Last night, at about one in the morning (before the DST switch), I was playing one of my biweekly games of Subway Hopscotch, which is my name for the two to three subway transfers it takes for me to get from wherever I am on the weekend (usually Union Square, Soho, or the Lower East Side) to my home in the Upper West Side. Last night, working on recommendations from a new friend, I decided to alter my route in a way that would send me through Times Square Station for a transfer. Times Square that late on a weekend is actually a bit surreal. The place seems uninhabited, with vast open spaces with no one at all, the normally bustling crosstown shuttle parked in the station with lights off, and homeless people taking their Sabbath rest from asking people for “loose” change.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised to come across a svelte young lady in expensive furs who was biding the time waiting for her train by working on her laptop. Nor should I have been overly surprised that she was using the guardrail between the platform and the tracks as a table to balance her laptop. But I still maintain that I’m allowed to be surprised that what elegantly dressed woman was working using her laptop for was was debugging some Java program in Eclipse.

At 1 AM.

In the Subway.

Wearing what had to be about $800 in clothing.

That’s either dedication or insanity.