Pass the Source

Waiting in the rain

By 8am this morning, a crowd of 13 people had gathered in the drizzle outside Wellington’s Magnummac store, eagerly awaiting the New Zealand launch of Apple’s iPad.

I decided to ask them why.

“This device is changing the rules of digital engagement”, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one; I want to be the first person in New Zealand to get one.” The hopeful, but ill-informed, gentleman at the head of the queue told me.

“You know that people have been importing them for months?”

“This device is changing the rules of digital engagement” he replied, effectively ending the interview.

I moved along the queue, stopping in front of a lady who, I quickly noticed, had a tattoo of a heart with an apple in the middle of it on each hand and “A-P-L-E” spelled out across her knuckles.  I moved along the queue.

A normal looking gentleman told me: “We want to stand at the intersection of computers and humanism”.  I noticed that he was nervously fingering a small white book on which I could make out the title “The Quotations of Chairman Jobs”, and I fled.

As I passed the last person, he grabbed me and confided that, in his inebriated state, he’d thought it was the queue for the soup kitchen.  I explained.  We fled together along Vivian Street.