the bane that is boon (lay)

Coming not a moment too soon, yesterday was the last time, for a while, when i'll have to go on a long journey to the west, and certainly not on a daily basis for a longer while. The past seven or eight or so months of taking the mrt, more often than not during peak hours, has reminded me of the sheer inconsiderateness (this word exists?) of many S'poreans, and hence needless to say has been quite the test of my patience.

There have been the pesky youths who receive texts or calls but after taking out their phones hold them up for the whole train car's worth of passengers to hear their already loud and jarring ringtones at least until more than half the tone goes by before finally reading the text/answering the call. Along the same line, those who find it within the kindness of their hearts to compensate for the lack of tv mobile (the bane of my sbs bus-sitting existence) by broadcasting their own selection of choice (read: crap) music for the listening pleasure (read: where's my earplugs when i need them?) But worst of all, the motley crew of passengers awaiting entry into the train who either are color-blind (oops i'm an English teacher now so i must use the British spelling eh? - make that colour-blind) and hence cannot see the yellow arrow markings on the floor, or just don't care for anyone apart from themselves. Hence they form a crowd immediately outside the train door and hinder the way of those trying to exit, and even worse, attempt to push their way past the alighting people. Must have mentioned this before. Anyways, it annoys the hell out of me. This problem is especially prevalent in boonlay in the morning, which has let me to the uncorroborated conclusion that people in the far west are just about the S'poreans most lacking in social graces. One day (must have been a bad mood day) i lost enough of my patience to not only push back at one auntie who were trying to worm her way in to get a seat, but also scold her (in Chinese, no less) and then scarper before she could react. Not my finest hour, but well at that moment i felt that it was warranted.

Well hopefully those days at boonlay will soon be gone, now that the two new stations are opening and the western mob will be spread out to these stations as well. Inconsiderate S'poreans aside though, the trains are seriously getting too crowded for my liking. The other day, on the rare occasion that i headed to nie during an off-peak hour (3ish pm), the trains came at six-minute intervals, and needless to say, each train was packed to the brim. I've definitely taken the train before at those times, and the intervals were not so spread out as they were this time. What alarms me is that this nonsense is apparently the intention of SMRT, since Saw Phaik Hwa (the President and CEO) actually believes that packing as many people into the train is what our trains are important for. Something tells me she drives to work...