Crouching tiger, hidden dragon

I’ve previously mentioned before how I have a long commute. It is very long. It takes me 50 minutes to get to the metro station closest to my office, and it is another 20-30 minutes from there. So that’s nearly 90 minutes each way. 90 minutes is 1.5 hours. That’s 3 hours each day spent just travelling. Add another 9 spent at work, another 6 spent sleeping and how much time does that leave me with? Six! That’s how much. Six! Six measly hours over a 24 hour period in which to enjoy the space I pay rent for! Weekends, I’m mainly at home, but still! And of those six, 60 to 90 minutes goes in getting ready for work. So effectively 5. And I spend about an hour or so cooking. So that’s four. I spend about 1 hour of that before cooking, and 3 hours after.

But that aside, the reason I brought that up was to demonstrate how much time I spend commuting. What this means is that I have three hours each day to spend with my thoughts. It’s a pleasant activity. All you meditators don’t know what you’re missing. You should just let your brain run free. Free-range for life! But a fair part of my commute is via road. And that, in Delhi, means traffic. Delhi has terrible traffic. It has some very good roads, but it has terrible drivers. And a significant part of my commute is actually in UP, which is worse. There, the roads are terrible, and the drivers are worse. Today, one of the auto drivers was complaining to me about drivers in UP. I consider that deeply absurd. He was complaining about people going on the wrong side, right after he tried to do the very thing he was complaining about! **Deep breaths**

But that aside — have you noticed how I notice that I’m doing a certain style of tone in each post and then I consciously develop that tone in the remaining part of the post and then it just dies and all right you haven’t no need to get so worked up jeez– the reason I brought that up — see what I’m doing all right no need to get violent– was because during today’s commute, I had an idea that I decided to throw out there. What if vehicles were given right of way according to passenger density?

What is passenger density? That is an excellent question, faceless reader. I doubt many people have ever asked that question. Passenger density is the number of passengers divided by the number of seats available according to the manufacturer. This of course means that an 800 with 7 people in it has a density greater than 1, which is absolute fine and which means that the 800 gets right of way, unless an 800 turns up with 8 people in it and does not get challaned.

What implications does this have for traffic in Delhi? First of all, it would get a lot worse because how the fuck are people going to be estimating passenger density on the fly? Until every car comes equipped with either a passenger density display board, or starts broadcasting its passenger density, we are doomed to terrible traffic. But seriously, it would do nothing to fix our traffic. All it would ensure is that fewer people are stuck in traffic. And maybe encourage people to increase passenger density and thus reduce traffic after all.

I’ve also moved out of the old place into a new place. The old place was falling apart and the tap in the kitchen started to shock us and not with provocative speech or anything but with 220 volts of alternating current. And there was a lot of seepage, and the place was really hot. So we folded our tents and left. The new place is nice, if old, and things keep breaking because they’re quite old. Only a few days ago I had to get the choke of a tube light changed because it had copped it, and the busted one was from October 1991! Dear lord! Similarly, some switches are dying because of old age and will need to be changed and stuff.

In other news, I have so much bloody work!