Another sign of increasing local homelessness.

At the beginning of this winter at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, when it was the very dark part of winter and it's super dark when you open the restaurant for dinner, this (wild-eyed) (unshaven) (mid-60s) (white) (man) with a battered brown coat and knit cap comes into the restaurant walking a bit too fast, and as he walks back towards the back counter and I'm walking up front to go do something, he turns and asks me if we have Taiwanese beer.

And, I immediately see he's off, so I'm like, "I'm sorry, Sir, but we don't carry that," and then as I'm up towards the front of the restaurant, I see him waiting behind some customers waiting to get their take-out, and then as I'm moving back towards there, suddenly he's having words with one, and he's like, "I spit on your grave!", and I keep my eye on him as I keep doing what I'm doing and I go back up front to take an order of a table by the window, but as I do so, I feel in my back pocket to see where my pepper spray is and if it'd be ready for him should he try anything, and I also make sure to stand at a cross-angle as I take the order so I can watch him out of the corner of my eye wherever he is in the restaurant, so there'd be no surprises like suddenly somehow he comes up to me from behind and he's on top of me before I know it.

And, his voice raised, he says two more angry comments at that customer where he said that he'd spit on their grave, and then he begins walking fast again and heads out the door of the restaurant, as I keep my body positioned at that angle so I can rapidly get my pepper spray and turn towards him face-to-face, should he try anything, though he doesn't, he just ups and leaves, after all that.

. . .

Never seen him before, and never seen him again -- it's just something that happened.

Addendum.

The kids of my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) really liked this one lemon poppy seed bread that I brought them once, so I've made sure to try to bring it for them every visit, and they've even taken to calling it "[my first name] bread," though as my friend says, "I don't know why they call it bread, it's all sugar, they should really just call it 'cake.'"

Anyhow, when I arrived for my last visit, I had two small loaves of that for them, but the kids weren't home yet, and she didn't want them to see it and eat it and ruin their dinner, because she knew that they would want some right away, so she said that she was going to hide it and say that I forgot it but I'd drop it off early tomorrow morning for them (they like to have it at breakfast, I guess, and she was okay with that for them, then).

And, she did say that to them in front of me, and the kids totally bought it.

"Aren't parents creative?", my mother was like, when I told her that story over the phone, afterwards.

Genre and vomit humor.

On my last trip to the city that I used to live in, I caught up with the family of my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair), and her husband was asking me what I did over the holidays.

And when I said not much of anything, and I added that I've never been much of a holiday person, he was like, "This is exactly like the first scene of a Hallmark Christmas movie."

Also, their young son showed me the spot on the dining-room floor where he had vomited a month ago when he had the flu, and I think I said something like that's okay, but I hope that he didn't vomit on anyone, and somehow that started a game where he and his older sister would run up to me at random times and make vomiting noises and pretend to vomit all over me.

My friend's husband also said that at his son's pre-school, they have an activity where they talk about one thing they did that past weekend, and they list it on the board, and the list was something like so-and-so went Christmas shopping and so-and-so went to the park with their parents, and when it got to his son's name, it said that he got sick and vomited.

It seems to have been something very big and memorable, for him.

A new relatively unsuccessful schtick in (Spanish).

So, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, this (younger) (quieter) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker seems a little bit reserved, even if I try to interact with her.

(I wonder how much she even speaks [Spanish]; something tells me that she might only be fully comfortable in her [indigenous] language.)

Anyhow, when it started getting cold out this winter, she started wearing this knit headband to work, that covers her ears.

And, the way it wrapped around her head, it made it look like some kind of martial arts thing.

So, I would say "Hola" ('Hello') to her, and then I'd point at the headband and smile, and then I'd strike a karate pose and shift my hands back in forth in chop-motions and be like, "La luchadora!" ('the fighter').

Which, left like no apparent impression on her.

So, a few times I asked her some variation of "Quieres ensenarme karate?" ('Do you want to teach me karate?'), which got a smile out of her, but also a shake of her head, no.

So, once, when she said that, I was like, "No quieres ensenarme karate, porque cuando luchamos, tu quieres ganar siempre" ('You don't want to teach me karate, because when we fight, you want to win, always').

And, that got a laugh out of her, but only once.

And that, my friends, is the definition of a "tough audience."

A slower evening at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now.

So, like over a month ago at the one (Thai) restaurant I work now, I was working a double, and during the morning shift I made sure to take all of the quarters that I'd brought in for my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and I put them inside an old receipt and I folded it and stapled it around the edges and I put on it --

GIVE

ME 

$5, [her first name]

-- since she always takes quarters from me and gives me back bills in return, so she has them to do laundry with since I guess wherever she goes to do laundry, it's a coin-operated place, she doesn't have access to her own non-pay washing machine, and so she needs quarters all the time for that.

And, I did that on the lunch shift and left the little packet out on the counter in our work area, so she would see it when she came in for dinner shift; quite a few times when I've brought in quarters for her, I forget that I have them, and I haul them all the way in and then all the way home, which isn't that big of a deal, it's just a big lump in your pocket, but still, it's a pain, so, that's why I did that.

And, she saw them, and she didn't have five dollars on her, but we negotiated so that she'd remember to give that to me next time, and then later that night, I look at the coin-packet, and there's a little tear towards the center that must have come from somewhere (maybe even from picking up the packet and having the coin-edges shift and slide around)..

"What?!", I was like, taking her and showing her the little tear towards the center of the coin-packet. "What is this?! You don't trust me, and you have to tear it open to make sure that I'm not giving you pennies or nickels?!"

Then, I was like, "You are one of the most creative people I know -- you always find new ways of breaking my heart."

And, I also took a pen and added to the words on the little coin-packet, "(and trust)", so it was like telling her, "Give me $5 (and trust)".

 Later, too, she was saying that she was watching this social media video about gay marriage in (Thailand), and it made her cry...  There was this lesbian couple that had been together 30 years in this one village and they ran a restaurant together in their village and everything, and no-one knew they were a couple, everyone just thought they were friends who ran a restaurant together, and then they got married and everyone found out and all the village came together and celebrated.

So, I said what I have said a few times over the past number of months since (Thailand) passed its gay marriage law, that our restaurant should put up a (pride) flag and a (Thai) flag together in the window along with a sign that says something like, "Come celebrate gay marriage in Thailand," and then as a special dessert we sell pieces of wedding cake, or maybe some kind of cake with rainbow frosting.

"People here would love that," I was like. "Everyone around here is so liberal, they'd think, 'Awwww, that's so nice, let's go eat there!'"

"People around here are always looking for something to do," too, I added.

Some banter with customers...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, after there's a large group and I check on beverage orders and one guy orders a Singha beer and another orders a Thai iced coffee:

"Okay, so that's one Singha and one iced coffee" -- a pause like I always do, for order confirmation, to minimize mistakes -- "So, okay, so that makes one upper, and one downer..."

An occasional WTF restaurant occurrence...

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

After they're done eating, (white) people ask if we have fortune cookies.

. . .

(Once, in fact, a [loud-voiced] [round-faced] [old] [white] man with [coke-bottle glasses] and a big [eccentric] group actually pulled out a box for his entire big [eccentric] group he was in with, to give each of them a fortune cookie, after they had finished enjoying their [Thai] meal cooked by us, he must have felt so strongly that everyone needed to finish their meal in that way.)

. . .

(Though, to be fair, maybe I'm being ungenerous here, some Thai places do do pan-Asian cuisine, and there's also that whole [Thai] [Chinese] thing with historic [Chinese] immigrant communities in [Thailand], so maybe some [Thai] restaurants really do hand out fortune cookies after meals, for all I know. I mean, my coworkers say that our restaurant does green curry in a way that just doesn't happen in [Thailand], and the red curry and cashew nut stirfry are things that don't happen there either, they've said, so who knows, maybe some [Thai] restaurants elsewhere take that same liberty and bend the cuisine to include the distribution of fortune cookies.)