Ides of February Round-up

Feeling the pressure for constant innovation here at the lab, I bring you our latest experiment:

Strawberries dipped in chocolate pudding yogourt

Analysis: A fine way to eat chocolate yogourt pudding, but straight pudding tastes better with the strawberries because the sourness of both the strawberries and of the yogourt doesn't quite work. If I liked banana more, I'd try that. Any suggestions?

On the bus: Last night I was on the rear bench of the #2 when a guy with messy hair asked me what time it was. I'd seen the time on a pay phone just before the bus came so I told him "about five to ten." He thanked me in a way that seemed a little over the top and put the unlit white end of a cigarette in his mouth.

Just as the bus turned onto Somerset and stopped, he moved to the seat by the door. A woman got off the bus, the door closed, the green light went off and then he got up and pushed on the door. He looked angry, but didn't call out to the driver.

This is when I remembered the "sit in the middle" rule of thumb for avoiding crazy people on the bus. The theory is that friendly crazy people sit up front near the driver, unfriendly crazy people sit at the back as far from the driver as possible. The cigarette guy slumped against the panel next to the door and let the bus go two stops before he pulled the cord to signal a stop. As soon as he got off, a man who looked like he might have come from Ethiopia or Somalia moved to the back corner with a big white plastic bag.

I didn't have to wonder why he'd moved back for long because he pulled a sweater out of the bag and folded it, then he folded a couple of shirts. What an excellent use of time, I thought. This guy is using dead time on the bus to fold his laundry instead of doing it at the laundromat or when he gets home. I wondered if he felt a bit embarrassed about it (airing his laundry in public, so to speak) and considered offering to help as a way to show I thought it was a fine thing to do, but I only had three stops to go and I'd have to get off the bus before folding a single shirt. (Plus, I'm not that good at folding shirts anyway.)

Then he leaned over and began to ask me a question. "A long time ago, did you..."

Oh, oh, I thought, he's one of the people in the documentary I did ten years ago, he remembers me and I don't remember him, but then he finished "used to smoke on the bus?"

I was about to tell him he had the wrong guy, I never smoked on any bus, when I realized he was asking about the Canadian history of smoking on buses. "Oh," I said, "a long time ago, maybe twenty-five years." We had a nice little 3-stop chat about it. He was very happy that people didn't smoke on buses here, unlike the place he came from. Just before I left, I complimented him on his time management practice with the laundry.

If I tell you about how I like to use PBWiki, I can get 10MB more storage.

A wiki is a website that has two main features:

1. It is easy to create new pages and link to them from other pages; and
2. Any reader can edit the content.

I created a wiki for the Mature Students at the Law School because a lot of the upper year students have advice for classmates and I thought it would be a good way for us to keep the advice in one easy to manage place. So far though, as easy as I find it to edit the thing, I seem to be the only one who does.

My other wiki I use for school work, particularly my research notes for papers. It's an extremely handy way to have all my notes available wherever I am, and to make links between them and to information on the web that I'll be referring to.

Check out the PBwiki tour! or Get a free wiki at PBwiki.com.