All of the classes today were canceled, due to the hurricane Sandy. Hopefully I got extra time to catch up with subjects being behind. But, kept in a apartment room all day long is a little tiresome. Furthermore, strong wind and rain hit the window violently, and the sound of the squeaking window was so noisy. Though I have a lot of things to do, I’m not so stoic to be able to concentrate on studying sitting on the desk in such a condition…
What was interesting was, visibly many of Japanese Twitter users in U.S. especially in east coast began tweeting so frequently. They must be boring with canceled work or school same as me. Fortunately, my resident area never experienced any black out or water stoppage, while I saw some friends saying they had that. Compared to my country Japan, where natural disaster such as typhoon and earthquake are more frequent than U.S. the damage of infrastructure seems more serious and it would take longer time to be fully restored in U.S. This hurricane reminded me two typical scene in my country. First, most of, though no all, Japanese companies and salarymen especially in city area make their effort to go to office even on the day or soon after some huge typhoon arrivals. Some of my friends in U.S. said their offices would be closed and they would do remote work. Second, they rush to super markets to buy foods, water, toilet papers and many other goods for ‘emergency’ after they got news about some natural disaster even though their residential area seemed rather safe (most recently, when the huge earthquake and tsunami hit north east of Japan, those who in Tokyo rushed to stores). The first one may not be so common in NYC (some of my friends said their office would be closed and they do remote work), though there may be some businessmen who had to stay and work in office in some cases. For the second one, New Yorkers also rushed to super market and I saw they bought lots of water and food same as the Japanese do. To a varying degree by nations, basically people behave similarly.
ハリケーンで授業が全て休止に。一日中部屋に待機。雨風が窓に打ち付け、激しいうねり声を聞き続ける一日。勉強が出来るのは幸いであり、確かにやるべきことは多いのだが、こうも部屋に缶詰だと、集中力がなかなかもたない。進めては休み、の繰り返しでボチボチと進める。そうすると、翌日も休みだ、なんてメールが流れてきた。なんとまぁ。
目に見えて在米邦人ツイッタラーのつぶやきが増えている。僕と同じく暇を持て余しているんだろう。僕の家は水も電気もガスも無事だが、地域のよっては停電が起きたり水が止まったりと色々大変なことが起こっている様子。交通機関もマヒ。台風の翌日でも健気に通勤している日本のサラリーマン像と、それからスーパーに買い溜めに行く住民の情景が思い起こされた。前者の情景は、NYでは日本ほどは見られないけど、後者の買い溜めの方は、近所でもよく見られた。