Wednesday, October 12, 2005
rubbing shoulders with garbagemen
i have a love-hate relationship with weekends.
having a nice weekend means having to go back to boring old school and listening to ancient horrors drone on and on while my brain slowly disconnects from its stem and my train of thought chugs slowly toward the Station of Unconsciousness; whereas having a lousy weekend means i've wasted the only free days i have in my week on being unhappy. bah.
anyway i had a nice mrt ride on sunday. one thing i miss about being in ac is the long mrt rides home. the most interesting people take the jurong east line; cute little babies and crazy mats with huge alien-looking headphones. and mormons. haha. i love staring at mormons and watching them sweat in their neat little skinny ties, pressed white shirts and metal name tags. so cute.
saw a eurasian guy sitting on the mrt clasping a gigantic cushion that looked exactly like an oversized orange slice to his chest. it was wrapped very haphazardly in a plastic bag that crinkled loudly every time he fidgeted. which he did. often. if carrying or smoking pot wasn't so horrendously, terminally (in some cases only la), illegal, i'd say he was probably high on it. he had really bloodshot shifty eyes and kept squirming in his seat. i was sitting almost directly opposite him, next to a gregarious little boy.
for some strange reason my brain decided that it would be a Wonderful Idea to take a picture of the Crazy Orange Man. so i decided to hide my intentions by playing a bit of tetris on my phone before switching my camphone on. Curious Boy suddenly became very interested in my handphone, so i tilted the phone to show him what i was doing. he stared at it for a while and then after about half a minute lost interest and started irritating his mom again.
thinking the coast was clear, i exited the game and turned on my camphone. i tried to angle it so that it wasn't obvious i was taking a picture of him (which was difficult because the aisle between us was totally clear) and quickly snap a photo. because i had set the camera to zoom, it took a while to locate him on the screen, and just when i pressed the button to take the picture, Curious Boy turned around and saw what i was doing. uh-oh.
me: -smiles painfully and prays hard-
CB: kachak!!! -imitates camera noise, points imaginary camera at Crazy Orange Man-
me: [thinking: ohshitccbknnwtf] -angles camphone away and pretends to point it at other, random things like poles, the floor, etc-
COM: -eyes slide suddenly to me, nostrils twitching-
me: [thinking: omg. i hope this picture is worth the beating im gonna get.]
the rest of the train ride was horribly awkward. Crazy Orange Man hugged his orange slice tighter and twitched his nostrils accusingly at me for the rest of the trip while i pretended to be absorbed in my camera.
the worst part of the whole thing was, when i looked at the picture after i got home i could see he was already starting to stare at me.
parents should control their children properly in trains.
+ fictions&fires
8:46 AM
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plangere, latin: to strike, or to lament.
in the depth of winter i finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
--albert camus
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to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
-- ee cummings
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