To improve a bad situation, tell a good story.

In a somewhat anticlimactic manner, the transit strike has ended. These past few days I got to spend a great deal of time with my colleague from the Engineering School, since we were stuck in traffic on the West Side Highway for many many many hours. It was actually a lot of fun, and we shared many great stories. I am sure that for the next several weeks I will inevitably nauseate a great deal of my friends by beginning most of my sentences with "well according to Tim..."

Tim works and teaches at the Engineering School. He knows pretty much everything there is to know about Columbia - the students, the administration, the politics, the alums, and so on. He has a PhD from the History department, and speaks English very well. He also knows a lot about an assorted array of other useful topics - where to eat in Park Slope, where to stay in Cambridge, where not to stay in Amsterdam, the fastest way to get to the Battery Tunnel, and how to make a citizen's arrest on the particularly annoying tourists in Manhattan, just to name a few. Tim is a good guy, and is extremely quotable!

For example - as I was telling him this morning about my graduate work, he said "if you write software that can teach kids Calculus, you won't need a PhD, you'll be able to retire right away!" I didn't realize that there was such a demand, but it's certainly an encouraging thought.

I am really willing to endure almost anything, as long as I get a few good stories out of it. So, in that respect, this agonizing week of transit hell wasn't so bad after all.