2001 / november / 20
solitaire
A colleague who visited another university library was full of the impressive design of the building. Especially the gallery of office rooms, separated from the main hall only by a glass wall - though only partially see-through, some people had had difficulty adjusting to, as he put it, the thought that everybody could see them working hard on solitaire.
Which reminded me of an ashram story. I spent three months in Osho's ashram in
Pune, India in '97
(see who?).
It was an interesting time to be there in many ways... but let me stick with
solitaire. The first email kiosks were springing up then,
where you'd pay a substantal amount of rupees for every thousand bytes typed.
There were billboards on the streets advertising mobile phones, 33k6 modems and
computer courses - changes were afoot, that was clear.
And then, one image can put the finger on what was previously just hanging in
the air. One day, I left the main gate and saw a commune worker working her
computer in the small office next to the gate playing windows 3.1 solitaire
in that way most of us know so well: bored (*).
In, of all places, an ashram.
(*) [which is precisely why, at my work, it's not included on a standard workstation - though I'm sure some managers higher up pulled the strings necessary to get a custom install]
haiku's | main | choco-chai
