Eventfulness
by Tommy
As with most summers, I been super busy recently – I went to Wexford to visit a friend on Tuesday, and then we both went to Dublin to meet more friends, and then home again to Wexford, and then back up again to Dublin today to go home!
There was a direct train from Limerick Junction to Rosslare Europort, which is where all the ferries go out of, and is within walking distance of my friend’s house, which makes it fantastically convenient. There was a special offer on in the Limerick Station which meant that my one way ticket (I’d decided to come back via Dublin because the return journey left Rosslare Harbour at some ungodly hour) cost me all of €6 to Waterford. The guy told me I’d change at Waterford and buy another ticket there, but that wouldn’t be expensive.
I got on the train to Wexford at Limerick Junction, and an announcement came over the intercom that this was the 15:10 train to Rosslare Europort, stopping at….. Hang on there misses! I double checked with the ticket collector and may have come across a bit mad: “This is for Rosslare Europort? Directly? No Change? So I just sit here and I’ll be at Rosslare?”
Anyway, I sat down at the end of the carriage, across from two men in suits. One had some badge of some sort on their shirt and I assumed he was and Irish Rail employee. I looked at it again. He was from the Church of Latter Day Saints. I resolutely put in earphones and started reading (Driven to Distraction by Jeremy Clarkson).
I find though that I can’t properly concentrate when music is playing too loud so I turned it down and took out one earphone, fearing the repercussions. As I was charging my iPhone off my laptop, I heard a voice from behind me..
“That’s a lot of technology!”
This is how it starts.
“Uh.. yeah!” I laughed nervously.
We talk a bit. They seemed to think that I was in college (do I have one of those faces?) and we chatted. To make the journey a bit pleasanter, I said that I was a Roman Catholic who went to Mass and appreciated the comfort of someone to confide in. I’m an atheist but don’t hold a House MD-style ‘religious-people-are-idiots’ belief - it honestly is no concern of mine and I couldn’t care less. They asked if I’d ever heard of the Latter-Day-Saints..
House needs 18 as a control for an unconventional test to be done on a woman’s liver – downing shots of tequila. The patient is in competition to become an astronaut and will not allow any invasive procedures that might leave scars or records.
18 balks at going against his beliefs, but House eventually convinces him to do the test by quoting scripture and asking if 18 would pull an ass out of a pit on the Sabbath. That sneaky House.
As the two throw back shots with the patient, House wonders why 18’s religious beliefs were suddenly less important than the dreams of the patient.
“LDS doesn’t try to dictate every detail of our lives,” he says. “When a situation isn’t clear we’re encouraged to make our own decisions.” Plus, he says, House made a good argument.
A stunned House notes that, “Rational argument doesn’t usually work on religious people. Otherwise there would be no religious people.”
Yes, yes I have :)
I didn’t say that – I mentioned a (fictional) project in school done about them and they told me about the extra scripture they had and such. It was my first proper brush with religious people in over 2 years and they got off at Waterford and I felt no different about religious – the same old indifference stuck.
Unrelatedly, I had some free time between my train arriving from Wexford into Dublin and my train home to Limerick leaving, so I met up with App/Mac Developer Steven Troughton-Smith. I’m still not taller than him, damnit. He very generously let me play with his iPhone 4 (WANT) and gave me a promo code for Speed, the only app of his I hadn’t played with yet – which I demo’d on the train home and included a screenshot here.