Observed changes in tipping, after recent price increases.

Since prices went up at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I've seen improved tipping.

Like, with everything going up a dollar here and there, from beers to noodle dishes, that bumps up the base value that people tip on, and so you see tip-totals going up, on average.

When I was telling this to my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker, though, she said that she's actually seen tipping go **down**.

Like, whereas before people who ordered a pad thai would just round up to twenty and that's the tip, now that the price has changed, they're still doing that, and so you're out a dollar and more on tipping, with every order like that.

So, she didn't disagree that what I saw happening might be happening, but what she noticed was the very opposite, at least with like the pad thais.

A comment on uncertain plans for the day...

...when, a few months ago, I tell my mother on the phone that I'm not sure what I'm up to on my day off:

"Maybe you'll go out for a chooka or whatever it is."

. . .

(She always forgets the word "kombucha"...  "It's such a strange word," she's like.)

Third season of "White Lotus."

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and the one (wife) restaurant owner with the tired face both have been watching the 3rd season of "The White Lotus" because it's set in (Thailand).

They both really liked this one detail, where some hotel guests have an argument and the (ignorant) (American) mom calls (Thailand) "Taiwan," since they said that that happens a lot, where (ignorant) (Americans) confuse the two.

"If you're Thai, you get that all the time," the (wife) restaurant owner was like. 

She then asked me if I knew what Taiwan was, and I said that I thought it was the island off the (Chinese) coast where the old (Chinese) government fled.

 "But you know that because you are educated," she was like. "Many people here don't know that, and you don't see that, but we do."

And, she gave the example that people find out that she's from Thailand, and then they are like, "Taiwan?".

My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker also said that they have a shot in this one episode, where the camera pans from a (Buddhist) temple to a weedshop that's in front of it, and it was just great.

"Thailand is like that," she was like, saying it's so (Thai) to have something like that, where you see a (Buddhist) temple, and you just have this weed shop in front of it.

Practice for death, and actual death.

Because of recent power outages, my parents did not have power for a period of some days.

After contacting them via my mother's emergency cell phone and confirming that they were well and as set up as best as they possibly could be, I otherwise left them alone, since they had the ability to take care of themselves, and why go and drain that cell phone battery.

But, it was very odd not to talk to them every day -- almost like practice for what my life will be like, when they are gone.

And, while all this was happening, I found out that an old professor had died, through two people who I know texting me about it.

Quite strangely, that very same night, I finished a long-held goal of reading all of a famous two-volume set of (Christian) apocrypha, that project coming to a close along with his life.

A recent Sunday lunch shift...

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

1) I'm hustling to work since it's only a few minutes till noon and I need to be there by then to open the front doors, and from a distance I see a green coat that's the exact same color as the one that my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker wears, and it's coming from the direction of where she lives, and as it's passing by the one liquor store on the way to the restaurant, I see the person in that coat duck in there, and right away I know that it's not my coworker, but I also know that now I can joke with her, that I saw her going to buy liquor before noon on a Sunday.

2) As I go to clock in, the entire small hallway leading from the kitchen to the timeclock area and the dining room is impassable, because of a big cooler that a (Guatemalan) coworker had shifted away from the wall there to scrub the tile underneath it, and finally I had to wedge myself in behind it and push it as much as I could back to where it was, so I could create room for me to squeeze through and past it so I finally could be able to clock in and open up stuff for the day.

3) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says she has a present for me, and takes out a small paper bag with a croissant in it, from the one really nice bakery in the area that makes amazing baked goods, she had gotten one that morning for me, too.

4) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says that her friend's new restaurant in the city that I used to live in isn't doing as well as he had thought it would, and she says he needs to do more advertising to stand out from all of the (Chinese) restaurants in that area.

"Like you could dress up as a rice-box and stand outside and dance on the street," I was like. "That would help."

5) A (tall) (late 50s) (cleancut) (white) man who comes in to pick up a take-out order tells me that he was there the very first day the restaurant opened up over twenty years ago, and when I ask him what he ordered then, it turns out to be the very same thing that he had ordered for take-out that day -- yellow curry, with chicken -- and here he is, more than twenty years later, still coming to this very same restaurant and still ordering the very same thing.

And, he left no tip.

"Imagine that," I told my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, as soon as he had left. "That's twenty years of no tipping on take-out orders."

Three recent occurrences:

1) Although there's a limit of 6 on $0.69 avocados at the local chain supermarket, it's not in effect at the register, and they let me buy 9 -- something that I'm okay with doing, since in the past I was misled by signs and thought that something was on sale when it wasn't, or stuff rang up differently and I didn't feel like putting up a hassle over getting overcharged like fifteen cents, so, I figure, stuff like this goes towards balancing that out and actually puts me more in the direction of breaking even (I think I was like around three dollars in the hole, before that avocado purchase, and now I'm like two dollars in the hole with what they owe me now, cumulatively).

2) After I'm carrying around some dishes that I'm clearing and a digital clock that I keep on my dining room table to tell time, I look around and suddenly the digital clock is nowhere to be seen, and I go and look, and there it is in the sink, I had set it in there alongside the dishes when I was clearing them from the table to the sink.

(I was pretty darn sleepy that afternoon, got to admit!)

3) One night at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, three (white) people -- one man and two women -- are there on a university credit card and the expected fourth doesn't show up, and it slowly becomes apparent when I'm by their table over the course of the meal that all three are entomologists, and the man among them seems to be recovering from some combination of overwork and depression.

"Some nights I just turn on the black light and see what comes by my porch without even trying to collect it," he says to them, as I'm leaving the table. "Just sit there and enjoy myself." 

Then, he adds, "But I don't have to tell you that, you get it."

Retroactive affirmation of a decision.

I'm increasingly thinking that it was wise to check out of monitoring LinkedIn for information about different job sectors.

Like, two of the main sectors that I was always (fruitlessly) monitoring were higher ed and non-profits, and although I'm checking out of national political news and actively not looking at it in order to preserve my headspace and general equilibrium, my sense is that both of those sectors have now been plunged into extended chaotic retraction through the actions of the current presidential administration, like what with its revocation of expected and long-standing grants and funding streams.

Like, it's just better to "tune out" and "check out," for the time being -- there's absolutely no benefit to forcing yourself to look at that mess, on a weekly basis, and it just drags you down.

"Out of sight, out of mind."