Wednesday 25 July 2007

Bus journey

I'm like, in that kind of mood... I keep blogging about gross stuff. No wonder I'm getting nightmares in my sleep. Here is another gross one.

I used to go on these really long bus rides before I had my driving licence. We lived so far away from the city, any journey to anywhere was long. I had to change 2 buses to get to school and later, to work. Only 3 buses plied our district. Along the way, the buses did an extra loop within an eerie little village along Muslim Cemetery Road.

Whenever I came home at night, there would be very few passengers in the bus. I would get so spooked out as the bus rattled through the dimly-lit roads of the little Malay kampung (village). It was like a scene out of a horror movie. If you looked out of the windows (the old buses had sliding windows which were usually opened to allow air in) into the distance, you would see nothing except total darkness, and the soft flicker of lights from the wooden houses and the silhouettes of tombstones in their backyards. I could never fathom why anyone would build their houses right next to the cemetery!

Mostly I would hope that the bus driver would avoid that stretch because nobody every got up or alighted in the spooky village! But the driver always did the loop, faithfully, without fail.

I was on the way home from school one day, as usual, seated happily near a window seat. The window was open and I was enjoying the breeze, feeling the wind in my face. Suddenly I was startled by the sound of a man clearing his throat. This fat, middle-aged man who sat 2 seats before me, stuck out his head and spat a huge blob of phlegm out of the window.

In the next second, the wind carried the blob back into the bus, right onto my sleeve! EWWW! It was so horrible! I almost gagged at the sight of a gooey mess on my school uniform. But being a meek teenager, I took out a piece of tissue and wiped the mess quietly without making a squeak. I wiped every single trace of moisture from my sleeve, feeling so digusted and sorry for myself.

Needless to say, I never enjoyed the breeze in my face anymore.

12 comments:

The Real Mother Hen said...

Ting, you must be in LUCK to get that :)

mooiness said...

After all that built-up about a spooky cemetery, the point of the post ended up being about flying snot. Hahaha. Good twist.

Blur Ting said...

Ha ha, it wasn't intentional. My mind was just flying all over the place when I was writing this.

MH - damn suay to kena snot! It's probably worse that bird shit! Then again, nothing beats stepping on dog shit.

Anonymous said...

darn blur...ur on a roll... how much grosser can blur get today????

Blur Ting said...

:-) I take that as a compliment JY!

robkroese said...

That is NASTY.

Blur Ting said...

I was reading this story again, slowly this time, pretending to be my reader. It started innocently enough, and then it became quite scary, just when you expect to see a ghostly face turn around and scare 'me', a blob landed on my sleeve.

Gee what a bummer! A real let-dwon for the readers.

I can't help giggling at the silliness of it all. Thanks again Mooiness, for making me relook at the story and keep myself amused on this boring afternoon!

Anonymous said...

I was once told this story by a guy who worked as a pilot. He got a job scattering someone's ashes over his home state. He took the urn up, reached the required altitude, opened the window and emptied it out.
Needless to say he got a face-full of Uncle Bob.

Blur Ting said...

Oh my goodness! Don't tell me he swallowed some of Uncle Bob!

Mike Minzes said...

Ewwweee!!!! Fat man phlegm!!

Great story!!

I would love to hear more about you growing up. Those stories fascinate me.

Darren G. Miller said...

When I was in my third year as a band director, we were traveling home from a competition on a school bus late at night with most of the windows down.

One of my students became ill and decided he would vomit out the window. The girl about 3 seats back was asleep... next to the window... with her mouth wide open. Yep, she got a mouthful of his vomit. I had to stop the bus and allow several students to be sick on the side of the road, instead of out the bus windows. It was a chain reaction. What a horrible ride home that was, since we still had an hour to travel after that through desolate countryside with no place to stop and let anybody clean up. What a smell.

Blur Ting said...

Thanks Mike. I've got some more coming up!

Wolfgang - Eww, that is soooo horrible! Poor girl! The smell of vomit is probably the worst and it really makes everyone else around sick in the stomach.

Gee, come to think of it, having phlegm blown my way is nothing compared to vomit. And you had to endure a busload of kids who smelled of vomit!! Jeez

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