Buy Neurontin Online Erythromycin Without Prescription Acomplia No Prescription Motilium For Sale Avapro Generic Buy Erythromycin Online Acomplia Without Prescription Hoodia No Prescription Elavil For Sale Erythromycin Generic

NY is in the midst of a transit strike.

The day when you have three back-to-back and important-to-you meetings.

In three distinct areas of the city.

All disctinct from the area you reside.

Somewhere Murphy is chuckling.

And after a brief moment of frustration I decided to join him.

 

Transit strikes are striking things.

In a city like Sydney, where I grew up, they barely touched me. Able to drive it was always possible to get use of a car/grab a ride in with friends. But NY is no car city. Precisely one of the reasons I love it so:  you walk everywhere; the subways connect you through most of Manhattan; taxi’s (at least for me) are for late nights and airports…

Until comes the day when you really need to be utilising the transport network.  And it doesn’t want to play.

I will admit I did try to break the system. I stood on the Street corner at 7:30am in a vain attempt to hail the elusive empty taxi.

A man actually giggled at me: "are you seriously trying to get uptown?".

I debated whether to hitchhike. 

Briefly.

I heard my frustration rise… 

And then I stopped: 

- nothing was that important! At least, not meetings and subways.

So there, on that street corner I stood stopped. And smiled.

Each day we  cross vast distances, distances that if individually journeyed by foot or messenger would be year(s)-long.

In real time we communicate and connect across continents, across time zones, across cultures and languages and…

In one day I speak to ‘tomorrow’ in Australia. Tonight in Amsterdam. Earlier in San Fran. Later to Wales. I fire flurries of emails uptown, downtown, crosstown, crossworld. I drive kilometers. Fly miles. I search for a particular line in a particular story in a particular book in a particular library.

All without the slightest thought for the distances I couldn’t cross in one individual day some 50years ago.

And at the same time, I saw that even though I have my laptop and my phone and my web cam and wiki and blog and…I still wanted to be face-face with the people I was scheduled to be meeting.

So there, on that street corner, I watched my annoyance float by.

In its place stood the magical world we live in.

A world where time and space mean something new. Yet a world where we still want to be in the presence of one another to feel connected.  A world where we still wanted, nay, needed, to ‘meet’.

And with that, I made three phone calls, grabbed a coffee and walked joyfully back home.

PS I would like thank the strikers for giving my the gift of perspective. And probably for keeping me a little fitter. But can you please turn the trains back on?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 at 4:48 am and is filed under action, musings, talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.