'Ordeals'

I recognized the albino beggar from the pedestrian bridge leading to the ferry port. Even he was holding a placard picketing alongside a group of others; the picture taken and used in a recent article highlighting how disgruntled we, the daily bus commuters of the island were. I recall him sitting against the wall of the pedestrian bridge, with a laminated medical letter or documentation of sorts placed in front, an open food container for alms. He squints to read and holds his reading material close enough that it almost touches his face. When even a man so meek can be picketing--you know things are getting pretty bad here.

The busses seem to be traveling later than they're supposed to in the mornings and by the time it reaches my stop, the wreck is almost bursting with people, not unlike an overly ripe fruit--sullen that it's about to burst. When the bus driver deems the saturation of passengers to be of 'optimum capacity', I curse as it passes, blind towards my flagging, and then I'm waiting all over again: wondering if a mini-bus will be coming after, worrying about when the next one will be. Thinking of having roti canai if time and circumstance may permit me.

Things have never changed since the day I can remember working here in Penang. I keep thinking that perhaps the island is a refuge for old and dying busses; a retirement home for all of the busses from the peninsular in the most twisted sense possible (some say it's "cruel"). I've had to ride in a bus reeking of vomit once, initially fooling myself into thinking that it was somebody's BO or something. Based on how close (and uncomfortable) everyone was, I was nearly convinced that it was coming from a man half a head shorter beside me. We were close to the entrance but somehow the door was kept shut each time it left a stop. It was the hair gel he used. No, his cologne. Something. I recall being very fixated on my breathing until I had a window-seat to myself, somewhere in middle of the bus. I'm extremely thankful for I'm not the confrontational type, because as things turned out, the smell wasn't from that man. I'm even more thankful that I wasn't the bus driver, when I realized that the smell was vomit; it being right next to him, when he stopped us at Komtar, to wash it off.

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