Thursday, October 25, 2012

About those napping Greek islanders

Well good for them. Olive oil, sure, wine, why not, longevity, OK. No goats'-milk for me, thanks unless it's been turned into a cheese. Makes for a good most-emailed, I suppose, for there to be an entire island full of people's grandfathers who smoked like chimneys and nevertheless lived to be 100. Until the time comes when we learn they're all actually 45 but smoking didn't do wonders for their skin, let us congratulate them for their paradox-ness.

But I'm more interested in the fact that these people are not waking up while it's still dark out to meander their way through a total of seven legs of transportation. They don't leave their offices before 5 in order to make a train that gets them to a train that gets them at shortly after six to another train, connecting in turn to a shuttle, all of which gets them home close to 7pm, leaving approximately three hours until the too-tired-to-not-be-asleep feeling hits. They don't gaze out the window as Central NJ becomes Northern NJ and vice versa, scenery you could show to someone who's life goal was to visit the United States and they'd be like, meh. They don't run out of podcasts and end up laughing along to something about British politics without even getting the references. They drink lots of coffee, yes, but they don't put it into a thermos, forget to close that thermos, and discover that the odd drip, drip, drip on NJ Transit is coming from their backpack.

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