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.

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.

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.