Random news
Mar. 22nd, 2007 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spacealien_vampA while back, I reported about the hospital that instituded a non-smoking taxi stand. Last night on the news, there was a story about the hospital patients complaining that the non-smoking taxis still smelled of smoke. The news program researched this, and they found that the problem is the drivers.
When a patient comes out the door of the hospital, the first stand is the non-smoking taxi stand, and the regular taxi stand is behind it. The taxi drivers, knowing that human nature is to take the first taxi one sees, all want to be at the first stand in line. Therefore, they buy magnetic non-smoking signs and slap them on their taxis so they can line up at the first stand.
However, they don't particularly care about being non-smoking. The drivers themselves smoke (when passengers aren't in the car), and they allow passengers to smoke when asked. When they are working other areas of the city in the evenings, they take off the non-smoking signs and run as regular smoking taxis.
The news crew went to ask the people in charge of regulating taxis what is being done about this, since there have been so many complaints. They were told, "We're leaving it up to the morals of the drivers." The news crew was particularly concerned about this because Nagoya (and here I'm not sure whether they meant the whole city or just the train station) is requiring all of its taxis to be non-smoking starting in May. There needs to be some kind of penalty for smoking in a non-smoking taxi.
Edit: Oh, also, I saw the funniest commercial during the news. It was a commercial to prevent people from doing something terrible that causes the commercial's creators to worry about the future of society. (Yes, they actually say that.) Go ahead, guess. Doing drugs? No. Dropping out of school? No. Gay marriage? Of course not.
It was a commercial to prevent people from eating fast food on trains. Yes, that is on the verge of causing the downfall of society right there, folks.
At school, the closing ceremony is tomorrow. Next week is spring break. The first week of April is mostly break, but there are a couple of days that teachers are required to show up for departmental meetings and such. The official opening ceremony will be on April 9.
I neglected to mention this past weekend that I finally scraped together enough to purchase my epic flying mount. (It costs 5000 gold to get the necessary training to ride it, plus 200 gold for the mount itself.) It flies SO FAST. I love zipping around on it, dropping out of the sky to pick random flowers, then zooming away again.
When a patient comes out the door of the hospital, the first stand is the non-smoking taxi stand, and the regular taxi stand is behind it. The taxi drivers, knowing that human nature is to take the first taxi one sees, all want to be at the first stand in line. Therefore, they buy magnetic non-smoking signs and slap them on their taxis so they can line up at the first stand.
However, they don't particularly care about being non-smoking. The drivers themselves smoke (when passengers aren't in the car), and they allow passengers to smoke when asked. When they are working other areas of the city in the evenings, they take off the non-smoking signs and run as regular smoking taxis.
The news crew went to ask the people in charge of regulating taxis what is being done about this, since there have been so many complaints. They were told, "We're leaving it up to the morals of the drivers." The news crew was particularly concerned about this because Nagoya (and here I'm not sure whether they meant the whole city or just the train station) is requiring all of its taxis to be non-smoking starting in May. There needs to be some kind of penalty for smoking in a non-smoking taxi.
Edit: Oh, also, I saw the funniest commercial during the news. It was a commercial to prevent people from doing something terrible that causes the commercial's creators to worry about the future of society. (Yes, they actually say that.) Go ahead, guess. Doing drugs? No. Dropping out of school? No. Gay marriage? Of course not.
It was a commercial to prevent people from eating fast food on trains. Yes, that is on the verge of causing the downfall of society right there, folks.
At school, the closing ceremony is tomorrow. Next week is spring break. The first week of April is mostly break, but there are a couple of days that teachers are required to show up for departmental meetings and such. The official opening ceremony will be on April 9.
I neglected to mention this past weekend that I finally scraped together enough to purchase my epic flying mount. (It costs 5000 gold to get the necessary training to ride it, plus 200 gold for the mount itself.) It flies SO FAST. I love zipping around on it, dropping out of the sky to pick random flowers, then zooming away again.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-22 06:07 am (UTC)Suddenly I feel so guilty! That last Big Mac may have ended Kyoto's glorious millennium-long history! If only I'd known!
...only, um, not...
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 07:15 am (UTC)...Or not.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-22 01:27 pm (UTC)So strange what different societies consider it imperative to legislate. In the US, smoking abuses would get so much more attention than public eating... but then, most US citizens could stand to learn a little public manners. Starting with cell phones.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 07:17 am (UTC)What I find ironic is that it's acceptable--even traditional--to eat on the shinkansen, just not on slower trains. Therefore, it's not necessarily being in public that's the problem. The commercial implied (with visual imagery) that the problem is when people drip their food on the floor. In a shinkansen, people have food trays like on airplanes.
...If I ever spill my bits of potato chips or whatever, I always pick them up...
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 01:18 am (UTC)I hope the closing ceremony went well.
You hardly get a rest before starting up again.
Do you know what your new schedule looks like?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 07:20 am (UTC)We need to get you up to 70 so you can have a flying mount of your own!
I hope the closing ceremony went well.
I actually missed the ceremony, but that's the topic of my next post. ~_~;
Do you know what your new schedule looks like?
Not yet. I believe that will be decided at the departmental meeting. I do know that one of my team teachers will be teaching at the middle school portion of the campus instead of the high school, so I won't be working with her anymore.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 11:56 am (UTC)Oh, my. I'd have to start saving money now--mostly I just have copper now!
I'm looking forward to your next post. I hope everything is okay.