Yesterday was an unusual day.
I visited the office after a long time because a customer wanted to meet me in person. Meeting people in person, on business, is so rare these days that when the occasional meeting happens, a chance to suit up, or just use a deodorant, it is time to celebrate. The subway ride, the walk to the office or the menu reading walk at lunch time, browsing the lunch time offerings, deciding what I want to eat seemed like a luxury.
Zoom and other video conferencing apps dominate the days, they make one attentive to details. The word spoken in person seems so very different from the one relayed over the internet. The occasional drop in internet speed , conversing alternatively with a live and a blank screen, trying to understand how the word, unheard or distorted over the internet changes the context .
But a video conference from the comfort of a closed room make one complacent, unconsciously making us pick our noses, or unconsciously show expressions of joy and disgust , without meaning to and leave us wondering how much did the other person really see and recognize.
Then there are the intrusions of courier deliveries. One doesn’t have to just worry about being in the toilet when the delivery person rings a bell, you have to worry about being in the middle of a call, explaining some important point, waiting for an answer only to be interrupted by the bell.
The other day my call was interrupted when my customer had to go and open the door for his dog walker. Or a few days before when I had to delay a call because I could see a policeman on the doorbell monitor. It turns out he was making a call at every apartment asking people to be vigilant.
||The feeling of privacy in a closed room with an intrusive camera violating and magnifying every moment of it has left me exhausted. The fear that a package delivery will happen at a crucial moment in a presentation, a fear coming true too often. There is privacy in working from home, especially when you have the home to yourself during daytime. But there is a lack of control over what might violate that privacy, an unconscious act on a live camera or an intrusion totally beyond one’s control.||
But yesterday was different. I stopped by at a restaurant for lunch. There were a few people waiting for their take-outs when I entered the restaurant, a few minutes before twelve, lunch time.
But then it changed. Within minutes the restaurant filled up and every available table and chair was occupied . There we were, all the tables occupied , almost every seat filled up, masks removed, eating and talking. We ate as if in the past and the servers, wearing masks, was the only reminder of the changed times.
The quiet hum of muffled conversations, the servers flitting back and forth, taking orders, setting plates and the occasional customer who stopped at the door, saw a filled restaurant and walked away, was a scene so detached from the times it could have been in black and white.
The chilly early autumn afternoon, a threat of rain later in the day, was pleasant to walk through, going to the office. The customers had travelled out of town for the meeting, another rarity in these times. We alternatively took off masks, speaking, drinking water, the mask back on, removed again when something wasn’t clearly understood.
The customary bowing in Japan, before and after a meeting, sometimes discarded for a foreigner seems stronger than ever.
The lack of physical contact , something which might have come across like an oddity before seems to be a blessing today.
Walking back to the subway station after the meeting, the clouds more threatening now, mild raindrops splashing in the breeze, I walked past a man, wearing a shoe on one leg and a slipper on the other.
Yesterday was an unusual day!
