Second Sighting

Cara has been somewhat elusive of late, so I have not been able to track and document her adventures. I was finally able to find her sneaking out of her apartment building last night. With my Amex Gold Card in hand, I followed her cab and found myself at the Logan International Airport. What happened next was near unbelievable.

Cara swept into Logan and within minutes purchased a first class ticket for American Airlines flight 827 direct to Delhi. Although the $2100+ ticket price was not easy for me to swallow, I knew that this would be quite an opportunity to watch Kara in action.

I understand the rules that govern Cara's relationship with me, so I took a seat in coach and waited for surprise opportunities to watch her and document her actions. She selected a different beverage and snack every time the cart rolled by. During the 20 hour flight, she went to the bathroom in different toilets each time, sometimes waiting for long period of time just to assure that she would not have to suffer the same experience more than once. She only allowed her seat neighbor to speak with her once, every time after that when he tried to engage Cara in conversation she would find a different way to deter him, pretending to sleep, nodding her head but not saying anything, putting her fingers in her ears, and finally giving him "the finger." He took the hint after that last gesture and didn't try to speak with her for the rest of the journey.

Landing in Delhi at 8:30pm, Cara demanded to use the coach exit of the plane, rather than leave with the first class passengers. She only said goodbye to those members of the crew with whom she had not previously interacted. Cara had a mission and a job to fulfill, she would not allow any redundancies to slow her down. She bypassed the baggage claim as she had packed nothing and exited the airport, quickly jumping in a cab. I was able to secure my own cab and what followed was a hair-raising cab chase through the city.

When the cab finally stopped, I found myself at Delhi's Rat Surveillance Department. Unbelievable... was Cara really going to catch rats for the day? I knew that her employer, Ms. Q., often had her doing interesting jobs to keep her active, but this was incredible. Quickly using my PDA, I ascertained the likely reason that Kara was assigned to the RSD for the day.

According to a recent report in the Hindustan Times (September 2005):

New Delhi's government has a rat-catching department that has not caught a single rodent in more than a decade… The Rat Surveillance Department employs 97 rat catchers, who each earns about 3,500 rupees (US$83) a month. But there are no records of any rodents having been caught in the past 10 years.

Obviously, Cara was here to change that all around. Sprinting into the department headquarters, Cara found the chief, relieved him of his duties and assembled the 97 rat catchers. She instructed them that they were all to find and kill 10 rats by the end of their shifts at 6am (of course rat catchers work only at night). The workers were scandalized, but quickly realized that they were likely to be assigned to some hideously worse job were they to fail.

As any good leader would, Cara decided to lead by example. She grabbed a metal pole with a sharp end, a net, and a pair of gloves. Descending down into the rat infested streets of Delhi in nothing but her short leather skirt, latest Prada shirt and Manolo Blahnik pumps, Cara instantly found and killed her first rat followed shortly thereafter by numbers 2-9. The professional rat catchers were amazed. Never had they witnessed such prowess. Little did they know that this was just all in a days work for Cara, she never fails at a job and is good at anything she tries to do.

Assured that the department is now on the right track, Cara returned to the airport and boarded British Airways flight 256 (Delhi to Boston with a stop in London). I can assure you that redundanciess were avoided and Cara safely returned to her little apartment with her dog and bird and is resting soundly, awaiting her next adventure.

--KG

The First Sighting

Across the dinner table several nights ago, I spotted the most delicious, vivacious and bloggable woman, one Cara Brikkman. I gathered my courage and spoke to her, deciding to skip the normal getting to know you dribble and jump right into her life. What I found was astounding.

Cara never does the same thing twice. She does not do the same job two days in a row, she never orders the same drink, eats the same meal, or even dials the same phone number. She allows herself to be on the receiving end of sameness, otherwise she would be friendless and alone in the universe. She also lives in the same apartment with the same dog and cockatoo, but other than that she is on a crusade to avoid sameness, or as she terms it, redundancy.

Now most people would not see dialing the same phone number twice as redundant, but Cara believes that there is no need to call someone twice if you can get all the information you need during one call. If the call gets cut off, well then that is all the information that the universe wanted you to have. Cara is, by necessity, a big believer in fate and the power of the universe to assure that only those things that need to happen actually occur.

I became shamefully aware that my life is full of redundancy. Upon this confession, Cara assured me that there is nothing wrong with this. She believes that she was chosen by the universe to shake things up and be very different from the norm. If everyone avoided redundancy the social connections of our world would simply fall apart, economies would crash, alliances would crumble and you don't even want to imagine the traffic accidents that would occur (for this reason, Cara doesn't drive). Cara relies on others to maintain a basic level of consistency in her life. Her landlord assures her that she can remain in her apartment, even though she alters the rent payments by a penny every month as to avoid check writing redundancy. Her employer (a extremely eccentric older woman with more money than God) makes it possible for Cara to do a new and exceedingly odd job every day. Even her dog and cockatoo dance to her fiddle by allowing her to call them by different names on a daily basis.

As you can plainly see, this woman is by far one of the most fascinating creatures around. I decided then and there that Ms. Brikkman was to become my new obsession. I would become a new constant in her life, the man that follows her and keeps track of her adventures in stamping out redundancy. Of course I stalk her with full permission with the agreement that I will never speak to her except in the case of a life and death emergency. Cara, above all, wants to un-redundefy her life with as little interruption as possible.

So the reader at this point should clearly be able to understand the purpose of this blog. I will update the universe on the happenings of Ms. Brikkman on a regular basis with the hope that we all can learn a little something about constancy in our lives by watching the elimination of redundancy in hers.

--KG