A restaurant trick that's new on me...

...that I saw the other day at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

The one (older) (Thai) worker who's a whiz at the phones was refilling a little sriracha tableside condiment jar from this big plastic jar of sriracha, and I noticed that the safety seal on top hadn't been peeled off, but rather a small triangular notch cut into it at the edge, so that you could safely pour it out bit by bit without having large amounts of it glop over the side.

Observation on an alcholic beverage offering at the (Thai) restaurant.

So, at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we have beer and wine, but no real hard liquor, apart from some chilled sake, including like these like chilled sake etc. mixtures that are kind of fruity and more of a summer-y/(womanly) drink.

And, there's also this new (recent college graduate) (Thai) woman who started working there, and she came up to me after she began waiting on this large table of (South Asians) to ask me if we had sangria, because a guy wanted it.

So, I said no, but I said we could always offer the people this sake thing, so I walked over to the table and explained it to them, and then got the bottles of the different flavors and showed it to them, and I even ended up selling one.

And, after all of that, the new (recent college graduate) (Thai) worker was like, "What is that beverage, exactly?".

And, I explained it to her that it's like chilled sake, but they mix it with other stuff like carbonated water or whatever, and there's like citrus flavors or fruit flavors in there, too.

"So like a sake White Claw?", she was like.

Walking into an obvious joke.

Like last week at work, it was a bit slow at one point and I was chit-chatting in (English) with my one (Guatemalan) coworker who inspired the diablo joke.

(Sometimes I try to speak [English] with them, after several of them mentioned to me that they really want to learn it and they need more practice.)

So, he asked me how I was doing, and because of the weather, I was like, "I'm okay," and then I mentioned something about how it was too hot outside.

And, he was like, "Not for me."

And, as I looked at him quizzically, all of a sudden it dawned on me what he meant and just about as I was going to say something, he broke in with the punchline and was like, "Because I'm diablo."

Novelty ice cream.

At the one supermarket that I shop at, they have an ice cream cooler facing the checkout lanes, and there's often really good deals on ice cream as last-minute impulse buys.

For a while now, they've had every so often a store-brand novelty ice cream inspired by and licensed from a regional sports team, that's like this punk red color like the hair of someone in the Fifth Element, with vanilla swirls and little bits of cookie inside.

So, I ended up buying some, and I have to admit, it was a lot tastier than I thought.

Like, the fruit flavor tasted really like fruit, and not artificial at all.

And, the cookie bits weren't so much cookie bits, but like little outsize BB pellets of something like chocolate or vanilla frosting, perfectly encircling a little spherical mini-wafer and keeping it perfectly safe and crisp.

Overall, I was very surprised, but honestly, you look at that shit, and you even eat it and you hit one of those BB pellet things, and you know it just can't be healthy.

A conversation with my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker...

...who has also been eating a lot of cherries this summer, since we've been catching the same sales at the local grocery store:

Me (chitchatting with her as she folds silverware): "Do you want to know my deep dark secret?"

Her (gives a sharp serious nod, not looking up from what she's doing): [ - - - ]

Me: "I eat so many cherries that I have to go to the bathroom a lot."

Her (suddenly looking up at me, and laughing): "Ohhhhhh, but it happens!"

Addendum.

Something else I've been noticing with that one dead language that I've been studying a lot recently is how many academics narrowly divide up chronological stages, and never look to either side...

That makes sense for finding small things to say quickly, but you can't really do the large-scale diachronic work that the field needs.

It's like the whole professional academic system militates against the type of skills-building and broad thinking that you really need to critically grapple with material, and break down bad theories and build up new ones.

Some mild optimism.

I've been increasingly optimistic about my research on that one dead language that I've been working on a for a number of years, now.

I had already brought with me necessary knowledge around the most modern stage, and now -- much faster than I ever anticipated! -- I've developed some baseline competency in the necessary scripts.

My last research project has also helped me realize major categories of flaws in current scholarship, whereas I used to be a lot more trusting with it, like there was a "there there" when something was difficult to understand.

Really, from here on out it seems like it's more cake, where you just keep up script knowledge and memorize words and read around in scholarship and different texts of different eras, and wait until you have ideas.

Like, I have around 4-6 major questions right now around stuff that doesn't seem to make sense, although I don't have any answers for any of it, yet.

To some extent this stuff is unpredictable, like when I'll have a major insight that I can move forward on, but I've already done a huge amount of the skills-building to have a foundation where I can do that work.

It really is like a linguist friend said to me once, it takes you five years before you can say anything.