Cultural wastefulness.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, it's really striking how wasteful with plastic and take-out containers customers from foreign countries are, particularly (India), (Pakistan), (China), and occasional places like the (Philippines).

Like, (South Asian from South Asia) customers will want to pack up a curry and just a spot of rice separately, even if there's not much sauce left in the curry and the rice could just sit out on top of the vegetables and not really get soaked and weird, because it wouldn't be in contact with the liquid, which is is a way that (born-here American) customers typically would pack it.

And, all of them want plastic bags to carry their boxes, even if it's just something like a single one that they could just hold in their hands and take home with them, which is what (born-here American) customers do very frequently, in addition to (rarely) bringing in their own Tupperware.

(Though, to be fair, there is one [South Asian from South Asia] guy with a [white] [born-here American] wife who does bring in Tupperware, too -- though, I suppose, that's what they call "the exception that proves the rule.") 

You also get occasional requests from these customers if they can take their take-out that they had ordered and just sit down and eat it all in the restaurant, where they would just eat everything and then throw out all those containers and bags afterwards, rather than have thought ahead and held off ordering until arrival and then used ceramic plates etc. that can be washed and re-used.

(You get that from some [lower-class] [African-American] customers, too; we always say no to such requests, to preserve the atmosphere of the restaurant for dine-in customers, and also to save us waiting on these tables with water and cleaning up after them afterwards, when they're not in a tipping relationship with us.)

It really is like a lack of an ecological consciousness, which is all the more surprising, since my understanding is that their home-countries don't have it as together pollution-wise as the (United States).

If anything, you think they would be even more attune with all that, since they have had to live more amidst the squalor that's the outcome of such wastefulness!

I've seen this a bit in my (Guatemalan) coworkers, too, like a few times I've seen them just sitting down and using plastic forks at their shift-lunch to eat rather than silverware, or sauces in the plastic take-out cups rather than put into the reusable metal cups, though one time I did see the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner correct them and tell them to use silverware, and another time I also saw the (wife) (Thai) restaurant owner correct them and tell them not to use the sauce from the plastic take-out cups.

That was probably more a profitability thing, though, then concern for the environment. 

Another recent day at work...

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

1) The (wife) (Thai) restaurant owner with the (tired face) shows up in this fashionable summery dress that's like white linen with navy blue accents, but somehow she also has to do something at the stove, and so she stands at the stove and cooks while looking like a fashion-plate, just holding out the big wok handle with one hand, as she stands several feet back from the stove so that no grease spatters onto her and her dress.

2) A local (young) (lesbian) comes in with a friend, and at the end of the meal they present a business card for the restaurant where on the back there's a handwritten signed-and-dated note from the (wife) (Thai) restaurant owner saying that these 3 people listed on it should get a 15% discount whenever they come in, since it's obvious from the overall situation that they're all renters from them at one of the residential buildings that they own somewhere else in town, and so this must be some sort of perk that all or at least some of their renters get when they come into their restaurant.

3) A big table of (older) (white) (evangelical) women out for one of them's birthday take a shining to me, and when I go to cash out their (largely individual) bills, I ask if they need change as I ruffle through the bills, and two say no but a third says yes just as I see that she has 2 twenties for a much smaller bill and I say, "Yes, you''ll definitely be needing change," and as soon as I say that, I overhear one of them whisper to another somewhere at the back of the table, "Oh, he's so honest."

 One of them, too, asks if they can pull out a treat that they brought for dessert since they're out celebrating someone's birthday, and I say yes, but later when I come back to the table, I see it's a plastic tray of 12 mini cupcakes that they had boughten from some supermarket somewhere, and so I'm like, "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to tell you, there's a charge for bringing in your own dessert, you need to give us six of those cupcakes," and at that, one is like, "That's perfect, since there's six of us!", and immediately I'm like, "I know, I counted really quick before I decided to mess with you," and I laugh.

Then, the next time that I return to the table, they have one little cupcake sitting out at the end, and they say that that one is for me.

4) When I'm picking something up from in the kitchen and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says to wait for a minute so I can take something else out on the same trip, I'm like, "No," and as I go to turn to leave, she's like, "Save your energy, broooo! You always say you're so tired, and then you do this!"

5) When at the end of the shift my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (newer) (younger) (taller) (Thai) coworker shove some uneaten Buffalo Wild Wings takeout at me and tell me that I should finish it, I'm like, "Please remember these words, because you'll probably only hear this from me one time in my life: I don't think that I can do it, because I'm not hungry."

6) This (Amish?) (Mennonite?) (something like that?) couple come in who are in their 30s, this stolid (bearded) (white) guy with a face like a pug and a very beautiful (placid-faced) (white) wife, with her (blonde) hair tucked back into some sort of light little bonnet thing.

And, they sit on the same side of the table, and most of the meal she keeps her hand so far over onto his lap that it must be sitting on his crotch, and they're like that for like practically the entire meal, where her hand is just obviously on this guy's crotch the whole time.

A recent day at work...

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

1) After this incident where some of us run into each other at the local farmer's market -- my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is there with the (newer) (younger) (mustachioed) (Thai) cook, and we're by the farmstand of the one (Lao) lady, to whom my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says, "He's my friend," to which I say, "And she's my best friend," and while we're doing all of that, who walks up but the oldest daughter of the (Thai) restaurant owners, in sunglasses -- and, anyhow, I mention again at work how funny that all was, and suddenly my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is like, "Shhhh, be careful, don't talk about that at work!", and then she says that the owners' daughter was actually there with some guy, and it seems like a situation where she doesn't want her parents to know.

2) When I try some flower-shaped shortbread cookies that the (Thai) restaurant owners brought back from (Thailand) for everyone, I tell my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones that they're good, but hers that she makes are better.

"I know," she's like.

3) Because of the heatwave, the metal door lintel swells up, and for a while the front door won't close entirely, until the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner comes out from the back office and fixes it, I think by screwing down the door lintel severely with the help of some power-tools. 

A roach in my cottage!

Like just over a month ago in my small cottage that I now live in, I go into my kitchen and turn on the light there, and I see a smaller brown roach run up the cabinet and go under my radio that's sitting out on the counter.

At first it so freaks me out, that I turn out the light and I don't even want to think about it, but then I decide that I should kill it, and so I turn the light back on and I shift the radio and it scurries out again, and it goes underneath a board-game box that's sitting next to the radio on the counter, there.

So, I immediately press down the board-game box as hard as I can against the counter, until I feel where the roach is, and then I focus my energies there to press it down even harder, until I can feel the shell of the roach breaking down into itself, and I am sure that it is dead.

But, again, it so freaked me out, that I just leave it there like that, and I don't even want to turn the box over and clean it up, yet.

So, like a day or two later, I finally muster up the willpower and I go and I flip over the board-game box, and there it is, beneath the rubber band that went around the box, since it either got tangled up in it or it was trying to hide there, somehow.

After this, too, I also have visions of roaches somehow getting into my large bags of rice that I keep under my counter, even though I keep them carefully closed with clamp-clips and I'm pretty sure that there's no way on earth that they could get in there. 

Developing workplace injury...

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

The base of my thumb-joints on both hands seem jammed, like when you jam a finger in basketball.

. . . 

(I suspect it's because I try to be macho at work and carry two full water pitchers in a single hand, when we need to refill water pitchers... The weight of the pitchers pushed onto the pitcher handles that rest by the crook of my fisted hands must somehow extend through and mildly distend my thumbs, I think.)

A recent dream...

 ...that I dreamnt like just over a month ago:

I'm hanging out with my one (professor) friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature, and in this advertisement paper for a dollar store, we come across the phrase DOLLAR STRONG, and we just keep repeating the words "DOLLAR STRONG" to each other in all these different voices, and laughing, and we just can't stop laughing over it.

. . . 

(Back when we'd hang out in person, we'd actually repeat stupid phrases that we had found at each other like that, since she finds stuff like that just incredibly funny, for some reason.)

. . .

(I think that in my dream, the phrase was actually written $1 STRONG, and maybe it was written on a T-shirt that they were selling and some other stuff, but we just kept saying, DOLLAR STRONG.) 

Plane-trip happenings:

1) In my first time on a plane in like 12 years or so, I fly over farm-fields, and compared to farm-fields that I had flown over on that last longer cross-country plane-trip like 12 years or so ago, these ones are just full of those tall sleek white three-bladed windmills, and I can see just tons of them on the ground, for like a full ten, fifteen minutes or so, during the first part of the flight.

2) When I board the first leg of my trip in the college town that I now live in, the door-gate guy sees my full itinerary and says that their old manager now manages the gate at the city that I'll ultimately arrive in, and to say hi to him from all of them at his old job.

And, I do.

Like, he's not there, but I pass along the hello through the gate-agent who I meet, there.