In My Head

There ARE nice people out there during the holidays!

Heading home from Union Square tonight, I couldn’t get my MetroCard to scan (an on-going saga for me).  A nice gentleman passing through the busy rush hour turnstyle to leave the station noticed my predicament and decided to offer assistance. Once on the other side, he offered to scan his own card so that I could get in. Who does that…during rush hour… during the holidays?!

Thank you sir, whoever you are. Your kindness will not be forgotten. I shall pay it forward in the hopes of inspiring others into random acts of kindness.

The MetroCard is on it’s on its way to a very long and drawn out death. If the MTA follows its usual schedule, we’ll see a MetroCard replacement probably sometime around 2050. But the MetroCard is young; subway tokens had been around for 50 years before the MetroCard killed them for good in 2003.

A flimsy plastic card with a magnetic strip that gets damaged in one’s own packet is not efficient, reliable technology.  Even the best of us get slipped up: “Please swipe again.” “Swipe card again at this turnstile.” “Too fast. Swipe again.” “Insufficient Fare.” Or, the dreaded, “See agent.”  Then throw in a few thousand tourists (who are either used to smart-cards [thanks, Europe & Asia] or have never seen a subway before [thanks, middle-America]) and suddenly the turnstile is a nightmare.

Unlike the MetroCard, smart cards stay right in your wallet or handbag. In London, a whole business has been formed around OysterCard covers called OysterShells. And in Boston it’s not unusual to see a man lift his right hip up just far enough at the gate so the reader can scan the card in his pocket. Once you experience this magic, it’s hard to go back to the cumbersome swipe.

Sure, magnetic strips can store information, but the beauty of a SmartCard is its flexible, ever-expanding functionality. In Hong Kong, the Octopus smart card is used everywhere from the subway to parking meters, from 7-11 to Starbucks.  The technology of an RFID-chip embedded into the smart card allows for lots of information in one card.

Currently, the MTA creates separate MetroCards for each type of rider: student, senior citizen, disabled, etc.. Instead, one kind of smart card can be issued to everyone and customized, via programming, to reflect their status and meet their commuting needs.

Purchasing cards and then throwing them away is wasteful — one smart card could do it all.

For now, I guess I’ll just have to live with swiping my MetroCard 7-10 times in order to get in.

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I was walking on a busy expressway with my trusty pet horse when I realized “This is dangerous. We have to get off of here.” We walked up one of the exit ramps, and it lead to a Lowes (like Home Depot) parking lot. It was either that or the highway, so we continued towards Lowes. Five very angry dobermans were behind a chain link fence slightly succeeding in breaking it down to get to us. I knew we had to get out of there and fast! A ladder lead to the Lowes attic. I told my pet horse that he had to go up that ladder. He looked at me as if to say “No f’n way!” I told him it was that or the doberman pinschers. He went up. It was no feat getting him back down either, but with the help of the Lowes staff we were on our way. Now we’re walking down this lonely country highway. As the sun is setting, my pet horse recalls the last time we were in a bind. “Remember when those kids were being mean to me, and you said ‘get in the hole’? That was a fiasco!”

Today was 61F and sunny.  A beauty to experience. And good things are happening all around. And the Christmas spirit that has eluded me for so many years…it’s here…. and gosh darn it… I feel happyyyyy!!!!!

Blue skies, are smiling at me…. nothing but blue skies. 

So Thanksgiving went very well.  Then we went to CT to visit the family.  That was nice except for the part where I spent around 10 hrs doing homework.  Not a paper…. just regular old homework.  Can’t wait to finish this class.