the long talk home

it was an interesting ride home on the train this evening. despite the fact that i was tired beyond understanding, and it felt like it took hours for the train to reach my stop...it was quite funny.

the trains were as usual, courtesy of cityrail nsw, running around half an hour behind time. getting onto a train where little school kids' faces are smushed against the carriage door windows, the businessmen clutch their suitcases for dear life and old ladies try desperately not to fall over when the train jerks to a stop and put out someone's eye with their knitting needles, is not exactly the most comfortable of experiences. add to that the sweat-smell of the tall guy next to me, the odor of cigarettes and a suffocating stale sort of perfume coming from the fashionable new cardigan of a middle-aged working woman. not fun.

however, this evening, as some evenings turn out, there was a guy who rode the train with us and decided it was the perfect place to either a) pick up or b) make new friends. i'm not sure which one he was really after but i'm sure the women that were unfortunately squished next to him had much of a choice. he was a relatively short man, balding, a pensioner [though i'm sure he wasn't older than 60], wore a purple scarf, adidas trackies and blue sunglasses (it was raining). this guy decided to announce to the carriage that he was on his way to see his therapist...and the snickers from some of the commuters revealed the common assumption that he was pretty much nuts.

anyway, he started to talk about how bad the rail system is in sydney, no less, new south wales and then decided to compare our system to that of queensland, melbourne.. and then the world. no country remained un-praised: france, germany, spain, japan...you name it, he'd been there. and of course, he'd tested their transport systems thoroughly.

one lady next to me turned around and laughed saying: ' he's probably pissed'
strange choice of vocab from such a normal-looking, middle-aged business woman.

the guy went on to claim he knew 5 foreign languages: german, french, spanish, something else and i think he even said swiss. is there actually a swiss language? i thought switzerland had 2 languages: german and french. hmmm...not looking good for his statements about being a musician and a writer and travelling the world over... 16 times the whole way around i think he said...

from this loud and rather inescapable episode i started to think, what a perfect place for someone to really get up on their soapbox and preach it...i mean, these people can't move, they can barely breathe let alone whip out their mobile phone to answer it...anyone could start talking in a relatively loud voice about...well, anything. the weather, the current political crises, philosophy, racism, psychology...and the poor passengers that are stuck there with this obtrusive person can do nothing, but listen...or tune out to their own thoughts, but it's hard not to listen to someone else talking when you're too tired to even think for yourself. the only people that can escape are the teens who can pop their mp3 player headphones in and voila! you're in a new world.

my mp3 player's broken...thank the Lord for general etiquette and low-self esteem...