I'm juggling between work, piano class, gym (ok I hardly ever bother with this one), social life, uni, readings (umm) and occasionally stuff with societies. I love being busy, but I really need some time to myself and some SLEEP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! I don't feel like myself any more. I'm not used to being on my toes constantly, and my typically meandering, whimscal thoughts are being uncomfortably tethered by practical things... it's all just a bit alien to me. It doesn't help that I kept running around during the winter break. I should have just stayed in my cave and chilled with SRK. In the middle of all this, the one thing keeping me sane is... HillsBus
person: Cherrywhaaat?
me: (sigh) It's near Castle Hill/Pennant Hills/Hornsby... like, Hills district?
person: oh... shiiiiiiiiiit, how long does that take you?
me: uh, up to two and a half hours door-to-door one way but it really depends on the traffic. Usually less
person: whoa that sucks! Why don't you move out?
It doesn't suck. I love public transport! It is the organising principle of my life, and I'd probably be a different person without it. It's a buffer zone that lets me catch up on sleep or finish off my readings. It's the time I just sit and meditate on life and people and... things. It's the time I amuse myslef by inventing colourful life stories of
I've met so many cool people on the bus, some of whom I now consider to be pretty close friends. Last week I struck up a conversation with a girl I very vaguely recognised as a friend of a friend I'd met years ago. She happened to be on the same bus on the way back too and we bantered like old friends about Margaret Thatcher and parents and hipsters. She was lovely, but I sadly can't remember her name. I also have public transport to thank for keeping up friendships with people I probably wouldn't otherwise go out of my way to contact. And how could I possibly neglect to mention the times I've fallen in lurve on the magical M2? The best part is that I can just sit and be besotted with a stanger at a distance, without him opening his mouth to shatter the illusion of his perfection.
Of course, you have your characters: drivers that cruise past you even though you're flapping like a bird to signal him and the next bus won't come for another hour, cranky co-passengers...
So I was on the 620 with Rai last week and our conversation, fascinating as always, ranged from student politics to flippant gossip to questioning the value in democracy (courtesy Tocqueville), and back to flippant gossip. At one point she said if she wants pads she can just say so to her father, and it's no big deal, seeing both her parents are doctors. I said I can't imagine doing that to my dad, ever. We wandered into the topic of Jane Caro on QandA, and that saying "vagina" should not be tabboo. An old man in front of us twitched violently, turned around and proceeded to berate us for five minutes: "the whole bus could hear you and you're making a fool of yourself" "have no respect" "talking non-stop" and... "highly inappropriate".
In my head I was responding: "Speak for yourself, you're the man directly in front of us, not the whole bus. I mean, duhhh you can hear us", "we're hardly being rude/vulgar", "since when was talking a crime", "OHHHHHHHH THE IRONY! LOL" but I'm a wuss so what passed through my lips was "I'm soooo sorry", multiple times even as he kept ranting. I need to grow a pair. Rai put him in his place with some hilarious staged whispers which made him visibly uncomfortable. Cherrybrook is such a conservative backwater, WHY do I live here?
All in all, it was quite funny.
HillsBus FTW
