Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Time

Time is money.
There is a time and place for everything.
Time cures all things.
Time flies.

The funny thing I have found about keeping journals/blogs is that they help you measure time. Wasted time. I dind't do anything I would consider fruitful in the past 3 weeks (besides going to work - not that I'd a choice. I guess time is, indeed, money. ) and yet I couldn't even bring myself to sit down for ten minutes and put down my thoughts.

Americans like claiming that they don't have time. But seriously, how busy can life really be? I think it has become a culture to think that Americans are busy.

If I fail to call home on a regular basis, other members of my family cover for me by saying i've been 'busy', and that excuse always works like a charm. In fact the standard habesha description for uncommunicative people is "min yidereg ingidih ... nuro'ko ruCHa new!".

Ok. I understand there are some people who work two jobs. Maybe those people are truly busy. But what's with the rest who work, say 10 hrs a day. Let's say they sleep 6-7 hrs, and commute for 30 - 60min round trip. That leaves 6 hours free per day. Lets say another hour or two for taking a shower, meals etc. Abesha people in America don't have to do zemed Tyeqa (ok, locations that are recreations of Ethiopia on the wrong side of the Atlantic, like DC, don't count), leqso, daily beteskian mesalem .... and to prove we've the time to waste, many among us will not miss the routine entertainment, be it a party or a wear-out-the-seats session at Starbucks. If there is a time and place for everything, then place seems to be the key word.

So how did we acquire the "ruCHa nuro" reputation? I for one feel like i'm wasting shitloads of time. Yes, time is flying ... but no, i'm not feeling cured.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

but dont you feel americans truly dont have time...

tobian said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
tobian said...

Yonas ... tenkolegna!

I answered ... then deleted the comment because I relized I have to think about it. So you can say that i had time to respond, but not to ...eh ... think. Again, not that I can say what I did with my time ;-)

My answer was something along the lines of ... if catching the Lakers game on the weekend, or walking my dog is the kind of excuse I could give my grandmother for not calling her regularly, the yes, Americans are busy. But then I realized I was blatantly passing a judgement on other people's lifestyles (which i probably was already doing in the original post anyway ;-) which begs for the question: what if i don't, what if i do?

Yeah, i'm still thinking.

Yonas, siroTu yetaTequt siroTu yifetal :-p bakih ... lasib silemaseb, lela maseb kaltechale ...