{"id":132,"date":"2006-02-04T11:59:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-04T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sararosso.com\/wordpress\/2006\/02\/04\/an-opinion-on-commuting-conversing\/"},"modified":"2012-01-26T17:11:44","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T15:11:44","slug":"an-opinion-on-commuting-conversing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/04\/an-opinion-on-commuting-conversing\/","title":{"rendered":"An Opinion on Commuting & Conversing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cool Event: Pillow Fight Club’s<\/a> Valentine’s Day Fight in SF
\nListening to: Energy 92.7 (also on internet)<\/p>\n

I spent quite a bit of time earlier crafting a blog post about the Army Teaching Troops How not to Marry a Jerk<\/a> – the post got a little politically charged. Strangely, I had big problems with Blogger and I wasn’t able to save the post. I tried several times, and then went back to try and it find it, and it was gone.<\/p>\n

Probably wasn’t meant to be. Therefore, I’ll let that go, and tell you why we commuters can only ever talk about that to each other.<\/p>\n

We all have friends that fit in categories. A few that you can’t have in the same room together; the few that, if you threw a party, you’d have to sacrifice not inviting them for the good of the whole. There are all types of acquaintances. Some of which seem to be at instant odds with each other: Your single friends and married or mommy friends, your knitting buddies, techno dancing friends, expat crowd, grade school and university friends, your gym buddies, and your I-really-want-chocolate-now friends.<\/p>\n

Usually you have something in common which binds you. An interest, an activity, a quest, a self-improvement. What happens when you have only a commute in common?<\/p>\n

With knitting buddies, you can share new patterns, yarn finds, proudly-finished articles, even exchange or buy from each other. Your concert friends can keep you updated on the latest bands and concerts coming up. Your expat friends can help you grease the creaky and cumbersome wheel of what is known as Bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

But what are commute friends for?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, not much. And they happen to be the people you may spend the most time with, involuntarily. Every day, on the train, on the bus. If it’s a bad day in the world of transport, you’ll spend the entire time talking about how ridiculous the wait or delay is. You may even include some stories from your other equally comparable horrendous days. Or of a friend of yours. Or other cities that may be experiencing worse delays than this.<\/p>\n

And you can also recycle these stories, since the history of delays only lends added credibility to the absurdity of the current situation.<\/p>\n

On a good day, when there is no delay, you get your bus in plenty of time, or the train arrives right about on schedule, you may spend some time remarking on how you’re lucky that today it wasn’t SO late, not like ____ day and then you can segue in the above examples of other days worse than today.<\/p>\n

Or you can complain about the weather. Thank goodness the train is here! What a terrible day, I’ll be so glad to get home.<\/p>\n

If for some reason, transportation is relatively on time, and the weather is quite nice, this becomes a problem.<\/p>\n

One may remark on the nice weather. If the weekend is near or has just passed, one may also comment or ask about whether this weekend will be special, or whether the recently passed weekend was interesting.<\/p>\n

These will be general remarks, along the lines of “How was your weekend?” or “Anything special for this weekend?”<\/p>\n

Rarely will you foray into personal territory, and usually limited to transportation-themed topics, such as whether your Significant Other will be picking up at the station or whether you will be traveling somewhere for the weekend.<\/p>\n

Usually these answers, skirting away from in-depth details, will be interrupted by the responder himself, and will revert back to the above-mentioned routine topics.<\/p>\n

The rest of the time will be spent in silence. Or if you’re lucky, typing on your computer, and making soothing, concordant sounds responding to the other person that use a minimum of brain cells while the others are hard at work. Thank god for my tiny laptop<\/a>, my hero, my savior, my silencer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cool Event: Pillow Fight Club’s Valentine’s Day Fight in SF Listening to: Energy 92.7 (also on internet) I spent quite a bit of time earlier crafting a blog post about the Army Teaching Troops How not to Marry a Jerk – the post got a little politically charged. Strangely, I had big problems with Blogger…<\/p>\n

Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,2,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-italian-culture","category-italy","category-work","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uB1-28","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":149,"url":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/31\/always-have-a-plan-i\/","url_meta":{"origin":132,"position":0},"title":"Always have a Plan …I?","author":"Sara, Ms Adventures in Italy","date":"March 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"This looks yummy, but not exportable: Cadbury's Mini-eggs Flurry Heard a good line lately? 100 Best First Lines from Novels I think I have diagnosed one of my many mental illnesses. 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(Feed readers, you'll want to click through the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Discovering Italy"","block_context":{"text":"Discovering Italy","link":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/category\/discovering-italy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Canadair firefighting planes flying over our heads and beach, Puglia, Italy","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3020\/2886231627_7bb3973242.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":217,"url":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/27\/bad-girl-dogs-as-accessories\/","url_meta":{"origin":132,"position":2},"title":"Bad Girl: Dogs as Accessories","author":"Sara, Ms. Adventures in Italy","date":"September 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The bad girl in this post is me. When I was home over the summer, I went with my dad, his girlfriend and S to a place in San Diego that does a great seafood Happy Hour. We drank pomegranate margaritas and ate fresh ceviche and calamari. We got there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travels"","block_context":{"text":"Travels","link":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/category\/abroad\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":354,"url":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/15\/alchechengi-my-introduction-to-the-winter-cherry\/","url_meta":{"origin":132,"position":3},"title":"Alchechengi – My Introduction to the Winter Cherry","author":"Sara, Ms. Adventures in Italy","date":"June 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It looked so promising, wrapped up like that. I actually wasn't planning on buying any chocolate when I entered the store. I just wanted to know why there were so many people inside and what was drawing them to this corner pasticceria. Was it the coffee? There was a crowd\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chocolate"","block_context":{"text":"Chocolate","link":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/category\/food\/chocolate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wrapped Up Alchechengi","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/246\/551069023_2630b03ba8.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":204,"url":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/14\/italian-palestragym\/","url_meta":{"origin":132,"position":4},"title":"Italian Palestra\/Gym","author":"Sara, Ms. Adventures in Italy","date":"September 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Truth in Advertising: A regular meeting environment, with the different roles and power struggles just beneath the surface of regular comments. Except this time they say what they are thinking. Gotta love the Teddy Bear icon. This year, more than any year in my recent history, feels like a new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Italy"","block_context":{"text":"Italy","link":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/category\/italy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":170,"url":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/19\/watching-the-game-in-piazza-duomo-milan\/","url_meta":{"origin":132,"position":5},"title":"Watching the game in Piazza Duomo, Milan","author":"Sara, Ms Adventures in Italy","date":"June 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Create your own Picasso masterpiece onlinePut your Etch-a-Sketch skills to the test with the online versionCan you feel the excitement at the beginning of the game? There were about 5,000 people there watching the game with us. I didn't see any American flags but I did hear a few Americans\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Italy"","block_context":{"text":"Italy","link":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/category\/italy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3818,"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/3818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msadventuresinitaly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}