Thursday, March 23, 2006

I'm a rocket scientist

So I got up this morning and sat around for 20 minutes or half an hour at home eating my oatmeal, watching the morning news and the coverage of the farmers protesting outside of the provincial legislature. Then I got all my stuff together and headed out. I was feeling pretty good, ahead of the game, I had my lunch packed, I had tokens for the bus, I got to the corner and the bus pulled up next to me.
Now I have a couple of options on how to get to work, I can go the fast way through the downtown core (standing and pressed up against all my fellow commuters for most of the ride), or I can skirt the core for a more pleasant, but slower ride which usually but not always involves sitting and reading my book. Usually, I walk out of my building and see if the bus for the more pleasant route is coming, and if not then I go the faster way.
So I walk out of my place, the bus pulls up and I'm thinking, this is great. So I hop on, get a seat start reading my book, until we get to the provincial legislature building and the bus stops. We crawled around the legislature behind tractors for at least 15 minutes. I could have gotten off the bus and walked very slowly across the park and back to the bus 5 or 6 times in the amount of time it took the bus to get around, for that matter, I could have gotten off the bus and walked to my next connection too, of course you can't get off the bus between stops, so it was way too late to abandon ship at that point. So I sat and kicked myself, and seethed, and writhed. I think the farmers should protest, they are getting a bum rap from the government. It's hard for them to make ends meet. The big farming corporations are getting subsidies out the yin yang and the little family farmers are getting screwed. I just wished I hadn't taken that route to work.
In between kicking myself it was pretty cool to be in the middle of the city in a bus completely surounded by farm equipment. And the little 3 or 4 year old boy next to me was over the moon to see so many tractors. I also couldn't help but notice one of the farmers driving his tractor talking on a super swank blackberry phone, that doesn't do much for their cause, but it is important to communicate and he might have been one of the organizers. How much do those blackberries cost anyway?

7 comments:

Miss Ash said...

They cost between $100 and about $600.

yrautca said...

i am surprised you didnt join them. you the ever ready political activist. this was your chance to glory.

Jennifer said...

Yrautca,
I don't own a tractor, and I had to go to work.

Ash,
per month? or for the unit?

Jennifer said...

Also I don't do the activist thing because I want glory, most of the time I just drag my ass down to those things because I support the cause. I'd much rather if the farmers got a fair deal without me having to lift a finger. It's cold in here in the winter and scorching hot and humid in the summer (and I don't tan well), neither condition is ideal for protesting, so the cause has to be particularly worthwhile to get me off the couch.

Jennifer said...

Although it's 5 degrees celsius today, which is actually a really nice temp.

Miss Ash said...

I think that cost is for the unit itself, and then the actual service charges ontop of that per month would range depending on your individual plan.

yrautca said...

Jenn, if you want to make a difference, you need to get on with the program. If you are to be a leader, you need to go for some glory and fame - not because thats what you want but because people will listen to you better.

oh dont get a blackberry. they are having major legal issues and cant be sold outside canada. that means that any software that american companies develop will not be blackberry compatible.