Today a student posted a job offer on our studies' fb page. It was addressed "Dear Ladies," and went on to indicate that one had to be female and Polish-speaking to apply. I looked at the ad, which was very legally non-discriminating regarding the sex of candidates for the position, and so posted a comment saying that if she was officially representing the company it would be best to reconsider phrasing that could indicate to potential rejected candidates that sex was used as a criterion of selection, and that if any of those candidates were reading they should contact me because I know a good human rights lawyer.

I was pissed, to be honest. I concluded with "because this shit is not cool. NOT COOL."

I hesitated before I posted, and I fumed for a while before deciding to, but I eventually thought it would at least be read by students from my stereotyping and prejudice class, and I would not be passively propagating an atmosphere that condones sex discrimination with my silence.

Anyway when I logged back on a few hours later her post (and my comment) was gone.

Today at my Norwegian class we were talking about indirect speech and one of the examples was "I asked her to meet me here." I conveyed this in indirect speech thus: "He said he asked her to meet him here." The instructor said that in indirect speech "here" becomes "there".  I protested. Then another student insisted that it is a rule in English too that in indirect speech "here" becomes "there". I said, "no, it doesn't". Then she said that she is an English teacher and yes it does. Then I said "I'm a native speaker, and sorry but You're teaching Your students wrong." (Obviously not in a very conciliatory mood today.) Then the instructor told us to stop arguing about it, because it wasn't super relevant to the lesson. And I exited the interaction with my stereotype of Polish English teachers being incompetent confirmed, and she exited the interaction, I'm sure, with her stereotype of native speakers being arrogant  ignorant assholes intact.

Hurrah, Humanity.

I did a very civically responsible thing today, and I want to feel good about it; but what I feel is like a freak, because people in this town don't stop for crying drunken people to make sure they are safe.

Today some change spilled out of my pocket when I was at the bar and I left it on the floor, with blessings to the lucky finder, who turned out to be my brother when, 2 hours later, he went up to buy me a lemonade. He picked it up and dropped it in the tip jar.

Did I ever tell You about the time I landed in Oslo and couldn't get off the plane because there was a new bridge operator who couldn't match up the gate ramp with the plane door? The pilot asked for our patience.

I met a racist tonight. I had a hard time reconciling my need for harmonious social interaction with my instinctive rejection of his words. It highlighted to me something I have been thinking about a lot, about myself: that I really do care about social interactions going smoothly. I used to think I didn't care about that. But I do. It also highlighted how difficult it is to persuade someone that their own subjective experience is not reality. He, naturally, thought that he had more expertise in the subject matter than I did, because he grew up in a black neighbourhood in Chicago. What could I tell him that could possibly convince him that his perceptions were false? We couldn't go back in time to consider specific incidents, deconstruct them into his expectations vs. his perceptions vs. his behavior vis-a-vis the other's expectations and perceptions and behaviour. What could I say to counter the statistics he provided to support his stance? Only that statistics don't show the "why" of a phenomenon, and my interpretation of the differences he described were different from his. That "racism" is not a phenomenon made up by people who want to underachieve. That the perspective of those in minority groups are probably different from those of people in the majority. I didn't tell him that his perspective was wrong. How could I? I'm too much of a psychologist to tell someone that their subjective experience is inaccurate. I don't do that, and I guess that makes me a really crappy anti-racist.

I left the house this morning in a rush, after having in spectacular and somewhat Rube Goldbergian manner knocked over and smashed into pieces and puddles a bottle of Pastis that H had given me for Xmas. Mourning this profound loss, I mopped up what I could then sped to my dentist appointment. I then spent the day at work having completely forgotten about this incident until I got home just now, and my memory of it was triggered by the unmistakable olfactory cue. More mopping to do tomorrow morning, I guess... unless I should leave my floor sticky with licorice liqueur? Would that count as aromatherapy?