Category Archives: The Observer

Observations from what’s going on around me

And the Gold Medal Goes To …

Posted in Media, The Observer, The Telly by

Some of the memorable highlights of the opening ceremony!

The theatrics in the beginning… I especially loved the Maypole and the different scenes in the grass – picnics, rugby … and the transformation. It’s a shame that NBC didn’t do a good job showing the different scenes depicted in this display of historical Britain before the introduction of the industrial revolution. I mean, real sheep on the set? What’s not to love?

The forging of the rings. Definitely a fan of this! Flying rings of fire gets the gold for sure.

The world’s greatest nanny – Mary Poppins – coming to save the day! This tip of the hat to the NHS and to famous British children’s literature, a segment that started with J.K. Rowling reading from Peter Pan was fun to watch. Especially identifying the different villains. Of course, it’s not without it’s controversy as some  – who will not be named – seemed to believe that  it was a blatant political move. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, all I saw was some very lucky kids having a lot of fun at the Olympic opening and some hard working doctors and nurses honored for their work and Mary Poppins (my favourite nanny), a symbol of imagination. Also, some really awesome umbrellas that I kinda want.

The Queen and James Bond and some cute doggies. Oh that Queen, shocking the world with her sense of humour.

Mister Bean and Chariots of Fire. In true Mr. Bean style, this segment had me laughing at his hilarious facial expression and running scene.

The way the torch was lit!

What a way to light the torch! Why isn’t there more talk of the symbolism behind this? One torch lit by 200 and some tiny torches, burning brightly for the remainder of the games!

Of course, there were some huh moments, like the cover of Come Together, was it just me, or did they sound a little low energy? And, Hey Jude, I mean,  I love The Beatles and great for Paul McCartney for singing at the ceremony, but, I am sure there were many more songs that he could have sung than Hey Jude. And please don’t say it’s for the sing-along value, a lot of people in the world know many more songs and if they wanted people to sing along they just had to put the words up somewhere. I mean .. they have the entire stadium lit, it’s not impossible!

Overall it was enjoyable. Different. Unique. A great display of history. And of course, it was also fun to watch it while having a running commentary on Facebook with a few friends. My status because Olympic size, totaling 1006 comments. Not bad for seven or so people.

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Images from Reuters

“Excuse me!”

Posted in The Observer, Thoughts by

I travel to work on the Long Island Rail Road and I tend to notice interesting bits of behaviour. One behaviour in particular is the inability of passengers to say, “Excuse me” when they want to exit a row.

The typical train has 5 seats in a row – three on one side of the aisle and two on the other  – there isn’t enough space to pass the person sitting in the aisle seat without first asking them to move.

So, how do they indicate that they need to exit? Well, it’s really simple … they start to fidget. They gather their things and angle their bodies and there is this expected agreement that this fidgeting means they want to exit. This reminded me so much of a post on “She’s not from Yorkshire1” that, one day, when I was in a particularly mischievous mood, I decided to see what would happen if I ignored the “I need to leave” cues.

We were waiting to pull into the station at Jamaica – a big transfer station – when the lady next to me started to gather her things and angle her body. I wasn’t listening to music, only reading a book, and I decided to be conveniently engrossed in the paragraph that I was reading. This wasn’t difficult, the book was a good one2, and I was at a good part. It took her a moment to realise that I was missing her cues, but she finally said, “Excuse me!” and so I said, “Sure!” and got up.

Thankfully she was nice about it3. I just find it interesting, wouldn’t it be easier – and quicker – to say, “Excuse me!” than to fidget and wait for the person next to you to notice?

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1 They do that in NYC as well!
2 I was reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
3 I was lucky to get a decent person, not all people are decent and not all people will react politely. Basically, this is a disclaimer saying, “Reactions may vary, so observe with wisdom”.

Mondays are made of this …

Posted in The Observer, Thoughts by

I was minding my own business, sipping on my very caffeinated drink, contemplating important life decisions – should I take the train that stops 8 blocks away from the office, or one? – and generally minding my own Monday Morning business when a voice calls out, “EXCUSE ME!” and a woman tries – unsuccessfully – to push me out of the way, rushing in front of me to get down the stairs.

I stopped to allow her to go, I figured someone in such a hurry must either be running away from something, or running to something. Since it didn’t look like she was running away from anything, it might just be best to let her run to whatever she was in a hurry to get to and save myself some coffee stains.

I think she realised how rude she was being so she said I should go ahead, except, she didn’t say this politely, it was more along the lines of “No, no, go, go, go, go, go!” with each go getting louder and more urgent.

Figuring she really needed to go I indicated again that she should go ahead of me.

“Just go, I’m going to be late for work!” she said.

So, I went, taking the stairs one at a time, making a point to take my time and savor each of the 12 stairs. I familiarized myself with them, possibly naming a few of them along the way, as opposed to my usual morning stair-skipping trot.

As I smiled to myself the thought came to me, this is why I don’t like interacting with people. Now, I’m a story in this woman’s life. She’s going to go into work, grumpy and complaining about the girl in the yellow skirt who took her time down the stairs. She’ll tell her friends how I refused to go, even though she told me to go ahead in front of her and they will all shake their heads at my delinquency.

Of course, this is all in my head and by the time she gets to her destination she’d have forgotten all about me. But, just in case, here’s to all the ladies-in-a-hurry. Next time you want to push someone aside, just go ahead of them, or they might write a blog post about you.

The day the internet goes dark

Posted in The Observer, Thoughts by

Wordpress.com's front page

Today, a lot of sites will be “going dark” in protest against SOPA and PIPA. (these can be viewed on Wikipedia, even though the rest of the site is on blackout)

Wikipedia's redirect page

I am fascinated with the way social media has created an avenue for protest and will be following this to see where it goes. A lot of user generated social sites will be affected if these bills get passed and I wonder what the world will be like without sites like YouTube, or Etsy or Flickr.

Google stands up to SOPA and PIPA

What are your thoughts on these bills?