Tuesday, March 24, 2009

What can you do in four hours?

When I lived in Tokyo, to get to one of my jobs it involved a one and a half hour commute each way and three trains. And the rail system being as efficient as it was, if you missed one train, you could catch the next one that would be running about forty seconds later.

And I thought that was a bit of a schlep, however it pales to utter insignificance to a commute I heard about last week. A woman I was working with, used to drive two hours each way work.

She started work at 8 a.m.

She finished at 6p.m.

I told her that I believed there should have been a statue built in honour of her dedication to her job.

And that was before she told me she did it for nine years - and that it was considered quite normal behaviour in England.

I think the only thing that would be normal for me to do for four hours a day would be breathing.
Hah, crazy poms, no longer shall I grumble about my twenty minute amble to work into the heart of the city during a howling southerly.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately it is pretty common place here (Ireland) for people to commute for 60-90 minutes each way to get to work 2 hours would be a bit over the norm, but the traffic here can be crazy indeed. I did the 2 hour commute to college for 3 years and it nearly killed me!
Never again. Ever.

laughykate said...

I suppose that's an advantage of living in a small country down the bottom of the world, with a population of only four million, Whoospadaisy!

Anonymous said...

Yeah but we're a small island with a population of only 6 million so it's not fair. I walk to work along a canal with ducks and swans. I don't know how luck I am sometimes.

laughykate said...

Ohh ducks. They waddle and they're proud. Ducks are cool.Unless of course they're shitting in your kitchen.

And yes, Mama Duck and her ducklings were chased out of my flat's kitchen as soon as it happened.

Anonymous said...

We had a pet duck when I was a kid. He'd come into the kitchen if my Mam was there and do a slimey green shit on the lino.

laughykate said...

If ducks didn't shit, they'd almost be the perfect animal.

Jo said...

No, no, you're forgetting the gang rape.