I Spy With My Little Eye...Something That Rhymes With 'Sus Sauna'

I firstly want to start off by saying I have had the sweet joy of editing this three times.. because in those three different times of editing, I have managed to close this stupid editing tab that many times without saving this as a draft on here. So to the fourth and hopefully FINAL time, (it is the final time because I have now saved it to prevent from dubbing myself a complete idiot), let's frikken go.

Also, I started this entry on Wednesday and it's now Friday, but I was too lazy to edit the tenses so... 'today' is really three days ago.

Anyway, hello and welcome to another bus blog entry. I want to start off by apoligising for the title. It's got too much wit, I know. So it ironically isn't witty anymore. It's undeniably cringe-worthy, so cringe away if you must. If I do happen to come across a sus (suspicious) sauna during my time in Korea, I'll be sure to write about it as a side quest on here.

This morning’s bus driver inspired this entry – so let’s give thanks to him.

As we all know, people can be very diverse. Some people may be extroverted, whilst others may be introverted. Some are lucky enough to call themselves ambiverts and adopt both abilities of being able to socialize, but also being content enough to be alone without feeling the presence of boredom breathing down their neck. My brother fits the extremeness of an extrovert. Rather, he’s social savvy. My guy cannot sit still or be alone for too long unless he’s sleeping or on the brink of it. He's also a snake charmer....the snakes being people of course.

I on the other hand…will dwell under a rock for years to come and not feel the impact of being alone. (Okay I’m kidding. I do get lonely. But there’s nothing quite like being left alone to your own, with the ability to do whatever you want, when you want, without having to worry about leaving the house and interact with others). Yes, it was very important for me to push myself out of my comfort zone and move to another country in order to comeback the hermit life. Make no mistake, I got out. I socialized. But a lot of the time I dreaded it and didn’t want to do it because I simply got way too comfortable being at home alone most of the time.

Okay back to the main road of this story. Speaking of people and their different characteristics - Yes, some people may be extroverts, introverts, ambiverts….friendly, unfriendly, stand-off-ish, welcoming or even have RBF… (I’m sure most of us know what this is, but for those who don’t – I have been told to have RBF which is in fact… resting bitch face.) This just means that when you are not engaging with someone or you’re not particularly looking at anyone, your natural resting face looks somewhat very unfriendly. I was always told to smile by my family as a youngling and boy it drove me insane. I was asked by my family members "why you so grumpy?" when I in fact wasn’t. I would often barely be getting into the car when I hear that good ol' "why you grumpy?" I was a pubescent teen going through the most (pimples, boys and body changes – of course I wasn’t having the greatest time, but I was never truly grumpy). Whenever my family asked me why I’m grumpy or told me to smile - like the petty kid I was, I would become grumpy for REAL. You want to manifest? I’ll show you. I never showed them anything. In fact, it just made everything worse and we were all for real for real grumpy by the end of it.

But Tayla ... WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH THE BUS DRIVERS??? (Listen, I’m trying to make some plot here).

So this morning when I got on the bus – I had one familiar bus driver. To be fair, they’re all familiar because I take the same bus each weekday morning and they occasionally rotate shifts. One of them is very nice and greets me and would even wait for me if I was to be distracted, not realizing my bus is coming. He once stopped and even hooted for me so that I would realise my bus had come. A true angel. Then on the opposite side of that coin, you have the bus driver that doesn’t greet you or you breathe funny and he’ll drive away before you can get on.

If you ever come to Korea, never take the bus drivers’ actions to heart. I’d love to say there was an effective formula for making sure you stay off their naughty list, but they’re all so different and some of them unfortunately wake up and choose violence (for my non-native English speakers or my boomers, this isn’t literal violence, don’t worry Mom. No bus driver out there is trying to murder me or my fellow passengers....hopefully.) It just means they wake up and decide they’re going to cause a bit of grief for you today...at least in this case.

So I got Mr ‘Make Your Life Difficult’ today. Luckily for me, I try my best to pay attention to the buses’ arrival times and I try and be quick in every regard. I stand in the optimal position, greet the bus drivers, sit down quickly and stand up to get off even quicker. They say jump, I say "how high?" I just try and be a good passenger to avoid any trauma…at least with the bus drivers. Trauma with the bus and passengers is already more than I can handle. This bus blog is really my only way of remaining sane.

If there’s one thing worse than embarrassing yourself, it’s having someone else embarrass you and I will drop dead before I let that happen on a bus. My nasty toxic trait of people-pleasing is also one of the reasons I’m like this. I have to see these bus drivers ona daily basis, so I want them to like me. Trying to build a good rapport with them without actually conversing with them and the only way I figured that’s possible is being a good passenger and greeting them… even when they don’t greet back.

So Mr MYLD (for short) had (has) a tendency to stop as far as possible away from those wanting to get on the bus. I don’t know why he does this. I don’t know if he’s trying to be courteous for those wanting to get on but it feels like he stops even far away from them – but I will say he didn’t do this to me this morning. In fact, he stopped in front of me (You see, being a goody-two-shoes passenger gets you some bus brownie points).

But as I got on, I sat down right at the front and as I did, he just started closing the door as a young student came BOLTING. She made it there before the door closed but she couldn’t get on else the door would have literally closed on her…and to be honest with you I don’t think MR MYLD would have stopped that from happening. I’ve seen bus drivers close doors on people. I’ve had a door closed on me by a bus 16 driver. But we don’t talk about bus 16 no no no. (if you know, you know.)

Anyway, most bus drivers would open the door back up for the passengers to get on. I mean this was a young student. She was no older than 13 or 14 years old. For me at least, I would be more likely to open the door again for kids and old people out of sympathy and let them get on. But no. Bro chose the viva la vengeance life simply because I’m pretty sure this girl was in fact at the stop already but she was on her phone. So, he probably thought to himself “I’ll show her.”

We all make mistakes though and honestly, it would have taken five seconds to open the door back up again to let her on…but I guess it’s the luck of the draw and today’s bus driver was not the winning lottery.

Eventually we get to the stop where I have to get off. I press the button pronto and get to the middle exit door and wait. As he zooms down and flies passed the bus stop (said bus stop I have to get off at) an ajumma (middle age / elderly woman in Korea) screams bloody murder because she thinks the bus isn’t going to stop. Now Mr MYLD is traumatizing people who aren’t even on the bus yet. Pretty sure he enjoys this too much. She also had a handful of bags she then had to lug to the door to get on with. Thankfully he waited for her and didn’t decide to take off whilst she had one foot in the doorway.

I giggled a little inside once I got off. It’s not nice when these things happen – to me or anyone else. But the fact that even the natives are brawling it out with the buses and their drivers, it makes me feel somewhat better when something unfortunate happens to me. I just gotta remind myself that we’re all in this bus trauma (get it now... sus sauna...bus trauma?...hehe) journey together.

Regardless of this, I hope Mr MYLD had a good day and is doing well. You'll be happy to know I rode again with him today (the real today) and yesterday and he seemed to be in better spirits than he did on Wednesday. Must be the weekend feels in the air and I'm relieved for that.

Until the next stop,

Bus Blog Driver Tay