Where extraordinary becomes eccentric

Sitting in a train for over an hour at least gives me an opportunity to look thoroughly through all the college-related retail mail I received over the past week. While contemplating my options regarding the bed linens, the following advertising line caught my attention:

“In previous years, some students always showed up with their sheets that did not fit the beds on campus. Parents were frustrated, and some students were left literally “short-sheeted” and unable to properly make their beds. This is now how we want your student’s first nights at college to be remembered. “

Right now I am on verge of ordering the over-priced “Value Pak” (it includes even an extra-long egg crate pad and a bedside buddy!) because a frustration from an improperly made bed is something I certainly don’t want to carry in my memories and give me shivers whenever I think of my first college endeavors.

The leaders of various union organizations (doctors, teachers, train conductors etc.) decided to strike this afternoon in order to express disagreement with the latest steps of the government and its social, retirement, and who-knows-what-else policies. The strike ought to begin at 1pm and although the spokespeople claim an ordinary citizen should not experience any inconvenience, that will be rather difficult to accomplish if the trains will stand still for 75 minutes.

I do not necessarily concur with the reasons of the strike; the reasons are short-sighted and don’t take into account the need for economic reforms. But let’s say that I respect everyone’s right to strike.

What angers me, though, is the situation where yet another maliciously scheduled railroad repairs are in progress and the train from my station will be 10 minutes late. Those extra ten minutes will overlap into next hour, when the strike should start. So it’s very likely that I will get stuck on a train once again, this time because of brilliantly coordinated sequence of obstructions designed to slow down the travelers as much as possible.

The latest version of Firefox includes a nifty feature - by clicking at the favicon in the addressbar you have a chance to see how many times you have visited that particular website. I installed Firefox 3 yesterday and randomly checked the number of visits I paid to my Gmail account since then.

145, wow! I have not yet figured out the exact mechanism the script uses to count the visits (perhaps it counts pageviews on the domain and not unique visits), nevertheless such a number is pretty high. It’s also true that I have been rather busy and communicating with people throughout the world for the entire afternoon.

Software upgrades have been generally prolific this week. For example Gmail implemented Labs into its interface, allowing users to turn on functions that are currently under development (just like their parent application). Two of them especially captured my attention — one that allows me to choose between different kinds of stars, thus allowing further to differentiate between important emails, and one that puts a semi-transparent blue background over the entire GUI and disables all links for 15 minutes, an ideal feature for people check their emails on their phones as the first thing in the morning, simply for email-abusers. It is also equipped with an insightful advice that it displays in the center of the screen; it reads: “Take a walk, get some real work done, or have a snack. We’ll be back in X minutes!” How did I interpret this message? I logged into my wordpress account and wrote these paragraphs. Real work done!

A rare combination of evanescent naïveté and greed that overwhelmed me a few days ago allowed several vicious spywares to make themselves at home in my computer. My friend emailed me a phenomenal book but in an obscure format which I was hoping to convert to PDF for reading on my Blackberry, however the suspiciously easily available converter came bundled with an unwelcome guilt of trolls. Thus my computer became infected. No anti-spyware was capable of a proper clean-up, and because the malicious software was even apt of cutting me off the Internet (unless I was logged into the emergency mode where sound didn’t work so I couldn’t watch Seinfeld), I decided to format my hard drive and install a new copy of Windows. And because I had owned no installation CD and the prices of software upgrades are no longer unbearable, I went to my favorite computer store to buy Vista Home Premium which I promptly installed on my laptop.

I am actually very surprised how smoothly the new operating system works. I was expecting lags in the new eye-candy-dominated user interface, given my graphics card isn’t the latest technological miracle, but so far I can only object the ridiculously slow process of application installations. I had to wait for at least three minutes before the initial set-up screen for my synching software appeared, and then another five minutes when the files were slowly copied. Nonetheless, the first skepciticms is overcome and with Firefox3 being available tomorrow, I am looking forward to several days of experimenting, just like in old days.

Update: by the way, the new Office allows blogging from its general interface. That’s lovely!

As much as I don’t want to generalize, I don’t believe the situation will be much different in other European companies than in SkyEurope which I used.

My friend recently expressed her contempt for the requirements that must be fulfilled for one being eligible for getting the new iPhone at the aggressively advertised price of $199. The fact the phone with this price tag is bundled with plans that are far on the more expensive side of the selection makes the deal rather bittersweet. She compared Apple’s (and providers’) marketing strategy to what the European budget airlines use and what they’re being hated for — not advertising the whole cost of the ticket. But after going through an ordeal of buying my tickets to Amsterdam (our budget was cut by 80% and the airline’s site didn’t work in Firefox — I can’t decided what’s worse), I only wish the budget airlines’ pricing methods were at least as semi-transparent as Apple’s.

I knew the ticket wouldn’t cost those $50 that initially popped up in my shopping cart. However when the next step added the expected $200 for various fees, I thought that was all I had to pay. I was wrong.

Then I was given an opportunity to travel with luggage or without it. Each bag, including the first one, must be paid for. $30. I have read of outrage this policy created when it was first introduced by American Airlines only two weeks ago; I couldn’t believe how quickly we adopted the idea.

But paying for bags didn’t end the shopping spree - I had to buy seats on the plane. That’s where I was becoming truly irritated. The ticket in my cart came without seats? Had there been an option for skipping the seat-selection form, would that mean we would have to stand the whole flight? Another $40, not good.

And even after that I wasn’t seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I was charged a flat credit-card processing fee of $30. When I was then asked to contribute $8 to offset the carbon footprint created by my voyage to the country of tulips, I cold-bloodedly refused it.

All in all, the final bill consisted of twelve separate items (was booking flight for my brother too) that could have easily been grouped into two - everything concerning my own transportation + cost for the bags. Not only would such booking be faster, it’d also be more customer-friendly because the user won’t feel like being a victim of a daylight robbed after handing in cash for every possibly billable feature of air transportation. On the other hand, displaying a four figure complete price wouldn’t look as a good on the promotional posters as two figure prices do now.

Syrian representatives accused the UK of discriminating against Muslims and Iran complained about the UK’s record on tackling sexual discrimination.

Funny. The U.N. Human Rights Council recently suggested the UK should abandon monarchy and turn into — preferably — a republic with a written constitution and a bill of rights.

I take this as another hit to UN’s flesh, once again proving its current state superfluous. With Zimbabwe chairing the Division for sustainable development and Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia expressing concerns over the condition of British democracy, one can hardly take the organization’s reports generally seriously. Unless, of course, this cry was an indirect response to Britain’s proposed law that would extend a detainment without charges to 42 days. For some reason I doubt it.

In one of the previous posts I described the necessary change the inhabitants of less affluent suburbs will have to take to cope with the recent economic changes. Here in the Czech Republic we’re witnessing a similar phenomenon of leaving cities in favor of living either in our “special” suburbs, recently artificially created self-insufficient developments characterized by the houses in the light shades of beige that give a new meaning to the word “crowded”, or simply villages. Although there is a visible shift in the lifestyle of the “villagers” (for some reason this word bears negative connotations to me — as though a person residing in a village was supposed to be oblivious to modern world, still living his own life surrounded by animals he will later eat; I live in a village-house yet have no edible animals on my front yard), some further adaptations will be necessary in the near future.

Take these examples: our neighbors have seldom anything to do. I don’t understand it, aren’t they supposed to work or something? What consequences does this have? That whenever there is any exciting activity going on on someone’s garden, they must be aware of it. Their reactions depend on the level of excitement, however can be simplified to two categories: 1) lower level of excitement - the person is casually looking out of the window while you’re mowing the lawn; 2) higher level of excitement - can be divided into two too: the person runs out of his house to meet and greet the contractors that a) were hired to rebuild your staircase - in that case he comes to talk to them every time they leave the house b) were hired to build you a fence - then the neighbor will be incessantly advising the people how to built a better fence. This abundance of attention gets really annoying.

Or for example random encounters with domesticated animals of any size: I am no longer surprised when I take a turn on a narrow road that leads to the train station and suddenly find myself standing right in front of a horse. His owner is reluctant to repair the broken pound and prefers to chase the horse around every time it runs away, about three times a week. Given the numerous opportunities to practice the move, I now master the slow quiet escape backwards that after a few steps turns into a desperate run for life. You can’t get such adventure anywhere else!

Speaking of train stations and trains, that’s another area of peculiarity. I live in place that’s almost in the middle of the road between two larger cities. Of course it’s not a fault of the Czech Railways’ employees that the trains are always late, but oftentimes their operations are questionable. Because I take a train almost every other day, I observed that the trains are on average ten minutes delayed. Thus I don’t come until five minutes after the scheduled departure of the train and spend the time at home on something more meaningful than waiting for the archaic pieces of metal that serve our unimportant route.

But that’s where I came short today: after arriving three minutes after the regular departure time and seven minutes before the — correctly — expected departure time, I stood in front of an unoccupied counter for nine minutes, hence missing my train. It’s not that there wasn’t any clerk to sell me the ticket, I saw one in the other room, separated from the waiting room by a rather opaque glass divider. Yet she didn’t see the fear in my eyes, neither did she hear my banging on the counter with a coin (I’ve observed knocking is even less effective). For her I just wasn’t there. Finally a clerk came over with a self-satisfied smile of yet another successfully departed train. She asked what I wanted and I replied I wanted a ticket, although it might be too late. She said the train was late, as if that was changing anything, as if you can take a train that’s late unless you properly wait for it and express a genuine surprise when the loudspeaker announces the delay. I stared at her for a moment, then paid for the ticket and left for the platform. There I’ve been sitting for 45 minutes now, waiting for a delayed train to arrive and take me to a golf lesson. And then I will wait for another twenty minutes for my connection. Twenty kilometers in two hours, that’s just great.

Funny. A plane belonging to a company no one has ever heard of landed on Hanoi last year and no one has expressed interest in it since. I would take it, just to save it from being scrapped, however that would make me a hypocrite after bashing the gas-thirsty SUV owners and suggesting them to switch to something smaller.

I vividly recall the last time I was at a concert - it was a night of March the 19th, 2005, and I as a member of a church group went to see some Christian rock. Since then I have neither attended a church service, nor visited any other concert; I feel no rancor towards either, however there wasn’t a proper opportunity for me to take an action in either fields.

The proper opportunity arose a few weeks ago when I spotted a gigantic poster at our train station. It advertised the arrival of the legend of folk and rock, Mr. Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan. Although the time I truly worshiped Dylan would date dozens of months back, the decision to book the tickets followed after only a short soliloquy. Finally, the 9th of June appeared on the calendar and I went to see Bob Dylan.

My feelings are rather mixed.

First of all, the advertised show kicked off eighty minutes after the scheduled beginning, but as I was assured that is now a new norm. Thankfully I am as punctual as I am patient, and the Blackberry’s Brickbreaker is addictive and contagious, which I didn’t want to believe before my friend pushed me into playing it for the first time. But at the end of those minutes of idleness I was started to grow impatient.

Then the lights went off, rhythmical organ tunes started echoing in the spacious arena, and a deep-voiced announcer started citing milestones in Dylan’s career, his successes and legacy. At that moment my resentment against the past sufferings was shed and I was truly looking forward to the musical performance.

Oh, how disappointed I was! The show was almost unbelievably uniform — the songs sounded alike, the characteristic organ was completely missing, and the famous songs did not make the playlist. But one at a time - the songs differed from each other in no more than subtle details that were too hard to spot; the melodies were interchangeable and when a new song begun, I couldn’t remember what the previous one was about. Maybe it was because he left his typical instruments at home; the harmonica reached apex of its exposure during the initial announcement at the beginning, the bass appeared the stage only twice, everything else was taken care of by a boring and non-identifiable cacophony of tones from guitars, drums and keyboards. The sad status quo was further exacerbated by the choice of the songs — the ones with distinct melodies, especially from Highway 61: Revisited, were almost completely omitted, along with other famous pieces. Dylan might have gotten us all wrong when he thought we came to be introduced to his less-known works, but frankly at least I came to see what I am so familiar with.

Furthermore, I did not expect that Dylan, 67, would be boisterously jumping around the stage with his guitar and harmonica, but he never moved away from his keyboard, positioned at a 90° angle counter-clockwise to the audience, and never turned his face towards the people in front of the stage, let alone directly behind his back where we sat. As a matter of fact, I at first believed Dylan was one of the guitarists, so negligible was his part; perhaps a more “personal” approach to the concert would be appropriate. Again, my expectations didn’t include any expressions of feeling of a warm welcome, but not uttering a single word beyond the songs’ lyrics until the very last song after which he introduced his band verged with austerity. He sounded as though he came to languish in a shift like the clerks might do in Walmart — nothing more and nothing else. Several of his studio-recorded CD’s I happen to own provide far better atmosphere than a live show; one eventually comes to questioning whether that’s right.

It’s likely that I will establish a rancor towards concerts after this. Having spent over $50 on a ticket that gave me virtually no added value over a $10 CD was a mistake. Perhaps he just had a bad day, perhaps he forgot to synchronize his watch with our daylight savings time, perhaps he was afraid he’d bore us to sleep if he played Like a Rolling Stone, perhaps… there was just way too many perhapses that the number excepts an unfortunate coincidence. Next time I will let my soliloquy unfold into lengthy critical silent debates.
Missing a next great concert would thus be only Dylan’s fault.

The New York Times just published a neat graph that depicts the average percentage of income citizens divided by counties spend on their gas. There are two things to consider:

1) the South is generally poorer, yet it maintains the same driving habits as the North

2) the South is notorious for its idolatry of gas-guzzlers

While I feel sorry that certain Alabamians have to spend up to 16% of their earnings on gasoline, they should employ introspection and take necessary steps for decreasing that horrible percentage. Since I am a fan of simple (and also more advanced) math, according to my calculations, the median citizen of Holmes County, MS, can afford over 840 gallons per year; assuming the average MPG is 2004’s 24, that would suffice for over 20,000 miles to drive every year, or 55 every day — that’s five times as much as an average commuting distance. Of course was the MPG only 12, an average for an SUV, the daily driving portion would halve. So…?