That means one thing - NASA countdown time - 5 (days to go).
Being a Saturday, I was ready to go out to tutor in the afternoon, but it was cancelled. Maybe my pupil needed to do some urgent Christmas shopping? After all, the Saturday before Christmas has now got a name: Panic Saturday.
I am not sure why, as every day seems to have been a panic over the last month when I have ventured out - as I mentioned, I hate going out and "milling around" in amongst the crowds of people who are not quite sure what they are shopping for, but they know they need to get something.
So, "Panic Saturday" - I went to the post office.
What madness you ask? I even asked myself! I took a book in case I had to stand in the queue for a long time. If you read my post about queues, you will understand why I took a book.
Surprisingly, the post office as no busier than on a normal Saturday and the ladies behind the counter as grumpy as ever until you smile at them.
Why was I going to the post office? I had sold a book from my Etsy store: The Balloon Ride. The story of the first passenger balloon flight, that took a duck, a chicken and a donkey up into the air. I could do with a balloon occasionally to fly over everyone in my way.
The advantage of not having to tutor, for my son anyway, is that I become a taxi. Not an Uber Taxi, but a Mum Taxi. And off he went to a climbing and mega-zip line party. Perfect boy stuff for the start of the school holiday and a break for my eldest son who got some "on-my-own" time.
The prospect that there may not be many people around at one of the shopping malls, drew me to go and buy chocolate and wrapping paper. I had run out of the latter and you can't have Christmas without chocolate. Fairly straight forward. Until I decided to try out the supermarket.
Oh goodness me! $99.99 for a box of cherries! $18.50 for a medium sized carton of strawberries!
How can anyone afford such luxuries?
I left in haste and went home to make myself a cup of green tea.
BAH HUMBUG
They'll just have to eat apples instead.
Bah Humbug, it's 13th December and I only have 12 days to sort everything out before everyone stuffs themselves, gets buried under a landfill of torn up and scrunched up wrapping paper that could have been recycled if only they hadn't ripped it off.
I realised that it was this day last year that I ventured into the cavernous maze of Vivo City shopping mall. You get the sense that it should be full of life and Spanish music. Which of course it is not. It is always full of people and booming echoes. Nothing like a lively shopping area in the south of Spain.
This year, by sheer co-incidence, I did not go back to Vivo, instead, I ventured along Orchard Road, - rather like Oxford Street on any day. I ventured out early to beat the crowds, get the whole rigmarole of shopping out of the way early, and thereby minimise my chance of having to queue, which I eloquently bah-humbugged about yesterday.
I targeted the Paragon shopping centre, for numerous reasons. Mostly because I had become rather weary with waiting on the phone for 37 minutes and then not getting an answer to my query to that I could purchase the item on line. It appears that shopping on line is really not a substitute for walking into a shop and having a face to face interaction with a real person. A prime example of why queues are not going anywhere, fast
The name Paragon, always strikes me as a strange name for a shopping centre. One normally associates the idea of paragon with someone of extreme virtue, merit or excellence. Personally, I do not find parting with obscene amounts of cash in a glitzy shopping centre to be either virtuous, merit-worthy nor excellent.
Not unexpectedly, I still had to queue at my final destination. But until that particular retail outlet lifted its shutters to blast an overly-zealous welcome to our store in my ear when I was trying to read a book - I was not going to be outdone by the waste-of-time-queue-monster - I decided to run some other errands in some of the shops that were open.
That is easier said than done.
Like last year, this place of shopping seemed to be filled with humans who were shoaling. Shoaling like fish, not Shaolin' like the Kung Fu monks. Everywhere I turned, semi-vacant individuals meandered around shops, not really with a purpose, almost as if they have been brainwashed to enter a shop, wander around and then purchase something of non-descript purpose, to wrap up and pass off as a well-thought out gift to someone they are not sure why they are buying a gift for in the first place. It might also have been that it was fairly early on a Saturday morning.
Nevertheless, when humans mill, shoal or even peregrinate, (there is a good word, meaning to travel or journey on foot, which is exactly what they are doing, gyrating around the shopping aisles and displays, on foot) they seem to morph into a state of oblivion of the world or anyone else around them. That was rather a lengthy and complex sentence but it captures the rigmarole of trying to avoid these quasi-shoppers. Unaware, they gravitate into my walking trajectory and block my way down aisles that make you feel like you entered the rubbish crusher in Star Wars. Where is Yoda when you need him?
All of this invariably leads to me muttering under my breath about awareness. I seem to remember the same thing happening when I went to buy milk on Tuesday. No wonder Neil Gaiman ended up on an adventure when he went out to buy a pint of milk. Fortunately the Milk, great book Once again, as I sat awaiting my turn to be called from the digital voice linked to the linear queue system, last year's tongue twister came to mind:
A Singapore Shopping Centre, Swimming with Shoaling Shoppers
Bah Humbug, it's 12th December. And I've only got 13 days left! Half the gifts I ordered on line have not turned up yet. What is the point of ordering on line if your "stuff" never arrives? And then there is the "trying to order on line" thingy. That is where you go on line to purchase something because you don't want to elbow your way through the crowds. The "trying" comes in to this because, no matter how hard you try, you can't order. In my case, I need to talk to someone. Easy. Get off my butt and go to the shop. Why do that? A shop where I would have to queue up? and as I mentioned, queueing is a sheer waste of time.
(even seagulls seem to queue these days)
Which made me wonder why on earth we queue, and why on earth the British are known to be the best at it.
The queue is revered as a very British institution. Although, actually the word comes from the
French word for tail, queue, which in turn derived from the Latin cauda. And so,
contrary to popular belief, and as the BBC write, it was Thomas
Carlyle a 19th century historian who wrote about the French penchant
for “standing in a queue”.
Another instance of the British, borrowing to create such a
wonderful and rich language. (see the History of the English Language in 10
minutes):
So where did the myth about the stoic Brits and their
passion for queues come from?
There are supposedly some references to queueing in the
Bible, but I am not too sure about where that comes into play. What is clear
however is that the British queue in an orderly manner for things like
Wimbledon and mostly in banks, but waiting for a bus? No.
Or is that because there
are now so many people in Britain who have forgotten or never been instructed
in this art?
Queueing had become a government-led institution in Britain
during WW2 when everyone was expected to do their part, and that included
waiting for your turn. Typically British, patience, decency, stiff upper lip
and fair play! Except that fair play does not really come into it, more self
interest, especially in the case of queue-jumping where I am sure, that many "queuers" (invented word) might like, quite controversially, to bop the jumper on the head. To
throw a spanner in the works, there are the queue-jumpers who pay for the
privilege, normally which turns out to be quite pointless, especially if you
are in the queue for the January Sales, which probably won’t be much this year
as everyone spent their money on Black Friday. However, if you are at a theme park, then there is a point to paying, although the danger is that you might get bopped on the head or thrown off one of those helter-skelter rides in the dark.
Dr Kate Bradley, a lecturer in social history and social
policy at the University of Kent writes about the reality of queueing during
WWII and of the arguments, civil disturbances of the time. She comments that “queueing was
exhausting, frustrating and tense.”
Exactly my point!
Just the same today as it ever was. And if you try and queue
for a bus or anywhere where there is no demarcation nor indication of how to
queue, then the whole concept flies out of the window, or into a punching match
– look at that stupid American custom of Black Friday, (that has nothing to do
with darkness, witches and evil other than companies enticing us gullible
consumers to part with our money). Bedlam – and there is a word that has a deep
meaning – but that madness will have to wait for another day of griping.
There are theories and psychology papers about queueing. The
theory of queues, which is all about maths and science and prediction and
probability. And if you leave the queue you are in originally, you will never
be happy and not get there any faster. Try it at a supermarket. Although on
Wednesday I tried staying in the same queue and it didn’t work.
Meanwhile, Management Today reckons that the institution of
the queue is dying out. We are moving to virtual queues, thanks to Rodger
Dudding, a British engineer who lived in Stockholm and who devised a ticket-dispensing
machine, the idea of linear queues from America and then Terry Green.
Terry Green, along with Martin Christie, an inventor, made
use of digital sound recording to link a message to a number indicator board.
Thus by telling the customer at the front of the linear queue which counter to
proceed to, ‘cashier number five, please,’ the customer throughput increased by
15%. That means 15% less waiting time for everyone else in the queue, which of
course depends upon how long the queue is and the types of transactions
happening ahead of you.
All well and good, but if you are in a supermarket, then
“cashier number five, please,’ does not work. And certainly not when you are
Christmas shopping.
And then you get the economist’s view. Queueing is a failure
of the system to match supply with demand. If you increase the price, the queue
disappears, and so probably do your profits.
Nevertheless, they have cottoned on to my point, that time
spent queueing is a loss of personal time and extremely inefficient.
Even making a phone call to a sales hot-line or ordering on
line, you find yourself in a queue, waiting for someone to speak to you or
waiting for your goods to be shipped out, because of an increase in demand and there are rather a lot of orders waiting in
front of you.
And so, back to the reason why we queue. We queue for things
we want, or think we want. Sometimes we queue simply because there is a queue (I
see that a great deal where I live!), sometimes we queue because there is a
limited supply of an item, such as concert tickets, items on sale, and
sometimes queues form because the demand outstrips the supply. Maybe the answer
to queues at Christmas might be to increase supply and the irritating queues
would disappear.
The fall-back option is the telephone. Excellent idea. Until I end up sitting waiting for someone to answer for 37 minutes and 37 seconds! And then the phone cuts off! Not such an excellent idea. BAH HUMBUG
What madness you ask? I even asked myself! I took a book in case I had to stand in the queue for a long time. If you read my post about queues, you will understand why I took a book.
The prospect that there may not be many people around at one of the shopping malls, drew me to go and buy chocolate and wrapping paper. I had run out of the latter and you can't have Christmas without chocolate. Fairly straight forward. Until I decided to try out the supermarket.
