China syndrome

Back when I was in high school, during the Middle Ages in the 1960s, I had the choice of which second language I wanted to learn.

That's because a second language was an elective in the college prep curriculum. We could pick between German, French and Spanish, I believe. And to think I was still having trouble with English.

Since I was living in a place called Center Valley, in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch country (local farmers still had hex signs on their quaint but attractive barns), I figured German was the logical choice. I mean, we had regional breweries with names like Horlacher, Neuweiler, Piels and Rheingold, for cyring out loud, and bakeries that made pretzels with the names of Miller (no doubt anglicized from Meuller) and Wolfel.

Well, German would have been a great choice if I wanted to be a waiter in a Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant or a brewer in Allentown.

But as the world turns, Spanish might have been a better option with the gradual increase of Hispanic immigration. Didn't foresee that at the time, of course. So I ended up taking two years of German in the 10th and 11th grades, and later, a semester at Kutztown State College (ach du lieber. Kutztown?). Nearly 50 years later, I've forgotten most of what I learned, although I can still count to 10, auf deutsch. Yay, me. I can still translate words like Lufthansa and Volkswagen for you, if you want. Very helpful.

But even Spanish might have been a short-sighted choice. Maybe Chinese is the way to go these days. Especially if you order something from Amazon.

A couple weeks ago, Kim and I decided we needed a thermometer in the house, just to make sure we weren't running any Covid temperatures. We haven't had a thermometer in forever. I can't even remember owning an old mercury thermometer, the kind you shook out before placing it under your tongue.

Our new thermometer. (Click to enlarge)

 So Kim put in her order. A couple of weeks later, we got our new digital thermo-meter. From BaiQen. I couldn't wait. I opened the box and unfolded the instructions. Everything – and I mean everything – was written in Chinese. Not a word of English to be found.

I googled BaiQen and found a short video on YouTube showing me how to operate the thermometer. Put it under your tongue, press the button, wait for the beep.

Okay. I did that. And the digital readout told me my temperature was 37.4.

Well, crap. Maybe it was broken. I tried it again, just to make sure. 37.6. Clearly, I was getting hot.

Then I looked at the picture of the thermometer that was printed on the box. The readout in the picture was in Celsius. Jeez. I went back to my computer and did a Celsius to Fahrenheit (a good German name) conversion. Turns out, I'm normal (in a manner of speaking). 98 point something.

The lesson here is that you have to be careful when ordering from Amazon. Kim also ordered hand wipe sanitizers, and what we got were those mini packages, each with a strip about two inches long and a half-inch wide. Fifty of them. Mostly, you use them to wipe down an area on your arm where you might give yourself an insulin injection, or something like that.


An acquaintance of ours told me she ordered a book on Amazon to give as a gift to her daughter. It cost $30. But she had failed to read the small print. When the book arrived, it was all in Italian, right down to the copyright.

Now I'm thinking we might have to order something else just to figure out the stuff we ordered: Rosetta Stone.