Seen on a Korean menu today:
“Bean curb soup.”
Mm, I never knew that curbs had different flavors.
Also, seen on a Chinese daycare center:
“Dong Dong Pre-School.”
That was the school’s name; I know, “Dong” in the Chinese language does not mean anything bad, but transliterated/phonetically translating it to English makes it sound too wrong.
Yesterday during work, I realized I took an odd sense of amusement watching cars getting towed away behind me. Some people just don’t think to read the signs on the parking meters, stating “COMMERCIAL VEHICLES ONLY, 4am-6pm”. So some shmucks decide they would park there, only to later find either a ticket or their car towed away.
There were two cars parked illegally in those spots yesterday, and I was anticipating the tow trucks to arrive. And they did. Except, they only towed away one of the cars, which I found a little confusing. Still, I found myself standing there, feeling amused and slightly evil for finding amusement in someone else’s misery.
Oh, but it was a short-lived evil feeling. When I saw the owners of the towed-away car, they were Asian…worse, I think they were actually Japanese. One guy, a little meek yet cute looking, came up to me and asked, “Ah, excuse me, where did this…car…go?”
Me: “They towed it away.” (smile of pity)
Him: “Ah…what does…’towed away’ mean?”
This question made me feel even worse since he didn’t even comprehend the meaning of the phrase. So I had to think of a way to explain it so he could understand.
Me: “Well, it means…’they’ took your car away, because you are not allowed to park here. Only these (points at commercial vehicle behind me) are allowed to be parked here.”
Him: “Ah, okay.”
I’m not sure if he understood the situation at that point, but he ended up walking back to his two friends/colleagues and they in turn tried to figure out how to fix the situation.
Oh, I felt bad for them.
So, this morning there was a young woman on the bus who did not seem to want to sit down when there were available seats all over the bus. She was standing in front of the guy sitting next to me, and I guess he found her attractive, so he struck a conversation with her.
I was eavesdropping the whole time; she did not seem to mind the attention, but I could tell she was also cautious enough to keep a distance. The guy seemed to be genuinely interested, asking her a few personal “small-talk” questions (“What is your job?” “How long of a bus-ride?” et. al.).
Finally, he asked her if she lived with roommates or by herself, and she said, “Oh, I live with my boyfriend.” At that, I could see the interest drop immediately as the guy seemed to stumble over his words. “Oh, uh, oh! That’s nice, how long have you guys been t-t-together?”
Poor guy. Nice try.
I was waiting for Bus #31 this morning when I heard some music blaring from a car sitting at the stop light of Eddy and Van Ness. I looked at who the driver was, and saw this big, African-American woman busting away in the driver’s seat as if she were completely oblivious to the outside world. Her whole car was shaking with the music and she looked like she was enjoying herself, despite drawing in an audience from outside.
It was just an amusing part of my morning. Oh, San Francisco.
Yes, karma’s a bitch. And here’s a story to teach you about this statement:
Yesterday, I worked a full day from 9:30am-7pm. I think working seven days straight with no day off finally caught up to me in the afternoon because I felt a bit cranky with some customers then. So, this guy comes along, parks his car in the spot behind me, and then proceeds to bug me for dollar bills and quarters. At that point, I was low on dollar bills and was not in the mood to have someone bugging me for quarters. He was persistent (and rather rude), but I stood my ground. Finally, he “gave in” and bought a bottle of water from me so to “force” me to give him change (what a way to phrase the situation, huh?)
He bought his water, I gave him his change rather begrudgingly, and he filled up his meter. I guess he needed more quarters afterwards (more than $1.50 worth!) and asked for more quarters. I felt really annoyed with him at this point so I shoved the quarters into his hands with no smile. Come on, give me a break, seriously. This is a BUSINESS, not a change machine, dude. No thanks or anything from him.
The guy ended up leaving to go shopping after awhile; I was so tempted to do something to his car since it looked shiny and new. But I resisted the temptation since I felt I could never be so evil to do such a thing to someone’s car. So I forgot about the guy and went on to do my usual duties.
I don’t know how much longer afterwards, but there was a bit of commotion in the area due to some guy jumping off a building nearby (I was completely oblivious to this, fortunately?). Two parking officers came by and were trying to clear the lane behind me for traffic to get through; the female officer stopped and looked at the guy’s car parked behind me. She proceeded to punch in his license plate/make into her little machine; I thought at first she was going to give the guy a ticket. But after awhile, I noticed she was not leaving right away and was sticking around for quite some time.
I was already feeling some sort of victory over the guy with the thought that he was probably getting a ticket. Then, a tow truck stopped in front of the guy’s car and the tow truck guy came out and asked if the car was mine. Well, gee sir, yes it is my car, and I am going to let you tow it away right now…..(sarcasm). Anyway, so the tow truck guy proceeds to prepare the quarter-hoarding guy’s car for towing away; meanwhile, throughout this whole ordeal, I was laughing to myself inside. I could not believe this was happening; the guy was getting his car towed, and the tow truck incident pretty much made my day 10x better.
The car was towed away after awhile, and finally I felt relaxed. The quarter guy comes back much later and looks confused. “What happened to the car that was parked here?”
“Oh, it was towed away.”
“But…they didn’t see the parking meter!”
“Well…the parking officers said no parking in general in this area.”
The guy looked confused for a few minutes more, then he walked away to call someone. In some ways, I felt a little bad for him, but in other ways, I felt like my evil laughter inside was justified. That’s what you get for harassing someone for quarters. Yes, karma’s a bitch.
I will probably be struck down for laughing about this later on, but right now, I’m still feeling amused by the situation.