Three bullets on punctuality
Time and human rights
I have no intention of putting the right to punctuality in the same category as the right to education, security, health care, food, and work.
However, in a country such as ours (Venezuela) where we because of sheer lack of punctuality can easily lose up to three hours per week waiting for something or another, this, over our average active life span of 55 years, adds up to around one year. As civil-rights organizations normally go ballistic whenever anyone is arrested without justification even for a couple of hours, I wonder how they let this pass.
There can be no doubt that the majority of our countrymen do, without any remorse whatsoever, blithely ignore the existence and purpose of the clock, and so it is evident that in terms of punctuality we need a total reform of our civil society. How do we achieve this?
One alternative would be the creation of a “Punctual Venezuela,” parallel to the actual one. For example, if we start to use a little symbol that could be printed on all invitations to those activities that really require punctuality at the risk of being either excluded from the event or publicly chastised, we could possibly begin to create some semblance of civility. This symbol could be a watch, but I’d rather leave that up to the specialists in advertising.
The interesting part of this alternative is that it would allow us to impose, as of today, a heavy public and social sanction for those who lack punctuality without having to request that “notorious and incurable sinners” kick the habit cold-turkey. Also, maintaining the option of a not punctual Venezuela alive would allow us to continue to humor those foreign visitors who with a tropical flare that rivals our best take every chance they get to free themselves from the yoke of punctuality.
From The Daily Journal, Caracas, June 11, 1999
###
About parallels and meridians
We have recently witnessed public spectacles such as the fight the United States has sustained with Europe about bananas. Perhaps the effect of global warming has been much greater than we suspect as it seems to have moved the parallels normally identified with Banana Republics northward.
However the meridians might have gone haywire as well. I often take my daughters to parties that begin at midnight, which to me simply seems like a real and crude version, in cinéma vérité, of Saturday Night Fever. I cannot but suspect that their generation has simply decided to substitute the East Coast’s meridian for that of the West Coast. Some of the television channels seem also to suffer from the same syndrome. Somehow, I always seem to go to bed at night watching their afternoon comics while, if I am not careful, my daughters could wake up with their XXX-rated after midnight material.
From The Daily Journal, Caracas, June 11, 1999
###
My daughter’s cult
She is rarely late but she is absolutely never ever a minute early. She follows that Just-In-Time cult that drives us inhumanely nuts.
###
My wife’s cult
She is never late, but she is absolutely never ever just in time. She follows that better-early-than-late cult that has made us use years of our life waiting in airport departure halls.
###
My reality
Being squeezed between the just-in-time cult and the better-early-than-late cult is probably one of the reasons why I have been harassed into developing a radical middle mumbo-jumbo philosophy.
