redbird: a New York subway train, the cars sometimes called "redbirds" (redbird train)
Redbird ([personal profile] redbird) wrote2007-04-13 10:17 pm

Another random conversation

I went to my usual Chinatown place for lunch today. They put me at a table where a couple were already eating. [When people go there alone, the restaurant seats them at shared tables, usually large round ones that hold 6 or 8 customers; two people together at one of those tables suggests the place had been very busy when they arrived.] I sat down, poured myself tea, and ordered a big bowl of soup. Then another woman was seated at our table, and said something vaguely apologetic about sharing our table. I assured her "that's how they do it here," and that led to me chatting with her, and then to a cheerful four-person conversation, which included the couple's plans to move to Bangalore this fall (from Richmond, Virginia; they were in New York doing a few days of tourist stuff), and the other woman's child custody hearing this afternoon, which is why she was in Chinatown. So, India, exchange rates, the value of email for long-distance relationships (their 14-year-old son has a girlfriend he's not looking forward to leaving), the tendency of courts to make her nervous regardless of why she was walking into them, and some of the backstory of the custody hearing. (One-sided, of course, but if what she told me matches what the court has found, I think she'll win: she said her ex had put the kids in foster care, and she wants to get them back and take them home to London. All I know for sure is that she's angry at her ex—understandably, from her story—and wasn't obviously mad or antisocial.)

The odd bit was that she told me that I had an Irish accent and asked where I was from. [livejournal.com profile] rysmiel, [livejournal.com profile] papersky, I expect you are as startled by this as I am, though I did mention that I'd just been visiting an Irish friend and I might thus have picked up a little of the accent. That question/guess would have puzzled me from anyone, more from a woman who also said she was half-Irish (and half African) and has been living in London, not the US. She also commented on how healthy my lunch looked, because of the greens in the soup; one of the advantages, for me, of Chinese food is that I'm more likely to eat vegetables when I'm eating in that idiom than in most others.

The Virginians said goodbye with a promise to pray that she'd get custody. She and I talked a little longer, and after asking what I do, told me I must be a genius. I demurred, saying that what I am is a generalist, with a sticky memory that will go "that looks wrong" and check on things.

[identity profile] jbsegal.livejournal.com 2007-04-14 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
Did you get contact info? Charles Haynes is living in Bangalore for 2 years (at least) working for Google.

[identity profile] r-ness.livejournal.com 2007-04-14 03:12 am (UTC)(link)
I went to my usual Chinatown place for lunch today.

Out of curiosity, which place?

[identity profile] r-ness.livejournal.com 2007-04-14 03:34 am (UTC)(link)
Cool, thanks!

[identity profile] cakmpls.livejournal.com 2007-04-14 12:57 pm (UTC)(link)
On that last: yup. My mind is a 60-year storehouse of information that would be 99% totally useless if I weren't a copyeditor. (Well, unless there were money to be made in playing trivia games...)

[identity profile] don-fitch.livejournal.com 2007-04-15 06:59 am (UTC)(link)
I envy people with such fortuitous access to good Chinese restaurants. Out here in Southern California Suburbia it's difficult to find any but quick-food-on-steam-tables ones. (The rather good dim sum place on my usual path closed (*sigh*) and really good ones are a half-hour (or more) drive away.) But last week, on a whim, I tried one I've always passed-up because it looks so typically mediocre. Ordered two take-out items (four meals, for me), and while waiting for them to come from the kitchen noticed a case containing four barbecued/roasted ducks (@$12), so added one of these to the order. It didn't make the batch of food last much longer -- I ate it in addition to, rather than instead of some of, the other dishes (steamed chicken with ginger, and halibut with mushrooms & scallions), and I'm now down to duck congee and some broth to be used with noodles. Maybe someday I'll get one just to make a comfit or terrine, though I probably won't want more duck for about a month.