Some experiences and perspectives (2 of 2): Chinese-American.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, there was this one (local) (female) (Chinese-American) student who briefly worked there – she got hired and worked for some months and expected to work longer, but a post-graduation job offer came in for her much quicker than she thought – and she said she was once a hostess at a steakhouse in town, and once she got this coat and gave it to this (older) (white) (woman) customer, and she was like to her, “Your English is so good.”

She and my one (Chinese-American) (male) coworker were also saying that having different lunchboxes in elementary school was “a thing” – “Uh yeah, you have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I have these yummy dumplings,” he was like – and he also said that growing up students made many race-jokes about (Asians) (e.g. that the easiest way to blind them is with dental-floss).

Some experiences and perspectives (1 of 2): Chinese from China.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (Chinese from China) coworker says that 80% of people in (China) hate it there, and if they tell you that they like it, don’t believe them, they're lying, they all want to leave.

He also said that there are very few foreigners in (China) now, since the pandemic, and it gives it a much different and more closed-in feel, and that all of the activity around Taiwan makes him nervous, and he foresees war.

On understanding.

Over the past decade or decade-and-a-half, I notice that some of the most sympathetic people who get where I’m at in life are actually the various artists that I know.

They don’t find it odd that people go around to different things and try different things out, since it’s like they would in a practice, and they don’t find it odd that people don’t get traction for stuff, since that happens in a practice, too.

That’s all on top of how essentially all the different research and writing and even much activism I do can often be like an intense ongoing practice that occurs on top of any dayjob that I might hold.

There’s also very specific social dynamics and personal experiences that they just instantly get, too.

Like, when I was saying how I was encountering rough patches for not having branding as a person with different parts of the various work I was doing, my one (art school) colleague who wears (women’s) clothes was automatically just like, yeah, the world really doesn’t ever let you really be more than one thing, like it was wisdom he had from seeing career trajectories of different artists, many of whom never even get known for one single thing.

And, when I had that exceptionally crazy intense experience where I was bringing forth my one huge research finding, I saw the one local animator who I vaguely know, and I apologized for being out of it and I said that I might be odd and out-of-it since I was just in the midst of all this stuff and my head was elsewhere and I had actually just realized some more stuff in another major insight on a long late winter walk right before I saw her, and I also said that I was just very afraid of death right then, and she immediately observed that she felt the *exact* same way many years ago when she was deep in the middle of this one big project that she is known for, where she was actually pleading to the universe, please, don’t let me die know, I need to get this THING out of me, and when she said ‘this THING” and she noted how it was just inside of her, it was like she was exactly describing my feelings, with my unbirthed research finding.

All very odd, but very interesting.

Many artists also have a very open and accepting and non-judgmental vibe, too, and are on board with people who do passion projects.

Memories of the recent eclipse.

Somehow, I missed the one specific fact with the last solar eclipse until the very evening before, that the totality is a categorically different phenomenon than even a very high percentage of coverage, and since I don’t own a car, by then it was too late to make plans and get out of town and travel just a little ways and see it.

Like, there were tinted glasses at the local library and I picked them up and people were saying what percentage we’d have and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones was mentioning the date of the eclipse, but somehow no-one was ever talking about the totality thing, and that information just escaped me until it was just past the verge of too late to make plans to go and see it.

Later, I found out that my one (tall) (skinny) (Latino-American) (just-graduated-from-high-school) coworker actually had been planning a camping trip the whole time and was down in some forest for several days with his dog – and yet he never said anything about these plans to me, until afterwards!

I also found out that the one local (gay) (Colombian) graduate student actually planned ahead a ton and figured out a rental car and a great park that he could go see it from – and again, he never told me any of this until after it was over!

The day of, I met some friends in a local park, and it was interesting to see the change in a familiar environment, and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones said that only two customers came in the entire lunch shift that day at the restaurant, and she called everyone out onto the street to go see the eclipse.

As my one (former assisted-living client) with (disabilities) said, all of those coincidences with my not getting that information was very freaky, and it must have happened for a reason, and it was simply not my time to see an eclipse.

Somehow, I agreed with her – it was just too liminal and dangerous to be in that place then, and be exposed like that…

That was exactly when I was in the middle of my bringing into written form the outline of my gigantic research breakthrough, and it really was like some weird intense birthing process, and somehow I just feel that I was very extremely vulnerable right then, for the duration of that, until it was complete.

Etc. etc. about the restaurant…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) My one (college-age) (Chinese-American) coworker saw me reading something about trans* politics on my phone and we start talking a little about that, and he is very un-self-consciously like, yeah, I’m not really sure that people who’ve gone through male puberty should be competing in women’s sports, and it doesn’t seem like he’s afraid of being “called out” for that at all, or even aware that such a thing could happen to him for holding that opinion and saying it out loud.

2) It’s very interesting how many (Indian) customers want to keep a menu at the table for the duration of the meal, even though they never touch it again, and how many (Chinese) customers want everything to come out at once, and never take home any leftovers.

3) For a button advertising a local vegetarian cooking competition, I tape onto the back of my advertising button this small felt mushroom like a Super Mario Brothers mushroom that has a string coming out of the top and that someone had left at the restaurant and that was in our Lost-and-Found box for like forever, so that when I wear it, the mushroom hangs down on the string from the button as part of additional “fun and wacky advertising” for the local event, and once when it’s colder out, I take a light jacket into work, and when I’m leaving, I put it on and zip it up, and then my (Thai) coworkers point out how the mushroom makes a small sharp mound underneath my jacket, and they say that it looks like my nipple is hard, and so after that I start this thing where when I’m working I stop, jut my chest out, and shake the little mushroom back and forth, like it’s a stripper’s tassel and I’m just there performing in a show, making my little tassel fly back and forth.

Addendum.

At the one wedding I was at, I was catching up with the bride’s one (very nice) (white) aunt who’s recently retired from nursing, and when I mentioned how I was in and out of eldercare since I last saw her, she automatically went into that boomer autopilot pontification mode that people of "that age" often go into and she was all like, “Oh, the most essential positions are always the most low-paid and they’ve never been paid enough,” and I had to be like **coughcoughcough** ummm, I don’t think you quite get how bad payscales have gotten, it’s always been relatively low, but any “step up” paybump has now evaporated in many states as far as I can tell, etc. etc. etc.

It really is something how certain people without direct recent experience really do pretend to know-it-all, even if they’re really nice people.

Like, my one (lawyer) friend from (Missouri) was recently telling me that I can sometimes be a bit “dire” – that’s her new word – and I kind of had to bite my tongue, since she’s been ensconced in a state job for years, and I don’t think she quite gets how severely eroded a number of interlinked sectors are.

Like, it’s not just me, I know people who are in different sectors and I talk to them, and I come across articles in magazines all the time on just these same topics. Like, I seek out other perspectives, and I do accept correction when I find it, but a lot of what I’m keyed into really does seem to be true.

Odd overheard conversation…

…while in line before a recent train ride, while standing in line during what turns out to be a lengthy delay:

A(n older) (white) woman directly in front of me is talking to two young people – one an (almost college-age) (white) (male) and the other an (almost college-age) (black) (female) – and – of all things! – she turns out to be a healthcare instructor at a regional college who teaches for certain eldercare positions, where she was telling them that you can get a license and move up, pay is $16-17 an hour “to start,” you can get all the hours you want and fill in shifts while you go to college for a better position like nursing, etc. etc. etc.

And, it was exactly the same lines that people were saying like a decade ago.

It brought to mind what a (graduate school) colleague of mine had observed to me a number of years ago, that all of these institutions are just up and humming along and behaving like nothing’s changed.

Like, that pay was all right 6-8 years ago, it was more than you could make off-the-bat at retail or many restaurants or whatnot, but it just doesn’t compare anymore – you can make that much at Target, and probably more at many restaurants, even at the shifts you start out at! – and the “fill-in” thing isn’t like the “fill-in” thing of 6-8 years ago, since you’re basically not supplementing manageable situations, but are more than likely walking into severely short-staffed operations where who knows what the heck is going on.

It really is just incredible, to know these things, and to see that.