You know the Thought Experiments. This is the back of the envelope.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Thinking Aloud - II

An overnight train journey that lasts exactly as long as you need to sleep every night, doesn't really count as a journey. And a 40-minute flight that isn't on board an ATR, doesn't feel like a flight either. In both cases, you're physically in another geographical location before you've had time to effect the transition in your head - including seeing the landscape change, which is the most important part of the journey anyway. If you're flying fifteen hundred miles on board an ATR, at least the size of the craft matches the length of your flight. Else, you're just sitting in an A320 at forty thousand feet above sea level, expecting to be able to get through eight chapters at least, and voila, you're already being asked to fasten your seatbelts for the landing. It confuses the brain. And don't even get me started on train journeys where you enter, stow away luggage, settle onto your berth for a nap, and wake up to a plaintive-sounding chaiwala telling your co-passenger that there's another fifteen minutes to go, and would they like adrak chai or plain?

Who would have known that the concept of inertia of motion would - in its own warped way - apply to Crossworder when she travelled? Physics, is this how you choose to get back at me for playing pen-and-paper scrabble instead of working at those numericals back in eleventh grade?

I do hope you realise it's a mean trick.





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