More Katy Perry release streaming.

A bit ago when I was going at the end of the night to go stream the new Katy Perry album over Spotify at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, to help Katy with her streaming numbers, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like, "People don't do that for Lisa" (i.e. Lisa from the K-Pop group BlackPink, who now has a solo career).

"But Lisa doesn't need help," I was like, to her.

. . .

On another note, she told me that a lot of (Koreans) don't like Lisa, since she's so big and she's not (Korean) (Lisa is like Thai descent, and got tapped to go through the K-Pop training machine).

"How many followers does she have on Instagram?", I was like, and she told me, and then I asked about BTS, and it turns out that Lisa has double the numbers of BTS.

"It sounds like they're jealous," I was like.

"You said it, not me," my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like, very seriously and very tempestuously, in a manner that gave a suggestion of nothing so much as a very high level of personal involvement.

A very full day of restaurant life...

...a few weeks ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, when I end up working a double on a weekday:

1) When I open the door for the day, there's some peeled-plastic decal above the door in (Chinese) seeming to be something about some new payment app, and I am not sure if the owners agreed to have that put there, or this was some random advertising event that happened without anyone's permission being involved at all.

2) When three (cleancut) (young enough) (white) guys in (business attire) beat down the door right as we open, right when I go to interrupt their discussion of finance and take their order, I find that my pen doesn't work, and I realize that there's a little plastic cap on the tip of the pen since I had just gotten a new pen at the local bank that I go to, so as I start to fiddle with it and try to pick off the plastic with my fingernail, I'm all like, "I'm sorry, if you don't mind, I need to wait one second, my pen isn't working right now since I just got a new one at the bank...", at which point one of the guys asks me which bank I use, and I tell him, and he's immediately like "Ahhhhhh, that's the problem, you should come bank at [name of the other bank two blocks away from my bank], our pens work."

3) As I undertake my "daily battle with the leaves" and sweep the sidewalk out in front of the restaurant and then the leaves that have blown in the front door, there's actually so many leaves that have blown in since they're really coming off the trees and since it's really windy, too, that I actually have to once go and empty out my caddy dust-bin that I was sweeping everything into, and then when I start up again with the sweeping, I fill the caddy dust-bin halfway again, that's how many leaves there were that day.

4) Since I was taking over the lunch shift for my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker -- she had texted me late the night before, saying her daughter was feeling sick and she should probably stay home from school and she should stay with her, can I work for her tomorrow -- I told my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, "Hi, I am [the name of my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker], it was a busy morning, I forgot to put on makeup, this is what I look like without makeup." Then, later I was saying that I should go home on break and put my makeup on so that I can make better tips, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like, "And your wig, you forgot your long black wig, remember to put on your long black wig."

5) My (newer) (pretty monolingual) (older lady) (Chinese-Thai) coworker is working the curry station, and her shirt that day is black, with a few big embossed gold starts along her shoulders and shirt-front.

So, when there's a moment, I point to those, and I slowly say, "You are my star," at which point she laughs, and forces out (English) words with bad pronunciation that take me a minute to get, that "I am superstar of the kitchen."

6) At a table of two (jumpy) (middle-aged) (white woman), one with a dour and angry face and (dyed) black hair, and the other a (frizzy redhead), they're talking something about some firing somewhere, and the redhead is like, "Welcome to our drama," and I'm like, "Oh no, nope nope nope nope nope, no thank you, no drama for me, please!", and I theatrically hold up my hands and back away from the table, and a bit later when I go to take their order, the (frizzy redhead) orders a curry with "no meat because I'm vegan and no mushrooms," which order can be done but doesn't really correspond to the way that the item is listed in our menu and it's not even clear that she's even looked at the menu, so I point out the vegetable mix and verbally list the ingredients in that, and then I show her the other ingredients listed for that particular curry, and that's all fine, "but no mushrooms and please say I'm vegan," and then I take the other lady's order, and then the (frizzy redhead) jumps in again and says she need a big plate to mix her curry on, and "a butter knife," and I say "of course" and then I finish taking the rest of the other lady's order, and then the (frizzy redhead) jumps in again, and as I'm writing the other lady's order down, she says she wants a Thai iced tea.

Only, after I bring it, two minutes later, she's calling me back, and asking if that's milk in it, and I say oh yes, it is, I'm sorry, and she was like, "But I said I'm vegan," and I was like, "I'm sorry ma'am, but we were talking about a lot of different things and jumping around a lot with the order, and people have different definitions of what vegan and vegetarian mean, and that's not usually a substitution we do and we didn't specifically talk about that particular substitution, so I just took the order as-is and I just did it the usual way without thinking," at which she started to bristle -- had the milk already touched her lips and tongue and contaminated them, or worse still, had it reached her stomach, and through digestion had it begun to be part of her? -- so I was like, "In the future, please specify a request for coconut milk at the time of ordering, to make sure it comes out right," and she started to bristle again, and I was like, "Oh no, we'll replace that, but please specify a request for coconut milk at the time of ordering in the future, please, so that it comes out right the first time."

Later, too, her dining companion with the dour and angry face was still in the middle of lunch and said she wanted a to-go box, and I said we could size that up and take care of that at the time of the bill, and later when I came up to start taking care of their bill, she was like, "And where is my to-go box?".

7) A Costco giftbox with cheese, sausage, and crackers arrived at the restaurant by UPS for me -- my parents had really helped out some neighbors and they got that for them as a thank-you, and as soon as my parents opened the thank-you package, they thought, "We are never going to eat this much food," and so my mom thought to send it to me so I could take it into the restaurant for everyone and we could all eat it together -- and so my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker picked out the smoked gouda to open first, and so I did that, and I made up little sausage plates to keep up front and to put in the back for everyone, including with this sweet-hot mustard that also came in the giftbox.

So, when I was pointing out the food items to my (Guatemalan) coworkers, I was like, "Hay mostaza, es dolce y piquante" ("There's mustard, it's sweet and spicy") -- at which point I paused and intoned again the words "dolce y piquante" ("sweet and spicy"), and then suddenly I cocked my shoulders a bit back in an unconventional but highly dramatic posture and I also put on a dramatic face and I further intoned, "Como yo" ("Like me"), all with highly dramatic pausing, throughout.

8) A (very thin) (ungroomed-haired) (knitwear-wearing) (HAPA) lady who once references living in San Francisco comes in with her (older) (slow-moving) (vaguely HAPA-looking) mother, and after double-parking and walking her in from the curb and I go to get a firmer chair with arms for the mom to sit in, she goes outside to get the car and go park somewhere, and while that's happening I go to check if the mom who's sitting alone is taken care of, and she seems a little scattered but she also insists that she wants a cup of soup right then with chicken but not so big pieces, and I say that we can do that, and she wants tom yum soup, and since people always confuse tom yum soup and tom kha soup, I make sure she knows what tom yum soup is by leading her through the description on the menu, and that's what she wants, and they start the order in the back, and she decides on a fried rice entree but wants to wait to order that until her daughter comes in, and then the daughter finally comes back in, and she finds out that the mom ordered tom yum soup and says she should have tom kha soup since it's not as spicy, and I say that she ordered the tom yum soup not that spicy although there's a little spice automatically in the broth, and the daughter says some stuff to the mom and then turns to me and was like "she only picked the other soup since the tom kha had big pieces of chicken in it before," and I start explaining that the cooks have cut up the chicken into smaller pieces this time and at that point the bell in the kitchen goes off, and I'm like, "Oooh, you know, the soup is already ready," and the daughter doesn't seem too happy, though it seems like the soup turns out to be fine, and anyhow they order and the mom is confused if she ordered her fried rice already, so we get that straightened out, and then half-way through the meal the daughter says she wants a tofu curry but only if we have "non-GMO tofu," and she says that she has asked about that before but she forgets if we have it or not, it should be listed on the original tofu package wherever we keep that, and so I go in back and check, and it's non-GMO, and she says she wants some for here and the rest to go, and so I say that we can order it for here and then we can bring out to-go boxes for the rest, and that's cool, and then like five minutes later she runs up to the front counter and says that we can bring a little out and box the rest, and I say we really don't do that, it has to be all one way or all the other, so it's best to have it brought out and then they can pack up the rest, and anyhow at the end of the meal, then, the mom wants some tea and asks for some sugar with it, too, and the daughter starts asking her why she needs sugar with her tea, and when I bring out the tea I decide to bring the little plastic open-top box with sugar and sweetener packets to the table since that's what the mom requested and she's the one ordering, and when I set it down and the mom reaches out to get one, the daughter immediately puts her hand on top of it to block it and she shoves the box back towards me as she cries out, "No!! That's poison for your brain," and then she turns to me and is all calmly like, "She won't be needing this."

9) Since it's a slower lunch shift and the owners aren't there, I have more leeway to order a staff meal, and so I get a more-elaborate soup that's hard to transport, and so I dine in with the others while we're closed for the afternoon lull, and I can hear from a few tables over a few of my (Guatemalan) coworkers talking in their indigenous language, and later my one (newer) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker explains to me in (Spanish) about the folklore dances in her area which is a different area than where the others are from, and they all show me some videos from TikTok and Instagram including some logoed influencer channel called "Guategram," and later she tells me about the (Guatemala)-particular celebrations of Day of the Dead, complete with online videos about this special dish that they make only there in the Yucatan, and also later she comes up to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker with something she'd translated on her phone from (Spanish) to (English) and it said that she'd talked that day with our one previous (young) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker who had moved away to a different state for a job nearer family, and anyway, she said to say hi to me and to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker.

10) During quiet moments of the nightshift, I am using my flashcards to review writing and vocab for the one ancient language that I've been studying intensively for quite few years now, and my coworkers notice, and so I explain some cultural stuff with that ancient culture to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones, as they try to guess what some of the images are.

A recent-ish afternoon:

1) When I call up my one (hippie) friend from (Michigan) to check in to see if she wants to do this one kind of super-tough crossword that we do together over the phone, like we had planned to maybe do that afternoon, it turns out that it's a bad time for her after all, since she was getting ready to meet her aunt and go to dinner at her grandparents.

"And I had the worst hot flash an hour ago that I'm still recovering from," she was like, adding that it runs in her family and that her mom had that stuff even earlier than at her age.

Then, to close off that bit of the conversation, she was like, "And I'm sure you can identify with being perimenopausal."

"Yeah," I was like. "I hate how my vag is dry and gets all torn up."

At which, not even missing a beat, she was like, "I wish my vag was getting all torn up."

2) When I'm finishing shopping at the local grocery store, I look at my cart, and the top is several packs of Lavazza espresso and a couple big bags of celery.

So, I immediately photoed it and texted it to a few friends, that here I was, having the diet of a supermodel.

I said the same thing to the (younger) (black) (female) cashier, too, and we both laugh about it, and then when I'm leaving the store, who comes out of a different cash register row but my one (newer) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker, who had come there during her break to get something for her cell phone, which she should have done yesterday, but she didn't, she said, since it was too cold out then.

And, she said that she knew it was me, since she heard my laugh.

So, I showed her the espresso and the celery and asked her what the word for celery is in Spanish (apio), and so I explained the joke to her by pulling out the objects and being like, "Mira, espresso y apio, tengo la dieta de un supermodel" ("Look, espresso and celery, I have the diet of a supermodel").

She seemed to appreciate that and laughed, so then I did the next stage of the joke, pulling out a gallon of ice cream that I had bought on sale.

"Y helado, quiero comer todo el helado, y vomitar," I was like ("And ice cream, I want to eat all the ice cream, and vomit").

She also appreciated that and laughed again, and we ended up walking the few blocks back towards downtown, and I dropped her off back to work at the alley that goes to the restaurant's backdoor.

. . .

(I love how I'm just this guy now, who sees a [Spanish-speaking] [immigrant] at the local chain supermarket in this semi-rural place, and she says hi and we chit-chat, and then we share a stroll together. What a life. It's very rich.)

Katy Perry album release.

After Katy Perry released her last album, fans were trying to make sure to always stream it, to help her chart numbers.

So, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I'd cue it up on Spotify at the end of the night after customers were gone, and we were doing our finishing tasks.

"Katy needs our help!", I'd tell my front-of-the-house coworkers.

"Yeah, sure," my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones was like.

But, later, though, out of nowhere, she told me that her favorite song was "Wonder," because of the meaning.

A memorable watermelon...

...that was like the 3rd or 4th last one of the year, that I got at the farmer's market from the one (nice) (multi-generational) (Mexican-American) family with the stand positioned over towards where the farm-stands bleed into the craft-stands that form the majority of the market:

It sat on my counter for like three days, and just when I was getting ready to transfer it into the fridge, I notice that the small section that's a little rough with dirt that got pressed into the rind as it grew has like some dew forming on it, so I wipe that off, and then the next time that I look at it a bit later that same day, it's there again, and there's also just the tiniest bit of water trickling down from that patch onto the dinner-plate beneath it, so I decide to see what's up and eat some right away if I can, and as soon as I sink the knife in towards the top of the watermelon, there's this giant hissing sound like internal gas escaping, and bubbles start rapidly forming and popping at the slit that I just made, like whatever was happening in there had been forcing out the juices through the compromised rind, and now it could finally escape.

. . .

(I threw it out, of course, and I felt bad not only for the food-waste, but also for the $7-8 that I spent on the melon, though the next week they were trying to get rid of end-of-year melons and I got two for $3 each, so I feel like it all evened out in the end.)

New joke at work.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, the (newer) (older) (female) (pretty monolingual) (Thai-Chinese) cook who usually runs the curry station occasionally wears this t-shirt-like shirt that is covered over every inch with repetitions of the word LOVE in a very attractive font.

So, like right away, I began pointing that out to her and my front-of-the-house coworkers, saying stuff like, "Here, we cook with love."

Then, I'd start to make comparisons, like, "Here, we cook with love, though we don't serve with love, we just cook with love, and only sometimes."

Then, I started to do that in (Spanish) with my (Guatemalan) coworkers, pointing at her t-shirt and being like, "Aqui se cocina con MUCHO AMOR" ("Here, we cook with a lot of love"), or putting on an ingenuous and mildly accusatory face and being like, "Porque tu no cocinas con mucho amor? Es posibile, ella cocina con mucho amor" ("Why don't you cook with a lot of love? It's possible, she cooks with a lot of love").

And, I started doing variants of that all day, like going up to the dishwasher and being like, "Senor, estas limpiando los vasos con amor?" ("Mister, are you cleaning the glasses with love?"), or when someone took out the rice from the rice warmer and put in a big fresh new pot of steaming rice, I'd stroll over and contemplate it like I was inspecting it, and then I'd turn to them and be like, "Donde esta el amor? Veo el arroz, pero no veo el amor" ("Where is the love? I see the rice, but I don't see the love").

Like, it got to the point where one of the dishwashers came up to the bussing station to take back a bin of dirty dishes from the dining room, and I heard him saying sing-songily to himself to no-one in particular, "Mucho, mucho amor" ("Lotta lotta love").

My favorite variant was at the end of the night when I was walking through the kitchen to take the trash out to the dumpster in the back alley, and as I did that, I said to one of the dishwashers, "Senor, mira, voy ensenarte, estoy andando afuera con la basura, con mucho, mucho amor" ("Mister, look, I am going to teach you, I am walking outside with the trash, with a lotta lotta love").

I was also asking the one (older) (male) (Chinese-Thai) cook why he wasn't cooking with love, and the one (younger) (Lao) cook said that I needed to buy him a t-shirt.

Alternately, I suggested, I could get him glasses with heart-shaped lenses, much like I think John Lennon used to wear.

At one point, too, the (newer) (older) (female) (pretty monolingual) (Thai-Chinese) cook took the little black serving tongs that we use to put fresh-cut carrots and bean sprouts on the pad thai dishes, or fresh-cut cucumbers and chopped green onions on the fried rice dishes, and she pretended to graciously pick off individual iterations of the word LOVE from her t-shirt-like shirt, and to put them on my shirt, to give me more love for the doing of my job.

A minor cabbage horror.

So, at the last farmer's market of the year, I bought a head of cabbage for cheap, and I threw it on the top rack of my refrigerator to pull out and chop up and make sauerkraut, whenever the next time arrived that I needed to make sauerkraut.

And, it sat there for like 2-3 weeks, a bit dirty, and with the very outer leaves starting to turn a rotting dark yellow-green.

Then, when the day finally came when I needed to make more sauerkraut, I pulled out the head of cabbage and set it on a plate so that it would get to room temperature, by the time that it came to washing and chopping up the head, for the making of the sauerkraut.

And then, later that day when I had gotten out the chopping board and went to go grab the head, I noticed an inordinate amount of dirt on the counter and up by the cabbage-stem, and I look, and it's like small pieces of dirt, but they're all kind of the same size, like specks of push-open thick plastic coin-wallets, fat in the middle, but tapering to a point on each end.

I didn't even look too closely since it disgusted me so much, but somehow I knew that they were all small insects that must have been inside the cabbage, and then when I went and put it in the fridge, they began to freeze to death, and so emerged from inside the leaves and huddled on the stem for warmth, where nevertheless they ultimately perished.

I wiped the counter right away, and I took the plate and dumped the "dirt" in the sink and washed the plate, and then I cut off the stem and removed the outer leaves as best I could, throwing them in the little plastic bag that I keep in my sink for vegetable waste.

Only, when I cut the head in half and began peeling away the good leaves, occasionally I'd see one of those specks inside, usually a few inches up from the bottom.

So, I got out my spaghetti drainer and set it in the sink along with the two halves of the cabbage head, and then I took one half and peeled away the leaves one at a time and washed them each under running water carefully, before putting them on my cutting board, and I kept doing that until I got down far enough to where the leaves grew so densely together that there was no risk at all of a bug worming its way inside and still being there.

And, I did that for the entire cabbage, to wash off all the insects but still salvage the cabbage for use.

Like, even though it was weird and freaky and disgusting, I mean, it's not like I was going to throw that away.

Afterwards, too, I began to think of all the fruit and vegetables that I eat each day, and I began to think about all the insects that have walked across each bit of every single one, and it was like this overwhelming feeling of personal contamination, to the point where I got mildly sick and had to stop thinking in that direction about it at all.