Woes of a MRT commuter

I’ve not been coming into the office promptly for a long long time. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I made it to office before 9am…probably…at least…three years ago? Perhaps even more. But today, I made it to work by 8.55am. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap! That’s me giving myself a round of applause…hehehe! But this post is not about my feat. Today, I need and want to rant about some inconsiderate commuters I have to tolerate on the trains every day. I had the misfortune of meeting another one of them today.

During the rush hour this morning, a young guy standing about a metre away from me was blasting his music through his iPod. I could practically hear what song was being played so I turned to stare at him hoping that he will turn down the volume but he didn’t seem to notice. I told myself, “Its ok, just focus on reading the newspapers” and that’s what I did. Halfway through the journey, I managed to get a seat. I sat down and continued reading my papers. Guess what? After a couple of stops, that guy also sat down and right next to me! His right ear was only centimetres away from my left and I could hear with clarity 曹格 crooning away “…紧紧相依的心如何say goodbye…” No lor, I just wasn’t in the mood to listen to Gary’s 背叛. Firstly, I think 蕭敬騰 and 楊宗緯 can sing that song better than Gary and secondly, if you don’t mind, I prefer to read my papers in some peace and quiet in the morning. I turned twice to stare at him real hard. He noticed but simply didn’t find anything amiss. I was on the verge of asking him if he had a hearing disorder but my horoscope says I should keep a low profile and avoid all confrontations this year so I just kept my mouth shut and suffered for the rest of my journey. In the end, to escape the jarring sound on my left ear, I had to resort to bending forward to read my papers >_<.

Another type of commuters I dislike meeting on the trains are men who stuff all kinds of bulky and hard objects in their pants pockets. If you’re a regular train commuter, I am sure you must have experienced been poked by these objects when you sat next to them. It is bad enough that women have to endure with men who need to occupy a bigger space on the seats due their bigger physique, not to mention those men who like to sit with their legs wide apart. But since that is due to the construction of their anatomy, I can forgive them for that. Frankly, I can tolerate it if it is something beyond their control. But guys, if you’re reading this, can you just kindly remove those mobilephones, PSPs, DSlites, MP3s and PDAs from your pants pockets before you sit down? Please spare a thought for the person sitting next to you because it is definitely not comfortable to have a hard object jabbing at your thigh when you commute.

The third kind of commuters I want to rant about today are the mobilephone loudhailers. I know that having a mobilephone is a necessity in today’s world and practically everyone who works owns a phone. But why is it that some people need to talk at the top of their voice on the phone and share their telephone conversation with the entire carriage of commuters? Almost every day I have to endure with Chinese nationals having a long loud chat with their native friends in a dialect I do not recognise, highly motivated insurance agents trying to sell a policy to a potential customer over the phone while they make their way to meet another customer, aunties instructing their maids to carry out some household chores they forgot to assign before they left the house, businessmen hounding clients for payments or dodging payments to suppliers, throngs of people telling their friends they are only two or three stops away from their meeting point, etc etc.

Do I sound like a very fussy and intolerant commuter? No lah. I just need to get this off my chest. Hehehe…one of the traits of an extrovert according to the MBTI test. Will blog about this psychometric test if I have the time.