During a break in things yesterday, I read parts of a BBC article on the plane crash in Southern Sudan aloud to a friend. "Shocked?" I said at the end. "How can they say Southern Sudanese are shocked at the plane crash? I'm not shocked. Do you know what those planes are? They are single-engine Cessnas flown by Kenyan pilots who are forced to fly 16 hours a day without a break and who send text messages by satellite phone while in the air, or they are Antonovs flown by Russian pilots who are still drunk from the night before and who are beginning their drinking again while in the air. How is anyone shocked when they crash? I flew on about 20 of them and I was always shocked when we didn't crash."
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Every morning, I take the bus to work. The bus stop is a block over, and I stand next to the covered booth in my tights and heels and wait for the bus. Sometimes one bus comes first, sometimes another. One morning I had just turned the corner when the bus came by and I would have missed it had the driver not known me and my bright blue KLM flight attendant coat and stopped a block early for me. "Isn't it nice when your bus driver knows you?" she asked as she opened the doors for me. I'm beginning to recognize people: the older black man in a suit and a camel coat, the young Asian girl with the skinny jeans, the middle-aged white guy with the floppy hair and the black overcoat. One of my colleagues complained about the bus, how there are so many strange people who take it, how it's better to drive, even though you have to pay for parking, but my buses are filled with people on their way to work and school, people just like me. We all sit in the sunlight as the bus goes down that hill and over that bridge, listening to our music and playing our sudoku and staring out our windows.
I like riding the bus in the morning. It like the time it gives me to wake up. I like the people. I like the fact that I'm not using any more fuel than would be used anyway. I like watching the city go by. I like walking from the bus stop to work, under the rapidly greening trees.
...
Every morning, I take the bus to work. The bus stop is a block over, and I stand next to the covered booth in my tights and heels and wait for the bus. Sometimes one bus comes first, sometimes another. One morning I had just turned the corner when the bus came by and I would have missed it had the driver not known me and my bright blue KLM flight attendant coat and stopped a block early for me. "Isn't it nice when your bus driver knows you?" she asked as she opened the doors for me. I'm beginning to recognize people: the older black man in a suit and a camel coat, the young Asian girl with the skinny jeans, the middle-aged white guy with the floppy hair and the black overcoat. One of my colleagues complained about the bus, how there are so many strange people who take it, how it's better to drive, even though you have to pay for parking, but my buses are filled with people on their way to work and school, people just like me. We all sit in the sunlight as the bus goes down that hill and over that bridge, listening to our music and playing our sudoku and staring out our windows.
I like riding the bus in the morning. It like the time it gives me to wake up. I like the people. I like the fact that I'm not using any more fuel than would be used anyway. I like watching the city go by. I like walking from the bus stop to work, under the rapidly greening trees.
1 comment:
I'd mention also that these plans where rejected by Aeroflot. Talk about dismal standards.
Congrats on passing the bar!
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