Scene and heard

The great public transportation dilemma: Who do you give your seat up to? When I was a small kid, I was taught to stand for most adults, but certainly for elderly, handicapped, and sick people, and of course, pregnant women. I come here and few people give up their seats for anyone except…. small kids!! The great majority of people who do give up their seats are women. I have never seen a teenager or young adult stand for anybody! I will stand, but not for kids beyond the toddler stage.

But what do we do about marginally pregnant women. Indeed, do we even know if they are marginally pregnant! I recall from some years ago, the reaction of a woman whose kid was 9 months old and who still carried around a fair amount of her pregnancy weight. A well meaning woman happily asked her when the baby was due. She took it as a real insult and was absolutely mortified! "I don't look pregnant, do I?" I lied! But the truth is, unless a woman carries in a certain way, it can be very difficult to tell at a glance whether she is a little overweight or a little pregnant! I have decided that I would far rather appear to be a selfish pig than a heartless shit! When in doubt, stay sat.

While on my way back to the office with my lunch (Grilled Chicken, Guacamole and Portobello Mushrooms on Sourdough. Yum!), I passed a man who was standing by a parked car: “I’ve never seen anything like this before!” I looked. It took me a moment to realise it was more than just a feather sticking out of the car grille. Talk about wrong place, wrong time! The guy took a picture with his phone. Good idea! I tried, but the camera on my phone is complete crap. While I was trying, a woman asked me what kind of bird it was. Predictably, my answer was “a dead one!” I went back to the office and asked Joe, who always carries his camera, if he’d like to go for a walk. Samir, another colleague, joined us. Not something you see every day… fortunately.

It was January, and I had just got back from the gym – my first visit in at least 8 years. My cell phone chirped – I had a voicemail. It was Arline, a great friend from the early 80’s who I hadn’t seen for over 20 years. We had an interrupted conversation earlier in the day, catching up.

I called her back. As she picked up the phone, I sat down. I thought I was a couple of inches from the remote control, but the TV came on, much to my surprise. Arline found this amusing and pointed out that this indeed was a good reason for me to go to a gym – if I think I am a couple of inches from the remote and due to thigh-spread, I nevertheless catch the power button, perhaps this is a reminder that I am doing the right thing!

I told her about something that happened the previous day when I was watching something that I had recorded, with my son, Sean. During a commercial break, I was startled when the on-screen image suddenly markedly sped up. Sean had grabbed the remote and was fast-forwarding. Seeing my reaction, he laughed and said it was at moments like this that he understood where he got his scattiness.

Arline found this hilarious and said that I hadn’t changed a bit! I then said that I couldn’t have sat on the remote power button if I tried, and to prove my point, purposely sat on the handset, losing the picture. It took me a while to figure out how to get the picture back. All the while, Arline was laughing hysterically. Finally, I figured it out. And what should appear on the TV screen but Monty Python! Somehow appropriate, we agreed

When I worked the Saturday of the big Dress Rehearsal at The Exchange (see below), as a professional, I didn’t expect to be paid. But I can’t help but be irritated by the modern reality of the Professional worker. I didn’t work the following Monday – it was Yom Kippur. I had to give up a personal day for that. So like most people, I had a 2 day weekend, but I finished it with one less day to take another time.

My take on this? Until the 1920’s, workers had very few rights and benefits and worked much longer hours for lower pay. The unions greatly improved the plight of employees in just about every way. And then they lost sight of their mandate, stepped considerably too far and lost the support of many whom they were supposed to represent. They lost power and the employers regained it. We now work longer hours for less real pay. We give, they take. We need unions to go back to basics and help us take back. They have to regain the hearts and minds of those they lost sight of when hunger for power blinded them. If I give you Saturday, then you give me Monday or money.

And still, many insist that trickle down economics work!!!! We give more to the rich and they will give more to us? It didn’t work until the 1920’s and it isn’t working now. Money is as much of a drug as Heroin. Like Heroin, it removes proper values from its addicts. They must have more. Trickle down economics isn’t economics at all. It is just dressed up as such in an attempt to legitimise the true fact that those who make and lobby for these rules are greedy fuckers who aren’t satisfied with a mere 80% of the pie. And they do it in such a way that large numbers of those who they supposedly represent, believe the rhetoric and support them; too blind to realise that they are being screwed along with the rest of us.

On Saturday, September 30th, I observed a full dress rehearsal for the new Hybrid Trading system that is being phased in by the New York Stock Exchange. This is really a bridge between the old, fully hands-on system that has been in operation until now, and the likely eventual full automation, as happened in London in one fell swoop some years ago. To say that the test was less than a resounding success would be something of an understatement. But a lot of people are working very hard to rectify that.

My lasting impression will be of the floor, in action. Apparently, this was about half of the normal volume – and I can tell you, it was loud. Those guys stand for the entire trading day. They make split second decisions involving huge amounts of data that flashes on multiple screens and the ticker. It takes a certain type of person to handle that kind of stress. No wonder most are quite young. To give you an idea of the pace at which they work, we talk in terms of 8 milliseconds (0.008 of a second) as being an unacceptably slow response time.

For those of you who picture the floor as it is depicted in the movies; with lots of guys on a big floor, yelling and waving paper; it isn’t like that now. It is divided into several rooms, each of which has Specialist Stations - which look like a couple of imperfect circles that have been pushed together - in the centre of the floor. Surrounding them are the Trader areas. The Traders and Exchange ‘observers’ gather at the Specialist Stations. They talk, they shout, they key stuff into their handhelds. The assistants in the middle of these stations are also very busy. And with the amount of paper that ends up on the floor, it is amazing that there aren’t frequent injuries.

I left there very happy to have finally seen this organised madness and even happier to have spared myself the ulcers and headaches that these guys must endure. I realised that they are a bunch of regular men and women. The toilet is like that of a truck stop. They also swear like truckers. And I respect them more now than I ever did before.

I have decided to publish my bus driver diaries as a blog. I wrote them from 2003 to 2005 and am being encouraged to do something else with them. Writing a book seems like an awful lot of hard work, so I'll see if this in any way encourages me to embark on such a project. As some are quite large, I will publish them over a period of time. You can find the link on this page, if interested. Also putting them on goarticles.com. They might really be better suited to there than a blog.

I'll still be posting stuff on here. I already know one thing I want to put up, but it will be a few days until I get to it. I'll be spending the weekend visiting Susan's parents in Scranton, then watching a recording of Tottenham v West Ham on Monday evening after I get back from the gym. It will be a challenge to avoid reading a report for a full day. I hope it will be worth the wait.

Today was the 30th anniversary of my entry into what was then known as D.P. (Data Processing). I worked with punch cards, programming in COBOL. The Mainframe, an IBM 370/125 probably had less processing power than some phones now, and certainly considerably less than the laptop I am using to write this. As Susan commented: “You’ve come a long way, baby!”

On September 13th, I was on a Q train that had been running on the R line from Manhattan into Brooklyn, as no R trains were running in Manhattan. As the train pulled into Dekalb Avenue, the R that a large percentage of people on board wanted to catch, pulled away. This was about 9:25pm. (See “A swipe at the MTA, below.)

I wasn’t satisfied with just blogging my experience, I emailed the MTA. Their website tells you that they care what you think. It also explains, as I already understood, that during the rush hour, trains can’t always wait to connect with others across the platform from them. In my email, I said I understood this, but asked why a train couldn’t wait in the evening, especially considering that in the circumstances, the majority of passengers wanted that train and the next one wouldn’t come for another 15 minutes.

I received a form letter, with the exact blurb about why trains may not wait during rush hours. I wrote another email, angry that my original had obviously not been read by anyone. This one received no response at all. The MTA cares? Don’t make me laugh!

I went to the Laundromat tonight, my second successive time going on a Thursday. And I saw a couple of the same people, one of whom I had also seen once previously. He is a man who looks greasy enough that you could harvest it and run a car. He has skinnyish legs and a huge gut that way overhangs his trouser belt. He always wears the same shoes, trousers and hat, and always wears two white business shirts which are way too small for him, one as an open overshirt. The other has buttons undone at the top and bottom; the three or four that are fastened are under extreme pressure. If he laughed or coughed, they surely couldn’t survive. His belly is almost completely bare. I think he must have had his quarterly bath some time in the last 2 weeks, as he only churned my stomach while passing me. From a distance of 10 feet, his odour crept slowly towards me but was no threat to my lunch. Two weeks ago, I had to hold my breath whenever I got close to him.

The other person I recognised was a 7 year old girl who was there with her mother. OK, I recognised her mother also! Last time, she reminded me of my daughter, Hannah. She was trying to get a quarter out of the slot of the soap dispenser. When she asked my help, she said “my Quarter went in there”. This apparently had nothing to do with her! She also read her mother horoscope from a woman’s magazine: “…you will meet the man of your dreams…” Both were highly amused by this, especially as daddy was at home. Tonight, she was busy reading with the Laundromat owner. Very cute.

An article that appeared on CNN.COM last Friday was titled ‘Good news for aging hippies: Smoking pot may stave off Alzheimer's disease’. You might be able to find the article if you are interested. The part I had fun with was the following:

“Those afflicted with Alzheimer's suffer from memory loss, impaired decision-making, and diminished language and movement skills.”

Now as I see it, this kind of makes pot smoking Alzheimer’s training. As I read it, I wondered if Alzheimer’s is actually staved off, or just not quite noticed! In a brief conversation with colleagues, I suggested that it might be the equivalent of inert polio inoculating against real polio. My boss continued the line of thinking: “It’s a homeopathic remedy!” I like that!

Throughout February and March of this year, McAfee bombarded me with renewal notices. I relented when I got what I thought to be a decent offer, although I knew I had some months to run on my coverage. I immediately started receiving offers for a further 2 years of protection.

Fast forward to September. Susan, who similarly renewed some months earlier, started receiving emails that her coverage was expiring. The warning emails were for Security Center, which includes VirusScan, Personal Firewall Plus, Spam Killer and Privacy Service. She ignored the emails until after the expiry date she believed to be false. After that, when powering on her computer, she couldn’t get into anything without first having to ‘x’ out of several warning pop-ups. Alarmed and annoyed, she checked her computer and found that 3 of the 4 programs mentioned had indeed expired. But the emails made it seem that the package could not be unbundled. I advised her to ignore the Spam Killer – all email programs have their own. I would now advise anyone to consider whether the Microsoft Firewall that came with their PC or laptop meets their needs - it probably does. Privacy Service? They go into no details about how this software will protect your identity, just that it will. Only giving your details on secure sites is about as much protection as the Internet offers you as far as I know, although I am not an expert on this.

So anyway, Susan relented and decided to buy the Firewall. She was going to further renew her VirusScan, as McAfee want you to believe that you cannot renew Firewall without doing so. But she did find a way to get it as a stand-alone. And still, the pop-ups kept popping up, until she disabled the other programs.

This month, I started getting the same emails. Cheating fucking bastards!

So the scam? They pound you into renewing VirusScan early, fully knowing that you are unlikely to realise that you are only buying one of the Security Center package. Then they try to scare and mislead you into buying it again, along with 3 other programs that you probably don’t need. And they invade your computer in the manner of a virus, until you take some action. I think that when my subscription really runs out, I will be looking to Symantec. I really don’t like the McAfee tactics. They are shameful and should be illegal. They are not the only solution and may not even be the best.

In Brooklyn, there are road markings that are reminiscent of Pedestrian Walkways in the rest of New York and the US, and highly recognizable to British people as Zebra Crossings. Strips of white are painted on the road and boundaried by a thinner white line. But non-Brooklynites would do well to not be fooled by this similarity. What actually is it? A temporary parking solution for minivans? A focal point for pedestrian frustration? I really don’t know. What I do know, is that in one year, I have seen 3 vehicles stop for wanabee crossers: There was a woman loaded with stroller, small children walking and shopping; there was the time that I just walked out and dared a car – not advised in this part of the world; and once when someone just stopped – must’ve been from out-of-town!

I think that either the pedestrian right-of-way should be enforced or these ridiculous focal points in the road – surely all they actually are – should be removed.

Hoboken has a similar idea that works only marginally better. Where there aren’t stop signs, there are ‘yield to pedestrian’ signs, which a majority of drivers try to ignore. Last weekend, while a third of the way across one of these, walking with Susan, a car just ignored us and drove within inches of us - close enough that when I kicked out, I caught his tire hub. This was far from the first such incident, but certainly the most dangerous so far. How about some cameras to bust these arseholes?

For those of you who are either too young or too un-English to know, this was a form of greeting and response in England in the early-to-mid 1960’s, when I still thought that 4’ was tall. (For the record, I was 10 when I reached that magical plateau.)

This memory was evoked by the creative arm swingers I have been noticing recently:

I have seen at least 2 men who, when their arms are in the forward position, hold their palms open and facing inwards. As they take their next stride, the arm comes back and twists with a last-second jerking motion so that the open side is facing the rear. I don’t see how this can be done without concentrating rather too much on the process of walking, or more precisely in their case, ambling.

This memory was in turn triggered when I saw a man earlier this week whose arm swing was really violent; a clenched fist pummeling the air as if meaning to do it damage, contrasting with both his gentle walk and diminutive stature - perhaps 5’ tall and 110 lb. And yet another association awares itself to me: (According to the Oxford English Dictionary, I just made that word up, but I’m guessing you’ll understand its intended meaning.): I will call him Bill, largely because that’s his name. We worked together some time back. He too is about 5’ tall, but certainly weighs rather more than 110lbs! He claims to have got over all of his height related problems, but nobody believes him. A nice enough guy, but with a chip on his shoulder the size of a planet (forgive me for that one, I’m reading Douglas Adams at the moment); he smiles at the world through gritted and grinding teeth. And yet another associated memory pops into my head. This time, from when I was driving buses in London: A little man in a large car went halfway into oncoming traffic just before a red light, attempting to overtake me. Problem was, there wasn’t enough room for him to fit. But that wasn’t his fault - apparently. He boldly charged over to my bus to tell me what he thought of me, but I couldn’t see exactly how I was to blame for his impatience and dangerous stupidity. His final words to me, with trembling voice were: “You’re a right dickhead!” – delivered with all of the menace of the most fearsome of Teletubbies. OK, to some people of fundamentalist persuasions, they were rather fearsome.

And now to the scariest arm swingers – we’ve all seen them – women who walk with their arms swinging in an exaggerated arc. Fine if they are in the suburbs, but not so on busy Manhattan streets or where there are shopping crowds. Stick a cigarette between two of their fingers and not only do men have to concern themselves with potentially painful groin contact if passing within a foot of her, but all now have to be concerned with having their clothes burned.

Between 120 and 140 Broadway, across from the South-end of Liberty Square, the road once again narrows to a single lane and a police sign flashes the warning: “Check point ahead” “Be prepared to stop”

As I see it, anyone driving on Lower Broadway during business hours who isn’t prepared to stop should not be driving anywhere in or near Manhattan!