San Jose Shopping Mall Meetup

I'm writing this a week after the fact, but I attended a meetup in San Jose.

I get so flustered in these kinds of contexts and was initially really tense. It was nearly four hours long. We stayed until the conclusion.

I had one-on-one conversations with two people: M, and another individual who's name I didn't catch.

We were late coming into the conversation, because we had picked up Taco Bell and there was no place to stay at the main table and eat, so we ate off to the side and then joined in when we were done.

First Conversation Partner

We talked about weather, which lead us to talking about where we lived. I talked about how cold it gets where I'm from. He said, oh, I've visited your city before. And he said that his sister had his wedding here, and afterwards, they went to eat at a Palestinian restaurant. I asked which one. It turns out, he went to one of my favourite Palestinian restaurants in the city! He talked about how he spent some time in Chicago, and also was living in Rochester, at the Deaf College there, so he had some experience with colder climates. We got on talking to why he had left Rochester (he said that he enjoyed it so much!) and he replied, well, it's rough. The cost of living was rough, but also the culture there was hostile to him. People infantilized him. He couldn't have stayed. Now he lives with his parents and some other siblings in the Bay area. He's the second oldest of four.

There was a lot that I missed. God. I missed so much. My poor fingerspelling reception was one of the main culprits for this. I wanted to stop for clarifications, but at some point, the conversation had already moved past where clarifications would have been useful. And I was embarassed. It's embarassing to have shit fingerspelling reception. I really need to get better.

He is hard-of-hearing, and was semi whispering a lot of signs, which did help, but to match his signing style, I started mouthing a lot. And I don't need to mouth. I shouldn't have mouthed. But I did. Next time I'll be more careful about that.

Transition

I asked my first conversation partner about the population of the Deaf school at Fremont. How many students were there exactly. He got the attention of some other people, including my second conversation partner, and I was informed that there was 500 students in total across all grades.

Second Conversation Partner

Somehow I shifted over to start talking to M, who was the provider of that information as she works at the school now as a sub. Our conversation kinda went all over the place. She talked about her old office job and how demanding it was-- M was an early adopter of tech, using the earliest Mac models, and her proficiency with technology gave her pretty stunning opportunities. She was the only Deaf worker at her company, but carried a lot of responsibility and was heavily trusted. She is an IT gal. Now, she teaches at the Deaf school. She lives with her mom, who is an ASL interpreter. She doesn't own her own house, her money goes to travelling instead. She likes travelling. She enjoys travelling to places on organized Deaf tours, because an interpreter is present and that makes things a lot easier. Recent trips include Disney-- she's a Disney fan. She has 4 sets of Mickey Mouse leggings.

Nowadays, M is on her phone a lot. She moderates a whole bunch of Deaf groups on Facebook, and she's a hardline moderator. She kicks out anyone who doesn't follow the rules. She's very proud of the work that she does. She protects her community. She has a kind of 'Momma bear' attitude. She has many many Facebook followers. She doesn't give her phone number out to anyone except close contacts, but she has so many friends on Facebook.

She uses an Android. There's so much freedom with Android. Like me, she's got a cracked version of YT that doesn't play ads, and she enjoys the captioned speech feature that ships with Android. She has a particular distaste for Apple, doesn't understand how people haven't shifted to Android en masse yet.

Other Group Convo Topics

We talked about how they're charging so much for the 'Deaf' version of those AI glasses that show you captions in the corner, while the 'Regular' version is cheaper but has more features.

We talked about Boy Scouts becoming the Scouts. We talked about other things that I can't remember now...

I wish there were more meetups in my area.

For the Spreadsheet

Vocab

• Chicago
• Afganistan
• Cheap
• Wifi
• Computer
• Rochester