A day on the Link

Bus Trips

I've been taking the Link for the past few days and have already come across some interesting observations.

1. Most people just keep their mouths shut on the bus.

2. The bus is almost too loud to hear anything and too bumpy to write it down.

3. German and Chinese are spoken more frequently than English on the bus.

4. People's behavior and etiquette are far more interesting than what they are actually saying.

5. Only about 1 in 5 people thank the bus driver, if not less.

6. People speak louder when they are on the phone.

7. Some languages are spoken in a tone that is far louder than English and can easily drown out the conversations that I can actually understand and as a result can no longer hear.

8. The hot topic of the week was the possible bus driver strike and the overall theme was the economy.

9. Despite the difficulties of this project and the fact that I can go for an hour and only hear maybe five sentances, I've already started to pick up on certain commonalities. The recession and the economy seem to keep popping up in some form or another. Conversations on job loss, strikes over pay rates, rising prices, unemployement rates, tight budgets... all fall under the greater scheme of "recession".

10. Globalization and internationalism are also quite prevalent topics found in conversations.

11. Women make up about 90% of all of the conversations that I could hear.

Seminar:

My plan for this seminar project is to eaves drop on conversations overheard on the Link bus and make note of commonalities and recurrences in themes. I hope that the conversations will reveal something about Auckland as a city and/or the people that live and work in it. It's a bit of a stretch but I'm also hoping that I will be able to find coherent connections between different conversations that will help me in this mapping project. I'll be taking the Link during the morning and evening commute through it's entire route on a daily basis. Hopefully the chatter will be interesting enough to keep me from falling asleep.
I also hope that using the bus as a means of finding conversations will not be limited by people's inherent desire for privacy and lack of willingness to open up in public, whereas a bar or a party might yield more honest and open dialogues. Using the bus was intended to elimate bias and too much personal input, but it may also weaken the content. We'll have to wait and see!

Fleeting Conversations

Dérive: Things that are broken