Public transportation

I don’t know if I’ve given you my rant on the public transportation yet, but I need to, again, if I already have. Ugh! The MRT is fine, but the thing that really bugs me about it is that you have to wait in line for the MRT to come and sometimes, it can take 12 minutes for it to arrive (that’s actually only the one from Xi-Men to Chiang Kai Chek Memorial Hall that I only take twice a week). Anyway, it doesn’t matter if you’re at the front of the line and have been waiting ever since you missed the previous one, when the train arrives, people will push and shove to get a space. And if there’s seats available, forget it. There’s always a stampede of old people fighting their way in.

In the busses and MRTs, there are priority seats near the entrances/exits reserved for the old people, injured, pregnant and mothers with small children. I never got to use these seats even when I limped onto the MRT with that bandage around my knee last week. An old lady tapped my shoulder and motioned for me to get off the seat and surrender it to her. The rest of the ride was brutal because my knee kept shifting in its socket every time the bus moved. And no one gets off the bus until 2 stops before I get off, so even if I do get a seat, it’s not for long. Instead, people just keep on getting on! Every time we stop and more people want to get on, I can’t believe they think they can get on, but they do and things keep on getting more and more uncomfortable. Dun, dun, dun... another one rides the bus AHH!

Anyway, back to the old people. They are vicious! They look so old and helpless, but it’s all just an act! You can’t be fooled by them! And if you are sitting in a seat, priority or not, they will make you get out of it. Even at the MRT station when a train arrives, as soon as the doors open, it’s unbelievable how fast they’ll actually move to get a seat. Anyway, I hate the bus. I’ll come home with these gigantic muscles from gripping the handles that hang down from the roof of MRTs and busses. My skin is already starting to peel off for the same reason. Plus, public transport really eats up all your money. I go through about NT$500 every 3 weeks, but I know some people who go through 3 times that much. Everyone hates it.

Actually, there was one time when I got a seat, it was after band on a Friday night, and my stop is the first one for the bus that I take home. Then all these old ladies got on and started yelling across the aisles at each other in Chinese. It was so irritating! Ugh, old Chinese/Taiwanese ladies. They think they’re invincible. I’m sure I’d be having a lot more fun if I was about 60 years older and Asian. I miss the nice old people of Canada. Oh well. I’ll just turn my iPod up in the meantime.

On the brighter side, today at school I was hanging out in the library with Imme, she was on her laptop and I wasn’t really paying attention to anything. I was watching the OC on a school computer. Then, all of a sudden, I hear this crazy sound. Chelsea would describe it as a mini choke. So with that hint, you can all guess what it actually was. It was Imme speaking Dutch to her family on Skype. I walked over and just sat there and listened and enjoyed myself. Imme found it funny that I was so mesmerized by her language. My German is very poor, but I could make out some of the stuff she was saying because Dutch is pretty close to German.

Anyway, I think I’ll sign out for now. Hopefully tomorrow there will be less old ladies crossing my path. Oh! Just got to add something. So every morning, I have to walk through this market to get to my bus stop. It’s really annoying because there are so many people shopping and a lot of stalls and people selling stuff. Then scooters will try to make their way through all the people. I almost died a couple times. And if that’s not enough, cars will try to try to squeeze through the 5 feet of space and people and scooters. Why can’t they just respect that there are some places where vehicles are not welcome. Then there’s these mini-trucks that bring stuff for the vendors to sell that try to squeeze through. And cars will actually honk if you’re in their way! I hate it. People here are so selfish. Anyway, then there’s this old lady who rides this bicycle with a flatbed attached and steals cardboard from people so she can recycle it and make money. And she has a bell on her handle bars. She’ll bike through the market and she will NOT stop ringing that stupid bell! I see her very often and I’m very very tempted each time to rip her bell off and throw it in her face, but not near her eyes so I can make her watch that stupid bell shatter when I throw it on the ground.

I’ll never take Canada for granted. Ever. Sleeping in until 7:30 (here, I’m at my bus stop by 7:30), the natural cold (it’s about 25 degrees here, I can’t believe it’s almost November. It feels like July) and school starting at 8:30 and ending at 2:30.

I’m not going to say knives and forks. I can honestly say that I prefer chopsticks.