Bus riders who piss me off

Today, my girlfriend took the afternoon off to take a stroll, and we ended up walking all the way from HKU to Hong Kong Park in Admiralty. When took the double-decker 5B bus back to Kennedy Town, we decided to sit upstairs. When we got to the upper deck, we noticed that every single pair of seats, of which there were 30, was occupied. Not fully occupied, but each pair of seats was occupied by only one person.

What could my girlfriend and I do? We wanted to sit together, but rather than sit cheek-to-cheek, we ended up sitting across the aisle from each other. As we scanned the upper deck for an unoccupied pair of seats, not a single person offered to sit with someone else so that my girlfriend and I could sit together. This reminds me of a joke how Singaporeans who ride the MRT: whenever a pregnant lady enters the train, everybody who has a seat seems to suddenly fall asleep.

This also reminded me of riding buses in Beijing. Every time someone sat down in an unoccupied pair of seats, he or she would sit in the aisle seat, even if they are travelling for considerable distances. Not only would they occupy the aisle seat, but they would make absolutely no effort to stand up to let me sit in the window seat. About 5% of the time, people would move into the window seat, but the other 95% of the time, they simply shift their legs into the aisle to let me get to the window seat.

This, of course, angered me. If the rider wasn't an elderly person, I'd make sure that my filthy and usually full (and sometimes sharp) backpack would hit them in the face as I tried to get to my window seat. I'd put on a show and make sure they knew how difficult they were making it for me, a person with considerable bulk, and who usually carried a lot of things, to sit down. If you were carrying a backpack full of things, plus maybe even a bag of groceries or two, wouldn't you be annoyed to have to push your way through someone just to sit down? Anyway, for the few foolish people who dared to put on an annoyed face, I usually put on an annoyed PLUS an angry face. The only time this sort of incident came close to escalating to any sort of conflict was when I did this to some really tall guy, who tried to stare me down for 5 seconds, then backed down, then tried to stare me down for another 5 seconds. Well, I can tell you that when I have my angry stare, my usual 220 lbs looks more like 330 lbs, I look fully capable violence, and I give them a sense that I'd rather be beaten to death than to back down.

I won't comment on how often this happens in Canada because I stopped taking public transportation in Vancouver in 1997. I also can't seem to remember if this happened in Taipei or not. I don't even remember what Taipei's buses are like, except that they're only slightly nicer than buses in Beijing, and they pale in comparison to Singapore and Hong Kong's buses.

Oh, don't even get me started on young people who don't give up their seats to the elderly and to pregnant women..