Walked with the youngest in the pram and the eldest on her trike to the kindergarten this morning. It's about 2 k's - good going for a four year old first thing in the morning. Left them in and took the bus to work. Had to buy smokes in the kiosk by my stop, walked in, old arabic guy chatting on the phone in a language I will probably never understand, phone had a cord and as he didn't want to interupt his conversation he told me in english to come around the counter and take my own pack off the shelf. I did so, and took out the correct money, placed it on the counter and walked out smiling to myself at his ability to trust so off handedly. I don't think he even counted the money before I was leaving - just engrossed in his telephone conversation, that 'other' voice we all seem to recognize, penetrating our eardrum over miles and miles of cable (or waves, for that matter).
It reminds me of an occasion when i first visited finland on a youth trip back in 96 and talking with an old Indian man. What he was or what he did, didn't really matter - we were supposed to give time to this man and listen to his words merely because he was from India, old, dressed all in white and had lived at a Mahatma Ghandi ashram. He spoke of the invention of the mobile phone and how he saw it as a great way to communicate since years ago, if you wanted to communicate with someone on the far side of the valley, you would have to go to a mystic, give them your message, they in turn would meditate for hours on end, enter the ether or whatever, spiritually connect with another mystic on the far side of the valley who would in turn pass the message on to the intended recipiant - all this would take hours if not days - and then, to hear the reply, well...
Believe what you like from this, but the point was that he believed it and as such, was greatly appreciative of the appearance of the mobile phone since this way, any tom, dick or harry or...(insert three stereo-typical Indian names) could communicate, without, I suppose, the years of tantric training the former form of communication must have entailed.
Or perhaps it is just cheaper...
During the same meeting, our old, Indian, all in white, I've lived with the Great Soul, technology enthusiast, smacked hius hands together to kill a mosquito. One of the Finnish participants of our group, whose name has also left me but who I now imagine to be the managing director of a mid-sized haulage company, commented something along the line of; "You talk about this and that, about doing this, building that and reaching out. But what did that mosquito ever do to you?" I could see all that had been said by this man crumbling around him as he quipped, as it sounded to us, some glib remake about maleria.
Perhaps he changed jobs after that day. Perhaps that was him in the kiosk this morning. Why not? They would be around the same age.