Adventure

Traveling by bus is always an adventure. You run into some interesting characters. I guess I’m not yet at that stage of my life or perhaps am not of the personality where I really want to talk to complete strangers so I usually put out the vibe that I’m not interested. I usually sit alone. Book and headphones, I enjoy some quiet time. But I do like watching people and keeping keen to things around me. A homeless man was on the leg from Lethbridge to Calgary. He was jovial but smelled bad and I found myself wondering what his story was. But I didn’t ask. Right now there are two 80-something woman sitting in front of me talking about their entire life stories and the whole bus “gets” to eavesdrop as well. My favorite part so far was when they were discussing downsizing from their houses to smaller apartments and were bemoaning all of the stuff they had accumulated and how to get rid of it. One said she tried to give away her china to her granddaughter who said, “Maybe later Grandma”. This led into an impassioned discussion about the merits of drinking tea from china. “Drinking tea from china just tastes better.” “Oh yes, absolutely! Have you ever had tea from a Styrofoam cup?!! It’s terrible, just awful.” I’m not a big tea drinker myself but I do own some china which I indeed got from MY grandmother and never use – perhaps I should start.
My favorite bumper sticker so far read as follows. “Honk if you love Jesus. Text while driving if you want to go see him today.” Haha.
I also observe nuances of culture when I take public transportation. One thing about the west that I’ve noticed more since living in PNG where you will not observe this quirk is that people here go to great lengths to not have to sit next to one another. It is, in fact, quite rude, I believe, to plop down right next to someone if there are other seats available. We always want a buffer of at least one seat width. I was waiting in the Calgary terminal for my bus to load and a lady tried to sit one seat away but that seat was broken so she got up and sat in the seat right next to me. “I’m sorry,” she said, actually apologizing for violating the code, “that seat is broken so I can’t sit in it.” At which point another girl on the other side of the broken seat informed us that an obese man had been sitting there and must have broken it. Oh, well that makes sense. 2 minutes later a seat not next to me or anyone else opened up and my bubble violator quickly got up and moved. You will observe this phenomenon in movie theatres as well. As a sociological experiment one might try walking into a near empty movie theatre and sitting down right next to someone. They’ll get all prickly and annoyed, I promise.