Ok, so I do now have an apartment. A nice one, too. Small, but homey. And having only a matress and a chair makes it not so small, too :-)

I now al­so have a hob­bie. I watch peo­ple. No, no tele­scope and stuff, I watch them in the sub­way.

I had nev­er had to com­mute to work, re­al­ly. I could make a 5 minute bus ride, if I was in a hur­ry, but now I have a 28 min­utes SUB­WAY ride, and that is a lot of time to be sit­ting with peo­ple you dont know, idly look­ing at the flu­o­res­cent tubes.

So, I am try­ing to fig­ure out how they do it.

The first rule seems to be LOOK MAD. Ev­ery­one looks mad. Preg­nant wom­en look mad (even af­ter they get the seats ;-). Old ladies look mad. Med stu­dents look mad (my sub­way stops in the med school). Pret­ty girls look mad. Lawyers look as mad lawyers (it al­so stops in the court­s), but they car­ry large stacks of pa­per, so I would be mad, too!.

So, I am try­ing to look mad, with rel­a­tive suc­cess, even if it is not easy for some­one with my fea­tures (I go from pleas­ant bud­dha to scary, with­out a mad phase).

Then, af­ter you look mad so noone will try talk­ing to you, what can you do? Well, thats an­oth­er sto­ry.