A quick shop around parkway for Christmas presents (yes, on Boxing day) and dinner, I thought I'd be home early for once.
So Abs and I braved the gale and menacing dark clouds and made our way to the bus stop. ca. 7.45pm, a paranoid bus-ride later, I was dropped on the side of the shelter, shoved aside by an unfriendly man. He hugged his newspaper to his chest and contemplated the shower that in 30 seconds had overwhelmed the whole of East Coast Road. Overcast with dark clouds one minute, and one half later, a thick shower that made my home 200m away disappear.
He paced the shelter, cast me a cursory glance or two, and waited with me.
It was probably about 10 minutes, and the shower had been pouring down mercilessly without letting up. As I stared up at the street lamp, watching the water droplets in all their glory, my mouth slightly agape, I must have looked a mite retarded, and traffic cleared for a half minute, and he opened his newspaper and sprinted across the road.
There. I was quite alone. It was not until 10 freezing cold minutes later, that a rather forlorn 853 pulled up at the shelter and shed a short, stout auntie.
She studied the shelter, glancing at me. I was probably standing at the remaining dry (as dry as it got) spot in the shelter. I wouldn't have given it up, bunnies are not accustomed to be subject to cold blasts of rain. I'd realised the driest spot in the shelter, behind the only intact glass panel (a bus stop outside Chai Chee Sec would never see 3 fully intact glass panels for more than a week after their construction), was precisely where a large, robust, green rubbish bin was sitting. Very comfortably, it seemed. Who in their right mind would have thought that the middle of a bus stop was an appropriate place for a large bin? Well, fuck me.
I gave it my meanest glare, and words scrawled in liquid paper next to the ash tray glared back a large, legible "suck cock". Well, that's very nice.
Dear auntie rummaged noisily through her Cold Storage plastic bag and produced a small yellow Old Chang Kee bag, ruffled it up, and placed it upon her hair. It fit perfectly, not unlike a tight shower cap, though it might have come across as queer in other less suburban parts of the island.
Half an hour later, the shower let up just a bit, and I ran.
PMS revisited
Last night, Christmas night, I came this close to saying,
"Well f*** Christmas, and f*** you too!!"
The week leading up to Christmas had been a hard one. A few visits to the lab were necessary, for experiments had to continue. Frequent driving lessons were taking up most of my schedule, and sporadic attacks of paranoia plagued me.
I was paranoid of my father missing his flight, getting lost in Madras and being scavenged upon by cows. I was paranoid of missing my period. I was so convinced at one point, that some people were delibrately out to sabotage my grades. I was also, so convinced, on Christmas eve, that the whole Christmas weekend was going to suck, for reasons that remain unknown even now.
I hear that anxiety is a symptom of PMS. But that's as close as I could find to paranoia.
What scared me was how vulgar I felt, and how real it all seemed. Looking back, I realise it can't be possible, I must have gone all nutty or something. It can't be stress can it? It is after all, the holidays, and if there's something wrong it has to be the loony-bin for me or I'd get worse every month.
I'd like to blame PMS again, but that excuse is too old.
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