletic] guy picks up the bill for everyone and it's like $54, and he leaves a $5 tip.)

2) Some (younger) (South Asian) guy with a (South Asian) girl is in at the very end of the night and even though we say that the kitchen is closing very very shortly, like in 3-4 minutes, he says that he wants more time to look at the menu.

(Tip is $0, to which my one [chubby] [Thai] is like, "Seriously?!", and my one [older] [Thai] coworker who's a whiz at the phones says that with customers like that who want more time when the kitchen is closing, she's always fantasized about saying "Okay," and then when they finally say they're ready to order, to be like, "Sorry, kitchen is closed.")

(Thai) delicacy.

The other night at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, right before we were about to go home, the one owner with the tired face was coming in when we were closing out the register, and she had me try this (iced) (dark blue) (chilled) (herbal tea) drink made from dried flowers that you go and squeeze a lime into and it turns a cloudy purple.

"It's very good for health," she was like, and she said it was very traditional Thai, and it lowers your cholesterol and stuff like that (she had it in a little plastic bottle that she was reusing, and it was obvious that she had made it up for herself and her family as something to have around the house during this hot part of the summer).

It was a bit sweet and quite good, and since it's so refreshing, I almost want to tell them that they should make that to sell during the summer. I think people would love it, especially since people in a college town are open-minded and like authentic stuff from other cultures, and especially since I've never seen it sold at a (Thai) restaurant anywhere.

The only thing, though, is that I wonder if its health effects would trigger conditions in some customers, and f*ck them up somehow.

"Traditional" "herbal" stuff can do that sometimes, and you have to wonder if it's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

I did reach out to one (American) guy who I know who lives over there in (Thailand), though, and he actually sells some at a beachfront restaurant that he and his girlfriend run, so I guess it's unproblematic and legit?

But, you still have to wonder.

Repairs comment.

Last week in the middle of the night when a storm was coming in, I got up to go the bathroom and when I went to go flip on the lightswitch in my little cottage, it didn't go on, and for a second I thought the power was off, but then I realize I can still hear my box fan blowing and then I feel a drip fall onto my face, and then I realize that there's a leak starting right around the combination ceiling fan/light.

And, since I had already used my anti-procrastination app to block net on my smartphone until much later the next day, I couldn't do anything but wait until morning and pop into the library around the time that I was going to the farmer's market so that I could go and email the landlord, this (short and trim) (late 50s) (white) (conservative-leaning) doctor who is mildly hyperactive and very conscientious.

I ended up calling him, too, and he was on a short weekend trip with his family, but he said it was fine since the circuit was broken off like it should be in situations like that, so there wasn't a a risk of fire, and he'd be over the next day as soon as he got back.

He did come over then, too, and he drained the water that had pooled in the light fixture, and he looked around on the roof and realized that a plastic cuff that goes around an external chimney pipe there had broken and that that was what was letting the water in, and he told me all of that.

"It's good to know that at least this place is still safer than a Titanic submersible," I was like.

And, he didn't know what to say at first, but then he was like, "Pretty much everything else is."

Another sign of summer's course:

The other night right after dusk when I was returning from an evening walk down a quiet sidestreet, far off in the deep shadows beyond some houses set amidst some greenery and trees, I could hear the calls of a treefrog, the first calls that I'd heard all year.

Conversation with an app developer.

Through people around town I happened to meet a (somewhat out-of-shape) (prematurely balding) (South Asian) (graduate student) who works on language apps a few months ago, and when I randomly met them, I mentioned that I have been using DuoLingo to learn and refresh different languages that I need for fun and scholarship and whatnot.

And, he said that it was their competitor, and he started going into this whole big long thing about how it's not just learning a language, it's learning a culture, and it seemed like he was implying that DuoLingo doesn't teach culture but his competitor app would, and he just kept going on and on and on.

So, I put on a face and got indignant and was like, "Yes, I've been studying French for two months now, and none of my content has been anti-Semitic! Imagine, to learn French, and none of the content is anti-Semitic!"

And, I looked at him with a face like I was expecting agreement.

And, he didn't know what to do, and he really didn't have a response.

He soon began talking with someone else.

Another day at the (Thai) restuarant...

 ...where I work at now:

1) When it's slow and I'm in back by the deep fryer, my one (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) coworker asks me if I go to church, and I say no, and then he asks me if I believe in God, and I say I'm not sure, and then he asks me why not, and I say because I haven't had an evangelical conversion experience, and he doesn't know what to say to that, and so we both go back to doing whatever it is that we do when it's slow there.

2) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker when ordering for lunch mentions she's not getting meat because she made a vow and her wish was answered, and she had pledged to eat no meat for a month if that happened. So, it happened, and she isn't. She says that they do that a lot in Thailand.

A day at the (Thai) restaurant...

 ...that I work at now, the other week:

1) This (older) (white) customer is very insistent that he wants a side of hoisin sauce for his pad thai because it "adds so much to the dish" and I have to all be like, "Sir, I'm not sure that we have that," but then I go check in the kitchen for him and we do end up having it because we use it in one dish (the mongolian beef), and so I put some in a little tin serving cup and bring it out to him, and he tells me that he thought we'd have it, and at this other (Thai) restaurant that he goes to, they even have it out in little bottles on every table, he likes it so much and he thinks that's just great.

2) The (old) (very short) (sourfaced) (homeless) (white) woman who sometimes smells like (urine) and who I've had to increasingly shoo away from the patio tables at lunchtime had left her plastic bag of stuff out by the patio tables the previous night before and had never come back to retrieve it, so I go to go throw it out, and spilling out of the plastic bag are a neatly cut and freshly Ziplocked half-sandwich where the bag is open at the edge and some ants are crawling into it, and a somewhat crushed but otherwise clean plastic bottle of water with the bottle label still on it, and some dirty panties, but not dirty like ass dirty, but dirty like from being otherwise clean, and then laid up against something with a fine layer of dustlike dirt on it, leaving these varying bar streaks of umber dirt against the pastel yellows and blues.

3) Two (middle-aged) (very fat) (low-class) (white women) app delivery drivers come in, just apple-shaped and waddling all around and throwing attitude everywhere they go, and they have these little children who are running around and piping up a yell here and there and going around by the front door and sometimes putting their hands everywhere onto it and leaving all of these greasy marks, and somehow they both don't seem to be in there for the same order, there's just coincidentally just like two of them and they both happened to come in around exactly the same time, and they are just both in there fat and casting attitude everywhere they go, and they're both there for like all of five minutes, and then they are gone.