Pooh Talk

After being here for a year, you wonder if anything can surprise you anymore. Traffic will always give you a heart attack, people still spit and you thank God for a chance to see blue skies. A few days ago on a bus, I passed a restaurant whose employees are NOT serving lunch but pulling something outside the restaurant. I peered back to see them doing the tug of war. Really, cross my heart!! There they were, struggling IN THEIR UNIFORMS comprising of bow ties for the guys and skirts for the girls, pulling a thick rope with a red cloth in the middle, on a narrow pavement between the restaurant and the road. THAT was wierd. During another journey being totally squashed and trying to hang on to cold bars in the bus, an old couple boarded and pushed to the rear. The bus conductor, impressively young and helpful, asked sitting commuters to give up their seats and 2 kindly did. As the old grandpa moved towards his seat, a young girl did not move out of the way fast enuff and he snapped at her "Don't you want to move yet?". She did not back off as I would have  instinctively and snipped back "You didn't seem so old when you shoved up the bus steps earlier and now you demand a seat?". She did move away and the grandpa did sit down but I was thinking "Wow...." I can't decide whether to sympathise with the grandpa who didn't seem to care anyway or the girl who obviously didn't need it. They were both rude actually. It's true some old people just pushed and yelled their way up the bus and they think it's their RIGHT to have a seat. While I agree they deserve deference but surely they don't have to be rude abt it? Taking a bus here in BJ really tells you that the chinese invented kiasu-ism. It's as if the bus has gold!! I GET it coz some of them do travel far and wld prefer seats but the way they shoved and wedged their paths scares me sometimes. But back to the bus conductor, this guy impressed with his willingness to go the extra mile in his very humble post. He was helping some commuters find their connecting buses and advising them where to stop using his very tattered bus guide/map in a very dimly lit bus. He also bothered to help all the elderly find seats and lend them an arm to hold on to as they tottered around. Good guy here....

How do you complete this sentence in 150 words in your college yearbook? What single experience has marked your life such that you clearly remember what you did and felt and it was crazy and you know you are only young once. Sometimes you feel as if you have not lived fully and it is these moments that count. When you look bk, what singular moment do you remember in your primary school days? Would you remember playing 5 stones during recess time and drinking yummy prawn noodle soup that cost 30 cents? That rich brown taste still sticks in my throat and they don't make them this way anymore. At least not for 30 cents. I did a TERRIBLE Pride and Prejudice adaptation in secondary school and I still cringe at the memory of what I had to memorise. Or the time I had to eat cold canned beans under a lorry while it was raining heavily all around the cemetery, miserable with the blisters on my feet and wet stinky clothes sticking on my back....or standing at the deck of Nippon Maru singing the Spore athemn among 10 other nationalites while the sun rises, too bright so you squint...... those were it. I wish I had a camera then to record all of these small small things that pass by so fast. How can a 2nd person even try to understand the smile on your face when you think back these events? They will never come by your way again and while you may be miserable at its occurance, you never forget :) I think 150 words are too little to describe them :)