Mondays, that special time of the week when all that is bad comes together to upset the perfect balance reached during the week end.
Monday mornings, full of lazy spite and unwilling necessities.
Mondays... in my case: waking up with a fever, waiting for the bus in the rain, having Hanoi's traffic multiply times a billion, taking an hour and a half to get to work, getting robbed on the bus, and it is still only 9:30 am - plenty of time for things to get worse.
Last night was hot, I mean, REALLY hot. I lay in bed, completely unable to fall asleep thanks for the lack of any sign of coolness in my room. I open the window, 'nice, some fresh air,' I think. 10 minutes later, thunderous clashes announce a quickly approaching rain storm. 5 minutes later, god is taking the longest and most powerful piss of his/her/it's life on Vietnam. I close the window so as to avoid the flooding of all my belongings. The heat returns.
6:30 approaches quickly, I wake up feeling disgusting. It is still hot, and I don't feel as well as I did the day before. I can tell that I have a slight fever, and I'm slow to wake. When I finally do wake up, I walk to the washrooms, but they are full of 17 year old Singaporeans who seem to like taking forever to primp their teenage faces. Thinking that I would play it smartly, I go to the washrooms upstairs, because they don't tend to occupy those ALL of the time. 'Yes, it's empty, a victory for me,' I tell myself as I hang my towel in the open washroom. As I reach down to turn the tap to have all of that beautiful water come rushing towards me, I am met by nothing by annoying dryness. There is no water. 'Fuck'.
20 minutes later I am out of the shower downstairs. I dress and make my way to the bus stop. The bus takes longer than usual, but I am happy to see that there is a free seat. I gingerly sit my butt down and count the number of cyclists my psychopathic bus driver nearly flattens.
The rain slows as my bus arrives at my transfer point. Today is the first day that there are no other buses at the stop, so I wait for 10 minutes until the number 32 arrives. Me, and 50 Vietnamese rush for the doors as it pulls up, as if the bus only had a limited number of seats, or something crazy like that. I don't get a seat, 'fuck, again,' I think as I stand by the side of the window along with the rest of the poor seat-less souls.
As we slowly begin to leave the country-side, I notice the unusual amount of traffic which occupies the streets of the incoming city. My bus ride, which takes me about 45 minutes (on a good day), ends up taking one hour and thirty minutes. To make it worse, I had the worst money collector ever.
What is the money collector? I'm glad you asked.
The money collector is the bus driver's partner. He works for the bus company, and his job is to go around collecting money from the passengers. He walks up and down the bus checking bus passes and handing out tickets, leaving the bus driver to drive freely without the hassle of keeping count of who paid and who didn't during the rush for seats.
These money collectors, or, MCs, are usually a quiet bunch. Today, however, my bus had the anti-christ of MCs. He went around pushing people into place, yelling at them to take out their cards, and generally acting like a big'ol asshole.
Okay, back to my story.
So, as my legs begin to feel the cramped ache of standing like a sardine in an over-sized tin can on wheels, I am relieved to see my usual landmark which tells me that my stop is next. It is a big, grey-ish temple which is oddly located next to my route. 'About 4 more minutes, and I'm outta here,' I think in celebration. The damp stink caused by the other human beings had begun to take a toll on my patience, and my slight-fever wasn't getting any better, so I actually had something good too look forward to: not being on the bus in ridiculous traffic.
4 minutes quickly turned into 15 minutes, as the traffic came to a complete stop not 200 meters away from where I would get off. 'FUCK!'
Finally, we near my stop. I push past the 300 billion people on my bus to get close to the exit. You see, if I don't do this, I will be trapped on the bus. Not only that, but if I'm not quick, the bus doors will close on me, and I might have a foot or an arm stuck between two closed bus doors... and even though traffic wasn't moving fast, I didn't feel like holding hands with the bus for another 2 kilometers. AND, the bus never actually 'stops', it comes to a slow roll, which forces you to make a leap of faith off of and onto the bus whenever boarding or disembarking. Fun stuff.
JUMP, and I'm off. 'Yes!' I allow myself a moment to enjoy my victory. I bend over to roll down my pants, and realize something is wrong. Usually, when I bend down, I can feel the mobile phone in my pocket pressing into my leg... but my phone isn't there. 'FUCK FUCK FUCK'. The quick realization that I had been robbed during the disembarkment procedure removed any sense of victory from me.
Before I can curse aloud for the world to hear, a motorbike zooms past me, nearly knocking me over. 'WTF, I need to get off the road,' I think, but I don't have any time to move before I notice that I am not in fact on the road. ZOOM, another fucking motorbike nearly turns me into a pancake. I look around and am amazed yet not entirely surprised to see that the innovative Hanoi-ians have transformed the side walk into a road for their scooters and motorbikes. This once safe sanctuary for the motorless individuals such as myself has turned into a quick path to salvation for every damn motorbike on the road. I have to stand aside while bikes drive by me like maniacs, nearly getting hit every 5 seconds by another impatient motorist. My 10 minute walk to work turns into 20 minutes of me playing the South East Asian version of Frogger.
I arrive at the front steps to my office, I go to clean my shoes on the rub and slip. I open the door, walk into the office, wet, and looking miserable, and my lovely coworkers greet me with smiles and broken English 'Goo Moaning's'. I tell them about my commute, my fever, and my stolen phone, and, with the infinite kindness which everyone in this office seems to possess, they make me feel much better.
Another co-worker, Son, arrives 30 minutes after me, soaking wet. He is nothing but smiles. It reminds me of how sometimes, life can suck, but what matters is how we perceive it. Sure, my morning sucked real bad, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let it dictate the rest of this god forsaken Monday.
:)
A smile is an inexpensive way to change your looks. ~Charles Gordy
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