For the last four years of my college life, I've had to spend a LOT of time just commuting to and fro, and I've always complained about the long tiring bus journeys. But here's a secret, they were actually a strange sort of time-out. From people, from studying, from work.
I began with actually carrying text books to study so I could make full use of my time. Wow. I've come a long way since then! Then came the music. But i wasn't too keen on, well,
(a) Handling the earphones and the mess involved.
(b) Hiding the discman in my bag so as to keep it away from evil eyes..
(c) ..while at the same time trying to set the perfect track playing.
So, as you can see, it became quite tiresome. Quite contrary to the purpose it was brought in for.
Then i graduated to carrying the fun books - you know, fiction, nonfiction, but fun! But I soon discovered that the rocking motion of any bus induces quick sleep in a person. So i gave in. I, proud bus traveller, slept. And was i Bowled Over! Even a five minute dozing off would make me feel like i've slept like an hour. I would feel refreshed. At times I'd wake up just wondering where i was. Of course there's a whole lot of danger involved here. Let me elaborate.
(I need to change my numbering scheme)
(i) In a bus, there are always theives. You must always be alert. And being asleep is quite the opposite of that condition.
(ii) You can miss your stop, and wake up completely unaware of where you are. To avoid this, you can [1] not sleep, [2] estimate approximate time of arrival and set an alarm, or [3] befriend the conductor, who will then dutifully awaken you from your snooze vacation!
And then, there's the pure joy of simply sitting there and looking out the window. Watching all kinds of people go about their daily work, families, people taking a break, tears on unknown faces, and smiles.. You can never get bored.
As a result, you can see that one could easily favour this form of transport as opposed to driving oneself, if not for the fact that you have absolutely no control over timings. But oh I'll miss it. Or maybe not.
