View from my window

While waiting for check in at Heathrow, a middle aged lady carrying a smart Coach bag, clad from head to toe in black abaya and hijab , her shimmering face showing came to me and asked if I would carry her extra luggage for her! Shocked that she could even ask me such a question I tried to politely tell her that I didn't have any space, she blatantly lied and said she would have returned her extra luggage with her family but they had already left, whereas I could see them standing in a corner and waiting for the outcome of her adventure. This was a prelude to stranger things to come. On the plane, nothing less than a PIA, one out of two economy class toilets went 'out of order' ten minutes into our flight, causing at least half an hour waiting queues. Steward on duty to serve our aisle was too macho to serve us even water, let alone ask if we needed anything. My request for a blanket was ignored with not even a return 'sorry we don't have any more' note. We fel...

I am amazed that we don't notice change while it happens. Maybe because it is so slow- one micro pixel at a time! Though we do notice change when it has happened, we notice it when it is too late, we notice it to record an absence. For instance, Facebook will, I am afraid, irreversibly change our attitudes to relationships with people and things in times to come. At least we have known another era, kids growing up in FaceBook era won't know any other reality. To start with everyone in our contact list is a 'friend'. I might add my parents but when they join Facebook, they will have to be my 'friend'! My husband is my friend, so are my siblings. Oh yeah that girl I met last weekend on the beach who was very friendly and wanted to add me to stay in touch-is also a friend! What about that annoying guy in high school whom I was so happy to have lost in my life but now he has added me (I accepted his 'friendship because he was a friend of a friend and I didn'...

I am torn between birds eye view or ants view! Not that we are ever privy to enough information to give either with any authority. All we can do is catch some snitches and try to construct a reality. Always a little apprehensive about how things would turn out, that is if we are honest about knowledge dissemination. I say this because curiously we are always given the impression of having knowledge, there is nothing that goes on in the back rooms of power that is not shared in the press room, 'on or off' the record, and manages to come into the electronic or print media and we, the poor 'awam' or common man, subsequently hear about our fates. It is also quite strange that this media, acting as either mouthpieces of powers that be or awam's beneficiary and taking up the role of Nostradamus, can predict destinies of nations. They can foretell a destiny many months in advance. So the power is, not in the knowledge of what is happening right now but, in how early you ca...