Madame Blossom's Book of Poems

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Like your own bus

On Monday I took the public back to JB, from Singapore. I reached Jurong East about 10pm, and did not wait long to board the Causeway Link bus - CW3. Fare was $4

It took me approximately one hour to reach home. One hour doesn't seem that long, now that I'm commuting daily from JB to Singapore.

At the customs, some passengers from the bus would dash for the immigration counters. My son told me about it previously. He said he felt compelled to run with them when he saw them running. haha. I didn't - I kept my cool.

After the JB customs, when we reached the housing estates around Bukit Indah area - passengers were going up to the driver and telling him exactly where they want to stop, anywhere along the bus route. You don't necessarily need to stop at a bus stop.

One male passenger, went up to the driver, a distance before his stop to tell him where to stop, then started chatting with the driver.
At one point the driver asked all of the passengers if anyone was alighting at a certain neighbourhood, cause he thought perhaps he could skip that route if no one was alighting there. A couple of passengers responded that they were. The driver acknowledged and went that route.

I am actually quite amazed the whole thing. It makes us more human, don't you think? There are interactions and helping others. This is in contrast to Singapore where most services are by the book. People don't communicate with each other or oblige one another. They don't need to speak to each other - it's almost a mechanical robotic routine to board a public bus in Singapore - well the few times I did. To be fair, I have heard of friendly bus drivers in Singapore, who greet their passengers.

Well, I'm glad I took the public bus that day, to experience this normal human contact. Hope to see more of that.

1 comment:

Al-Manar said...

Here I am again. A one-hour's journey is really not that long these days. Living in KL can be worse on rainy days.

I wonder where you new home in JB. I was in Kebun Teh, a nice quiet residential area then. I was fortunate to have the customs chief as my golfing friend and mrembers of his staff knew that. I could be smuggling gold bars for all they knew. But one day he did a 'dirty' trick on me. He asked his staff to give me a 100% check on my car. You know whst that means - a thourogh check, inside the boot and bbonnet and all! The two men assigned were half laughing because they knew I would have nothing.

And where is your work-place in the city?