Their choices, as my mother lay in her hospital bed and I sat nearby in my usual visitor's chair, playing around on my laptop computer as usual, were these: "The timeline has been moved up," my mother said.
"In the Central hospital, for example, relatives are forced to sleep outdoors under hordes of mosquitoes, so it is quite usual that visitors end up being patients themselves," says Dominique, son of one of the patients.
Students can't fight tanks - but we can hope". In Tiananmen Square yesterday, the police presence was more obvious than usual, but visitors said they were unaware of the anniversary.
With temperatures exceeding 38C (100F) the usual "snowbird" visitors from Canada who winter here have mostly gone, leaving an eclectic, permanent population of Latino workers and wealthy gay people – and Republicans.
But this weekend, thanks to a recent, bloody turn of events, the deep association between the island and its wildlife will be weighing more heavily than usual on visitors' minds, even as expected annual crowds flock to its sandy beachgrass-covered dunes to celebrate Independence Day.
If the geyser is not putting on its usual show, visitors are advised to return later.
On my walk I pass the park's usual kind of visitors.
RescueTime reckons there were an extra 4.82m hours spent on the page, above and beyond the usual 33.6m hours visitors spend on Google daily.
This season, the usual streams of visitors from New York, Latin America and Europe have been joined by some deep-pocketed Russians, who tend to contribute unstintingly to the city's economy.
"[Northern Rock] was a big event and while we still saw the usual number of visitors, people were not so willing to commit," said Mark Clare, Barratt's chief executive.
