Not Awkward

One of my supervisors asked me to entertain her by telling her some random facts. According to her, I'm really good at that. All I could think of at that moment was a short article I read on the Holocaust, so I regurgitated that. It turns out that kind of stuff is really depressing, especially when your supervisor immediately goes on a rant about how people shouldn't have children during war.

Don't worry, I'm preparing an assortment of fun facts to be store in my mental rolodex to prevent awkward situations like this from happening in the future. See, I am proactive!     

Racist Or Not?

R: How did you get that bruise on your leg?
Me: Paintball.
R: Ping pong?
Me: Paintball.
R: Ping pong?

I'm Asian, by the way.

Over Heard Today...

M: You look nice today. What for?
J: Thanks. I dress like this everyday...
M: No you don't, I see what you wear everyday. 

There's Value in Evaluate!

I had a surprise employee evaluation yesterday, which is much like accidentally raping myself with a tampon. I love how my supervisor vaguely tells us that he’s reviewing our employee evaluations and will be meeting with us individually, and then bam, five months later, he yells for me to come into his office. There’s no heads up on what this meeting is about, but I get an uneasy feeling when I see that he’s sweaty and stuttering. I’m pretty sure I heard a banjo and a pig squealing as he closed the door.

It was just what I expected - another year of half ass excuses on why he can’t promote me. The first year was because I didn’t know enough technology (when asked what he wanted me to focus on specifically, he said everything), the second year was that I wasn’t assertive enough (through trial and error, I realized that actually meant that I had to come up with plan of actions and SOPs and let him take credit for it), and this year is I’m too mean and I need to take trainings. And like every year, I ask for specific examples on what I can improve upon and he launches into an hour long monologue about how he would hate to see me to be stuck in my current position. But this year, I wasn’t going to let him get away with that bullshit, so I really pressed for an answer. I ended up with, “It’s really up to you to decide what you want to do. I have to go now, I have a meeting.”

So my job is to decipher this message. The potential twist in the plot is that it’s all bullshit! I think I’m going to go with that because…ah, fuck that noise!    

ESL

Me: Should I cancel this?

O: Yes, done.

Me: You’ve already done it?

O: No, cancel it.

Me: Can you forward me that e-mail?

O: Actually, it’s already been done.

Me: I don’t see it?

O: I’ll send it to you right now.

I have conversations like this all the time with my supervisor. It’s frustrating because he’ll inevitably become upset and tell me, “Do not misunderstand me!” In that case, does that translate to no means yes and yes means no? I understand that ESL speakers may find it difficult to convey ideas at times because I’ve had to deal with my ESL parents my entire life. For instance, when I graduated college, my mom told me that I needed to hang out at UCSF so I can find a rich doctor boyfriend to be dependent on. I was like, what the hell? All my life, my mom told me to stay away from “the boys” and then suddenly she tells me that I need a rich doctor boyfriend immediately? Something must have been lost in translation so I asked her to explain. She patiently explained to me that “dependent like you go back to school to become doctor and he pay for it.” Oh wait, that wasn’t a misunderstanding.

My mom has been speaking English for the past 26+ years, and I have to commend her because English is hard bitch to learn. Cantonese doesn’t have all the phonemes in the English language (this is why t’s, d’s, and l’s are difficult for Cantonese ESL speakers) and it’s difficult to translate certain words in English so I understand that the inability to articulate what you mean is stressful. My English is pretty atrocious despite the fact that I’m a native speaker and you know that whole thing about black kettles. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I need to chill the fuck out and be more understanding. Now, I need to work on those de-stressing breathing exercises I learned on YouTube…      

Pat Robertson Is Law

One of my supervisors went on a mini rant yesterday about how her daughter’s teacher violated her amendment rights by telling her that she can’t write about God. She goes on to tell me that she wrote to the American Center for Law and Justice and was informed that her daughter’s right was infringed upon and was also encouraged to sue. Now, I’ve never heard of American Center for Law and Justice, so my supervisor pulled up the webpage and showed it to me. I was alarmed when I noticed that there was a blurry YouTube image of a man that resembled Pat Robertson on the home page, but my supervisor assured me that the website was very reliable and informative. She even encouraged me to check it out, but “don’t check it out if you like Obama because there’s a lot of Obama bashing.” Erm…yeah…I just weakly smiled and walked away.  

For those of you who don’t know, students in the state of California can freely express their religious beliefs as long as they are not disruptive, so I’m all for her daughter talking about God and Jesus in school. However, it worries me when someone believes media mogul Pat Robertson is more credible than the ACLU. But then again, she thought this video was the real deal - 

I had to explain to her about CGI because she’s never heard of it, and even then, I knew that she didn’t believe me. But come on, the shadowing and the ripples in the water were so off!

I’ve always believed that no question is a stupid question because when you’re asking, you’re learning. But how does one transition that to critical thinking?   

          

You Know You Work In Research When...

you look up, there's no ceiling.