"How are you?" Good.. good.... er.. I mean.. Really?

Wow, October, its almost a year since the "big" jump, and yet I still feel like a junior around here.

I have been taking the GO train to work since switching job last October. Life on the GO is not too bad, except I am getting up at 6:00 instead of 8:00, but the beauty of this is that I am home by no later than 5:15. 5:15? That probably is the busiest time back in the days, thats when I would start to hope "Maybe I can finish early and leave at around 8". Anyways, riding the GO is a fun experience, if you can get used to the same passenger around you on a daily basis. You get accustom to nodding and saying "Good Morning" to strangers whom you never met, gesture? Not so sure about that, the "Good Morning" and "How are you?" seems like a routine to most. Another benefit of the GO ride is about 40 minutes one way, so I either sleep (most prefer to do it on their bed.. but whatever) or read, but there will be times when I didn't bring any reading material but yet I can't fall asleep. Like today......

"How are you?" is over-used in a daily basis. I have an ex-colleague (co-worker for those smart @$$ who asked "Who the heck is a colleague") who was going through some pretty crappy experience lately (that poor bastard..). We had a gathering, a bunch of people showed up. Again, for the sake of privacy, I am not going to mention real names. Alias instead. So, try visualizing the following:

I arrived the gathering early with this poor bastard - Tom. Tom's life is a mess, people he cared about either got really sick or died in the same year: His grand father died, his mother in-law died, his wife got sick, his aunt got sick, he himself had an accident. So yeah, a successful person (makes over 180K a year with a decent job) with a messed up life (See, god IS fair, he gives you something and take away something else). Anyways, half an hour later one of our other more "popular" friend Ken came by. Here is the context of our conversation:

Me: "Hey, you are late"
Ken: "No I'm not you guys are early, hows everything"
Me: "Alright"
Ken: "Hey buddy, you don't look too good is everything alright"
Tom: "Well, can't exactly say its alright, going through a few things at home, my grandfather and my mother in-law died last month and this month"

Ken turned around and saw a bunch of people at the pool table, he waved, turned around.

Ken: "Oh really, sorry to hear that. Good!"

Tom looked at me, I was a little shock too

Me: "Good? His mother in-law died"

Ken: "Er.. really? Yeah, so thats good.. sorry, I was just kidding ha ha ha, I am sorry to hear this.."

Then he took off to play pool with his friend

Tom didn't care too much, I mean, we've known the guy for a few years now, we are used to him being distracted by others. We continue with our conversation, more people arrived. Ken finishes his game and came back to talk to us more

Ken: "So Tom, hows everything?"

Whoa.. whats wrong with you? Just absent minded or don't really give a rat @$$ about people around you? Little less than 20 minutes ago the poor bastard told you his entire family is being burnt in hell right now.. you think he will be better after 20 minutes?

This story (example) may be a little extreme, but I seem to experience this abuse of "How are you" on a daily basis. I mean, all those nodding and good morning and how are you... do you really want to wish me a good morning? Will it affect you if my morning was bad or will turn bad? Do you really care how I am?

I sometimes wonder if people around are truly nice or they just want to act etiquette....