I spent about three hours on several forms of public transit today, in order to pick up GXRP from maintenance in Brantford.

I rather didn’t like it.

There are the obvious drawbacks:

  • surface vehicles without an own right-of-way have to swim slowly in the turbulent sea of cars
  • a significant fraction of travel time is made up of queueing delays at transfer points, while one waits for the next vehicle
  • there are stopping points where anyone wants to get on/off, bringing everyone’s actual travel time up to the “least common multiple” of sorts
  • being enclosed in a tube with a bunch of physically sick strangers makes one not want to touch anything, much less inhale
  • and then there are all those advertisements ingeniously plastered absolutely everywhere a shy eye can try to park its gaze

But finally there is an upside: actually seeing a bunch of strange new people. In my habitual drive to work, and at home, I see strangers rather infrequently. And yet here they were, in a bountiful supply, even various handsome school folks. It reminded me of the way that an old friend (R.K.) from the 1980s met his future wife on a subway.

That made my mind wonder off to a weird hypothetical conversation between some codgy rich old guy and a pretty young lady he might be courting, realizing that there seems to be a subtle asymmetry between proclamations of appearance-irrelevance. (Got that?)

she: why should I be interested?
he: because I’m wealthy, I can provide, …
she: but I don’t find you attractive
he: everyone gets over that in time
she: not everyone: would you woo me if I weren’t attractive?
he: er … oops
she: hypocrite!