Some (Thai) In-jokes, with vocal titles.

So, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I learned this basic (I think?) fact about the (Thai) language, that you call someone who’s older than you “Pi-“, and someone who’s younger than you “Nong-“.

(For someone who’s radically younger than you like a small girl or a small boy, you can also say “Nong Leck,” which I applied humorously to my one [younger] [very tall] [Latino-American coworker], once, to great delight from my coworkers, and we now repeat that occasionally.)

So, since one my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones does Pilates, I decided to make a joke of it, and said something about “Pi-[her name] has a friend, Pi-lates.”

At first my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (tall) (new) (Thai) coworker didn’t like that, so, like I often do, I repeated the joke.

Like, when she was getting off shift early, I was like, “Now she is going to have some quality time with Pi-lates,” which they liked better.

Later, too, I made up a scenario and was like, “Do you think she is embarrassed about us? She has a friend Pi-lates, but she never brings Pi-lates to the restaurant.”

I also was saying something about how maybe Pi-lates was in poor health, since she always sees her once a week at the same time in the afternoon, and that’s when hospitals have visiting hours.

They liked both of those jokes, too.

General (Thai) levity…

 …at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, within the past three to four months:

1) My one (younger) (skinny) (techie) (Thai) coworker went to some rave again in the most nearby metropolis, and showed me the video of the people dancing to a DJ that he said was taken in the house, and I asked more and he said the rave was over all three floors of the house, with a different DJ on each floor, and then he showed me a clip of him vaping, and it was done through some video-camera on his sunglasses, and he showed me how it recorded as he looked around and vaped and walked, and took the footage then wherever he looked and walked, and he was showing me all that footage, of him walking around various rooms at the house-rave. 

“I’m half-expecting you to go to the bathroom and it shows me your dick,” I said, to which he did not respond much, though he also did not judge me.

( . . .)

2) Right after New Year’s, my one (younger) (skinny) (techie ) (Thai) coworker comes in late one evening, and at first I don’t realize that he just didn’t come in for his paycheck, but instead came in to eat something, like some special soup that he got from the back with egg noodles in it.

And, it turns out that he hasn’t been home to our prairie-town for like three days, because he was at a rave in the city. 

(Like, there was this soup-bowl served up in back, and on the ordering-touchscreen it was ticketed to some side-account beyond the usual tables, and at first I just assumed it was for my one [older] [Thai] coworker who’s a whiz at the phones, and then suddenly I realized it was for him, sitting at the back table, there.)

Throughout, then, I’d pour him water, and when it was finally time to bring him the bill, I read it out, and said shit like, “Okay, one pad see you, no broccoli, sub ketamine,” and then I immediately corrected myself and was like, “Oh wait, no, you’re thirsty, I don’t mean ketamine, I mean molly, one pad see you, no carrots, sub molly,” and at that he toleratingly laughed at me, and it wasn’t that he wasn’t amused at me, but he wasn’t sure what to do, either.

 (. . .)

On commercialism:

1) Recently, my one (charcoal) shaving bar ran out, and I went back to using a (sandalwood) shaving bar of the same brand, which I do have to admit somehow works better than the (charcoal) one, though good on me for trying something (mildly) new. 

And, I noticed as I opened up the new (sandalwood) shaving bar, that it has imprinted on it “ONE WITH NATURE.”

You really do have to say, isn’t it just wonderful, that you can become one with nature for only four dollars?

. . .

(I somehow feel like this is [British} humor, and I’ve been influenced by those friends of mine.)

 . . .

2) On my recent trip to the local mall to get new (work) shoes -- I do so much walking at work, I'd worn through the soles! -- an empty storefront had the most marvelous stock signs, with people’s happy and expectant faces, and different phrases printed in capital letters that said “START…” and ended with a verbal wish like "HOPING" or "DREAMING" or SHOPPING’ or whatever the f*ck have you.

Only, one had this photo of this super-pensive and mildly-‘froed out (black) girl, and the caption simply said, “START WISHING.”

As we all do nowadays, I immediately captured it on my smartphone and sent it to my one (art school) colleague who wears (women’s) clothes, and, like I was, he was much struck by it. 

“’START WISHING’!”,  he texted me back, more or less.

And, I observed, that it almost seemed like a set-up of some photographer with Brechtian commitments, who had made their home on the prairie.

“We can only hope,” he then texted me back, more or less.

Addendum.

After the (Christmas) party at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and I were talking about it, and, in reference to our (Guatemalan) coworkers, she was like, “They all have kids,” and she said something about them being so young.

“It’s the culture,” I was like, and I said it didn’t seem like a bad thing, since they worked a ton and also they had all their extended family here and people were looking after the kids, so what does it matter.

Also, that same day I asked my one (highly indigenous) (Guatemalan) coworker with the silver tooth or two if he speaks to his daughter in his (indigenous) language, and he says that he does, and I told him that was really, really good.

Christmas at work (3 of 3): Yet more fun.

The last day at work or so before our Christmas closing but after the Santa hat stuff started, I walk in, and my one (Guatemalan) coworker who we started the diablo joke about says hi to me and is like, Que pas-ho ho ho.

A few times I had to ask the kitchen to do stuff, too, and I’d always be like, “Ho ho ho, more work for you.”

Beyond that, we closed early at eight-thirty the final night and pulled the blinds and had a Christmas party, with seafood soup and little steaks and chips and guac and a whole roast turkey and some sweets, and also a very good (Thai) custard cake and a (Thai) custard and this very traditional (Thai) custard thing where you take one of those small little pumpkin gourds like you see at Halloween, core it, dump custard in the center, steam it, and then cut it into slices, where each one ends up being like a bite of custard and then a bite of steamed pumpkin, and each piece looks all nice and layered.

And, the owners had bought a number of items like cookie-tins and giftcards, and we played this game where you had to flip a water bottle and get it to stand upright on its end and then you’d draw a number and get that prize, and everyone would eventually get one, because the owners had used the RSVP list to buy enough prizes for everyone.

Among the guests were the (young) (dressed-up) wife (!!!) and the four-year-old child (!!!!) of my one (Guatemalan) coworker who we started the diablo joke about – they met because he began talking to her over Facebook, and she works at a local country club, first in the dishroom for two years and now in salad bar and she would do kitchen, but she’s not tall enough to reach the stove – and also the two-year-old-ish daughter of my one (highly indigenous) (Guatemalan) coworker with the silver tooth or two.

(At one point the young [Guatemalan-American] son wanted to play the plastic-bottle game, and they gave it to him, and he threw it way too high into the air, and it was coming down near him and so he ducked and put his hands over his head to guard it, all very cute.)

Afterwards, too, they sent us home with the extra food, and I basically asked for the turkey carcass so I could boil it to make soup – turkey broth is so good! – and so I got a plastic takeout bag and schlepped it home with that, in addition to some other food that I stuck in a washed-out-and-reused takeout container that I always have with me, to take my shift dinner home in.

Christmas at work (2 of 3): More fun.

Amidst the lead-up-to-Christmas levity, I worked a shift with my one (tall) (thin) (Latino-American) coworker who recently graduated high school and who is attending community college in the area, and who has a (very white-skinned) (very dark-haired) girlfriend who sings in a punk band and who laughs at my bad jokes and who seems to like me.

So, referring to her with the name that I’ve been using lately, I was like, “So, what are you getting your cool girlfriend for Christmas?”

And, it turns out that he had already gotten her a gift, something that he found online and that he said that he probably spent too much money on, and it was like sculpted barbed wire, only as a bracelet and as a necklace, the latter of which would presumably hang down on her white skin and nestle among her shapely breasts and stand out as barbed wire, and it was like $120 for everything, but that’s what he wanted to get for her.

Also, my one (tall) (new) (Thai) coworker had been asking me a lot about linguistics, and I had been telling her that (Thai) had actually been popping up a lot in patterns of historical evolution in the world’s languages in this book that I’d been reading this summer, and since I’d been telling her I’d bring it in, I did that one day, along with another article, only I messed up reading the schedule and she wasn’t there, and I ended up talking about it with my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones.

And, the article I was reading was about these funky deferential pronouns where different nouns become substituted for words like “I” and “you,” and I showed them the article, and they had to sound out the English letters-spelled words, but then they began recognizing them, and telling me about how they were used in their language.

Like, one word for “slave” that the article said you’d say was a legitimate word and it’d be used in certain contexts, but no-one had really used the word that way in a hundred and fifty years or so, they were saying.

And, they had these examples of these really long titles that were used by a (Buddhist) priest when addressing others and by others when addressing the (King), and they both said that yes, those were both really words that were used, and the last one was super long and I was amazed at it, and so my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker just pulled up some YouTube video of a recent political speech where someone was giving an address to the king, and we just waited, and like twenty seconds or so in, there was that super long pronoun used by someone addressing the (King), and she was like “See, see!”

Later, too, it was time to close, and my task ended up being cleaning the bathrooms, so I asked them what my pronoun would be, as someone who cleans the bathrooms.

“Slave,” my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phone was like, referring to that one pronoun that hadn’t been used in like a hundred and fifty years or so.

. . .

(Interestingly, both said that this super-elaborate pronoun system is something that you’re taught as part of your [Thai] language education, in like late middle school or so. At that point, I guess, they teach you these words for “I” and “you” and stuff that you should only use with [high] [Buddhist] priests and whatnot, in case you’re ever in the situation where you should use them, or if you ever come across them.)

Christmas at work (1 of 3): Fun.

So, in the lead-up to Christmas at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker bought a Santa hat and 2 pairs of reindeer antler headgears and left them around for people to wear.

And, I started wearing the Santa hat all the time, and I’d go to customers’s tables, give them water, and be like, “Ho ho ho, water for everyone!”

Whenever I’d pass a (Guatemalan) coworker in the kitchen, too, I’d say to them, “Permis-ho ho ho” (i.e., a combination of the [Spanish] saying for ‘excuse me’ with Santa’s signature exclamation).

Once, too, I was by a table of three (young) (Chinese from China) (graduate) students, and when I delivered my water with my “ho ho ho” greeting, the one (guy) was like, “Ho ho ho, thank you.”

(I like him!, I thought.)

I also said something about coal for a gift, and I just got blank stares, and so I explained to them that there’s a tradition that good children get gifts for Christmas, but bad children get coal.

“Coal, like you burn?”, said one of the two (female) students, after like ten seconds.

“Yes,” I was like.

Later, too, when my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker had the reindeer antlers on, I told her that she needed red on her nose to be like Rudolph.

“Maybe egg roll sauce,” I was like, and she laughed, as did my one (tall) (new) (Thai) coworker, who was standing right there.

“Or,” I was like, “We can use a maraschino cherry,” which we have for this chocolate cake thing that we have on the dessert menu and that we have to prepare using the microwave.

“But how do you attach it?”, she was like.

And, that flummoxed me for a very little bit, but then I reached over towards the printer that we use for takeout orders, grabbed the stapler, held it up, and was like, “Lean down here on the counter.”

And, my one (tall) (new) (Thai) coworker’s eyes just got really wide, and she just laughed and laughed while covering her mouth, and seemed in some disbelief at the implication of the joke.