Random Train Thoughts

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The Microsoft Rite of Passage to First Class

Most of my recent travels have been around the rather tiny country of Denmark. How far I used to drive to go shopping in Seattle is now a 'huge' distance travelled to go by Danish standards - except apparently, for meetings. Which I'm having all over the place. It's nice actually, spending some time on the train, relaxing, I'm writing this while on my way to a city called Odense (not like in Texas - try saying "Oh Enza" - no "D"). I've experienced all the seasons looking out these train windows and it's still a treat, 5 years and hundreds of train rides later, to travel by train. Watching out the window the vast fields - some (most?) seasons filled with snow and today, oh happy day, filled with green grass and lit by beautiful sunlight. It's the first week of May and perhaps the first week where the temperature remains about 0 for an entire week. It's not necessarily normal in Denmark to have such a long winter season but so be it. I'm glad - overjoyed - to see the sun again, and wear beautiful gold glimmer oil which my friend gave to me, a gift from Paris which reminds me every time the sun hits my arms that it's a gorgeous day and I should appreciate the sun.

Enough about the weather though, this is about traveling in Denmark. Most of it has been by train, sometimes plane (though it takes nearly the same time what with getting through the airport and catching taxis). I'm traveling on business and thus first class. It's an intriguing experience. A certain practice exists. Sit down, put away unnecessary things (such as jacket, bag, etc). Pull out laptop. Get a cup of coffee from the small corner kiosk where it's free in first class. Smile at fellow passengers, perhaps make a joke about where is my ticket/phone/whatever and then open laptop. Now there's four people at a table, all with laptops open (actually where I'm sitting now it's three with laptops and one with an ipad). Either way, we all politely hide behind our screens and launch our programs.

There's internet on the train but it's not nearly reliable enough to do any serious work online - and most of my work is online using Google Docs, web mail, etc. So hence me typing this up. But it is interesting. The guy beside me is editing a word document. Microsoft Word of course. And here's where the title comes in. I somehow get the impression that Microsoft is the Rite of Passage into this special club. We all work somewhere where the company can afford to put us in First Class (tickets are $200 return to wherever I go, it doesn't seem to matter which city it's always a few dollars more or less than $200). We all work somewhere where, typically one is using a Lenovo/Dell/IBM laptop (bonus points for having the red nub mouse in the center of the keyboard). Lucky for me, and apparently the lady with the iPad, our workplaces have decided to let us use something else (Macbook Pro for me) though, comically, I'm running Windows XP and thus using the same Microsoft Word program anyway. And there's just something about this Rite of Passage that must be had; using the products provided (Microsoft obviously since it's got the best deals for bigger companies) and clunking away on way-too-heavy-for-traveling laptops that earns us our ride in First Class. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with MS products - I actually have enjoyed using them over the years, but the alternative is so much better. Granted, Google Docs can't do some of the stuff that the MS Office suite can - but it's faster, more intuitive and obviously, online and collaborative, all of this in my humble opinion and experience, of course. Apple's Pages is lacking a bunch of intuitive things (fx: why hide the bullets menu? Oh, bullets are bad, yes but people are used to reading them and thus they shall be used. Stop hiding them). But the graphics handling and layout in Pages rivals bigger Adobe programs for ease of use and responsiveness. This isn't a software review though, it's a quiet observation on all of us on this train.

Missing the beautiful nature going by, (though, quite honestly - expansive fields of grass are lovely but dammit Denmark, get some landmarks. Mountains are non existent but a tree here and there would be okay! And hey, there's a tiny pond as I write this, nice!) We're missing the view because we're scrambling to get work done. Or even if we have nothing pressing to do (it does happen when one doesn't have access to email) then we're trying to do anything. To fill our time. To fill the gaps. I was at a birthday this weekend and one of my friends has recently decided to stop pushing himself so hard, to stop doing 25 things at once (usually all big events that he's organizing) and to enjoy life, slowly and peacefully and with meaning, rather than hectically and in chaos - which has it's magic, granted, but is absolutely draining of life force after a certain time. His friend at the party reminded him of someone who had told them to 'stop filling in the gaps'. This rang very true with me. (Can one say that, it sounds weird in my head). Anyway - everyone onboard this train is filling in the gaps. iPad lady just put down the iPad and picked up her iPhone - honestly what on earth is she doing differently? One is a gigantic version of the other and if they are synched properly then... what is she doing? Who knows. She's filling in the gaps. Everyone is. Busy work. Taking more tasks on. Drinking more coffee to do more things. (That's another thing, I've got to take it down a notch with this coffee intake. Scandinavian coffee culture is a bit crazy, let's invent a new saying "oh let's grab a Vitamin water together!" it costs the same, but at least has some useful vitamins going on, though given the need for coffee here, everyone would probably go for the caffeinated Vitamin water, sigh). Back to filling the gaps. I have tried, very consciously, to slow down. The past two years have been about slowing down. Doing less. Traveling less. Organizing less. Breathing. Granted, it led to a few months of wearing my robe around the house drinking tea and making cookies (read: Tea with whisky as "tea" and rumballs as "cookies" - it was around Christmas!) but even in my robe I was steering the empire of GeekPhysical, running networks and doing a million things at once.

Now I've decided my life is in two parts. Work and hobby. Hobby is Burlesque. Costumes, parties, dance lessons, etc. It's fantastic and a wonderful world to explore but of course, my hobby is trying to consume me whole and I must admit, the glitter is convincing me to let it. It's fine though, if it's work and it's burlesque then we're okay. If it's that plus filling every other moment with something then we're back to filling in the gaps. I get antsy without something to do. I think in this era of smart phones, watches, pants, smart things in general, we're just so used to being constantly entertained that we don't know what to do by ourselves. I marvel at Dzl - he can work for days, literally sometimes, on an idea he has....without the internet. He needs the computer for programming but otherwise wouldn't bother with it. He can sketch his ideas, build circuits, laser cut or cnc something and then build it, test it, change it, cut it, do it all again. He can be left with a toolbox of parts and invent for days. I can't build Lego. Seriously - I get very frustrated trying to snap the damn things together and tend to toss them quite whole heartedly back into their bin. So I'm not a builder. But what I am? What are we - the First Class Microsoft Using Must Entertain Ourselves Constantly train types? I've just bought myself some pencils and a sketch book and I'm hoping to teach myself how to draw. Well by teach myself I obviously mean YouTube videos showing me how to draw (thank you YouTube - and authors!). So is that filling in the gaps? I think not. I think I have to define this at some point. Launching on a new drawing career would be. Learning to draw so I can express myself better, and doodle on napkins when there is no internet, or ... wow now this is a thought, draw some of the nature that I see out the train window(!) could be interesting. On that note, there were just some windmills and a nice optical illusion out the window - a field with tracks drawn in it that revealed themselves only as we drove past them, quite beautiful actually. Maybe it's about that - shall we get sappy? Maybe it's about finding the beauty in these everyday moments. In these small observations - an optical illusion in a field, reflections in the glass, people's mannerisms, (the guy beside me is typing with his hands and holding his pen hanging from his mouth).

And apparently that's when I got to my stop because I've had to add this conclusion 5 months later, on to the next post...

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