You Are Never Alone

As I travelled in to work yesterday on the bus, smugly reading on my Kindle, I was struck by how many of my fellow passengers were displaying tell tale signs of iPod connectivity - thin white cables leading from a pocket to earbuds. A couple had their volume turned up quite loud so the rest of us on the bus could hear the crackle without being able to actually hear them. Others were texting on iPhones.

As I came home in the afternoon, again on the bus, again reading on my Kindle, I noticed that the girl standing in the aisle immediately in front of my seat had her Kindle3 in hand.I was tempted to start up a conversation about the differences between Kindle 2, which is what I have, and Kindle3. But then she was shuffled further into the bus as more passengers got on.

Then the woman sitting next to me got a call on her iPhone, and then a video call. She began talking loudly, complaining she couldn't hear what the person at the other end was saying (she didn't have earbuds in) because of the noise of the bus. She began waving madly at the small screen and making kitchy noises to a child on the screen who seemed to be making similar noises back to her.

The man standing immediately to my left got 3 phone calls during our 15 minute bus ride. He carried his mobile in a pouch on his belt, so we all got the benefit of the alarm-clock like sound of his phone ringing, as he took a moment or two to get it to his ear. He then talked extremely loudly to get his voice above the cacophony of the bus passengers. Meanwhile the lady on my right continued to give advice to the person on the other end of her phone about childcare and responsibility.

The joys of bus travel where we have no inhibitions about sharing our world with our fellow passengers. I didn't get a lot of reading done.