True story

Someone dinged my car and I left it at the body shop to have it repaired yesterday. Since there was a very small puncture in the sheet metal, the body work was slightly more elaborate. Anyway, this involves repainting the area of the dent.

Today I received a phone call from the body shop.

"Mr. Kote?"

"Yes"

"We are done repairing the dent and are about to paint the car"

"That's good"

"Can you please tell us what color your car is?"

"Titanium Gray"

And this was when it hit me. Why does he need to ask me my car's color if all he has to do is slap on something that matches the rest of the car? I'd like to think that he actually wants to look in some database for the exact color, but somehow that's too reasonable an answer. I should have said Flaming Yellow.

Salinas, Mexico

In the approximately three and a half years that I have lived here in the US, I have never felt more like a foreigner than I do here in Salinas, CA. Make that Salinas, Mexico. The city is full of Mexicans/Hispanics/Latinos. Suffice to say they all speak Spanish, and many of them are probably of dubious legality, having slipped across the southern border.

All stores and government offices (like the Department of Motor Vehicles) cater to Spanish linguistic requests. Most of the city is bilingual, with a significant proportion monolingual - in Spanish. Seeing a brown man, most people assume that I am a Mexican and start in Spanish. Until I reply to them in Kannada with a big smile on my face.

The kicker? I had called maintenance to fix the hot water supply to my bathroom sink. When I returned home, I saw a sign hung on my door knob without a single word of English in it, probably telling me that the maintenance man had entered the apartment to fix the problem. I called the leasing office to ask them about it, and the manager (a Mexican) explained to me that they had stopped ordering English signs since everyone in the community spoke Spanish.

I must say however that Senor Kote sounds a lot better than Mr.Kote.

California.....

I was getting ready for the office a few mornings ago when I saw on the news that a representative in the state assembly wants to make spanking kids a misdemeanour. Now that's something this state really needed very urgently. I can't wait till my mother hears of this......