I promise not to talk about the house today. So here’s a random picture from my random collection of photos on my desktop. I don’t know when Jay took this picture, we just have it on the desktop.
Continue reading ‘Jay The Cowboy’
Monthly Archive for August, 2005
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Installing any kind of hardwood floor is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. There is a reason I do badly at math and spatial calculations. And another reason I don’t install hardwood floors for a living. But, we’re doing pretty good, I have to say. Just don’t look at the floor too hard when you visit our home. Or do, and you are only allowed to say how brilliant it looks.
Until this experience with a pneumatic floor nailer and a bloody staple gash on my finger, I guess it was too easy to criticize uneven seams on the floor.
Abraham, our Hondoran contractor we found at Home Depot, has been working on the floor with us. Each day, up to 100 migrants – documented and otherwise – hang around outside our closest Home Depot, as well as Home Depots and locations all over the United States, waiting for contractors and home remodelers to hire them for the day. Pay is negotiable, and skilled work obviously gets more.
People with trucks turning into the Home Depot parking lot get mobbed quite a bit. No one really notices my Beetle. I think they think I want someone to help me take out the trash. Wimpy car: Wimpy work.
Heard of the five-second rule? If food falls on the table, you have up to five seconds to pick it up and still eat it. I didn’t grow up saying that, but Jay uses that a lot. In my family, we have the “blowing technique.” This technique does nothing for the micro bacteria already on your food, but it does wonders for your psyche.
Of course, this rule is moot when one is in a hawker center. Or if the food has fallen on the floor. However, I am embarrassed to admit that I have applied that rule if the restaurant is nice, the table looks clean and I’ve paid $15 for fried tofu. The double standards are obviously unfair to the food and my stomach. Who says a fancy restaurant is any cleaner than your average hawker center?
Well, let’s just say that we were at a relatively nice Thai restaurant tonight. I dropped a peanut on the table, grabbed it up immediately, blew on it, and put it in my mouth. Later, Jay dropped a piece of fried tofu on the table. He hesitated. I stared. I also hesitated. The five seconds were up.
“Tofu down! Tofu down!” Jay said.
“Can I still have it?”
“Five seconds, Dot. Five seconds.”
But probably not as much as Jay’s. He’s been hauling 5-gallon paint cans around. I’ve been on my knees scraping drywall mud, or what I affectionately call “hard goop”, off the ground. At least the house is ready for painting.
I think this whole remodel business is an excuse for Jay to buy new tools. He’s using one of those spiffy spray gun paints to cover the inside of the house. It kicks some ass.
I overheard two students talking about my accent today. One insisted I sounded British. The other responded that it wasn’t British, it was just “Something that you get when you’re from somewhere else.” Neither knew I was eavesdropping.
As I spend more and more time in the United States, I find myself developing a way of speaking to make myself better understood. So I admit it: I have a “fake” accent. All you people out there who decry my selling out, please know that it truely makes it simpler not to explain yourself twice or thrice, and just blend in. However, I am very aware of the way I speak, and yes, I am choosing to sound like that.
I’d like to think that I easily switch back to Singlish whenever I am home or I meet other Singaporeans here, something I hope my family and friends can vouch for.
I used to be irked by people who spent a few years studying or working overseas who returned to Singapore with the perma-accent. Come on, is that possible? What is the tipping point? How long does it take to “lose” or deny your Singlishness? I recently met an older Malaysian and Singaporean who had lived here for between 10 and 20 years, and both still spoke in that distinctive home accent.
I have to say I often feel like I’m living in two worlds. I consciously speak in the American/British/Somewhere Else accent to make life easier. And don’t forget, I teach journalism writing and media here. I doubt people will take me seriously if I try to edit their grammar and speak like an Ah Beng. Plus the students won’t understand my stupid Singlish jokes. Come to think of it, I don’t know if my Singaporean students ever got me too. But am I being a pretentious bitch? Does that mean I’m not proud of who I am?
That said, I hope I’m not one of those clueless people who think they are speaking Singlish back home when they are actually pissing off everyone around them with their psuedo accents. If I am, tell me off. I think I still can be re-educated.
There are at least 50 shades of white at Home Depot . That can make your task of finding a “basic white” color for your new home a basic nightmare. I haven’t spent that much time considering colors since primary school, when I was staring at my Staedtler Colored Pencils.
My problems were compounded by the fact that I naively thought I could pick up a can of tester paint -just like that- from the shelves. It didn’t help that Mr Friendly at the paint department appeared to be having his PMS. He curtly told me all paint colors were individually mixed and “Excuse me, but did you want flat, flat enamel, eggshell enamel, satin, semi-gloss, high-gloss, whatever the f**k.”
I usually buy my things at the end of their processed lives. Never killed a chicken, never chopped wood for a table, and never painted a wall. Who knew I’d be doing home improvement? Wait, strike that, home construction?
I can now say dry wall, shingles, insulation, studs, brackets, foundation, joists and exterior paint as well as the next construction worker. Now, if only I can find that *#@*%*! white paint.
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