Transit Time

Friday, January 11, 2008. 6:44 PM. Train en route to Union Station, D.C. Flickering fluorescent lighting, but outside is nonetheless kind of dark.

I asked a woman at the end of the train whether or not a seat was taken, and she said that it was already taken, but there was another seat just across from her that wasn't. After I sat down, five minutes in, I saw her reach into the coach bag across from her, pull some stuff out, then sit down in it. Nice move, lady. Go fuck yourself.

A little while later, it turns out that she actually was saving it for someone, who is apparently getting wasted in the club car. Good for her.

***

This is me as an intellectual mercenary. I go to the highest bidder, do my job, and get out, only to go on to the next job. Form no emotional attachments, don't get involved, just do your job and get out.

***

I'm semi-convinced that all those people convinced emotion is a crutch are just afraid of being hurt. And by that, I mean "I myself feel that…".

***

While eating dinner at Penn Station, a man came up to the person sitting across from me and asked for a dollar. That man replied he had no change. Then, the same man turned to me and asked if I had a dollar.

K.T.: Excuse me?
Strange Man (S.M.): Can you give me a dollar?
K.T.: Oh.
S.M.: I am trying to get something to eat, so anything you can give me would be appreciated.
K.T.: I'll give you a dollar if you tell me a joke.
S.M.: OK, thank you.
[PAUSE]
K.T.: I'll give you a dollar if you tell me a joke.
S.M.: Thank you.
[PAUSE]
K.T.: A joke.
S.M.: What?
K.T.: I'll give you a dollar if you tell me a joke.
S.M. A joke?
K.T.: Yes, a joke.
[PAUSE]
S.M.: Man, I don't know any jokes.
K.T.: Come on, something, anything.
S.M.: Man, I don't know any jokes.
K.T.: Come on, you got to have something.
S.M. I don't know no jokes, but I can dance.

At this juncture, he busts out with a smooth series of moves lifted from the 80s, pop-locking and pointing at the man across from me and myself. The man across from me scowls, while I smile a little broader than I should. I give the man the dollar.

S.M.: Thanks, I was just trying to get something to eat.
K.T.: I just wanted to smile a little.

The reason for that needed laugh will be hinted at later. He offered me a copy of the Onion (normally free), which I declined. As he left, I hoped he would actually get some food, though really, he would just as likely end up getting boozed up and lapsing out somewhere.

Ten minutes later, a new man had sat across from me, and S.M. came through again, this time offering to sell the man a copy of the Onion for a dollar. The man declined. Then, S.M. turned towards me, scowled, and waved his hand down at me, blowing me off.

I sat there chewing my chicken as if it were made of rubber and ashes.

***

It was a regular occurrence for myself and TK to show up at the client site around 0745 and get our visitor badges. The security personnel came to recognize us, though we still had to show our ID cards. That is, until Thursday.

Security Person 1 (S.P.1): Hey, I know you two. [T.K.], right?
T.K.: Uh-huh, that's me.
S.P.1: How's it going, [T.]?
K.T.: Pretty good, you?
Security Person 2 (S.P.2): I don't even remember your names.

The most notable moment of all this was that she called me by my last name, something that's happening more and more as I get older. I'm almost on the verge of just telling everyone to refer to me by my last name (though I've never been posted at a British boarding school). But the fact that a stranger referred to me so, well.

She wasn't the only one to do so. One of the individuals I helped train raised his hand and said "[T.], I have a question." I'd only introduced myself once, at the very beginning, yet he called me by my last name. Cool.

***

T.K. will be my project manager for my next project, but as we both had some free time, we both were posted to this New York project, to get to know each other, and to help with the T.S. bottom line. This involved training end users on how to use the system T.S. helped implement.

T.K.'s experience shows. She has the famed southern manners, and is much more easy-going as a trainer than I am. I'm usually so amped up that I tend to take on a very serious attitude, in order to keep myself from wetting myself.

This contrast usually leads to T.K. getting more questions from the audience. They feel much more comfortable around her. Me, they tend to say much less, because I just have, not an angry look and feel, but more tense, more uptight.

On the few occasions in which I have attempted to inject levity into the training session, the end result has been silence. My delivery has been so deadpan, they are not sure how to react, so the safest route is silence.

Lordy, lordy. Some day, some day.

***

More people have boarded the train. The woman, now sitting across from her son, had no choice but to let a third person have a seat. However, rather than lift her bags up and let the woman sit down next to her, she sold out her son, whom is now seated next to the woman. What a bitch.

***

One of the great things about training is the mix of individuals you get. Some are so old, they fall asleep during the class (though this may be a testament to my utter failure to inject much-needed liveliness into the training. I feel so bad for them, they're so at peace, I don't want to wake them up.

Then there's the union people. You can tell these guys fairly quickly. One of them actually raised his hand at 9:35 and told us "We usually get a break at 9:40." Ballsy. Come on, dude, you've been here for seventy minutes. We break at ten.

Then there was the guy looking at a power point slide of the world's ten strangest animals. During the class, while I was walking around helping people through an exercise. Most people checked their email (and I couldn't really say much, I'd be doing the same damned thing in a training session). What really got me was when I called him out on it, and he just kept clicking.

This same guy, long, curly hair, rimless glasses, could be a hipster if he weren't in a corporate setting, he was falling asleep several times during the session, so I was clapping my hands out of nowhere and getting really excited to try and wake him.

There are the ones that come out both guns blazing, attacking you, ready to verbally eviscerate you for attempting to foist upon them a system they don't want. What can you do but nod and say their issues will be addressed?

***

I got to give that woman credit, she let her son put his besocked feet on her knee for an extended period of time. Maybe we're all a little bit sinner, a little bit saint.

***

We generally held a morning training and an afternoon training session. During one of the morning sessions, I had one of the most rambunctious groups of end users I'll ever see. These guys belonged in an Ivy League fraternity house.

There was one gentleman that kept quieting them down, telling them to keep quiet so I could talk. Then, a little later, he asked me when the break was, and I told him it would be around 1000. Turned out he wanted to get out on time so he could move his car.

Owning a car in New York is as much hindrance as convenience. Apparently street sweepers twice weekly scourge the pavement, forcing drivers to relocate their armored carriages. Then, there's the cost of daily parking. Cheapest deal I saw was around eighteen dollars on the day. Eighteen freaking dollars, 8 freaking hours. One garage offered a half hour's parking time for the low price of almost ten dollars. Ten freaking dollars. I didn't learn about these prices until after this man, and started putting it all together. Had I known this, I would've let the guy out even earlier.

This is in addition to the prices of parking and traffic tickets, reaching up to the triple digits. Ridiculous, a racket. One of the many reasons that it's fun to visit New York, especially on business trips, but living there would be what we would term Mistake One-A. (You can guess what Mistake One is reserved for, now and forevermore.)

***

Woman's kid is hyper off the charts. The longer I sit here, the more I see a sympathetic figure, a tired mother, once beautiful, now caking on makeup and a fresh hair style in an attempt to stave off inevitable age, reading a book by Norman Vincent Peale entitled "The Power of Positive Thinking" (Have I read this?), trapped in a life she may not have necessarily wanted for herself, but has now taken on, taking her ten-year old son to the dining car in an attempt to help keep him from going crazy and pissing off all the train passengers around him.

***

Caught a nice disease from T.K., some sort of cold. Probably got it when I lent her my mouse to use. Racked my throat something fierce. She was also sick as a dog. This is good when your two primary trainers are having trouble speaking, that they have to give half-day training sessions.

Nowhere was this more painful than at the apex of my sickness, when I was doing a followup session. One boorish, overly large gentleman sat down in the seat next to me, and said he wanted to be able to hear me. Then he keeps telling me to speak louder and louder.

I'm sitting right next to you, you Dr. Robotnik knockoff. Go polish your head somewhere else, and get out of my sight.

Because of this sickness, I had to break down and go get some meds. Go to a walk-in clinic after work one day and fill out a series of forms. Wait for an hour, then get seen by the doctor for two minutes. He asks me the same damned questions that the forms did, then writes me a prescription for an antibiotic. Tells me to wait for two days, and if it doesn't get better, then I can go get the scrip. Until then, normal cold medicines and rest should do the trick.

Thanks, doc, for overprescribing antibiotics and not really paying attention.

I resisted for the longest time, but ended up taking the antibiotics. They really helped. I'm also somehow contributing to the new strain of antibiotic-resistant bugs. Damnit.

***

During one of the training session breaks, I was having a talk with one of the end users about the system. He was really getting into it, talking about it and what it could do. Finally, he asks me:

End User (E.U.): So, tell me, what do you do, are you an engineer?
K.T.: No, I'm a business analyst.
E.U.: Oh.

Just like that, the joy left him, and he left the room. I don't even recall what he looks like now.

***

G.H. emailed me while I was in New York and informed me that Subway caters six-foot long subs, and they were going to attempt to organize two teams of five people each to go to town on the sub. I told him that I'd plan for that.

Then I found out that I was extended for a week, and would not be able to coordinate in person. I offered to coordinate from New York, but they don't even have the drive to get people together.
Turns out that a lot of the time, you need one person to do the work, and the rest will follow. The difficulty is in finding that one person. Right now in the office, there's no one that stepped up to fill my temporary/permanent void. This also means that all my hard work is going down the tubes. At least I will be back in the office on a more permanent basis within a month or two. By that point, will there be anyone not on travel?

We are just intellectual mercs.

***

A.A. is on one of his medical rotations in New York. We decided to meet up to grab some food. He leads us down the street and says "I know this great place that sells kabobs."

Thirty minutes later we continue to wander through the city. At this point, he tells me:

A.A.: You know, I should have paid more attention when I went there.
K.T.: Good call.
A.A.: I probably shouldn't have had fourteen beers right before.
K.T.: The f*** is wrong with you?
Why don't you tell me this s***?
G** D*** [A.A.], G** D***.

***

I met up with J.P. at the T.S. New York office to play games over the land area network. Told him I was hungry, so we started walking. He mentioned several options, such as a kabob place (What is it about New York and kabobs?), an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet, and a hot dog joint.

K.T.: Wait, Papaya King?
J.P.: Yeah.
K.T.: OK, we have to go there.

G.B. and someone else told me that I had to go there and get the papaya drink. This was a perfect opportunity. J.P. ordered four dogs with kraut and mustard, fries and a papaya drink. I got a dog with kraut and mustard (when in Rome), fries, and a papaya drink.

Let's put it this way: Papaya King is now my new idolatrous god.

As a bit of what we like to call character building, over the course of the night, J.P. also had two rice krispie treats, a candy cane, several bags of chips, and a couple of root beers (from what I recall).

***

Travel has worn on me physically already (see the sickness), but it hasn't yet worn on me mentally. When will it? Right now, my only real worry is that my mailbox can't hold 11 days worth of junk mail, thus rejecting the two or three important pieces of mail which will get bounced out.

***

T.K.: So, [D.I.] said they're bouncing the server.
[K.T. stares]
K.T.: I don't understand what you mean.
T.K.: They're bouncing it. They're rebooting.
K.T.: Oh.

I hear "bounce" in that context, I think roll out, leave, exit stage left.

***

Due to my sickness, I didn't spend much time running or leaving my hotel room on my off-time. Thus, one fateful Monday night, I decided to turn on American Gladiators for the background.

Why is there so much contrived drama? And why is Crush now my [haha] crush?

G.B. had recorded it, and was watching at a later time. I was talking to him over the internets, when suddenly,

G.B.: HOLY S***
K.T.: What?
G.B.: you're on american gladiators

I sat up straight and looked around. Was G.B. on the drugs? Then I thought back, and one of the male competitors resembled me, only much cockier than I could ever be in an athletic setting. That was me if it was a Super Smash Bros.: Melee tournament. It was weird.

And yes, I won my preliminary round matchup.

***

Though I'm training all day at the client site, I still return to the office from which I'm working every so often, whether to help revise a training manual or drop off my stuff.

In no particular order, here are the accents I hear: Caribbean, Russian, Persian, Souther, New Yorker, Chinese, Scottish, British, and, of course, my own mellifluous slight Baltimoron accent, by way of Sesame Street.

***

I hate hotel housekeeping. Stay the f*** out of my stuff. Had I not just stayed in New York for eleven days, I would've kept the Do Not Disturb sign on my hotel room door the entire time.

***

Saturday saw me go down to Broadway to watch a Broadway play. I had to pass through Times Square to get there.

This is not true. I did not strictly have to, but I wanted to.

It is a complete f***ing spectacle. I went at noontime, and somehow Times Square managed to outshine the noonday sun. How do you do that, outside, in broad daylight? You overuse neon lighting and giant plasma television screens and anything you can think of to shine a bright light every which way.

Thanks to B.M., I found out that there's an organization called TKTS which sells tickets to Broadway plays at half price. Bam. Avenue Q it is, and I only had to wait in line for about twenty minutes.

Avenue Q came highly recommended by both B.M. and R.L. R.L. clinched it when he sent me a link to a song from the musical, entitled "What Do You Do with a B.A. in English." This has now been committed to memory, and will be encoded to a portable music player, probably my phone, and played as my (ironic) theme song when I find it necessary to play one.

***

Almost ninety minutes spent typing this up, and I don't revise blog posts.