Manners maketh man

Congrats to E for successful navigation through the Kafka-esque world of university and graduating!

Christmas is only a bit more than a week away, and so is my trip to Berlin. I have already started to fret and imagine all the worst case scenarios - I manage to catch a bad flu, the flights are either cancelled or that I miss the plane, that the hotel has never received my reservation (the worst fear, as the reservation was done through a booking system and not straight to the hotel - though my sister has had good experiences booking hotels through it before), and so on. Just like the "OMG we forgot to shop!" dream I see every time I'm supposed to cook large amounts of food.

Speaking of christmas, me and A sought out some extreme experiences the other day and went to a service organized by our school as part of the christmastime celebrations. For some reason I like singing hymns, I guess the heir to the Coca-Cola Company might get the same feeling singing some of the more bloodthirsty communist marches. Anyway, there we were, punishing the believers with our gift of noise and singing our hearts (and possibly some other organs as well) out, when right in the middle of it all, someone's cellphone rang. Like, what?

After a decade or so of having the damned things around, you'd think that some parts of the unwritten etiquette would have sunk into the brain of even the slowest of thinkers? Or is it that the older generations have neglected to teach some manners to the younger ones, as I think it was a teenager whose phone it was. And not so long ago, during the touching final moments of Harry Potter, a young boy not only answered his phone but talked pretty loudly to his mother.

What is going on? Do we need to start all over again with the public discussion of proper conduct of behaviour with cellphones? And this time I would like to include in this topic of discussion some people's habit of inflicting all the co-passengers in a bus to all the details of the talker's sex life or the lack thereof/diseases/retarded bosses and colleagues. I. Do. Not. Want. To. Know.

Whatever happened to common sense? Sheesh.

This year's Best SMS Award goes to H, however. I left work today, heard a bang, rounded a corner and saw a car on fire right in the middle of the road. I don't know what had happened, it was an older car and had obviously stopped at traffic lights and then for some reason KA-whoosh!! but anyway there it was, merrily on flames. Imagine a pyre. Of course I had to share this once-in-a-lifetime experience and reported it via SMS to H whose response, though it consisted only of one word, somehow captured the entire scene: Benzin.

Truer word has seldom been spoken.



To fit the mood:
Rammstein: Zerstören
Kotiteollisuus: Käärmeenpää