From my email to a friend who is snow-birding in Florida right now:
"On the bus on the way home (number 50 False Creek, which I caught going downtown by the Granville Bridge), I ended up having to shame a young yuppie couple with two kids around 7 or 8 years old for hogging the courtesy seats when a man well over seventy had to stand. He was proud, and seemed quite healthy, and refused my offer of my own seat, even when I told him there was an empty seat in the back I could take, so I just said in a loud enough voice to make the privileged little idiots visibly wince, "I guess some parents just don't want to be good role models to their kids." What I find particularly annoying is that the bus drivers never, or almost never do anything, but given how ensconced they are now behind their plastic shields (agreed that they are a necessary evil), I do find myself wondering if as well as protecting the drivers, also help contribute to an environment of fear and siege."
I had started engaging with this fellow while we were both waiting for the bus. I had to walk more than fifteen minutes from Sixteenth to Fifth Avenue, by the bridge and still, no bus, though I had just missed one turning onto the bridge. There is something still broken with our transit system when early or mid Saturday afternoon, one has to walk that long on a major corridor and still be out of luck. We were both waiting on the corner because, irrationally, there sre two bus stop, one on Fifth and one on the bridge, and the one on the bridge is a bit of a walk. There is no reason why it could 't be just one stop, maybe further along on the bridge to accommodate all the buses. i saw one coming onto Fifth so I let him know it was coming. When we got on the bus, I already had a seat at the front, and he looked like he needed to lean on something to be comfortable, which prompted me to offer him my seat, but older men can be stubborn and proud, and that happy privileged little white family wasn't about to budge, hence my shamelessly shaming the smug little bastards. I shudder at what selfish, psychopathic little monsters they are going to end up raising. And the bus drivers are so afraid now of being assaulted, spat at, sworn at, or that something will be said to hurt their delicate feelings, that now they have to be protected by transparent shields.
And to my friend in New York:
"I am in contact nearly twice a week on Skype with my host to be in Colombia. We started out doing language exchange and have become good friends, though we still support each other in our languages, so I am looking forward to actually staying in the home of a local person while I'm in Colombia. He lives in a town outside Bogotá. Then, after three weeks in February in Colombia I will be in Costa Rica for a month, the usual place and people. I really just want to settle down while travelling and spend time with people I have grown to love and enjoy the developing friendships. Especially in another language, though I will probably eventually check out some new places again. But really, I'm more interested in people than in places, though places can also be interesting. There was a conversation at work recently, with coworkers who never seem to travel and speak only English expressing bafflement that one would ever want to travel outside of Canada, which is nearly perfect in every way. Not wanting to get in any useless arguments with anyone, I simply quipped that one of the benefits of foreign travel is learning to appreciate all the more what you already have once you get home. I fear that anything more enlightened would just be lost on them."
So it goes, Gentle Reader. So it goes!
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