Totally unrelated to the accident
Oct. 17th, 2002 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynWhen Vicki and I went up in the CN Tower, we stopped at the glass floor/observation level and got to go outside and walk around in the area where the only thing separating you from about 340 meters of freefall is heavily reinforced screening. It is FECKING WINDY up there at this time of year, but I enjoyed it; I haven't been that high up and outside in ... well... ever. Even when the Twin Towers were still standing, I don't think I ever got to stand on the roof. I had to look out at the world from the indoor observation deck. It got cold fast, though, so we went back inside, got on line*, and took the elevator up to the Skypod - highest observation deck anywhere on the planet Earth, 447 meters up.
The view is impressive, I gotta say. And thought provoking, although the thoughts are of the 'Marcel, the number three fan above 360's kitchens went out again, get the climbing harness out and go fix it!' variety. I took a few snaps, so we'll see how they develop, but one of the things I pointed out to Vicki was just the same as back in New York, at the top of the Empire State Building: the international graffiti. Seriously, I don't know how many visitors to the Tower - and the ESB - feel the compulsion to leave behind a little token of their presence. usually it's just a name and a date, but a lot of people put what country they're from, and a number of Americans slapped those little return address labels up instead of scratching their names into the metal. There was graffiti from Poland, Hungary, the States, Egypt, India - I'm guessing on that one, the alphabet could have also been used in Bangladesh or Pakistan if I recall aright - Italy, Korea, France, Britain... you name it. What got me was that in amongst all of the other 'name - point of origin - date of visit' graffiti there was one particularly unusual one. It wasn't that it was written in Chinese characters. It was that the characters were punctuated twice: once by '(ANTHONY)', and once by 'ICQ: ' followed by a number. I didn't have a writing implement on me, stupid stupid stupid, so I did the next best thing - pulled out my celphone and saved it to the phone book.
I've just punched it into my ICQ client. Anthony Cheng is 19 years old and has a nickname in characters my client can't read. Wonder if I'll ever catch him online? 'Hi, yeah, you don't know me, I don't even know how good your English is, but you left your ICQ number in one of the biggest tourist spots in Canada, so an American copied it and took it home...'
*Long before anyone had heard of the Internet, or even of Arpanet or Milnet its ancestors, Noo Yawkahs were on line. People from my native city are just about the only ones in the country who say this, but if you're from New York, you don't stand in line. You stand on line.
The view is impressive, I gotta say. And thought provoking, although the thoughts are of the 'Marcel, the number three fan above 360's kitchens went out again, get the climbing harness out and go fix it!' variety. I took a few snaps, so we'll see how they develop, but one of the things I pointed out to Vicki was just the same as back in New York, at the top of the Empire State Building: the international graffiti. Seriously, I don't know how many visitors to the Tower - and the ESB - feel the compulsion to leave behind a little token of their presence. usually it's just a name and a date, but a lot of people put what country they're from, and a number of Americans slapped those little return address labels up instead of scratching their names into the metal. There was graffiti from Poland, Hungary, the States, Egypt, India - I'm guessing on that one, the alphabet could have also been used in Bangladesh or Pakistan if I recall aright - Italy, Korea, France, Britain... you name it. What got me was that in amongst all of the other 'name - point of origin - date of visit' graffiti there was one particularly unusual one. It wasn't that it was written in Chinese characters. It was that the characters were punctuated twice: once by '(ANTHONY)', and once by 'ICQ: ' followed by a number. I didn't have a writing implement on me, stupid stupid stupid, so I did the next best thing - pulled out my celphone and saved it to the phone book.
I've just punched it into my ICQ client. Anthony Cheng is 19 years old and has a nickname in characters my client can't read. Wonder if I'll ever catch him online? 'Hi, yeah, you don't know me, I don't even know how good your English is, but you left your ICQ number in one of the biggest tourist spots in Canada, so an American copied it and took it home...'
*Long before anyone had heard of the Internet, or even of Arpanet or Milnet its ancestors, Noo Yawkahs were on line. People from my native city are just about the only ones in the country who say this, but if you're from New York, you don't stand in line. You stand on line.
