Brave New Mall

At the mall, I walk up the escalator (on the left, natch) as far as I can go, until I reach people standing two across, left and right side, blocking my way.

Up ahead of them, a couple other people are standing, too, and I just don’t have the energy to interact with two sets of folks, so I step to the right and stand the rest of the way up.

After I finish my errands, I go down the escalator, only to encounter the same problem again, and I realize, looking at both the down and the up sides, that nobody is walking on the escalators.

Suddenly everything is in perspective, and I am no longer annoyed: I am in a foreign culture, and my standards do not apply, so I meekly stand on the right (though it doesn’t matter where I stand), and try to figure out what the rules are in this brave new world.