Creativity and humour transcend cultural and linguistic barriers!

Had a really touching moment on the train to work this morning. I was sitting there playing the new Maxis game, Spore (made by the same people that did The Sims and Sim City in case you didn't know what it was), where you get to let your imagination go wild and build some wacky creatures. It currently being Wold Youth 'Day' and all, a whole bunch of pilgrims came into my carriage. I was working away at my latest oddity when this little girl leapt onto the lap of the guy next to me leaning right over the laptop and giggling.

"Hello" was my bemused response. They said hello in reply and I continued making my creature. The little girl was transfixed on the game and found the creature hilarious. I got to chatting with the guy and it turns out they are a group of Columbians (the girl was only six and didn't speak English). What followed was the most beautiful time of people from different ends of the globe, from totally different cultures getting to know eachother and creating creatures together, laughing over what we come up with.

It was so cool to see the universal human fascination trait of humour bringing us together through the common ground of a computer game!

I let the girl name her creation and she called it Father Gonzalez, after their priest that was with them haha. She then went away and came back and gave me this hand-made bracelet thing, to "remember them by". The guy was in year 11 and is learning HTML at school. He was also fascinated with Spore (as am I, I must admit!) and would translate to his friend what was going on.

They named the last creation 'Recuardo de Columbia' (Remember Columbia) and then we arrived at our destination of Town Hall and went our separate ways. It was just something small on an otherwise routine trip in the daily rat race commute, but profoundly touched me for some reason!

I guess it was the experience of instant connectedness and friendship across cultural barriers, the way God had originally designed humanity to act in, that really got to me. That brief glimpse of the joy and love that heaven will be. Bring it on! :)

Matt.