On rising generations.

My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was telling me that our one (younger) (techie) (Thai) coworker represents the rising generations, to her:

He wanted to learn programming, so he just went and learned it, and then got a job, and he never really interacted with universities.

She said that's just more and more common, and a friend of hers who teaches in (Thailand) says in her program that she teaches in, there's always 50 seats, but they can only fill like 20 of them.

"Because education does not get you anything, now," my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like.

Some more (non-American) customer behavior...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant that I now work at:

1) A (well-dressed) (well-mannered) (grad student-age) (male) (South Asian) student comes in to inquire about work, and when I offer an application, he seems surprised, declines, and leaves.

(Did he expect an informal economy allowing him to work off-the-books, so he could get income without any paper trail that would violate the terms of his visa?)

2) It's clear by now that many (Chinese from China) students expect to seat themselves, but more than that, to sit at the table, raise their hand to call over a waiter, and then place their *entire* order at that point (including dessert), and to raise their hand at the end when they need the bill and want to leave, after which they occasionally take it up to the register themselves.

(I assume this is how you behave in restaurants in China?)

More lingo from the kids.

The younger generation is starting to say the word "iconic" a lot, to mean something that's highly memorable.

Like, I saw someone describing a very striking photo from social media like that, and then I read an interview with Olivia Rodrigo, where she uses that adjective to describe a big pop album from like 10-15 years ago.

Balzac.

One of the most unexpectedly positive things to enter my life over the past ten to twelve years was being forced to read a Balzac novel back when I was teaching freshman writing in a highly-structured introductory curriculum.

If I hadn't have done that, I don't think I would have ever read a novel by him, necessarily.

And, it's like someone once said about him, the best thing about him is that there's always more.

It really is like you just pick up some random-ass novel of his that you've never heard of before, and it hits all the sweet spots with taking some characters from some social class, describing how and where they live, putting them in some situation, and then you're over and out.

Often, my most favorite parts are where he just spends pages minutely describing shit that really have nothing to do with the plot per se, like what the interior of a whore's apartment looks like in Paris, or the details of some card game that some upper-class provincials have played and have joked about for over fifteen years.

He also has these amazing insights into situations and characters, that I often find myself photographing and texting to friends.

They're just delicious -- it's like he's an inveterate people-watcher -- and like my one (professor) friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature has said, they're probably so much better in the original (French).

The latest novel I'm reading is very weirdly structured, though -- we're a third of the way in, and we're just getting to a chapter where they introduce the title figure, and it's like an entire chapter where someone relates their back-story in a huge detailed monologue.

Even that, though, is endearing to me; it's so nice to have eccentric structures.

A dream of used teabags.

The other week I dreamnt -

I'm somewhere in a sunny kitchen in (Australia), and I'm not there but it's like a movie playing inside my head, and I watch two (middle middle-aged) (white) women just talking, and they're drinking mugs of tea, and one goes to set one teabag up on or pull one teabag down from rows of used teabags on the counter, which is like a wall of them over two feet high and like four feet wide, just neatly sitting up on the counter and filling up the space right up to right underneath the hanging wall cabinets, all for some reason having to do with conservation.

. . .

(When I make tea like rooibos or rooibos chai, I often use the teabag three or sometimes even four times, before I throw it out.)

A jigsaw puzzle idea.

So, I've noticed that vintage jigsaw puzzles with non-digital photography of stuff with different colors and textures and little bits going out of focus here and there can be very fun and satisfying to do.

Also, a lot of people have very scatological tendencies and very scatological senses of humor.

So, I was thinking the other day that a good way to maybe make some money would be to start a line of jigsaw puzzles of different shits, like spattered toilet bowls or big heaping piles or like a Turkish toilet at a roadside gas station somewhere in Anatolia, where it's all stained around the ceramic part that they have marked out for your feet to stand, and there's bits mounding up out of the middle.

It would have the colors, it would have the textures, there would be some variety with depth of perspective thanks to spatters and mounds and sub-mounds, and I think there would be a bigger audience for it than you think.

Bingo!

Is that money I hear?

Coworker interactions (2 of 2): Music.

So, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, there's a new guy in the kitchen, this one (young) (Afro-Latino) (Ecuadorian) guy who you can just tell is very ambitious, and who is always behaving like he's standing outside of himself and is totally aware of everything that is always going on at once.

Like, he seemed preternaturally amused when late on one dinner shift I saw my one (evangelical) (Guatemalan) coworker standing against the ice machine and d*cking around on his phone, and I was like, "Menos telefono, mas trabajo, senor" ('Less telephone, more work, sir').

He also was cuing up salsa music to listen to while washing the dishes, and when I was back in the kitchen he asked me if I liked salsa music, to which I told him, "La mejor musica es marimba" ('The best music is marimba," i.e. the music that [Guatemalans] listen to), at which my one (shorter) (younger) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker just gave me a look and nodded, solemnly and knowingly.

He then said something about bachata, and my one (Guatemalan) coworker who we started the diablo joke about pretended to act dumb and was like, "Horchata?".

So, I started making jokes on that, and being all like, "No quiero bachata, prefiero horchata, soy un gordo" ("I don't want bachata, I prefer horchata, I'm fat"), to general mild amusement.

I think that will be my new joke anytime that someone mentions bachata music, acting confused and saying that I want horchata.