A Blog-like Entity

15 oct 06

haha made you look!

im not sure if i really dislike you, i cant make up my mind

well, good thing there's an ocean between us, and i can't seal the deal by hiding your lucky charms. because who needs more strife in the world? no-one, that's who.

i've agreed to work two 12-hour shifts, two days in a row, for a driver who "wants to go to new jersey for his birthday". in return, he's agreed to work for me in november so i may drive 4.5 hours to pittsburgh, PA to attend my cousin's wedding. it's a relaxing, pretty drive -- oodles more pleasant than traveling the accursed I-95 (and inextricable "garden state parkway"), which is perhaps the ugliest stretch of road on earth. back when i was planning to attend an ill-conceived, two week-long, silent, cultish meditation retreat up in massachussetts somewhere, i avoided I-95 in my route planning, even though driving on it would have made for a shorter trip.

I-95 is so ugly, in fact, that it's beautiful to my evolved and contemporary artistic eye. unfortunately, my evolved and contemporary artistic eye can't keep it up for five, four, or even two hours, and starts craving winslow homer. i was surprised to hear that new jersey has a greater percentage of parkland than any other state, which i suppose isn't that wondrous an achievement, considering that jersey is roughly the size and shape of a chicken strip.

here's a beautiful map i found, from an 1895 atlas. the jpg was 1692px by 2586px, so i shrunk it down. of course i'll link to the site, since i wantonly stole their image.

isn't that nice? i love maps.

back to I-95. it's lined with the sort of thing i love to photograph: general industrial ruin -- the waste and stool of civilization. the best example of this is probably around the area where the states of pennsylvania, new jersey, new york, maryland and delaware converge and intertwine in odd ways such that one is never sure where one is. it's really ugly there, in a "suburbs-with-character (in the form of graffitied smokestacks)" way.

i'll drive up to pbgh, attend the wedding, probably get drunk, sleep somewhere, and drive back the next day. no biggie. in the meantime, another driver will be working two twelve-hour shifts to cover for me, unless we've hired another desperately-needed driver by then (unlikely), he's quit, or i've quit (more likely). this is the problem with small businesses delivery restaurants: they need all of their employees, unlike big pizza operations, who can ditch one or two per shift without incident.

yesterday i stopped by at a local "dominos pizza" and asked the general manager there if he could use another deliveryman. he seems like a pleasant, reasonable person, and i would like to work for him. unfortunately, he isn't looking for weekend drivers right now, but i left my number. i'll keep checking back, because the instant something opens up there, i'm going to ditch my current employer. dominos will give me better hours, better pay for those hours, and a more pleasant manager to work for. the only down-side is that i will have to wear a uniform, which is in fact a significant consideration. i don't even like to put a pizza sign on top of my car, because my car doesn't like wearing a uniform either.

my manager at my current job is a chubby, short-of-stature, grumpy, matriarchal latina with light-brown, sprayed hair, violently pulled back into a dangling tapestry of wound-up curls. she's sensitive about her pronunciation of english, which is indeed so twisted that it's often impossible for me to understand her. but her grammar and vocabulary are all right, as far as i can tell, squinting through the cloud of ruined phonemes. her speaking problems are compounded by the fact that she's become embarrassed to do so, especially on subjects that are unpracticed (chicken-unlrelated), and so mumbles, and sometimes outright refuses to answer.

the high-point of our communication was when i asked her what she had wanted to be when she grew up when she was a little girl, and she responded with "doctor" and "lawyer", and then something to the effect of that she had changed her mind when she realized how much work this would entail. it was a decent conversation.

she also has a lot of trouble understanding my spoken english, which is odd, considering that she has a relatively easy time communicating with a georgian driver, and a french-speaking cameroonian driver, both of whose english is less than stellar. so, i'm forced to the conclusion that i have a communication problem, which is a conclusion i've drawn before, if i recall correctly.

the georgian driver is one of those pure souls who is almost perfectly kind, considerate, friendly, etc, and the french cameroonian is mostly nice, even though he's always trying to dump hours on me. in fact, everyone there is great, and i get along with them all, except for this manager, whom everyone dislikes, and discusses disliking.

english-learners often fall into a catastrophic loop: their speaking is flawed, so they mumble, speak quickly, or in very short bursts to cover up their imperfections, which of course makes comprehension even more difficult. when the listner cocks his or her head and goes "sorry?" (or "what?!?!"), the shyness gets worse. the offending manager is from panama, but has what appears to be a persian sirname (ma'am name?). i mentioned that hers didn't appear to be a hispanic last name, and she gave a barely perceptible nod without looking up. ethno-language issues abound.

she's also just a moody little brat, who is emotionally about 7 years old. but i don't mind her, oddly -- coming to grasp her nature, it's impossible for me to take her seriously, so she's more entertaining than anything else. we're also gradually hacking through our communication problem, even though "she is in the basement" caused me to wander downstairs and look for a bag of shredded mozarella.

problem areas are the american "a" (as in "bath"), "i" (as in "pig"), "uh" (a phoneme called the "schwa", as in "c-U-stomer"), "r" (everyone has trouble with this), "y" (this becomes, of course, a "j"), "th" (soft or hard -- it turns into something between "dee" and "zee"). tongue-position relative to the roof of the mouth and the top teeth is generally an issue.

the difference between "call" and "cal" (as in california) is subtle, mouth-shape wise (something to do with the back of the tongue). i don't blame people for having trouble with this, but refusing to put the tip of your tongue against your teeth is either mild retardation or a lack of concern, which i suppose i don't object to, per se.

i can pronounce anything, so i'm allowed to be disparagingly critical.

then there's the other manager, who is also from cameroon. he's some kind of language protegy, and has basically picked up fluent spanish after seven months of working around a hispanic kitchen crew. he's starting in on wolof now, after a few weeks of listening to the two gambian brothers who now constitute the kitchen help. i keep telling him he should be a teacher of english for speakers of other languages, but he's one of the hoard that streams into the u.s.a. seeking to be doctors.

he also has fluent, academic-sounding, debate-oriented, big-worded english and french, his localized language (bafut), and a pidgin english that sounds a lot like what you or i probably think of as jamaican english. he spoke some of it for me, and at first i didn't realize he was speaking something other than english. but i heard him carry on a conversation in it with another native speaker, and i had absolutely no idea what was being said.

not too long ago, someone told me online that the prince of cameroon asked her on a date, and was trying to get naked pictures out of her. this seemed implausible to me, but then my manager explained that a "prince" refers to a "prince" not of the whole country, but of a subdivision, kingdom, or chiefdom -- something very much like a city-state (in his case, the aforementioned "bafut"). each of these subdivisions/towns/kingdoms/etc has its own language, which tightly and insularly binds its culture, as you can imagine. "manager x" tells me that there are people (usually the older generation) in bafut who speak nothing but bafut -- no french (cameroon's national language) or english, and certainly no swahili, lingala, etc. about 80,000 people live in the chiefdom of bafut.

i'm most likely going to cameroon with "manager x" in december of 2007, if i have money and am generally alive and well at that time. how cool would i be then? southern japan, paris, and cameroon, not to mention all around the USA and a bit of southeastern canada.

this guy is great, except that he's always borrowing money, something that someone told me might be a manifestation of the african ethic of "all for one, one for all". this sounds good, but is annoying to someone who pays interest on his student loans.

another latina has been hired as a janitress and general-purpose gofer, who speaks no english whatsoever except for "finished", except it comes out more like "feenees". i gave her some pronunciation lessons when i drove her to her other job one day; she did very well, and was appreciative. i'm good at that sort of thing, me being a sound-genius and all.

the two gambian brothers are loud, persistent, and effective communicators, which compensates for their somewhat limited english. it's ok, now that i think about it. however, i sometimes have trouble with their pronunciation.

the georgian driver (eastern europe, not south of the carolinas) wins the prize for "worst english". i feel like this is an insult, as do a lot of other people, but it's really not -- it's just a fact; his grammar and vocabulary are almost non-existent.

the french cameroonian (manager x tells me that cameroon is divided geographically along its anglophonic and francophonic populations) has iffy english -- somewhere between the georgian and the gambians. he has a heavy french accent, which magnifies some bitchy and prissy qualitites that tend to manifest when money or time is involved in the discussion.

oh, and the owner -- a lying manipulative salesman, friendly in that sort of exaggerated middle-eastern way that makes you wonder "what's his angle?" he isn't there most of the time, thankfully. when he is, he yells at everyone, and criticises everyone. if he were there all of the time, i would quit immediately.

so i'm the only white person there, the only u.s. citizen, and the only totally native english speaker.

the work environment is hazardous -- my leg once slipped into an un-covered heating vent, i badly cut my finger on some sharp aluminum catering trays, the kitchen is cramped and full of knives, roiling fat, and searing metal (the hispanic manager badly burnt her shoulder on a defective oven door that collapsed onto her as she passed -- i would have sued), and things are generally falling apart, roach-infested, cramped, and filthy. not to mention the fact that i spend most of my time driving somewhat like a crazy person, and wander around poverty-stricken apartment complexes at night clutching a wad of cash. it's fun.