My public transport journey…

AM

• Usually begins by missing the green man at the traffic lights and waiting a whole cycle before I am able to cross.
• Moves on to trying to buy a “travel ten” from the newsagency, and perhaps the daily paper. From a man who appears to be blind and doesn’t see me standing right in front of him dangling the paper and a $10.00 note. He could also try smiling once in a while so he seems more like a human being and less like a terracotta warrior.
• Continues with me standing at the bus stop, either being sprayed by a high pressure hose seeking to remove last nights vomit from the sidewalk, and/or being harassed by the possible owner of said vomit as he looms in front of me and try’s to crack on to me. Me responding to his dribble by saying, “I do not want to talk to you” Sounds cruel I know, but you have to cut him off at the pass because if you smile politely he may follow you to work.
• Then I get on the bus and stand like a sardine, pressed up against a rather unattractive male who attempts to look down my top, or read the newspaper over my shoulder. If I am lucky enough to get a seat it will be next to a high school student yelling at her girlfriend down the phone, “Oh my God, did you see what Chantal was wearing yesterday? Oh my god, we so can’t talk to her anymore.” (Please tell me that I didn’t sound like that in high school!)
• Another passenger yelling at the bus driver, for no reason other than they haven’t had their morning fix of coffee yet, and the bus driver didn’t think to read there mind and stop when they didn’t physically push the stop button.
• I then depart bus A and head for bus B, which I squeeze onto amongst throngs of uni students. Though this trip is getting easier the further into the semester they get, and realise that they don’t want to go to uni anymore, or don’t want to sit in that lecture. Yay for me!
• Get off the bus and grab a coffee before getting to the office and scrubbing the public transport germs off my hands. “Aaah, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off!” (aka Eliot from Scrubs style)

PM
Usually much of the same, yet in reverse, but sometimes deviates slightly to involve the following:

• Bus driver not letting me and a 75 year old man on the bus because he has decided that he doesn’t want a full load, and also can’t be bothered opening the front door for us, only the back one to let people off. (this happened today)
• Large man with no elastic in his tracky dacks, singing on to his very loud portable radio (think he may have had a few screws loose if you know what I mean?) poor guy I felt sad for him, radio is probably his only friend. I stopped feeling sorry for him when he exposed his large butt to me as he alighted from the bus, and I “Vomited in my mouth a little.” (aka Dr Evil style)
• Speaking of vomit; realise I am beginning to feel a little car sick on the bus, and can’t figure out why, realise that a previous passenger has left a little vomit present at the back of the bus that has not yet been cleaned, stench is nauseating. Perhaps it was the same guy from the morning.

Luckily you do find enough nice bus drivers, passengers and non-butt exposing people on the public transport system that keep you from stopping taking the bus.

For all the smokers out there...

For all the smokers out there, this site is worth a look. The Art of Quitting

Long ago I was a little bit of a smoker, what I mean by that is that I was in a foreign country and I smoked whilst I was there, in café’s, on the train, in super markets, in the snow, whilst drinking coffee in Amsterdam. It was all very romantic, but in the end I came home, and I decided to stop. I haven’t smoked in ages, years now and I will never smoke again, it was a romance for a while, but it wasn’t meant to last. Also how romantic is it to wake up one day and have self inflicted lung cancer.

God, He/She

Yesterday, I met with my God mother in the city for a catch up, I had not seen her in about 2 years so it was nice to have a bit of a chat and catch up on what both of us had been doing. She has always taken her position as my spiritual guide and support very seriously, and always asks me how my faith is doing. Well, well, well, that is an interesting question as I recently got married in a garden by a celebrant, with no mention of religion what so ever. So obviously I have not turned out the perfect Roman Catholic that perhaps my parents originally intended. Not that my parents are ridiculously active in the Roman Catholic Church, my mother definitely isn’t and my Dad is more of a fan of the Anglicans.

She is really a lovely woman, my momentary visits from her over the years have always been enjoyable, and I know that despite the fact that we haven’t spent heaps of time together throughout my life, that she loves me. I know that she tries to reserve judgement on me not being an active Christian, and perhaps the reality that I don’t even know that I believe in organised religion. I think I do however deep down inside believe in God, or whatever he/she is, and whatever he/she is supposed to do or mean to our human existence. I don’t believe that he/she created the world though. All that creation in seven days stuff has always seemed a bit to unrealistic to me, even when I was young and impressionable. The thing is, I still celebrate Christmas and Easter, god knows why (pardon the pun) as I don’t believe in Christ/Jesus. Well maybe there was a guy who was a do-gooder who was born and dedicated his life to helping the sick and the poor, like Mother Teresa, though I have a feeling being a nun she was inspired by this guy.

See, the whole concept of faith and belief seems to be so important to us humans, like believing in ourselves, and each other is not enough. That thinking that we can be in charge of our own destiny is not good enough, and dealing with the consequences of our own actions without passing blame to a cause is not possible. This is why I have such a hard time thinking/talking about religion, because it seems to me that people heavily/partially involved in religion seem to be incapable of shaping their own destiny, making decisions on their own, or capable of reigning themselves in when they misbehave, always asking their respective God/s for forgiveness instead of asking for it from the people they have hurt or even from themselves.

I think that young people (well I suppose I can only speak for myself here) are totally terrified by organised religion. After all, what do we see all the time around us? People committing mass atrocities against other people and doing it in the name of their God and religion. Whoever God is I am sure that he/she would not be happy with people enforcing their ideals through violence onto others, unless of course he/she is a nasty b*astard, who knows? So many wars, killing sprees, cultural take-overs, deprivation of civil rights take place everyday in the name of religion, and churches wonder why people are so opposed to religion these days? Just look at the entire of human history, yesterday, today and what horrible things people will do tomorrow in the name of religion.

I have heard many people tell me that Christianity in particular teaches people morals and values, but I don’t know whether that is necessarily true, I think that you learn these things from the people that surround you, and the people who love you, like parents, grandparents, extended family, friends, sisters, brothers, and partners. I have learnt more about life, love, care and support from my family than any church could have taught me. So I suppose I do believe in a sort of religion…the religion of family and friends, and the richness of love and humour that these special people bring to my life.

After my coffee date with my godmother I went to the Art gallery and then wandered back through a park towards home. Some gothy teenage boys were hanging under a huge fig tree in the park, and they yelled at me “Merry Christmas” then following that “I hate Christ”. I didn’t really feel anything after I heard that, no need to defend this Christ, whoever he was. How do we know he even existed anyway, but through stories that were written in a book by a collection of human beings. This is all we know of any God, through collections of historical material, all created by men and women. So how do we know it was true at all? Can science tell us? Can the believers convince us? Maybe it’s all to do with the human need to have faith in something, anything, a being that oversees and protects, and an institution that delivers the so called message from that being to the lowly parishioner. I wonder what would happen if we stopped believing in churches, religion, in a god, and started believing in ourselves, and our fellow man?

Well, for what it’s worth, Merry Christmas. Even if your not a believer, like me, perhaps we can just set this time of year aside for quality time with the ones we love.

A Hug

When I watched this I got tingles all over. If only we would all open ourselves up to this idea a little more. In this crazy, uptight, scary world we all tend to walk past each other as if the other doesn't exist, or the other person is going to molest us. How did we all get so terrified of each other? I am a prime example of this, I walk down the street clutching my purse, glancing suspiciously at every passerby like they are all out to get me. I am sure they all stare back at me with the same suspicion, especially when I am wearing one of my crazy outfits.

I think that this was filmed in Sydney, so next time I go into the city I will have to look out for this guy, and give him a hug.

Check it out here.

Public Urination

I have started going for a walk everyday, for fitness and also to have a bit of a look around this new city. I have been choosing new directions each day and it’s been a great way to examine all of the areas that we do and do not want buy into in the future. On Monday I went for a great walk, lots of beautiful streets and houses, great weather. Which all ended with me walking down the road and some old guy showing me his winky, and then proceeding to do his business! Yeah! I am not lying, it was the most disturbing thing I have seen in a long time. You think he could have just found a bathroom rather than scarring the 100 or so people on the street.

I know it happened on Monday but it took me a couple of days to be even able to come to terms with the fact that I had seen something that looked like a prune, before I could then expose you to the horror.

Jaded

Today at 2pm in the afternoon a man walked down our street ranting and raving, yelling ‘f’ this and ‘f’ that, yelling at imaginary people, as you do. Me, being a killer for drama rushed out onto the balcony to check it out. I looked down, and he was in fact yelling at no one in particular, mainly just the people in his head. The interesting thing was that all of the surrounding people just walked right by him, as if nothing was happening, as if this kind of behaviour was something they see everyday. Heck, in this neighbourhood it is probably something you see everyday.

See this is how you can tell that I am not Sydney born and bred, because we would react to something like that in Perth, we would stare and then run, or cross the road at least. Here they just continue walking right past the guy, even bumping into him, and he doesn’t even notice, he just keeps on yelling at the people in his head.

It’s interesting what we get used to in our lives that we no longer even see anymore. I have been picking up on a lot of that kind of stuff lately, as I seem to notice everything here, cause it’s all new to me, whereas everyone already here has seen all this and worse. I suppose someday I will become as jaded as they are.