General Strike in Belgium (yeah..)
Yesterday (Friday, October 7th), I experienced the first strike ever. Some major Unions called their workers to do this, to protest the government policy to raise the retirement age to 60 years from 58 years. It was a general strike, almost all of the workers from transportation sectors, shops, schools (well, long weekend for the students), and even from hospitals (poor patients) were joining the strike. The good thing is they made couple of days advance warning regarding the strike.
Yesterday (Friday, October 7th), I experienced the first strike ever. Some major Unions called their workers to do this, to protest the government policy to raise the retirement age to 60 years from 58 years. It was a general strike, almost all of the workers from transportation sectors, shops, schools (well, long weekend for the students), and even from hospitals (poor patients) were joining the strike. The good thing is they made couple of days advance warning regarding the strike.
Click here for more information about the strike.
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/10/07/belgium.strike.reut/
For me my self, I wasn’t very affected by it (thank the Lord) because luckily I live near the company’s bus stop (just for the background, the company provided us with shuttle bus, that starts at 7.30 and 8.30 in the morning, and leaves at 5.10, 6.10 and 7.00 from the office in the evening). So the absence of trams, metros, trains could not be my alibi to skip work, since there were a lot of people did that :-) . Well I can’t blame them. My office is in the suburb area. And most of its employees live in Brussels. If you don’t have car, and you live million km from the bus stop, trains will be the only alternative to reach the office. And since they were on strike, what could they do, walk? I don’t think so. So yup they were calling a day off yesterday.
Like I said, I wasn’t very affected by the strike. But I had a 9 AM meeting yesterday (according to the invitation). Normally I would take the 8.30 Bus, because it only takes around 20 – 30 minutes to reach the office. But I was trying to play smart (which is a rare activity for me to do :-) ) I was thinking the traffic would be very pack because of the absence of the public transportation, and the bus would be overcrowded because of the spill over from the trains. So I made the plan to take the first bus, and I was encouraging my friends to do the same with the arguments I had.
And they would thank me for saving them from the deadlock condition of the streets (yeah right :-) )
I never a big fan of early bus, I rather stay late then come early. But the idea of spending hours in the street was not really fit my plan to spend the morning. So I managed to catch the bus. It was easy, I used to wake up early. But it was quite an experience for me, because I left the house when it was still dark. Well it’s autumn already and the sun was suppose to rise at 7.52 AM. And it was sooo foggy. I had this funny feeling that I was in one of the episodes of twilight zone or some kind. And it grew stronger when I was approaching the bus. I could barely see the bus from the distance because of the darkness and the heavy fog. And it was kinda spooky you know, just like a haunted bus in one of those horror movies, that would take you away to different dimensions and you will lost forever. LOL.
Anyway, I was expecting that the bus would be crowded, and people would be talking about the strike, how the traffic was terrible or something. But all my predictions were wrong. The bus is very empty (only 10 people from 50 people capacity), and the traffic was relatively normal. I arrived around 7.50. Crap!!
And then at 9.00 my friend arrived. And he’s a regular company bus user like I am. So I assumed that the traffic was normal because well he was on time. And I asked him about the bus, and he said it wasn’t crowded at all. Crap again!!
And for the meeting, it was postponed
F**k !! :-)
NB: 11.5 Hours left for the Concert
For me my self, I wasn’t very affected by it (thank the Lord) because luckily I live near the company’s bus stop (just for the background, the company provided us with shuttle bus, that starts at 7.30 and 8.30 in the morning, and leaves at 5.10, 6.10 and 7.00 from the office in the evening). So the absence of trams, metros, trains could not be my alibi to skip work, since there were a lot of people did that :-) . Well I can’t blame them. My office is in the suburb area. And most of its employees live in Brussels. If you don’t have car, and you live million km from the bus stop, trains will be the only alternative to reach the office. And since they were on strike, what could they do, walk? I don’t think so. So yup they were calling a day off yesterday.
Like I said, I wasn’t very affected by the strike. But I had a 9 AM meeting yesterday (according to the invitation). Normally I would take the 8.30 Bus, because it only takes around 20 – 30 minutes to reach the office. But I was trying to play smart (which is a rare activity for me to do :-) ) I was thinking the traffic would be very pack because of the absence of the public transportation, and the bus would be overcrowded because of the spill over from the trains. So I made the plan to take the first bus, and I was encouraging my friends to do the same with the arguments I had.
And they would thank me for saving them from the deadlock condition of the streets (yeah right :-) )
I never a big fan of early bus, I rather stay late then come early. But the idea of spending hours in the street was not really fit my plan to spend the morning. So I managed to catch the bus. It was easy, I used to wake up early. But it was quite an experience for me, because I left the house when it was still dark. Well it’s autumn already and the sun was suppose to rise at 7.52 AM. And it was sooo foggy. I had this funny feeling that I was in one of the episodes of twilight zone or some kind. And it grew stronger when I was approaching the bus. I could barely see the bus from the distance because of the darkness and the heavy fog. And it was kinda spooky you know, just like a haunted bus in one of those horror movies, that would take you away to different dimensions and you will lost forever. LOL.
Anyway, I was expecting that the bus would be crowded, and people would be talking about the strike, how the traffic was terrible or something. But all my predictions were wrong. The bus is very empty (only 10 people from 50 people capacity), and the traffic was relatively normal. I arrived around 7.50. Crap!!
And then at 9.00 my friend arrived. And he’s a regular company bus user like I am. So I assumed that the traffic was normal because well he was on time. And I asked him about the bus, and he said it wasn’t crowded at all. Crap again!!
And for the meeting, it was postponed
F**k !! :-)
NB: 11.5 Hours left for the Concert
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home