The Homeless in Harvard Square

I went to college at Berkeley, and after 4 years I thought I was used to homeless people. When I first got to Cambridge, I remember joking with a college friend who also moved to the area. "Man, I feel uncomfortable here. Where are the homeless people?" I saw Harvard Square in the day as that tourist attraction it is, all clean and pristine. I wasn't being very observant.

I've recently become uncomfortable about homeless people. I'm not talking about the people who ask for spare change and have signs. Those people seem to disappear at night. I'm talking about the people who are homeless and do not ask for spare change. They fade into the crowd during the day, and at night if you care to look, you see them, snug in their very used sleeping bags.

I can tell you where to look -- right in front of the Coop, especially in the winter, and beneath stairs in the building at the bend of Brattle Square/Mt Auburn. Sometimes, you see a sleeping bag in Cambridge Commons when the weather is warmer. Don't forget to visit the ABP at the Holyoke Center -- I've realized that nearer where the bathrooms are, you see possibly homeless people hang around, trying to clean up at the public bathroom, especially at night. I think I saw an old man huddle in 7-Eleven this evening trying to get a bit of warmth. I hope he wasn't chased away.

These are a very different type of homeless people I'm now noticing. The ones I saw in Berkeley were kids in goth-ish clothes who looked like they were being homeless as an alternative vacation. Fine, there were some older people, but they were the ones telling jokes for money. There are the homeless people in Berkeley who gather in Sproul Plaza to drum at night, and sometimes students join in. I guess there were also those who stayed in People's Park and I didn't see those at all. I've heard of people who go through the trash cans on campus, although I've only seen people collecting cans, not looking for food.

These homeless people in Harvard Square don't seem to be asking for help. I once saw a woman chased a couple of guys away, furious that they tried to give her money. I remember her because I saw her a few days earlier near the same place, in an ATM center. I thought she looked like she might have just gotten off a plane, and was sitting in the ATM center while waiting for someone. I mean, I do that sometimes especially when it's cold outside. But seeing her again with her suitcase, I didn't think she was waiting for anyone.

I guess I'm bothered, and this is my first avenue for release. I'm hoping I'll eventually get around to trying to do something. With food prices going up and the economy going down, I'm reading about the increasing number of people turning up at soup kitchens. In the meantime, I fumble, trying to figure out how to cope with the real Harvard Square that really has vacant buildings and vagrants.

I haven't been noticing homeless people in other parts of Cambridge/Boston. Maybe I'm still not seeing the world as it is.

Female Forrest Gumps

Walking to school today, I was following behind a woman on wedge-heeled boots. I might as well have been following a woman handicapped in her legs. Her feet seemed totally disjointed from her shoes, which gave me the impression of watching someone with not one, but two twisted feet. She reminded me of the scene where young Forrest Gump was dancing for Elvis (I happened to see that on tv last night.)

After the woman with the wedge-heels and I parted, I found myself walking beside a woman with a double limp. It might have been badly-fitting sandals -- those chunky ones that shouldn't be too hard to balance on; she was dragging both sides of her shoes in turn. She was lifting her feet, but just not enough to compensate for her shoes such that she was dragging them both. It sounded like a terrible terrible limp.

All that said, I am guilty of wearing shoes that are not too comfortable at times. I only hope that I didn't look that ridiculous to onlookers. Someone forgot to teach women of my generation the importance of feigning comfort when wearing our chosen instrument of torture. After all, they were meant to make us look better, not worse.

Cracking the soup code

I found this out by accident -- you get free food if you speak Chinese at this particular Chinese restaurant near my school.

I've been eating at Chinese restaurants for years, and I've never really noticed any major difference in service speaking in English or Chinese. Sometimes you get a friendlier waiter if you speak in Chinese, but that's almost a natural response to speaking to anyone in their native language. Then, I went to this restaurant that I've ignored the past couple of years for no particular reason four times.

Visit 1: received free dessert of red bean soup.
Visit 2: received free soup, and free dessert of red bean soup.
Visit 3: no freebies
Visit 4: received free soup, and free dessert of red bean soup.

After Visits 1 and 2, we postulated that it was either the dish we ordered -- we had noodles the first visit, and a couple of main entrees the second visit -- or (unlikely) the time of the day -- visit 2 was rather late. Our 3rd visit there, we had noodles and there was no free soup. We also went during the regular dinner hours.

On the 3rd visit, we were wondering about the difference between receiving the starting soup and the dessert soup. While waiting for our dishes to arrive, I took a good look around the restaurant to see whether anyone else was getting free soups (and the answer is yes), and who was getting the free soups.

People getting free soups:
1. old white people who looked like they were regulars coz they had special attention
2. Chinese people who look like they speak Chinese (let's call them real Chinese people).

Of the people who ordered noodles, the real Chinese subpopulation definitely received soups.

We did not receive our free soups that 3rd visit, and I thought that I knew why. Analyze this:

Language used when talking to waiting staff:
Visit 1: Chinese
Visit 2: Chinese
Visit 3: English

Yeah, I thought it was a language thing. Naturally, the next thing to do is to test it out. For visit 4, I will order in Chinese.

Day of visit 4

The greeting staff that day was a young girl. She immediately spoke to us in English -- Argh! Foiled? I was worried about my experiment.

Fortunately, someone else served us water, and I made it a point to thank her in Chinese. Then I ordered dinner. I was slightly nervous about this because there were a few words that I couldn't read off the menu. I tried to fudge it, and I guessed the first 2 words right, but got the 3rd one wrong. The waitress corrected me, and I immediately felt extremely embarrassed and tried to mumble something in Chinese about not being able to read too well. It was so awkward that my non-Chinese speaking friend could tell I was totally bluffing at this point.

I sat nervously in my seat, wondering if I'd screwed up, trying very hard not to stare at the waitress. Then she appeared with 2 bowls of soup. But where was she heading? It was a heart-pounding moment. But I gave the answer away at the very start, so you know that those soups were for us. Score!

And we got our dessert soup too.

I haven't gone back to that restaurant since that time. Now that I know that it makes a difference what language I use, I'll feel cheap if I deliberately talk in Chinese to get free soups.

But what is in it for the restaurant that discriminates among their customers? Clearly they try to reward their regulars, so that might keep those regulars coming. I guess the Chinese customers (if they noticed) feel more welcome, so they may also return more often. But what about the people who notice the freebies, and did not receive them? I don't know if it makes a difference in terms of tips though.

In any case, I will be going back to the Chinese restaurant simply because it's the only real one in the area. The freebies certainly do help though.