vendredi, janvier 07, 2005 I wait at the bus stop, amid cricket chirps, and the faint buzzing of florescent lights, the white noise broken only by the occasional yellow-top taxi driving past. Ancient gears grumbling loudly as they trudge up yet another campus slope, the noise gradually fades and the crickets crescendo again.Another car streaks by. Everyone waiting with me at the bus stop has pulled out their mobile phones, and are busily messaging away, their faces lit eerily (white, blue, green) by their radioactive toys. (An idle thought crosses - before the mobile phone revolution, NTU must have been a very lonely place to be in.) A white mini van pulls up at the bus stop, almost full of people. (But then again, maybe it's even more lonely now with the phone. Kampong spirit lost and all that sort of thing.) A few fellow bus-waiters get into the van, and it drives off. Three souls left at the bus stop, two still messaging furiously. I wonder if they're messaging "A white bus just left my bus stop", "I'm hungry", or the ever perennial favourite waste of a 5 cents SMS - "where are you?" Telecommunication empires can be built on those three words. Another white van pulls up and stops. I stare at it and wonder why there are so many white mini vans around. Two students, just arriving at the bus stop (must have just finished their lesson), open the back door and hop in. The driver starts to pull away, then stops the van in front of me. (Wonder when the 179 will come?) He pulls down the window, leans over the passenger seat, and clandestinely whispers: "Go Boon Lay MRT, 70 cents, want or not?" [School #3: The (Ntu)ight Bus] |
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