At MD Anderson, where my dad is staying, they have signs posted frequently saying “We speak your language” (in different languages, of course… they wouldn’t be speaking your language if the sign was only in English, I guess). Anyway, having translators make sense considering how many consent forms you sign in the process of doing a clinical trial. Beware the IRB!

Of course, with a different language often comes a different culture, but one woman that I met yesterday had adapted really well to American culture. She had adapted to the service economy in our culture, so when she saw me standing around in the vending machine room (I was trying to figure out how to get my fruit snacks unstuck, actually), she assumed I was a vending machine attendant and said, “Coke, please.”

At first, I thought she was just new to vending machines, so I pointed to the coke machine. But then she handed me two dollars and said “Please, I’d like a coke.” I told her where she could stick her two dollars (in the dollar bill slot on the vending machine, c’mon, give me a little credit), but she wasn’t budging. So I took her money and got her a coke.

In retrospect, this wouldn’t be such a bad job. Just chill in a room with vending machines all day, and get stuff for people. Instead of developing human-machine interfaces, I become the interface! And how cool would that be.