Flashing lights and fire trucks
Whatever else might be going on in the world, this evening brought clement weather for my long bus ride home after supervising government, and the price of our favourite petroleum product has rolled back by another penny, to $0.88/litre. It’s not important that my transit bus is independent of such prevarication in marketing. I just like the thought that even fossil fuel prices don’t have to go up and up and away.
There was additional proof that skill and pay grade are not linked. While I was banished to another area (governments are secretive), the head of staff decided to “run” the videoconference and managed to point the camera into the nether reaches of the nearest corner. There was no way to reset things without powering down the codec, so a large part of the meeting was spent with the slightly balding head of the visiting auditor in frame. Sometimes it’s nice to have other people “run” things; we all need points of comparison on our job performance.
My layover between city bus lines saw the flashing lights of the traffic control override come on, to allow three fire trucks the chance to rush headlong down a narrow street against oncoming cars. I know how the system works (there’s a radio frequency detector that allows the crew to control sequences), but it’s still really cool to know that when you have enough money (for infrastructure), emergency vehicles don’t have to run red lights. I know, the traffic code says they can’t, but when in need, in deed.
