mrt

I've been rushing like a mad cow to Cityhall MRT station for the last train pretty regularly these days. Boring and mundane as it may sound, certain observations and events have made my insane rush interesting.

There is this one man who wears a khaki/dark green jacket matched with cargo pants, wears a cap, has his bag and a squashed 1.5L plastic bottle of water, sitting near the ticketing machines everynight. He will always be reading a book which I have yet identify due to my running/brisk walking at an incredible speed. Think last train, last chance. On the rare occasion, he'll be nodding off, asleep. I have never ceased to wonder everyday what he does for a living, what he was doing before sitting down there, and most of all, why he sits there everyday when the last train I'm running after is really the last train for the day. Now, everytime I run past him I just say a silent 'hi' to him. I imagine him to be a millionaire who just wants a taste of the life of a homeless man.

Just a couple of days ago, I witnessed a family drama in the train. An Indian family of three, along with a young Malay boy, made a run into the train right before the doors closed. When in the train, they were waving and mouthing "thanks" to one of the SMRT staff. All I heard them tell each other was "God is Great!" Being Miss Busybody, I could not help but stare at them constantly just so that no littlest detail would be left out for me to piece the picture. Here's the story.
Wife/Mother brought her 2 kids and a Malay boy out. As they were boarding the train, a Chinese guy was standing at the doorway talking to his friend, refusing to budge. The train door closed with the little Indian girl in the train and the mother, sister and Malay boy outside. Needless to say, panic set in and wife called husband down. They got help from the SMRT staff at the Cityhall Station Control and eventually got news that their little girl was at Bishan MRT Station. No wonder the mother and daughter were all teary and weepy. God is great huh.

Minutes ago, I was a tad early for my last train so I went to the ladies for a pee. While inside the cubicle, I heard the door open and someone entered. From the sound of the rapid clik-clakking of her heels, I could sense her urgency. I was right. The door of the next cubicle slammed shut and all I could hear next was a loud gush of a huge amount of piss, plus a soft moan of what seemed like relief. She must have been holding her bladder for like, 10 hours? Poor thing.

This was approximately 10 minutes ago. 2 minutes ago, while waiting for my train at the platform, this short and muscular guy walked towards the stone seats that I was sitting at and plopped a black plastic bag of something on one of it. That's normal you would say. But he proceeded to the doors and stood there, far far away from that black suspicious bag. With all the announcements and posters at the MRT stations regarding suspicious items, I could not help but wonder.. "Hmm.. this man is weird. Why did he leave his bag there? What's in it? Weird." He turned out to be exactly what I thought. Weird. Instead of igniting some bombs in that black suspicious bag, he started looking at his reflection on the glass doors and danced. Hiphop. He sang and danced as he listened to his discman/mp3player/walkman, and had moves which I thought resembles interaction with audiences. All these time without a care that I, or for that matter everyone else on the platform, was staring at him. All his hand-stretching moves, shuffling of feet MJ-style and pointing of fingers to his imaginary fans were... ermm... amazing. For a moment I thought I was obliged to like, clap and shout, "You've got the groove man!! Yeah!!" I decided against it lest I get mistaken for being his fan. Oh, did I mention that he was wearing a tight white T-shirt tucked into tight jeans with leather shoes? More rock than hiphop I thought. I keep getting a feeling I'll see him on the Singapore Idol program real soon...

*these were written when I was on the train, which explains for the weird timing like "minutes ago" and "10 minutes ago" and so on.