Bus Blabber

So yesterday, I decided to work from home and a lot of things transpired at work. I should have known, I should have known!

 

I got a series of emails in the lines of….

 

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Hello,

 

On behalf of the staff and management of Rabbit Transit, we are pleased to award you with the “Rider of the Month” award!  This honor is given only to our best riders, like yourself.  

 

As a token of our appreciation, we’d like to give you the following special gifts:

 

-          A free bus pass to anywhere Rabbit Transit travels (this offer good only on the East Market Street business corridor route between the Licatese Hair Salon and the Home Depot). 

-          Premier first-class boarding is now yours!  You no longer have to wait in-line at the bus stop or in the bathtub to enjoy your Rabbit Transit experience.    

-          Preferred seating!  We have reserved the front seat for you — next to the bus driver — it is nice and clean, totally stain free and sanitized for your protection.  

 

We look forward to your continued ridership on Rabbit Transit — and look out for your picture, name and address to appear on our new billboards that will be posted near all local bars, homeless shelters, and pawn shops in the greater York metro area.  Again, Congratulations!

===

 

Congratulations!!!  What an honor for you.  Perhaps we will see you on a billboard by the side of the road or maybe even on one of those “clever” television ads.

 

I heard the last winner of this award was “discovered” by a famous porn producer and now is a star.  Just think….we can say we knew you when…..

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And then this morning, when I got to work, there was a file marked “PRIORITY” waiting at my desk. I opened it and this is what I found:

 

Visitors

Bizarre things happen here on Mondays.

I was sitting and diligently typing away (another blog entry of course)… with smoke rising out of the keyboard… when I decide to turn around to take a book or something. And I jumped out of my skin when I saw a tiny furry gray mouse waiting at the entrance of my cubicle! Thankfully it was a battery operated one and I could hear my mischiveous colleague giggling in her cubicle.

“Now if you dont want your little furry friend”, I warned “I am going to eat him for lunch!”
I had a vegetarian lunch. So, no sweat.

A while  ago, I found a tiny ceramic angel waiting at my cubicle entrance. This angel visits people in the cubicles off and on and is seen as a good thing. It means that I have been such an angel today

I have decided to keep her for a while. One of the colorful things I have heard about this angel is that she has got a reputation. She was wearing an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini when they found her the first time, last summer.

Hmm… No Angel, this.

Lunch Talks

So we were out running errands one of these days during lunch time.

Two of them went to grab a quick bite. R and I went to the Pharmacy and then stopped by at the bank. We were supposed to pick M and K from the fast food joint on our way back to work. R suddenly hatched a master plot. She called up the food joint. The guy at the counter picked up, expecting a routine order of a cold sub or a salad. But this is what he got to hear — “Hi, I am calling to let you know a news about one of your customers named. He is in there right now having lunch. I am his sister. His wife is having a baby! Can you please tell him that she is in labour and that I am coming over to drive him to the hospital?”

A hysteric counterguy did not waste any time in rushing to the floor and declaring loudly “Is there someone out here by the name of M? Well, sir, YOUR WIFE IS HAVING A BABY!!”

Now, M is a seasoned player. He has known R for years now. He knew only too well about this than to react. So he sat there eating his salad. His fellow customers were shocked at how callous he was about this whole incident, and they glared at him. One old lady even went up to him and told him what a prick he was.

“Well, I am not the bastard’s father!”

*Collective Gasp*

Mind you – M is a single man with no wife, let alone a baby

 

His face was worth a million bucks, when they got into the car. R and I were in the parking lot waiting for them, we did not dare to go inside the food joint. There were two cops sitting in the joint and having food, and they came out to the parking lot when they saw the commotion — so we fled the scene.

 

Do you think it is a federal offence here if you call up a food joint and tell them that one of their customers’ imaginary wife is having an imaginary baby?

I guess we would talk about this over lunch tomorrow. 

Cabs and Buses, Cabbies and Bunnies

Let us take a moment here and talk about the modes of transport available in the where I live. Oh yes, we have the huge swanky cars with umpteen cylinders – the gas guzzlers – zipping down the highways. And we have superb motorcycles that make heads turn. You can even spot Amish buggies clunking down the lane. Yes siree, I live in the only American state that has Amish settlements.

 

But nothing prepared me for the scarcity of public transportation here.

“Buses? Who would wanna take that?!”

“Umm – me? I don’t have a drivers’ license yet.”

I always get the deer-in-the-headlights expression when I say that sentence. They are ALWAYS unprepared for that one.

 

So, I thumbed through the yellow pages and found a couple of cab numbers that I could rely on. Reliability is not their top priority here – for these cabbies. I live in a suburban area where every household owns a car or two. Who the hell would want to take a ride in a stuffy taxi? Well, I definitely could use a ride!

 

Here are some hard facts. There are FOUR cabs serving this county. And there are four cab companies and there are four drivers, namely, Grumpy Lady (GL) Driver, Indifferent Guy (IG) Driver, Chatty Dangerous (CD) Driver, Rehab Relapse (RR) Driver. Not much of a list to choose from. And it is difficult to keep track of who works for whom because they quit a company overnight. I used to call up IG the most because, well, he is indifferent. But then, one day I called him to hear this: “I don’t drive no more taxis anymore lady. Call some other bas***d”.

Hmmm.

 

GL was rough and terrible to even sit next to. I moved into my apartment a day before Halloween (that is Americanized… a day after Diwali is more like it…) I dragged in three boxes past the door and tried to put them into the car’s boot. She didn’t flinch. She sat in the driver’s seat and solved her daily crossword. I hated her instantly. And I swore never to call her up again.

 

CD is not too bad, if only he would stop turning around while chatting and driving at those dangerous speeds. My eyeballs would go deep into the eye sockets every time he revved up the engine, and would pop right out when he slammed the brakes. I am just newly insured, with no desire to visit the hospital or lie in a pristine coffin in a fancy funeral parlour any time soon.

 

And that is how Rehab guy and I met. Not very romantic, I admit. But this is how I got to work. I would sit in the backseat while he drove and spewed hate literature about discrimination and monologues about how life isn’t really as pretty as it seems on TV.

 

Television, I thought, now there is a neutral subject I can bring up with this chap.

“I don’t watch TV. Just too much violence. I have a life equally violent. I don’t need to watch it for entertainment.”

G-U-L-P

 

Over the course of five days, I got to know that he is a sketch artist with no money thanks to the economy. They all love to blame it on the economy and I have trained myself to nod sympathetically and make the appropriate grunts of disapproval. Gosh, I sound like a husband! Coming back to the Rehab guy. So, he goes for classes to a de-addiction centre and is “graduating” next week. I asked him if he has managed to stay clean and he told me that this was his second session after relapse.

 

After a week of being driven around I wasn’t too sure about continuing this. Money wasn’t much and frankly, I was beginning to worry that strange people knew where I live and where I work. That is when I turned my attention to the second mode of public transport – the bus.

 

 

* * *

 

Allow me to introduce you to the quaint ways of the Rabbit Transit, in other words, the county’s mode of public transportation.

 

York County has a series of buses plying its roads crisscross, from the suburbs to downtown and back. You can never get lost if you take one of them, because they all go in loops. The bus stops are marked with a bunny picture and a helpline number that will help you identify what bus goes where.

 

These huge buses are red in color and have–get this—a BUNNY TAIL PAINTED ON THE REAR END OF THE VEHICLE. It is almost always empty and it almost always makes a stop at all the major shopping complexes and similar such outlets. Most of the drivers are women. Not that there is anything wrong with that. They are a chatty lot and they love to read while at work. A very dangerous trend, I have to note.

 

So, you think you can get a ride on the Bunny Bus? It is not as easy as it sounds. They are so hard to spot. When you are sitting in a car and going some place and when you are not particularly looking out for a bus… that is when you spot the maximum number of these buses. I chased the evasive bunny for days.

 

One evening, I was determined to hop on to one of them buses. Hop on… that’s a nice way to say that you are boarding a bus. Not to mention, a Rabbit Transit bus. I walked out of the office building and walked in the direction that one of the Rabbit maps directed me to. I did not see any bus stop for yards and miles. Just when I thought I would die of exhaustion, I got to one stop. While catching my breath I noticed what a desolate little spot it was. Not a single human in sight. Why would someone board a bus from here?

 

I stood there for an hour, it rained, the Rehab Guy ditched me, and finally, a colleague came and got me. She dropped a sad, cold, wet, and stinky me home. That night, while munching on a midnight snack (yes, one of those American vices that I developed), I decided that I HAVE to get on one of those Rabbit buses. Sunday would be a good day, I decided.

 

I went through the complete drill of waiting for an hour-and-a-half and got a bus. No, in fact, Rabbit Transit rewarded my wait with TWO buses. Oh, I get a choice of routes. I am delighted. I take in the musty ambience inside the bus. The lady behind the wheels gives me a guided tour of the area, since I am new in town. How did she know? I did not know the bus fare and I fumbled with the quarters and nickels and dimes and dollars.

I got back home after three hours.

 

No points for guessing how I got to work this morning. Oh and did I tell you about the survey I had to fill out, at work? Funny Lady and Funny Man came up with a strange little survey that I had to take. Sample these questions:

1. Does the bus you are riding have a bunny tail, or not?
2. Are the seats clean?
3. Is the bus hostess friendly and serving you complimentary cocktails?
4. Does the person sitting next to you smell?
5. Do you have a sworn affidavit of your identity while traveling on the bus?

 I should stop, for now. My bunny ride is here.

American bLogs

I am beginning to wonder if I should keep a log of some sorts. To record all the crazy things that transpire at work. If I did keep one, today’s entry would go something like this –

Nov 03, ’08: Lady at work reveals that she has an enormous uterus. Funny guy covers his ears in dismay and starts singing church hymns to chastise himself after THAT piece of news. Friendly lady laughs uncontrollably and almost rams her vehicle into a truck – with a terrified me in it.

Later today, at the Diners, Funny man introduces me as his third wife, his new bride. Funny lady plays along and introduces the remaining two women as his first and second wives. Oh and what a jovial bunch we all are. She said, “He married me for my brains, her for her breasts and the third one for her exotic beauty.”

I think I choked on my soup.  

I got a pair of Christmas Green hand towels from these guys. A tacky housewarming gift. I was beginning to worry if they would gift me the ugly office clown. I hate clowns. They are scary. This little clown sits and bobs its head and sings “It’s a small world after all” Eeks.

Did I tell you that they think I would make a good waitress at Hooters because they think that I am—umm—well stacked?

Hooboy.

Fall in Another Continent

I am dealing with a new country and a new continent. I am dealing with air that feels different and trees that look different. I am dealing with non-spicy food and spicy political shows. All in all, I am dealing with change. During comparatively stressful times such as this, humor—specifically at the workplace—helps!

So when I walked into the warm little basement of the office, guided to my workspace in a bare cubicle, I was not expecting to be shown some showgirl costumes stashed away in the locker, or the saucy headgear for those really trying days. I gave an unsure laugh, not sure if that is the reaction they were looking for. I was welcomed to the fold with a couple more crass jokes and free laughter. I am relieved.

I walked around the cubicles and found funny notes all over. I found pictures of happy and hilarious moments. I am in an Americanized Bay26! This is like the mirror world or some parallel universe where everything that’s exactly the same is happening to a different set of people.

I am taken around town during lunch hours, I am given tacky books to read and make book reports of, I am shown secret haunts where things are on sale for throwaway prices. We walked into a store and tried on all the funny hats and made all the necessary noise in there that would be enough to raise some eyebrows and a lot of concern.

Oh and the other day, one of them happily slipped a—ahem—condom into my hand. I wasn’t sure what I should say about her concern about my new life. But before I was required to react she squealed, “Oh look where it is made! INDIA!” I did not know that Latex was such a huge industry back home. Then why such an explosive population?
Hmm.

The apartment hunt is on. And it is a big project out here. They are all looking. And how so! Calls are being made, I am taken around to see places, recommendations for me are being made, I am constantly given tips of how to negotiate with landlords. Furniture places, discount coupons, contacts, carpet places… everything is discussed.

Genie, Welcome to the USA.

My Journey to the East

I love the ocean and even have a masthead* to prove it. An extension of my love for the ocean is my love for the beaches. I sometimes get a feeling that the main reason of this unexplained pull towards the sun and sand is the deprived childhood. Now, do not get me wrong. I had a wonderful childhood – the kind that was full of loving parents with enough money to school me, buy me Barbie dolls, fairytale books, and candy. However, my childhood was deprived in the sense that it was mostly spent in the hills or in tropical areas. Even when I grew up and began to travel on my own, I usually ended up in places that were not surrounded by water. Hence, beach-deprivation continued. So the lone trip to Mumbai where I got to walk on the filthy and highly commercialized Juhu beach remained a sweet memory for a very long time. And when my fiancé brought up the subject of honeymoon (Err…or was it that I never gave him time to bring it up? Maybe I was announcing my choices the minute somebody whispered the M word!), my only condition was “by the sea.” Being a darling that he is, he decided to take me on the sea rather than just by it and won brownie points that shall last him until eternity. And so continued my love affair with the ocean.

Now, that the universe has conspired to make me live on an island, for the last three months I have been living in a joyful delusion that I am surrounded by lavish beaches, white sand, and frothy ocean waves. It was always about finding half-a-day free to visit a beach. This Saturday, we found half-a-day for ourselves and now I am back to the real world.

Let me give you a quick lesson in geography of Singapore. I happen to be living in the North-West of the island and the beach we decided to hit is called the East Coast Park (ECP), which obviously is in the East or rather, South-East of the island. Basically, we traversed the entire island, or the country if you will, to go to the beach. (I remember I once had a cab driver in tears when I asked him to take me home from the ECP. He laughed hysterically and then cribbed all through the way.)

ECP is a happy place with lots to do. It has an array of lively restaurants, a few colorful shops selling you the kind of things you may need at the beach and the kind you may never need anywhere. There are also many stores for bicycles and skates on hire. And if you are a water sport-enthusiast, you have several adventurous options too. The lazy ones fish at the Bedok jetty, or just sleep in their tiny camping tents. Most people walk, skate, or bicycle; some make sand castles and some barbeque in the pits. The only thing conspicuously missing from this cheery place is the sandy beach from where you can see ocean until the end of the world. Instead, what you see is ocean waves lapping onto the muddy/sandy artificial track and ugly ships as far as your sight allows.

On second thoughts, I should have known this! Singapore is one of the biggest ports of Asia and it is a tiny country that is partially built on reclaimed land. But of course its artificial beaches are surrounded by ships. However, once I got over the initial disappointment of being on a fake beach and trained my eyes not to look twenty meters beyond the beach, I had fun cycling around on a twin-cycle and feeling the ocean breeze in my hair.

So, I would still highly recommend ECP to anyone who is in Singapore for more than a week and will rate it higher than the artificial beaches of the Sentosa island, which are primarily built for the tourists and have precious little to offer in comparison with the free fun at the ECP.

*The picture used in the masthead was taken from the Singapore Eye (the observation wheel) and shows the reservoir where the Singapore River meets the ocean.

Life is what happens to you when you are expecting another routine day

 

One wintry evening a few months ago, a colleague of mine had a rather traumatic experience: the ground below her suddenly gave way and she paid a brief but terrifying visit to the Netherworld. The bus stop from which she takes the staff bus back home is, at that hour of evening, as chaotic as the well of the stock exchange. There was an uncovered manhole in that busy area, quietly lurking in a corner, waiting for its prey, not making a sound. A combination of the early winter dusk and insufficient lighting, the prevailing chaos, the city authorities’ callousness, and her own preoccupation conspired to ensure that she stepped into that open manhole. She had a brief free fall; fortunately the manhole was not deep, and when she frantically shouted for help, willing hands pulled her out into safety and God’s clean air. She emerged, shaken but not seriously hurt. Also, because of some oily sludge at the bottom of the manhole, she must have smelled like an oil drum for three days, though she would not admit it.

 

She is none the worse for her brief acquaintanceship with the city’s sewage system. She has had elaborate correspondence with the authorities in the organization, in which she has vented her spleen for their indifference. When one mentions her mishap to people in a group, she achieves instant celebrity status. She will, I am sure, have a good story to tell her grandchildren, years from now. (“Gather round, boys and girls, and listen quietly while Grandma tells you about the evening she fell into a manhole…Bobby, stop picking your nose and listen!”)

 

This incident made me think about some of the near disasters I have had, some of which made me briefly famous (for, I am highly egotistic and would not believe that I lack in any area in comparison with my fellow humans). I have had my share of falls and injuries in my boyhood – after all boys will be boys. I have fallen on my face and broken a few teeth; once the fat kid next door and I got into a fight and he banged a saucepan on my cheek next to my eye; once I fell down the stairs and survived without broken bones; I nearly drowned in a pond during one summer vacation. However, there are two incidents that stand out because they are bizarre.

 

Monkey in a DTC bus: How that monkey got into the bus, I will never know. Why it came toddling up to me – ignoring everyone else – I will never know. I felt someone – or something – holding my right leg and concluding it was a child, bent down to shake it off. It was not a child, it was a monkey and it went berserk. It bit my right arm, quite literally chewing on the thumb. It concluded its performance by biting my ankles; then it let go, glared at me, and then disappeared. Added to the pain and the tetanus shots, was the embarrassment. Tell people that you were bitten by a dog and you get sympathetic looks. Tell ‘em you were bitten by a monkey, and they either become incredulous or try to hide their laughter. When I revealed that the bus was in front of a well known women’s college during the incident, the monkey became a she-monkey in people’s imagination – and the laughter got louder.

 

Dettol Protection: I must have been particularly inquisitive as a kid. This – apart from stupidity – is the only reason to explain why, at the age of six, I drank almost half a bottle of Dettol. Maybe the world seemed new and full of wonderful possibilities and chances for experimentation. I remember seeing the bottle on a window sill, going glug-glug-glug, and then proudly announcing the fact to everyone. I hope my folks have forgiven me for that by now. I survived without harm; I also hope I have life-long Dettol protection now.

 

After all, some good has to come out of life’s misadventures.

A Bad-day Gone Good

I stared at my wristwatch that struck quarter to ten as I stepped off the train. “I am going to be late,” I thought miserably. As I made my way to the taxi stand, I noticed a long queue of passengers and a non-existent one of cabs. I sighed and counted that I was tenth in the row. The rain continued to pour down with all earnestness and all eyes were on the passing cabs. Time crawled. I waited. After a good fifteen minutes wait, I found myself at the front of the still very long queue. Finally, irritated at this unhappy beginning of my day, I ducked to get into my cab and muttered my destination without looking up.

As I adjusted my seatbelt, I heard “Achha.”
My head jerked up and lips curled in a surprised smile. In the rear view mirror, I could see a middle-aged happy Chinese face. “Namaste,” it said.
“Namaste!” I responded smiling wider this time.
“Kahana jaoo ge?” he was grinning this time because he already knew my destination.
“Where did you learn such good Hindi?” I asked extremely impressed by his pronunciation.
“From my ex girlfriend who was from India.” He quipped happily. “But my Tamilian girlfriend does not teach me any Tamil.” With this, he launched into a full-fledged conversation about how the young kids speak Singlish, which he does not approve of and insists on speaking proper English.

He then questioned me about India and had me flabbergasted. Unlike most other people, his knowledge was not limited to Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai. He told me how he wants to go to Goa, Assam, Sikkim, Hyderabad, and Jodhpur. However, he would not even think of driving in Mumbai, especially during lunch hours. “What is special about the lunch hour?” I ask “The dabba-walas!” he tells me, probably chiding me for my ignorance in his head but aloud he continued to tell me about how the travel agents only want him to see Delhi and Taj Mehal, not good enough for him.

The eight-minute drive to work was too short but it did a wonderful job of lifting my spirits and as I paid him the fare and got out, “Thank you,” I said. “It was great talking to you.”

“Thanks. Can you see why I have many girlfriends?” he smiled, his wrinkled eyes twinkling.

I wish I could be like him and spread joy so effortlessly.

Note to Self: Flag down cab number SH 7551M wherever you see it.

They don’t sell shock absorbers in 7-Eleven

I am no longer the one-third of The Troika who has been working in and writing from India. Well, I have still not reached Australia but I have made a beginning. I am now in Singapore – the island of fashion and Americanization. I am telling you, the Singaporeans love the Americans and whatever the latter eat, drink, or wear.

Every morning I leave my fancy service apartment to catch a bus that’d drop me in front of the MRT station, from where I take the metro to work. The whole process takes around 25 minutes and in these 25 minutes I experience many things American, like the crazy queues in front of the numerous Starbucks outlets, the super huge cups of colas being grabbed at the 7-elevens, the clicking of high heels and swishing of business suits on the escalators in the malls that lead to the MRT station. I also lustfully gaze at the showcases of Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and the like. And if this does not remind you of the big apple, let me tell you that there is also a Hooters outlet to be found here! Do you know what is the only place more American than this? NYC!

I soak all of this and walk into an extremely quiet office. People sit in their smart attire looking into their screens and sipping their coffee. No one looks up, no one turns around, no one says ‘hello.’ I struggle with the wires of my laptop and get it to boot, grab some water and sit down to check my mail, hoping to catch a glimpse of the boss. Now I think this is a point that needs some elaboration. Under normal circumstances I, like most normal people, do not want to see my boss first thing in the morning. But the circumstances I describe are far from normal, at least for me who is still in culture shock. You see, my boss is the only person who acknowledges my presence, hence he is the sole opportunity of human interaction. All day long. Of course, there is also that friendly cleaning lady who is generous with greetings and smiles. God bless her.