Weightroom conversation with a Bulgarian psychology Ph.D. student (1 of 2): Anxiety remedies.

There’s this one Bulgarian Ph.D. student in psychology that I know, that I run into in the school gym’s weightroom half the time.

He’s pleasant enough, but somehow he lacks a certain savviness and well-placed suspicion – he’s much too open to things, it seems! – as a Bulgarian friend had once told me was true of the people of a certain generation on down, who hadn’t really ever grown up under communism.

Anyhow, we had both finished sets at the same time, and he was asking how I was, pleasantly, and I told him something like “Anxious, to tell you the truth, from ongoing money problems and ongoing family problems” (my standard answer the past several months, when I do feel anxious, why hide it from people).

He seemed dismayed, and so I added that I was actually thinking of getting a cognitive – behavioral therapy self-help book, since I had heard that that was effective in reforming negative thinking.

“Oh yes,” he was like, “That’s true, CBT and appropriate drugs have been proven to be effective, they’re very effective in helping people adapt to situations when they cannot change them.”

“Effective in whose perspective?”, I was like.  “Maybe if more people continued to be anxious, they’d be able to recognize their social disgust, and cause revolution.”

Then, since he seem dismayed again, I added, “Who says people can’t change their situation?”, and added again, “We really do need a revolution,” but he still seemed dismayed.

Barhopping (2 of 2): Unfortunate incident?.

Later that night I stopped through a late night Mexican cafe to get something to eat (which ended up being a torta with roast pork, and some of their hot pickled carrots and cauliflower from the plastic help-yourself container with metal tongs on the side of the table, though I didn’t touch the jalapenos), and the waitress got me a lot of refills of water.

When I was leaving, she manned the register, and as I pulled out my wallet, I swear I saw that I had 2 twenties, since when I flipped through my couple bills I was surprised I hadn’t broke the 2^nd 20 yet (the bars I had been at were cheap, I guess).

I then paid her with 1 of the 2 twenties, and with some of the change even gave her a 2-dollar tip, since she was so nice getting me all that water.

Then, as I was leaving, I started putting the bills into my billfold, and noticed it was only singles, there was no ten there, so I had to go back and ask for the ten.

She was confused, and opened up the register, and there was a ten sticking a bit prominently out of the register clip, and she noticed that and said that I had paid ten, but I said no, that I was sure that I had paid twenty, and was ten short.

The manager came and they talked in Spanish, and she gestured to the ten sticking out of the register clip, but he held up his hand in a kind of a ‘no’-sign, and she gave me a ten, as I was saying that if they wanted, they could count the register and tally receipts, I was sure that I had paid twenty, and would wait no problem.

I slunk out of that cafe, I was so embarrassed.

I’m very very sure that I paid a twenty and there was some mistake (or even that the waitress trying to pull a fast one and even set up that ten dollar bill sticking out of the register clip?), but I’d feel awful if there wasn’t.

I do wonder if that waitress was trying to pull one on me, though.  Some of the people there were a bit tough, and it’s the first late night Mexican cafe that I’ve ever been in where they don’t bring you a bill to your table, so somehow I wonder if she was underpaid and thought I was drunk and decided to try to pull one over on me.

For some reason, I get that sense, in retrospect, though she may also have been confused and saw that ten dollar bill sticking out and seized on that as evidence that she had indeed given me the correct change.

 

Barhopping (1 of 2): Another Polish bar.

The other weeknight I biked down to the smaller of the city’s 2 airports, and ended up in a Polish bar located in a bar-banquet hall (there’s a few of those in the city).

The elderly blocky-built (Polish) guy in a dirty t-shirt looked like any number of people from my hometown (which is full of Polish-Americans) and was skeptical of me at first, since very few outsiders come into the bar, I’d think, and so asked me for my I.D.

After he saw I wasn’t a member of some sting, he got me my beer and began to chat a bit, and asked me what I was doing there.

“Oh,” I was like, “I worked from home all day, and I just took a long bike ride to relax and decided to stop and get a beer.”

“Why not?”, he said after a short pause, very deliberately, with a smile and a laugh.

I then at some point told him that I was half Polish, and he asked me if I knew any Polish.

“’Dzeinkuja’?”, he was like (“’Thank you’?).

“Of course,” I was like, and he then said that if you know “thank you” in a language, that’s important, it’s the first thing you need to know and pretty much the only thing you need to know.

I then told him several other Polish phrases that I know, including “Give me the cheapest beer” and “How much does the cheapest beer cost?”.

“Oh,” he was like, “You know too much,” and wagged his finger once at me.

We also went over several more phrases, and when I got to “dobra noc” (‘good night’), he was like, “Dose brown nuts,” and when I asked him if that’s what people say, he said that’s what the phrase sounds like in English.

Incredibly cool park.

There’s this one city park near my new apartment that I’ve biked by forever, which has this large artificial hill that slopes up severely to the pathway on the other side of a small fence paralleling the street, and looks kind of insipid, though every once in a while you see a parent and a kid flying a kite there, which is kind of cute.

The other week, though, I chose to bike around the hill to see if it was a shortcut – and you can’t see it at all from 2 sides of the park, but on one side, it dips down into a scenic cut-rock quarry into which a waterfall flows!

There’s a metal walkway around the edge and everything, and elderly (Chinese) couples strolling.

Computer problems.

Last summer during very hot weather, my computer spontaneously blacked out after I had been word-processing on it for a while (you could feel the heat under the keyboard).

The other week, I was supposed to get a job assignment email in the evening, so I headed over to a Starbucks near my local apartment to hop on the wi-fi there and check my email.

Every time I put the wireless card in, though, the computer didn’t pick up that it had been inserted, so when I put it in deeper, the computer would black out, and up popped some error message on the screen!!!

Fortunately, a kindly (older middle-aged) (black) (female) patron next to me let me check for my work email on her son’s cast-off Blackberry.

(She had just had a normal phone, but her son’s company didn’t get good cell reception at his college that he just started at, so he got a new phone and she took over his phone and number for the rest of his contract.)