My uncle has long since passed, so I feel comfortable telling a few of his adventures.

My uncle loved a bargain, he went to auctions and if nobody was buying something, and he could get it cheap, he bought it.

He bought 50 bags of what appeared to be cement, with no labels.

We mixed it up, to build a platform for a new boiler. It wouldn’t set, and started to rise. Someone tasted it and we had 50 bags of premixed donut flour.

Everything had to be removed and real cement was bought.

He bought two female mannequins, but no clothes, he put them in the back of the shop, to scare burglars if we were ever robbed.

He bought what he thought was 200 lbs of reflective beads/powder. He was going to cover all of our business signs with it. It was shuffleboard wax. We donated it to the local legion.

He bought a tamper.

It vaguely looked like this, but much bigger.

We used it as an amusement ride, you just push the bar down, the machines one cylinder engine fires, and the machine jumps. Which pushes the lever down automatically. It just keeps jumping. I have attached a video in the comments, showing a much smaller one that doesn’t work very well.

Many decades ago, our puritan province, had liquor stores where you couldn’t see the liquor. You went in, there were tables covered in glass, and there was a liquor menu under the glass. There were long beaded chains with pens on the end, to write your name and order on the card. The tables were about 12 feet by 5 feet.

He bought 4 of them, we had no use for them. One day he was looking at the tables and saw the chains and pens were missing. He went ballistic, it turns out that he had only bought the tables for the chains and pens.

He never did tell us what he wanted them for.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen was a song the label didn’t want to release for MULTIPLE reasons.

First, the title was ridiculous. At no point in the song is the title mentioned, which was quite strange for songs at that time. The label (EMI) was used to songs that had the usual verse/chorus/verse/bridge/verse/chorus styling. There isn’t ANY of that in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The label also didn’t believe that the listening public would have a clue about the song, because they wouldn’t understand the words “bohemian” (socially unconventional in an artistic way) or “rhapsody” (an enthusiastic expression of feeling).

There was also the factor that the song was basically three songs Queen jammed together. You can hear this in the piano opening, the operatic interlude, and the rock crescendo that concludes the work. Usually, listeners do not like variations in the tone or style of a song; “Bohemian Rhapsody” shattered that view.

Finally, there was the length of the song. In the Seventies, pop songs were only 3:30 long, at the most, allowing radio stations to cram in twelve to fifteen tracks in an hour. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was an epic 5:55 long, unheard of in that era (Don McLean’s “American Pie” had similar issues). Thus, the label thought that radio would not play the track, simply because of this.

It seems the label was wrong. “Bohemian Rhapsody” spent nine weeks atop the charts in the UK. It initially reached #9 in the U.S. (1976), but rose to #2 in 1992 after being featured in the film Wayne’s World. It has since been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Queen, from the groundbreaking video for the song “Bohemian Rhapsody”

I recently started looking for work; luckily I got hired.

All the interviews were the same with their standard company questions: tell me about a time when you had a disagreement with a coworker.

Some of the telltale signs I noticed at the end when I noticed that I wasn’t going to get the job was “ok, I have other people to interview so I’ll get back to you” or “ok, thank you very much.”

After hearing that a lot, I was thinking back to an interview, what happened during the interview, and how I got the job. And the answer was: instead of making the interview a question and answer session, make it where you are both sharing stories and laughing.

That’s what happened at my interview at the County. Apparently, this place is hard to get hired onto. During the interview, the guy asked me to tell me about myself. I told him about how I went to school for law enforcement and then went out to the academy. Coincidentally, he too went to the same school and the academy as well, only years before. He asked me questions about the law enforcement PT and the long run we had to do. I was telling him about all the pushups we did. We were laughing, which was good. And the interview questions were spot on.

Finally, he asked me where I lived and I told him. He then said “ok, we will find you a district that’s close to your house” (good sign #1). At the end of the interview, he told me “well, expect to get a call from us on Monday” (good sign #2) to which I shot back “look forward to coming on board.”

It’s the more personal questions in the end like “can you start this Friday” that indicates interest versus not. On a side note, I was asked if working from 6:00am–4:30pm Monday through Thursday was a problem and I happily said “not at all” without asking my wife first. I found out later another person when interviewed was asked if he would be ok driving the distance to the shop. He said “I need to check with my wife first,” and unfortunately, he wasn’t offered the job.

Update: Once you are hired and if the company offers positions internally first to employees, get references from your current managers and ask them, if they could, to send an email directly to the person who will be part of the interview expressing how good of an employee you are. This reference will have so much weight on the decision. Understand, that doesn’t mean you can slack off on the interview n

It’s not because I’m ashamed of my native name — sometimes it’s simply for the sake of easier cultural communication.

My Chinese name, when transliterated into English, sounds a bit strange; it actually means “unfortunate.”

For example, imagine a girl named 谢婷— it’s a lovely Chinese name, but when rendered in English… Shitting.

You wouldn’t like to be called Shitting, would you?

Over the past two centuries, Western culture has been overwhelmingly dominant, so it’s quite natural to follow Western naming conventions.

When I started my first job at an American company, the boss required everyone to choose an English name.

At the time, I had just finished reading a book written by a Jewish author about the tragic experiences in a World War II concentration camp, and I was deeply moved — so I took the protagonist’s name as my own.

Many years later, I discovered that it wasn’t actually a Jewish name, which struck me as odd. I later learned that Jews often have two names — one in Hebrew and another in the common European style.

I had chosen the latter.

It may sound a bit presumptuous, but I sincerely encourage you to learn Chinese.

Think about it — Chinese is so cool !

Every character is like a little drawing, the most ancient form of human language: pictographs.

The image below shows the oldest form of Chinese writing — over four thousand years old.

I think anyone can guess what these two characters mean…

““

By the way, if you are a Westerner receiving medical treatment in China, your name will appear on the large display screen in your native language, not as a Chinese transliteration.

We worry that you might not recognize Chinese characters and miss your turn for treatment.

At present, the voice announcement system can’t pronounce foreign names correctly—it literally spells them out letter by letter. I find that quite strange. Why is that? It really shouldn’t be so hard!

I guess this problem will be solved within the next two years.

But honestly, this is how it should be—not because of your skin color, but because you are a guest in our country, and you happen to fall ill while here.

China is not a colony.

“Civilized people” is not a term reserved for the West.

In fact, China’s medical standards are far superior to those in most Western countries.

And the same goes for legal services. I once calculated that America’s legal GDP is 3,000 times that of China’s! You read that right—three thousand times! How is that even possible?!

And yet, it’s true.

Shakespeare was a great writer.

He once said, “Let’s kill all the lawyers!” （in Henry VI）

Where I then lived, it was a tradition to spent your first pay-check on something you really liked. And although the people in the kitchen shop, wearing white overcoats, were terribly smug, I walked out with an almost 20 pound weighing cast iron pot. My pay was low and the pot terribly pricy, so few pints were offered that same night.

The pot remained behind when I moved to Italy, and reached my new home three years later. A friend visiting was willing to lug it in change for a week stay in Palermo.

This pot made a mean roast beef, always a success throughout the many parties we used to throw. People often asked how the beef was prepared, and I proudly showed them the pot. A big mistake.

It was after a party we found out someone had stolen the pot. First we thought it was a practical joke, but after many telephone calls, it remained missing. Until today I wonder how someone could carry the thing out without anyone noticing.

A couple of times I was about to buy a new one, but haven’t.

If you are ever feeling sorry for yourself, thinking the whole world is against you, my advice is to buy a Greyhound bus ticket. Why? Because you are going to meet a group of people that are at the very bottom of societies barrel, which of course will make your loser ass feel like a Rothchild. But to get the full feel of these peoples miserable lives your adventure has to be at least three days. I did four when I was twenty one years of age straight out of the army.

Uncle Sam bought me a ticket from Charlottesville South Carolina to Santa Barbra, California, and oh what a ride…or should I say crawl.

I remember buying these white pants that only James Crockett would wear from Miami Vice, and when I arrived in SB the crotch had turned a light brown from all the farting and non ass washing I went through as I traveled on my chariot for the mentally disturbed across the great land of Old Glory.

My fellow riders were an assortment of single moms and their kid that could only afford a laundry basket to carry their crap in, carnies, and drunk black guys that just got out of prison.

If I remember correctly, the smell was probably the worst. Everyone pretty much wants to get the ride overwith, so it’s relatively quiet, but the stink man! You can’t escape it. Like I said before about my rotten ass, it’s that, cigarettes, malt liquor, and with a hint of McDonalds. Mmmm…the fragrance of poverty.

My go to story of any passengers I remember on this trip was this weird little white guy that sat next to me from South Carolina to New Orleans. Ever since he boarded, he hugged this grocery bag full of magazines that sat on his lap. At first I didn’t think much of him, a little weird yes, but not a threat. But around one in the morning he gave me a little nudge…”Hey.”

I pretended to sleep but he nudged me again. “Hey man. Wake up.”

“What?”

“Check this out bro.”

He then started pulling out the magazines until he got to the bottom, and out came a very large and shiny bowie knife. We sat there in silence. He smiled at his reflection in the blade, and me thinking, “Well Pat. It’s been a good life. End of the line buddy.This is it. Stabbed to death on a Greyhound bus, around one am, just outside of Louisiana….”gulp”

“Pretty cool huh?” He asked.

“Um yea…cool man.” I replied.

But then, he just smiled, sighed, and put his partner in crime back in the bag, refilled the magazines, and turned to the window to sleep. I was like, “Umm..What the hell, man?” (To myself…very quietly)

He got off in New Orleans and disappeared into the crowd, leaving me and my Crockett pants forever.

I’m thinking whatever was whispering in his ear about my bloody death had a change of heart. For this, I say thank you.

I rode across the country on them once.. From California to Knoxville Tennessee – and it took almost 10 days.. After about the second day I bought a box of Unisom and stayed knocked TF out… literally, I would sleep for 16 straight hours or more. Bus would stop somewhere at 2:30am, I would stumble off like a zombie, stumble into the bus station only to find out my next bus wasn’t leaving until 1pm..

So I’d find a seat in the bus station and wait.. pop another Unisom and zombie out again… 2–3 hours of sleep and I’d get woken up by a cop wanting to see if I had a ticket and wasn’t just a bum sleeping it off.

Show him my ticket and then back to sleep.. hop on the bus at 1pm, pop another Unisom and go back to sleep. Wake up somewhere in the middle of the night, look out the window and see nothing but darkness with no idea of where I was, pop another Unisom, go back to sleep, then rinse and repeat.. Over and over.

One stop somewhere in the middle of the night was literally a crime scene. There were cops and EMT workers all over the place, yellow crime scene tape sectioning off a part of the bus station, and a big pool of blood on the floor. And while I didn’t actually see the victim, somebody told me a guy had been stabbed in the eye.

At another stop it was a full 24hrs until my next bus left.. That meant 24 straight hours of alternating between twiddling my thumbs, eating $12 hot dogs with a $4 coke, and being deep into another Unisom coma. And at some point I caught a whiff of myself and thought I’d take a whore bath in the bathroom sink there in the bus station. But the bathroom was even more disgusting than I was, so I just said screw it and stayed nasty.

And that’s how it went.. Day after day after day until I made it home. One solid week of pure misery with another couple of days added on for good measure.

And I wish I could say that traveling like that gave me a chance to see the country, but I can’t… I slept, I ate shitty expensive junk food, I smelled bad, and I slept some more.

Driving over to the café feels slower than usual, as if everyone is moving in slow motion. The bell dings as I push the door open. Coworkers greet me, customers turn to look when I spot him in the corner, and he glances up from a newspaper. Who even reads a newspaper these days? He wears a dark suit that seems out of place; the fabric has a tiny shimmer in the light, as if it has a life of its own. We often see business types, lawyers in particular, with their laptops in the corner, but something about him stands out.

His eyes track me as I make my way behind the counter. Rising from the table, he moves as if gliding toward me. “Medium black coffee, two sugars.” His voice is eerily smooth, like velvet. I can’t shake the feeling that something is off. Slowly placing the cup of coffee on the counter, he reaches inside his coat pocket. “Thanks, keep the change,” he says. Before I can say a word, he turns and walks out.

It’s a typical busy shift—crowds coming in and out in waves, orders stacking like small tidal pulls. In slow times, we wipe tables or goof off, but a heaviness stays with me no matter how hard I try to laugh it off. It’s hanging in the air, a dark cloud that follows me.

Back at my dorm, I peel off my jeans and stand under the hot water, trying to wash the feeling down the drain. Lying in bed, drifting, I hear distant voices and the steady electronic beeping, and then a whisper: “Wake up.” I shoot up. The room is empty and the TV is off, maybe I was half-dreaming.

Waking up the next morning, I shuffle to the bathroom. Something isn’t right; my jeans aren’t on the floor, and I could have sworn I brought my apron in this time. Maybe I was so exhausted I imagined it. Same routine as yesterday, I drink coffee from home, sit at my desk, and try to push through schoolwork before my shift.

Time gets away from me, and I’m back in the bathroom, checking myself before work. My apron is on the floor of my truck, but something just isn’t right. The drive to the café drags, slow as ever.

The café bell dings sharp this time, like a blade. It sounds louder, as if the room goes quiet before I step inside. Coworkers greet me, customers glance up, and then my stomach jumps. The man in the corner with his newspaper. He was here yesterday. His eyes track me as he glides to the counter while I stand frozen.

“Medium black coffee, two sugars.” The smoothness of his voice puts me on edge. I move slowly, like sudden motion might trigger him, as if he were some creature stalking his prey. Placing the coffee on the counter, he says, “Thanks, keep the change.” He turns and walks out. Maybe he’s just a new regular. It happens all the time.

My shift feels over before it even starts. My mind spirals back to the man in the suit. People become regulars all the time. Orders get memorized; I know what they want before they reach the door. Does he wait for me to get here? Is he a stalker? Questions ricochet through my head as I sit alone at my dining room table. Eating a college kid meal, ramen I make in a microwave. I decide I’m going to place my jeans on the floor in a specific spot this time, and just needing proof that I’m not losing my mind.

Haunted by beeps and voices as I fall into a dream: flashes of a hospital hallway, doctors rushing, faces I can’t make out blurring past. Same faint voice at the edge of my ears, “wake up,” growing louder until a woman’s face is inches from mine, and screaming the words. I jolt upright, breathless, like someone’s sitting on my chest. The bedroom is empty—only the fan hums. Rushing to the bathroom, I splash water on my face and grab a towel. I look down to see that my jeans aren’t where I left them.

Panic sets in. Is my dorm haunted? Was that the woman telling me to wake up? Sunlight spills through the window, and I let warmth wash over me to calm my mind. Desperate to get out of the dorm and to work as soon as possible. I find my jeans where I usually keep them, foled in a drawer. And my apron is in a ball on the floor of my truck. I hate this feeling, this hollow dread, as if something bad is about to happen.

Walking into the café, the bell rings, and I freeze in the doorway. It sounds even louder than before, but I can’t move. He’s there in the same corner, same newspaper, same stillness I’ve been watching for days. Rushing to get behind the counter, I lean over to my coworker. “How long has that man been sitting there?” I ask, wondering if he’s been waiting for me.

She frowns. “What man?”

“That man in the suit, sitting in the corner with a newspaper,” I say, panic cracking in my voice.

“I don’t see a man in a suit. Are you alright?” She looks at me with concern. Not wanting to be dropped off at the closest psych ward, I brush it off. I watch him. He doesn’t just glide. He doesn’t disturb a single customer.

Everything is happening over and over again; it’s the same thing for the third day in a row. This feels like something straight out of a comic book. I’m stuck in a nightmare, or I’m going insane. I quickly decide I’m going to change something, even if it’s small. I move the sugar from one side of the counter to the other. “Medium black coffee, two sugars.” His voice sends chills down my bones. There is something dark yet angelic about it, like a quality he uses to draw people in. Every instinct in my body screams not to trust it. He must be stuck in a loop, and somehow, I’m tied to it.

Testing this even further, I place an empty cup on the counter. He reaches for it as I pour straight from the carafe, my eyes flicking between his face and the cup. Coffee spills over his hand, but he doesn’t flinch. No grimace. No reaction at all. My stomach falls as I look back down. There is no coffee, no spill. The sugar sits neatly where it always does, as if everything has reset.

“Thanks, keep the change.” He turns and walks out. Screaming for him to wait, I attempt to run around the counter to chase after him. To find out what is going on, who is he?. My coworker grabs my arm. “What is wrong?” she asks, panic written all over her face.

“The man who was here. There is something wrong, and I am somehow connected,” I yell.

“There was no man. I can show you,” she shoots back.

We pull up the security feed. There’s nothing there. No man in the corner. When I tested him with the coffee, the cameras glitched, and time seemed to skip. For a beat, it was just me yelling for him to wait.

“I think you need to go home and get some sleep,” my coworker says, gentle and firm as if she were taming the feral raccoon in the alley. “We’ll be fine here, or I will call someone in.” My stomach drops. Please don’t let that be code for psych ward.

Sleep drags me under deep, like an anchor dropping into the ocean’s depths. The dream is dark and stronger this time. Beeps pierce louder, sharper, pounding into my skull. Fluorescent lights overhead, and I’m back in the middle of the hospital hallway. Nurses and doctors rush past, their faces blurred as if smeared out of a photo. I reach out for one, but my hand passes right through.

A woman leans over me, her lips forming the exact words again and again: Wake up, wake up, wake up. Her voice grows until it’s a scream that rattles my nerves. I bolt upright in my dorm bed, drenched in sweat, goosebumps all over my body, lungs clawing for air. The fan hums steadily in silence, but beneath it, I swear I can still hear the monitors beeping.

I pace my dorm, knowing it’s not this dorm that’s haunted but the man in the suit. I won’t go back there, not until I figure this out. I call my boss and tell them I’m sick, that I need more rest, and that I will not be coming in today. Shoving a piece of toast into my mouth, I decide I’m going to go to my college library to see what I can find out about that café and the man in the suit.

Putting on shorts and a baggy T-shirt I left on the floor, I grab my keys. Swinging my front door open in a panic, I step through—and it’s not my dorm hallway. The café bell rings out with a deafening sound. The sound echoes in my ears as my eyes dart from the counter to the man in the corner. I look down. I’m in my work uniform, apron tied at my waist.

This time, the entire café is frozen, staring at me with dead eyes. The only movement comes from the man in the suit when he shakes his newspaper. The noise startles me, and I instinctively look at him. I don’t want to move. What is going to happen to me?

Unable to take it anymore, I shout, “What do you want from me?” My voice cracks, but he gives nothing back. Refusing silence as an answer, I step into the middle of the café floor. The air is thick, heavy like smoke. My pulse is hammering in my ears. He lowers the paper and folds it with care. His eyes catch mine while rising from his chair, gliding until he towers over me. “Medium black coffee, two sugars.” The words splinter something inside me. Tears swell at the corners of my eyes.

“What do you want from me?” My whisper barely carries.

Silence stretches. Then, soft and deliberate, he leans in. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

His words hang in the air, heavy enough to crush me. The café wavers at the edges, tables bending like reflections in water. My knees lock to keep me standing. Not supposed to be here.

He tilts his head, studying me like a specimen. “Do you hear them?”

At first, only silence. Then it seeps in, the faint beep…beep…beep of a machine, the muffled sobs of someone begging me to wake up. My throat closes. “You’re in between,” he says, voice low, almost tender. His hand brushes a table, and the sugar packets scatter, then snap back into place, untouched. My head feels like it’s spinning, and for a moment, I see white sheets and wires, a still body on a bed. My body.

I stumble back, clutching my apron. “I want to go home, I want to wake up,” I choke out. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Then choose.” He holds out a cup of black coffee, two sugars. The steam curls upward, but the scent is wrong, like smoke and a hint of metal clawing at my throat. Is this man the devil? What did I do to deserve this hell? I shake my head, backing away a few steps.

“What is going to happen to me?” His smile sharpens, thin as a blade. “Choose,” he repeats.

“You’re not telling me what is going to happen to me. No. I won’t.” My voice cracks.

“So be it.” He lifts the cup, and the café snaps back into place. Customers laughing, coworkers moving as if nothing happened. The bell dings sharp. Suddenly, the weight of my apron drags heavily on my shoulders. For the first time, he looks back as he walks out the door. I look down at the newspaper left on the counter, and my chest caves. Across the top, bold and dark, one word: “Purgatory”.

Persian Date Cake

Ingredients

Dates-Walnuts

• 3 cups pitted dates
• 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Dough

• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1 cup ground unsalted pistachios or shredded coconut

Instructions

1. Toast walnuts in skillet over medium heat for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.
2. Place a few walnut pieces inside each date. Arrange dates, packed next to each other in a flat 9-inch serving dish.
3. In large deep skillet, sauté flour in butter over high heat, stirring constantly for about 15 to 20 minutes, toasting until it is golden caramel color.
4. Spread hot dough over dates. Pack and smooth it with back of a spoon.
5. Combine cinnamon, sugar, cardamom and sprinkle evenly over cake. Sprinkle with 1 cup ground pistachios or shredded coconut all over. Cool.
6. Cut into small square pieces. Arrange on serving platter or on plate in which it was made.

Attribution

Lior’s Kitchen Talk

PART 2 – Husband Catches Preg Wife Cheating At BBQ, Recruits His Lawyer Family On EPIC LEVEL Revenge