| Three Embarrassing Things To Happen To Me This Week |
[Jan. 5th, 2007|11:55 pm]
Scott
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1. I wanted to get my extended family meaningful, personalized presents for Hanukkah, but as always a few people fell through the cracks and I couldn't think of anything. For these people, I went to the local gift shop, bought some of what I assumed was exotic Japanese candy, and sent it back to the States. Of the five recipients, two sent back "Thank you for the candy, it was really good!", two sent back "Hey, Scott, what is this you sent us?" and one person sent back "Thank you for the soap, it was really good!" So now I have it on my conscience that either one of my family members just washed himself with candy, or two of my family members ate soap. Also, I sent back "Don't worry, it's candy" emails to the two who were confused, but I realized just before I left for Kyoto that I really had no reason to think that besides my own first impressions. Currently I am telling myself that if the two people who ate it liked it, then it has to be candy, plus the one person who thought it was soap is the crazy uncle well-known for telling people that kind of thing as a prank, so hopefully that's just what happened.
2. There is an arcane and complex garbage-sorting procedure here that neither my roommates nor I have ever quite been able to figure out. Something like "paper goes in a blue bag, plastic goes in a separate blue bag, food goes in the red bag, non-aluminum metals go in a green bag, aluminum goes in a box, cartons go in a separate blue bag, glass goes in a little bin, and anything else you have to hold on to forever." My roommates and I, to our credit, put a lot of effort into making sure that we do it right, but there are always some gray areas, and we figured that if we messed up, well, there was no way anyone would ever know anyhow.
We were wrong. Charles got a letter in the mail the other day in Japanese, and asked his co-worker to translate it. "I am the garbage man, if you please. I got your address by sorting through your garbage until I found a letter someone had sent you. Please put tissues in the red bag, not the blue bag. Thank you."
3. My semiannual haircut yesterday. I hate haircuts. My hair is long and I want them to make it shorter. They can't just do that. They have to ask me all sorts of tricky fashion-type questions, like "What style do you want?" or "Do you want sideburns?" or "Do you want the side of your neck to look like a 'wave', or 'natural'?" "Just make it the same, but shorter," I say. "Shorter on the top, or shorter on the bottom, or shorter along the sides." "Just shorter in general." And they won't take that as an answer, so finally I just take my best guess of which one is least likely to result in them shaving my head. "Uh, I'll have...a standard cut...uh, with sideburns...shorter along the sides...and...natural." And they stare at me like I am some kind of caveman unworthy of their ministrations.
Also, my barber was so chatty that it would have been bad enough even if we had shared a common language. |
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