Character Sketches

Hey, remember The British Co-worker? Well, friends, I'm afraid he has too much character to be confined to just one character sketch.

• The British Co-worker (again) When he first moves to the city, all green and wet behind the ears, you agree to help him find an apartment. All is going fairly well, until standing in the lobby of a swank apartment complex, he excuses himself for a moment. He steps back into an alcove, removes a set of nun chucks from his back pack and starts wheeling them about, then and there in the lobby. Needless to say, he does not get the apartment. Several weeks later, you'll walk through the small city park at night and see him running the perimeter of the park, while simultaneously nun chucking. You see a group of elderly Chinese men watching him from behind their pipes and giggling.

• The 30-something American Co-worker. He is lovely and sweet and has a voice like the man who does voice overs for movie trailers. He arrives for his first day of teaching English in Taiwan wearing a mandarin-collared shirt, pleated linen pants and Tevas. When all the English teachers go out dancing together that weekend, he splits his chin open on the floor of the club while successfully executing "The Worm."