It's pronounced "wuddah"

It was unseasonably hot last week, hitting a high of 95 on Thursday. It is also the beginning of tourist season, and the area right near my office is packed with people all day. The combination of the Ferry Building, the farmer's market, and the ferry port itself create a huge tourist draw all day every day. The Ferry building is also a favorite lunch spot of the people who work in the area, and it has a gelato shop.

Gelato appears to be the primary defense against heat in this city, and this week there have been gelato trips after lunch, gelato imported into meetings, meetings in the Ferry Building by the gelato stand, and so on. It's still a relatively new thing for me. I can remember one gelato shop in the Exton mall which I never went to. I didn't have gelato until I went to Italy last summer, and then I got spoiled on the stuff.

By Thursday, I had had my fill of gelato for the week. It was too rich for that kind of heat. So...

"Hey team, are there any water-ice shops around here?"
"What?"
"Water-ice."
"What?"

There were actually two things going on here. The first is that apparently my accent gets completely out of control when I say "water-ice" and I'm hard to understand if my listeners aren't used to the short-voweled, blue collar sound.

"Oh, wah-ter ice. I heard wuddah ice."

And then, once we got past that hurdle...

"What's water-ice?"

With some difficulty, I refrained from making comments about the uncultured heathens of the west.

"It's sort of like a snow-cone, only softer. Softer than gelato, no cream."

"So it's like sorbet, then?"

"No, softer than that."

"Like a slushie?"

"No, definitely not like a slushie. The flavor is better, you eat it with a spoon, it's a less homogeneous texture..." A lightbulb goes on in my head. "Slush! It's exactly like the slush you get on roadways when it's almost melted but not quite." A sea of polite but confused eyes stares back. I can almost hear the inner monologues. We must humor the crazy woman. She is talking about eating 'slush' off the road. It's the heat. She's lost it. "...except you don't have slush here, so you have no idea what I'm talking about." Ignorant, uncultured heathens.

"It sounds like sorbet. That's not that exciting."

"It's different than sorbet."

"Well it sounds boring."

Ignorant uncultured dirty hippy tree-hugging foodie-wannabe heathen savages....

I've had a few of these East-West culture clashes, and they always leave me wondering if I'm really just crazy. Fortunately, I do have one ally: my PM, who grew up in New Jersey, and who happened to be walking by at the right time.

"PM, do you know what water-ice is?"

"What, Italian ice? Sure."

"Is there any to be had around here?"

"Hmm.... no."

So if you were just waiting for the opportunity to move west and make millions, you've got it right here. Just open a Rita's next to the ferry port on the bay. You'll have no competition from anyone.

Epilogue: The next day was better. I found a real, honest-to-god, cheese steak place behind my office. They use Amaroso rolls and Cheez Whiz.