Author: Ingo Althofer
Date: 07:08:45 03/09/99
When you are in a foreign country with a foreign language you most intensively perceive those situations where words do not play a role. My Spanish is almost not existing (Castellano minimo). Yesterday I had a 30 minutes bus ride from the Universidad de Chile (Departamento de Ingenieria Matematica) to Fernandos home - by the way this was my very first solo bus ride in Santiago with its 5 million people. The bus was almost empty. I sat down in the fourth row, having a good look on two interesting persons. Number ONE was the bus driver. He managed "his" vehicle like like a little devil: minimum speed 70 km/h (allowed is 50 within town); in the corners we few passengers had to hold on very strongly (otherwise we would have been falling in the middle lane); and every few seconds our driver used his trumpet (tuut - tut- tuut) in a most aggrssive way. One time he forced an older bus to leave our lane; in another situation we were stuck in a long queue (at position 20 or so) - our driver was the only one to tuut-tuut, of course without any visible effect. Number TWO was a young woman, looking pretty well. She we sitting in the row directly behind the driver. All the time she colored her long finger nails with some brand-red. The color smellt (or stank, whatever you want) dominatingly. Even me, sitting three meters apart, preferred to breathe in through the mouth. Driver and girl did not speak with each other - but I sensed some invisible tension between them. I think he tried to impress her by his macho ride. Shortly before I had to get out there was a final scene: another nice girl crossed the road just in fromt of the bus - and the driver gave her a very very soft tuut-tuut. (However, she did not turn her head, even not a micrometer; "of course not" said Fernando when I told him the story in the night.) Why to post this in CCC? During this nights sleep I realized a cross connection to our small world in black and white. Substitute the bus driver by Garry Kasparov and the girl behind him by Feng-Hsiung Hsu. Doesn't the story perfectly describe their (everlasting?!) relationship after the 1997 match? Ingo Althofer. PS: Of course it would be more correct to put Lou Gerstner in the girls role and not Feng-Hsiung Hsu. However, somehow I do not enjoy imagining the scene with IBM's buss.
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