The choke of time

"You know," a respected Maori woman told me today during the crush of a hectic meeting that had to break up suddenly because it had fallen behind schedule, "the white man is run by time. We" - meaning the Maori people - "own time."

I was about to respond, when my phone began vibrating in my pocket.

"No," I said. "The white man is run by Blackberry."

We laughed, and then I had to run off to another meeting, hating to prove her point.