my journeys on the mrt.

My MRT rides these days have been far from mundane. In fact, it is something I look forward to more now, unless there's an alternative way of getting home faster, like hitching a ride from my sister who's also on the way home and taking the (ahem) driver's seat.

It's not surprising to encounter many interesting situations along the train journey. Really. You can witness the moralistic side of Singaporeans, where they willingly give up seats 'people who needs the seats more than them'. I'm in! You can also observe those pretentious Singaporeans, who probably thinks they have a more urgent cause to occupy the seats than those on walking sticks and/or 50-inch waistlines. This, I'm out, for sure.

Sometimes, very amusingly, you come across a hybrid of both situations, like I just did, hours ago. Listen to this: on my train journey from Queenstown to Tampines station, the first stop at which many people alight is Outram, for that's the interchange for north east line. As 3 consecutive seats beside me was de-occupied by passengers alighting, and as there wasn't anyone standing in the vicinity to want to occupy those seats, it was rather predictable that it would be occupied by people boarding the train at Outram. But what wasn't that predictable was the sheer kiasuism to chase for these seats by those tai-tais or aunties, as though the seats would vanish if they were split second late. Really, they were literally running for the seats, as if their b*tts were on fire. This promptly reminded me of what Neil Humphreys sarcastically wrote in his book 'Scribbles from the same island', that if you include these tai-tais in the Olympic 100m finals alongside the world's bests, and after 50m or so, prop up the mrt seats at the finishing line, they'd probably take a clean sweep at the medals. This is not the end of the story.

Apparently, after all the seats were taken up by these tai-tais, there was this particular tai-tai who was pathetically left standing. No, I did not even think of giving up the seat for her. What happened next is the amusing part. One of those 'potential Olympic 100m gold medalist' actually stood up after sitting for barely 3 seconds, and offered the seat for the poor tai-tai. Imagine the senario: the one left standing felt embarrassed of having someone give up seat for her, so did the one who gave up the seat, so both ended up offering each other the 'golden' seat. 'You want to sit? Na *points at the seat* go ahead.' 'No lah, it's okay it's okay, you sit *points at the seat*.' And these went on for the next 5 minutes.

So you see, this is the kind of amusing things I get to see on my MRT rides.

In my recent train rides, I would pop in my ear piece from my dear sony ericsson, listen to my mix of favourite songs, at the same time (attempt to) read a book along the way. It makes the 36 minute train ride seem shorter, as I grow engrossed in the contents of the book. In fact, I think I'm still engrossed in the book that I'm currently reading, Neil Humphrey's 'Scribbles from the same island', which talks about his views on aspects of a Singaporean's life which most people take for granted, and he does it in a humourous and sarcastic way. In fact, I think I'm subconsciously adopting his kind of tone in this blog entry. I would not exactly brand it as a good read, but it is beneficial for one who needs some humour in his/her life.

Well, that's basically my train journeys for you.

What about yours?