The bus was late, but it finally came the moment I
wanted to call in work (and saying that I might be late). I looked at the clock
one more time and got on the bus. Because of that 15-min tardiness, the bus was
overly filled. I took off my backpack and carried it as if it were a briefcase,
then turned up the volume on my headphone.
I used to take the same bus every morning but towards
the other end, when I first started school here as a literature student. It has
always been difficult for me to get up early in the morning and I hated to walk
into a classroom in a middle of a lecture. When I over slept, I would take the
bus two hours later to catch the next whole lecture. If the bus wasn’t crowded,
I would even try to finish the last bits of the assignment minutes before it
was due. Oh yes, those assignments, thousands of pages and a handful of
readers. Bus riding in a sunny day is a day dream trap. There have been
countless times I missed my stop because the day dreams blurred out the station
name outside the window.
The bus arrived at a popular stop. I pushed myself
against the side window to let the people around me getting in and out. When I started
my second study a couple of years back, I often got out here to change to
metro, like most of the passengers did. Today I wasn’t going to get out of the
bus here and tomorrow either since I had decided to put the second study on the
back burner. Last week I heard two people talking about schrödinger’s equation
on the bus; and I sensed a chill running down my spine. If I had managed my
time perfectly, I would probably be talking about the same thing now.
“If”—there is another “if I had…” thought again, I guess
I need to turn the volume a bit higher.
We passed the pharmacy at a main cross road – I was
half way there, and if there wasn’t any traffic jam, I could even make it on
time for work! A man in colorful T shirt and jeans rushed out of the pharmacy,
with one hand carrying a bag from the drug store and the other dragging a blue
haired girl with lip piercings with him. The young couple slipped through the
bus door split seconds before it closed, giggling and out of breath. I don’t
know if they knew or cared being stared at from other passengers.
“It is important to observe what people wear.” An artist
told me that.
“For you?”
“For everyone! You can know so much about a stranger
just by looking at what s/he is wearing!”
“Are you still trying to convince yourself of that?”
“It is true! We reveal who we are through what we
choose to wear.”
“Is it important for you that other people notice what
you are on?”
That was the last time we spoke.
Through the bus window, I have seen the shops along
the streets closed and reopened at an amazingly fast pace in the past six
months. I don’t remember what these
shops were, but only “shop-to-rent” signs in various colors and sizes. The
streets feels like a train station, and the shops are wagons owned by drifters.
I am too chicken and cynical to open my own business; I’d rather work for someone.
It was almost a miracle that I made it to work 10
minutes earlier. I went into the office to greet my colleagues then to the
kitchen to fix my caffeine withdraw. The pupils were done with school and
starting to arrive. That is when I start my shift – at the end of the pupils’
shifts.
