A schtick on job training…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, when my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones was overseeing the training of the (Thai) owners’ middle daughter on how to key in orders on the electronic ordering system:

When I ask her how it’s going and she says good, I tell her that no matter how good she does, her parents won’t get a good report unless she gives a $50 bribe to our one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones.

“That’s how it works around here,” I was like.

I then mentioned our one (younger) (taller) (Latino-American) coworker, and I’m like, “You know [his first name] and how everyone around here likes him? That’s because he gave [our older coworker’s first name] a **hundred** dollars.”

I then specified that it didn’t have to be cash, it could be a giftcard for a local chain supermarket that she goes to, and I was like, “And fifty is the minimum, you can always go higher,” to the great delight of my older coworker, and the continuing mild confusion of the owners’ middle daughter.

“And remember, this isn’t a bribe,” I was like, in closing, “It’s a gift, it’s a gift because she taught you so well.”

A visit to the local university butcher shop.

Since they sell large flats of eggs to people but don’t have packaging for people to break them up into more manageable and carryable amounts, a long time ago they mentioned in their weekly mass-email that you could save your clean dozen-egg containers and bring them in, and they’d keep them there for people who needed them.

So, for a long while I was saving my dozen-egg containers – I usually eat an egg a day, for protein – but since I hadn’t been into the university butcher shop for a while, I had like a big tall stack of like over ten of those to bring in, when I finally went in again.

And, I wasn’t sure if they were still collecting them, but the manager guy there told me to set them on a small table in the corner, and before I left, I saw a woman grabbing them and using them to repackage eggs from a large flat of eggs that she had boughten.

That same maanger also checked a back cooler for me for a specialty sausage that they had made a few weeks ago and were still advertising in their email as on hand, although he said they were running low on it and maybe even out… 

But, as it turned out, they had like 3 of those left, and I bought 2 of them from the 3 of them that he found, in the back cooler.

He said, too, that they’d be making sausage more regularly again this year, since they finally have someone on staff who knows the machines and can supervise student usage, which they hadn’t had for a while, now.

A trip to a restaurant in a(n Amish) area with two (Brazilians)…

…on my last day that I have my rental car from my trip:

The one (nerdy) (worked-out) (STEM) (Brazilian) who’s a coworker of the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM) post-doc who I know from around town has never tried macaroni and cheese, so he gets some from the buffet.

And, as it turns out, he hates it, and he says that it’s weird and milky and has no taste.

As we finish the meal, too, in this big bright hall of families dining and scattered (Amish) customers and workers, I ask the two of them what they think, and the one (nerdy) (worked-out) (STEM) (Brazilian) says that the entire time that he’s been inside the restaurant he’s felt like he’s in a horror movie, and when I ask him why, he says that it’s like the beginning of a horror movie, where your car breaks down in this small strange out-of-the-way town and you have to spend the night.

Then, when we leave the restaurant, I can’t find the proper exit to the street, and as I loop the rows of parked cars, we see that one fence at the far end of the restaurant is devoted to horses and buggies, all tied up in a line there.

So, as we leave the restaurant and go to drive home through all of these small towns that we had passed on the way there, too, “Let’s go to a scary bar,” says the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM) post-doc who I know from around town, 

Then, at one in the town one out from where we live, a (crazy) (young) (local) homeless woman comes into the bar and picks up his accent and tries to start talking to him in (Spanish).

“It is always awkward, when people speak Spanish to Brazilians,” the one (nerdy) (worked-out) (STEM) (Brazilian) turns to me and says, at that.

A small bit of drama upon returning my very mildly-damaged rental car…

…that had been damaged from my backing into a parking garage spot and (inadvertently) the edge of a post there that had scraped my rear bumper and made a side panel pop out, which I dutifully reported right away in case insurance eventually needed to cover repairs for it, even though it was borderline damage and the rental car people when reviewing it in person weren’t quite sure either if it really rose to the level of needing repairs:

The (older) (female) (black) manager is out doing something in the lot a ways away from where I parked and where we’re standing and the one (younger) (black) (male) employee who looked at it yells to her about the damage and that it doesn’t look too bad, and when he mentions the side panel issue and how it had popped out some, she shouts across the lot, “Can you put a finger in?”

. . .

(You couldn’t.)

. . .

(They seemed to let it slide, but because I had made a report to the larger rental car agency about the damage in case I needed to file an insurance claim at some point, I had some confused later communications with them, since they assumed from my filing a report that there was indeed some repair amount that they needed to recoup from me.)

Re-birth experience.

I was thinking recently about how intense my experience was with my one huge discovery about the one ancient language that I’ve been studying now for a number of years, and how it was like this gigantic thing in me that I couldn’t get out, until finally I did, and how I felt like death was chasing me, and how I had the weird experience where I missed learning about getting into the path of the total solar eclipse that was happening near me, where people I knew were going but somehow I didn’t know that it was “a thing” until it was too late for me to go, and how it was like some weird collusion of the universe to keep me from going there, perhaps to protect me while I was in a liminal state.

Thinking back to then and before then, I really am like a new person, where I’m on the other side and I’ve transferred state into just another level of expertise and discovery and being, even if it’s not getting recognized yet or if anyone else feels it as palpable like I do.

Before then I had more doubts about the overall path that I was on, whereas now it’s frustration about lack of particular recognition or an immediately viable professional pathway, but my confidence in what I’m narrowly doing is just a given, no questions asked or tolerated.

It's like I've just shifted irrevocably into a different and higher level of knowledge and action...

It's so weird.

Small red onions at the farmer’s market.

Towards the last few of the farmer’s markets this year, I bought some small red onions from the one (older) (female) (Lao) vendor who I know, since she didn’t have any usual items that I would buy from her and I wanted to buy something.

And, I didn’t buy like the whole little greenish paper tub full because there was no way that I could use that many red onions, but just like a small handful of them, for which she charged me almost nothing.

And yet, I was so surprised at how tasty and flavorful they were, when I cut them up in my salads – just levels beyond any ordinary onion.

You would think that there wouldn’t be that much difference with flavors across onions, but there is.

It made me wonder why I had passed them over so much before…

I won’t make that mistake again.

Ayurveda in my hair.

I thought that I had one shampoo bar in waiting in the storage-shelving in my bathroom in my back-alley cottage in the college town where I live now, but it turned out to be a handmade soap-bar that I had gotten somewhere a while ago, perhaps through a coupon sale, so, the next time that I was at the local co-op, I went to go get a shampoo bar from any of the brands that I like, only to discover that they only had one in stock, this one big brown one made by someplace in California that I had never seen before.

And, since I really needed it, I just went and bought it.

It was only after I washed my hair and I started smelling like patchouli that I fished the wrapper out of the trash and looked at it, and I realized that it was some ayurvedic something-or-another.