14.1.09

adventures in commuting

Recently I converted into a public transportation princess, taking the Metro and bus everywhere I need to go. There are a lot of pros to this mode of transportation, including but not limited to spending only £50 a month for a bus pass instead of £300-£400 for a car. I also love the fact that I don't have to battle Newcastle traffic behind the wheel but instead wait it out it behind the pages of a good book every morning and night. I've read more books the last 6 weeks than I read the prior 6 months combined. It sort of rocks.

Another happy side effect of using public transportation 5 days a week is that I also get to experience some pretty weird shiznit on a regular basis. Here are a couple examples of recent encounters you might find amusing...

This morning while I was waiting for my bus just outside of Newcastle Central Station, I saw a very bizarre occurrence. A seagull swooped down and placed a tube of lipgloss on the ground 3 feet away from me, squawked and then flew away. Seriously, wtf did a seagull want with lipgloss in the first place?

Yesterday morning at 845am a drunk 19 year old girl passed out drunk in the front of my bus while her friends debated whether or not they were going to drag her drunk ass home yet again or just leave her on the bus to sleep it off. YET AGAIN? As in, being this drunk before 9am is a regular occurrence? Dear me!

Monday on the metro I witnessed a group of 10-year-old girls having a debate about whether or not one of the girl's boyfriends was really gay, or just pretending to be so because he didn't want her to kiss him. Their consensus at the end was that he must really be gay because boys don't say their gay if they're not, and who wouldn't want to kiss little miss as she's, and i quote, 'sexy'... Ten or eleven year old girls having this sort of conversation - seriously my head nearly imploded.

One of my favorite journey-mates is this middle aged transvestite man who periodically gets on our really crowded morning bus cross-dressed to the nines and then instead of facing forward like everyone else does, (s)he stands, facing towards the back, staring blankly backwards at the seated and standing passengers who are all facing frontwards. I love this guy, he really brightens my morning when I see him. I love seeing my British seatmates struggle to discern the most polite way to handle someone facing the wrong direction. Honestly, I really do think the 'facing the wrong direction' part bothers them more than the fact he's wearing a killer woman's business suit with red pumps and a bad wig. Brits don't really care about a person's sexual or wardrobe preferences, but going against the natural order of things on a bus or in queue are really big no nos. Like seriously, I think they'd flog you for jumping in a queue if they didn't have to apologise profusely afterwards.

No comments:

Post a Comment