Interesting racial commentary in Walk This Way

Not only is this an awesome song, but it provides an interesting basis for a discussion on race: the way race is represented in music, the idea of "white" and "black" music, music as a form of commentary, etc etc

Aerosmith feat. RunDMC "Walk This Way"

Cleansing

I decided to do a cleansing nutrition diet thing. Not because I have the "I feel fat"sies but because I've been eating terribly lately and because I want to see if I'm man enough to survive one of this week long cleaning sessions.

I'm not. 

This diet is technically enough food and nutrients to be a perfectly healthy adult. I am no where near "starving" myself. But I'm so frippin hungry. Moments ago I stole a cruton (I know it's full of msg, which makes me sick to my stomach).  This evening I craved ice cream (I don't really like ice cream). Earlier I was eying egg rolls at work (they have shrimp and pork in them, neither of which I eat). While I was babysitting and the child offered me her drool covered half eaten slice of cheese, I ate it with gusto. 

Some might point out that I've always been irrational when it comes to food and chalk the previous vignettes up to my adoration of the edible. I can concede this point. What I cannot explain is my irrational behavior, grumpiness, and the feeling that I'm going to throw up. I shouldn't be that hungry. 

Question of the day: what on God's green earth have I/we been eating that makes me go into shock when I go all veggie/no starch/all organic/appropriate portions? Not enough really green stuff, apparently.

Editor's Note:
Perhaps part of the reason I was feeling so sick: I ended up throwing up for three days straight after this post. A very different kind of cleanse than I was expecting.

They made a video about me!

Not quite sure how I feel about finding a "typical" person, though.

No one has ever said anything good about him before

I was recently translating for some middle school parent-teacher conferences. It was a very impressive experience, humbling really.

One woman who came in to hear about her boy told us that she was not the mother, but that she had taken in him and his sisters from her cousin. She had accepted them instead of letting them be sent off to foster families, which is where her cousin was about to put them, out of frustration. They kids weren't living with their biological parents because their mother killed the father in front of them. So they were sent from their home country here to the U.S.. Then they were put in low-income public schools.

The teachers said good things about the boy, noting that he was friendly and intelligent, maybe a bit distracted in class, but nothing terrible. (Golly gee, I wonder why he's distracted? The fact that he's only been speaking English for two years? The fact that he's been shipped from family to family only to be put upon an older single woman with no financial security? Honestly, I think more than anything it's cause the stuff he's learning is boring and his teachers could care less about him.)

His care taker cried and cried. She cried through every single teacher's conference. She cried quietly, gracefully, thanking the teacher, asking what she could do to make him a better student, and then she would get up and we would walk to the next classroom. At the end she thanked me for translating.

"I'm sorry I cried," she said. "But I have worked so hard. No one has every said anything good about him before."

Liquid sand

My most recent obsession is emergency preparedness. Not on the FEMA scale, but on an every day, basic intelligence scale. Little things like: when there is an emergency, never go UP stairs, but instead always go down and towards the nearest ground exit. Or when some one yells "Heads up!," don't actually look up (which then lets your face be the target) but instead stand still and preferably find yourself skinny at that moment.

Anyways, when I saw this video about sand in a liquid-like state, as often happens during earthquakes, I was fascinated.
http://www.dump.com/2011/02/28/christchurch-earthquake-showing-how-the-sand-liquefies-with-vibration-video/

So I followed it up with some good old wikipedia research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction.

Here are some more pictures of what liquefied sand looks like/does. http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1251&bih=683&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=liquification+sand&aq=f&aqi=&aql=f&oq=

Long story short: don't trust sand. And definitely don't build a bloody city on it.
Oh and last but certainly not least: levees and dams are still an embarrassingly insufficient idea to protect populated areas from natural "disasters." Mother nature is way smarter than we are.

rut roh racism

I'm at a large international conference that also has a job search portion. There are tons and tons of people here, and we're all gung-ho about the same topic, so it's kinda fun. I've noticed, however, an unsettling trend.

I've watched four black people be approached by potential employers, all of whom were from different companies. The number of white/asian/hipanic individuals I've seen receive this sort of attention? Zero.

These employers are looking for intelligent, educated, dedicated people. That description comes in every skin color. So why are only the black ones being approached?

My continuing ed. class comes in handy...sort of

Last night I was hostessing at the restaurant. We were right busy, too. Later in the evening a woman and a super cute young guy came in and I took their take out order. The guy was hard of hearing, so I signed while I was talking with the woman. Mind you, the sentences were not high philosophical thought: "What do you want to eat? What is your name? Order number 77, about fifteen minutes." Then I went back to doing my other jobs.

I happened to run in to them as they were walking out with their order. The woman kept walking towards the door, but the guy came back when he saw me. He asked my name, and I told him. Then he asked for my number.

The fact that I knew that he asked for my number is rather miraculous. That's not really something that they have covered in my Continuing Education ASL 1 class (that has only met twice now). So I told him "I don't know sign language. I'm learning."  "So?" he asked. I mean, we could write things, I thought to myself.

Then I realized that the nearest deaf university is over an hour away; the nearest deaf high school is only five minutes. I switched to writing instead of signing. "You go to Local Deaf High?" He nodded.

Yup, that'd definitely be illegal.

Here's where I wonder why I wasn't smart enough to tell him that I have a boyfriend. It'd be less awkward for him in terms of rejection and it'd save a lot of explaining. But no, I wasn't that clever. "I started learning in college," I wrote, hoping he'd get the picture.

Then he offered me a tip. Sigh. I'm not even going to bother explaining why that made me feel uncomfortable. "Give to sushi chef," I signed. I gave his mom a friendly wave and then went to hide in the kitchen. 

I feel really bad because asking some one out like that point blank takes a lot of courage. And selfishly, it would have been really nice to have a friend that could help me learn sign language. But dating some one my baby brother's age is really not my idea of a wise decision.

Poem?

Under
two cloud streaks
hangs the moon.
Alone.

Adorable

Yesterday when I went to the grocery store I saw the very sweet high functioning mentally challenged man that works there. He gave me a huge hug. One of the men walking into the store said "Frank! You never give me a hug!" To which Frankie replied, "She's special."
As I was leaving, he was pushing a line of carts back to the entrance.
"Goodbye my little love bug!" he yelled.
Adorable.

What's my name?

A few days ago I was working with a preschool class during their weekly trip to the library. The children were supposed to tell the librarian their first and last names and then hand her the book they wanted to check out.
After waiting his turn, one of my favorite little friends eagerly passed over his literary choice.

"I know your first name in Jonathan," the librarian said, "but what is your last name?"
"Uh...Jonathan."

"Jonathan Rivera, tell her your last name," I prompted.
No response. The librarian had no patience for our name game.
 "Oh! I know my last name," he said finally. "Dragon. My name is Jonathan Dragon."

The difficulties of Christianity

Today, my dearly beloved (Asian) boss had some questions for me about a Catholic funeral he had attended over the weekend.
"J, what were they eating?," he asks, holding up his fingers in the shape of a circle.
In my head, I do a quick sort of small circular foods: cherries, cucumbers, egg rolls, peppermint patties...mints! Maybe they passed out mints after the funeral? A tasty little memento.
"No, they weren't candy. They were like white potato chips. I didn't understand why they were eating chips during the funeral."

He was talking about the communion wafers. Christianity is tough.

In the beginning, there was real life

(These are commentaries that I had written before establishing this blog. In a moment of catharsis, I decided to go ahead and get one, because really let's be honest, otherwise I'd be on youtube.)

I am a college graduate that works in a restaurant. To some people this sounds lame, to some people this sounds completely normal. I’ll be honest: I graduated in the top twenty of my class of over 800 from a well ranked school…I wasn’t expecting to be a waitress living at home once I received that coveted (and costly) diploma. But just yesterday I received an email informing me that I wasn’t qualified enough to be an administrative assistant, and I’ll admit that this job does help me pay off those absurd college loans, so I’m working hard to be thankful.

The restaurant I’m working at keeps me busy, that’s for sure. Located across from the biggest local high school, my Chinese restaurant is filled with oddball employees, expectant customers, and more business quirks than anyone could know what to do with. For example:

Some charity association puts out a donation box by our cash register. You know, the ones that use the honor system, asking you to put some change in the box but that leaves the mints out in the open for you to take. After school gets out, we have a lot of fifteen year olds streaming into the restaurant to buy a coke or a tiny box of fried rice, sometimes an order of chicken fingers if they’re feeling extravagant. My boss realized that this community was not familiar with the honor system, or perhaps, lacking honor, and so each day at 2:15, she hides the box of mints behind the counter and takes it back out again at 4:30. Only much later did I learn that my other boss uses the money to pay for his fishing trips.

The men of the restaurant are obsessed with fishing. Our sushi chefs, especially, have the fishy mania. During slow periods, we’ll see them behind the sushi bar looking down innocently at their cutting boards. One would assume that they’re sharpening their knives, preparing for a rush, or at least reading sushi magazines. No. They are making fishhooks. They add sparkley dangles and gummy fake bait and metal wires that look like they could withstand towing the whole boat, much less a fish.  There is a whole collection of them hanging beside the sushi plates. Just yesterday, five of our staff came back from an overnight trip and waltzed into the kitchen, covered in blood and trailing coolers of three foot bluefish. They swiftly chopped off the heads, drained the blood into a pot, and proceeded to make fish gut soup in the middle of the dinner rush. I decided to eat at home instead of have the servers’ meal.

___________________________________________________________

I am a waitress, substitute teacher, nanny, and interpreter. Between the four of them, I spend the majority of my time running about and covered in food. Although often the day-to-day of it is very humdrum, I still get plenty of memorable moments in between the mundane.

Take, for example, a regular customer that I have at the restaurant, whom I know to be very rich and very fat. Super friendly, great car salesman, huge flirt (although the last two clauses might be redundant). Recently he came in with his college aged son and asked me to—and I quote— “deflower” him.

                “He just turned 18 and is very virginal. You’re an older woman, experienced. It’d be great if you’d show him the way.”

                My boss later said it was the only time he had ever seen me speechless.

                Earlier this week, the man came back. Reminding me of the possibility, he extended the offer, saying that if it didn’t work out with his son, that I could be his mistress.

                “I have two houses. The wife wouldn’t mind.” The thing about being a waitress is that you can’t just leave your customers alone, you have to keep coming back to check on them until they leave. So I couldn’t escape this one, especially since I still had to bring him his lo mein. Then I realized what an opportunity I had on my hands.

                “You know, Giles, I have a lot of college loans that need to be paid off.”

                He didn’t even blink.

                “How much? 100,000? 150,000? It’d be gone  in a day.”

                As I neared my college graduation, I had often joked that I should just be a stripper while I looked for the right job. But now that I am actually actively searching for good employment, and prostitution is a viable and clearly lucrative option, it’s no longer a joke. Maybe he’d throw in a car too.