Be Careful What You Wish For

Well, well, well…how the tables have turned - and turn they indeed did - round, and round…and you guessed it – round.

“Okay Tayla, what’s all this nonsense about then? Go on, tell us,” - is what you’re probably asking yourselves, right?  

Well, if my last blog entry didn’t make it clear enough, which it should have, I complained a lot about having no further bus tales to share, as the bus trauma has been at an all-time low, to the point of being non-existent.

I mean when you take the same buses frequently, you somehow master the rides on them. You almost know what to predict and expect for the most part.

So, this event was simultaneously wonderful and unfortunate, all at the very same time.

Alright, what did God do? Well, God did what God does – He provided. Provided me with a freshly squeezed, juicy bus tale to share with you all. The irony, right? Ask and you shall receive I guess…and receive I sure did.

Let me take you back to less than a week after sharing my last blog entry. I was waiting for my bus to take me home. It was the first Friday after classes had already started – which also meant the unwelcome, frat-boy energy-exuding high school boys were also back at the bus stop (great)…doing what they do best – making a noise and stressing me out.

They mostly stress me out because of the fact that there are just so many of them and usually when the bus I need to take arrives – it can already be filled to the brim with people – which means only a limited number of new passengers will be allowed on, depending on how many get off, of course. Unfortunately apart from me, many of the high school students also take an interest in the same bus, so as I mentioned in a previous entry, it’s like the battle of life and death to see who will get on the bus first - so that we don’t have to wait for the next one, which comes in gruelling 30 minute intervals (darn those green buses, I tell you.)

Alright so here I am, waiting among the crowd and I keep checking the map app on my phone, watching the little digital bus wander the streets in our direction. It said it was arriving in the next two minutes.

Great.

However, another bus was also due to arrive shortly, possibly at the same time.

Not great.

Why that’s not great is because I must now try and be strategic on where I decide to stand whilst waiting for my bus to arrive. We’re all lined up on the edge of the pavement in hopes that the bus will stop directly in front of one of us, but when two buses are arriving at the same time, if you stand too far up and your bus is behind the front one, you have to try get to it faster than anyone else, if you want to try get on it before…well before the hoard (as I like to call it).

So anyway, I was so fixated on this factor that when I saw the bus that was in front was in fact, not my bus, I went for the one behind it, knowing it must be bus no. 73 (my bus) since the computerised notice board said it was also arriving.

Therefore, I quickly shimmied out of my pavement-edge spot and went to go stand further down so that I could get on my bus quickly. A few others made it before me but that’s okay, I managed to get on!

That really should have been the least of my worries…

I quickly found an open seat near the door next to a woman but man oh man do I regret ever sitting there because she was holding this big thing that looked like a folded mattress of some sort and as soon as I sat down, that thing was in my face, minutes away from poking me in the eye and dubbing me blind.

I don’t know why she held it towards me instead of away from me. She also was so unaware of its position it seemed. I tried not to get angry, because really it was my own stupid fault for sitting where I did, but I just leaned a little off to the side and hoped that I could save my eyeball to see another day (literally).

Apart from being preoccupied with this, at one point the bus stopped, and a woman rushed from behind to get off, since the door was about to close again. On her way past me, she whacked me in the head – unapologetically I might add.

Okay, so now my patience was wearing thin, and I started getting really agitated. The woman next to me then finally apologised to me because she realised that she was sort of in my space with her massive mattress, and she also said that she needed to get off at the next stop. (Thank you, Lord!) I said it was okay, thankful that at least she was kind enough to say sorry, unlike the woman who bashed my head into next week on her way out.

This is one thing I often wonder about long and hard. Are people sometimes not apologetic because they just don’t care, or because I’m a foreigner and they think I may not understand them? Which is just ridiculous because anyone would understand someone trying to apologise – regardless of what language it’s in. At least if it’s in context, and this would have been…because what else would she be saying to me after uppercutting the backside of my head with her bag?

Once we approached the next stop, I got up to let her get past me and off the bus – because I’m nice and would never expect her to attempt to crawl over me or anything (yes, I’m referring back to all the people who never move out of their seats for me and then expect me to just somehow miraculously transport through them with my magical transportation powers.) Too bad those are in fact, non-existent.

Once she was off, I sat back down, and an older man got on and sat next to me. This would have been fine if he didn’t smell as if he had just downed a bucket of cigarettes.

Just my luck today.

I was so over-stimulated and distracted at that point, that I was paying absolutely no attention to the stops being called out. Surely, surely, I was almost home by now. But then the next stop announcement made me go cold.

“The next stop is CBS Broadcasting System” (CBS 방송국).

WHAT? Suddenly and very abruptly, bells started ringing in my head and I was awake and truly aware for the first time on that bus…that bus that of course, was NOT mine.

I had no idea what bus I was on right now, but it was not bus no. 73, no siree. In fact, whatever bus this was – it was going in the complete opposite direction of where I needed to go. Of course...of COURSE I would get on a bus that not only doesn’t take me home, but it takes me further away down south of the frikken city.

I was now discombobulated because I wasn’t entirely sure where I was at that very minute, I just knew it was far away from where I needed to be. To add to all of this, my friend was waiting outside my apartment building because we had plans to meet after work. So not only is this the first time I have ever taken the wrong bus from school back to my apartment – but I was also on a time crunch because I had someone waiting for me. PeRfECt tiMiNG! (I say with as much sarcasm as I can muster up in a written sentence.)

Of alllllllllll the days this could have happened, really, today? A Friday of all days – such a precious afternoon-bordering-evening wasted going nowhere slowly on a bus while getting poked and prodded in the head and nearly the eye. Aiyaiyaiiiiiiiiiii.

Alright, before I lose my marbles completely and have a 멘붕 (aka mental breakdown), let me just get off and escape this bus of terrors. No wonder my ride was like this. It was never mine to take.

I quickly got off then and checked my phone to see the damages of where I had been dropped off and stranded, and yup – not good. On top of that, the buses I could take from there to get back to my place were on the opposite side of the road, far and few between – oh and they all required me to walk at least ten to fifteen minutes more to get to my actual apartment once I got off. It was all just a mess and so inconvenient. I was also frustrated because after telling this to my friend, she had told me the bus I was supposed to take had just arrived at my stop. I would have been home by now. cries passionately

Sigh…

That reminded me to check what bus I had taken instead so I quickly looked up at the red light where the trickster bus was still waiting and instead of 73, I saw the numbers 77. Grrrr.

So where did I go wrong? Well to tell you the truth, because my bus was behind the first one that arrived, instead of checking the number and ensuring it was in fact bus no. 73, I assumed the colour and ‘arrival status’ was enough to convince me that it was. The numbers were blocked by the bus in front of it, so I really didn’t even bother to make the effort. I guess 77 sneakily decided to arrive too and if I had waited one extra minute, I probably would have seen my bus turning the corner too and realised the one I was fighting for my life to get on, wasn’t even mine to begin with.

But I guess that’s not how we write a good, juicy bus blog, now is it?

Okay, okay, so after that revelation, I then decided to quickly cross the road, forgetting the pain of seeing the numbers 77 and not 73. (What’s done is done.) I saw Bus 01A was arriving within the next minute or so – a red bus.

It wasn’t going to be the best drop-off point but it was the most optimal and really, the only option I had right now besides taking a taxi – which I refused. I so adamantly wanted to save money that I would make my friend wait longer and make myself walk an additional fifteen minutes. I sound like a scrooge, don’t I? (This month was rough okay, tax deductions are no joke.)

There was one other woman waiting beside me and once I saw the bus come into sight, I was relieved it came at a good time, not having to wait for it at all after crossing the road. That relief soon faded into dismay and despair when I saw how absolutely jam-packed it was with people though. Oh dear, I get back up again and again, but a wrecking ball continues to pulverise me into the ground with challenge after challenge, it would appear.

Someone else approached the place where we were standing too, and once the door to the bus opened, the driver had told us there wasn’t any space. The first woman had walked off but then some people started exiting the bus and eventually the driver gestured for us to get on. Here is where my toxic trait of being too considerate kicked in. I would have even gone as far as having called myself a damn pushover in that moment.  Whilst I can usually shimmy up the courage to push my way through the high school boys as they sometimes do to me, I cannot bring myself to do it to other woman or older people. So, the woman who came after me, walked past me with absolutely zero consideration and got on. The first woman? The one who had left…well she made her way back and got on too. Me? I just stood there like an idiot, waiting to see if the bus driver would allow me on but SIKE, he closed his door and off the bus went.

It took every bone in my body not to curse him out because what a complete bites tongue hard…just…how extremely annoying and dare I say discriminatory.

You’re telling me you couldn’t allow one more person on that bus? Sure.

I cut my losses at that point and just called the stupid taxi. It was absolutely not worth it to risk another fifteen - twenty minutes waiting for the next bus that may also be jam-packed and biased. I’d get home at 10pm if I kept waiting for the stupid bus in this area it seemed.

Once my taxi arrived, off we went, and I soon arrived home. I met up with my friend and we went to get a coffee, where I proceeded to talk her ear off about what had just happened and how it was going to make for the perfect blog entry.

So there you have it. I wanted new bus trauma and I sure as heck got it.

So if there’s a lesson to be learned in all this – it’s to always be sure to check your bus numbers, else you may just find yourself in a world of chaos whereby a taxi has to come and rescue you.

Rookie error Tayla, rookie error.

Until the next stop,

Bus Blog Driver Tay