vancouver

It's been almost a week since I posted. Geez! I need to work on that...

I got up early this morning, and went to Vancouver. Nice, leisurely and beautiful sailing across the straits, and a nice calm bus ride into downtown Vancouver. It is eerily beautiful here right now - all the highrises are swarthed in a misty heavy fog, but the sun is streaming through in these immensely powerful shafts of light. I have dropped my bags at Linds' office (thanks for the Bag Check service Linds!) and am just sitting in a Starbucks (surprise surprise) enjoying my Grande with-room Americano. Now, anywhere I go, I pretty much look for a Starbucks; after all, it keeps my expenses down!

This 'Bucks is in the basement of one of the Bentall Centre towers, Bentall IV I believe. These buildings are the definition of International-style hideousness on the outside, but their retail areas in the basements have been given a tidy makeover over the last few years. But I experienced something interesting on my way down here today.

There is a woman cleaning the escalators. It is a job I never even thought of. She has been cleaning them for twenty minutes. I continue to watch her clean, and continue to watch the general public pretend she isn't there. The escalators are quite narrow, and she just sits down with her feather duster on the balustrade between the up/down sides, wiping finger prints and scuffs off the side panels. People cannot walk past her (and there are wont to do in Vancouver), so they just stand right behind her squat form, checking their watch or consulting their Blackberries (Bentall is like financial centre. Each of the towers is a bank. I am under the TD Canada Trust, RBC is across the street).

I am not meaning to say that these people are deliberately ignoring her, but perhaps they are as shocked as I am at the very presence of an escalator cleaning woman. I guess it is something that happens all over the world, and a clean escalator is something that we ALL take for granted. Do you ever have those moments where you are surprised and learn something new, even though it is completely and utterly logical?