The Daily Torture Called Commuting

Before you manage to get to work and try not to get yourself pissed off with the IT illeterate XXX Dept. Manager, you have to do something even worse. You gotta drag your sorry ass TO work.

Let’s face it. Not many of us are priviliged to work from home like those probloggers, dotcom entrepeneurs and unemployed graduates. You gotta get TO work, and get back FROM work for 5 or 6 days a week. Your wallet suffers, your patience diminishes and you hurt your bladder trying to stop yourself from emptying that filled-to-the-brim bladder while being stuck in an hour-long traffic jam. These stuff constitute the loss of money, energy and time, and it certainly needs a long, deep, boring and monotonous discussion on the topic.

INSTEAD, why don’t you just read up some online shit on “The Daily Torture Called Commuting”, such as the one below…

Going to work by car
I seriously have no fucking idea on what to say about going to work by car. I do though, have a story about the SpongeBob SquarePants toy hanging from my right rear door window. I would say Hi! to SpongeBob every morning, and he would give me that weird wide-mouthed smile as a reply. I’d be doing 80km/h turns at junctions and he’d be there trying to avoid flying off the the other end and hitting his ol’ pal, Patrick. And Mr. Nightmare hanging from my rear-view mirror would be giving me his most menacing look when I back out from my parking spot at home at 70 km/h. Mr. Nightmare gave me a reason. A reason to look at the rear-view mirror from time to time.

Then, our perfect world crashed when SpongeBob was actually thrown away from his usual hanging place and hit Patrick, with Mr. Nightmare laughing his dead ass off. The delicate balance was broken. I relegated Mr. Nightmare to the farther corner of the windshield, and there he hangs now.

All this has got nothing to do with the fact that if you drive your car to work, you are already fucked. Driving is fun, unless the asshole in front of you is talking in his cellphone. But you CAN avoid all that by not hitting the snooze button 27 times every morning, and ironing up clean shirts to wear the previous night, and do many other time-saving activities which are theoretically correct, but never, never realistic and are also absurd. My point here is, it’s already a gargantuan task to drive a manual transmission at 120 km/h while smoking a ciggie and singing along to your favourite headbanging music. And when you pricks start driving the speed limit and start braking your cars for trivial stuff like traffic lights and chickens which are crossing the road make me even more pissed off.

Going to work by bus.
It’s always the same. The same type of people always get on the bus whenever YOU are in the bus. They aren’t divided by race, religion, hairstyle, pubic hair density, third nipple existence, or any other of those stereotypes. They are all the same. They are DUMBSHITS.

Do you need to be a fucking rocket scientist to figure out that you should have the exact change when you get on the bus to buy your ticket? Why do they need to stand on the stairs and start digging through their purse like they’re gonna find an oil well there? And don’t they know that if you start walking towards the back of the bus without holding on to something while the bus starts to move, they will immediately start to become Superman or Superwoman and have the ability to fly towards the back of the bus AND hit some poor person standing there, which is usually me? Assholes.

Going to work by train.
Toooot-tooooooot!!!!!

Boy, does that sound entertain you or what? Hehehe… Doesn’t matter. Most trains in the Klang Valley aren’t called trains anymore. They’re called “Tren”. How much more plagiaristic can Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka get?!!! Not to mention about the whole choice of “tren”s available. There’s the KTM Kommuter, STAR-LRT, Monorail, ERL, RapidKL Rail, KL CAT, and many other abbreviations that mst of us don’t even know or understand.

The problem with this whole “going to work by train” thingy is that whole chivalry thing. I wait around for a seat to be free, and look for a woman to offer the seat to, but then this yucky smelly bum comes to park his dirty ass over there. This really sucks, but I continue to do this based on the popular thought that if you are kind to women, they’ll sleep with you.

The real problem with trains are actually on the tracks. Those dumb KTM Kommuter trains usually stop here and there in the middle of the tracks for minor reasons, such as an elephant crossing the tracks or to pickup a shitload of passengers from the Batu Tiga station. And there’s nothing you can do. This ain’t like that movie where Keanu Reeves makes the train go fast and crash somewhere in the middle of a busy street. KTM Kommuters are slooooowwwwww.

Going to work by boat/ferry.
This is what most of you Penangites will do. Take the ferry to work. There’s a lot of cool stuff to do in a ferry. You can have your breakfast, catch 40 winks, take a smoke up on the deck, feel the fresh sea breeze on your face, puke your breakfast out because of the gentle rocking motion, etc…
Consider this situation. One day you receive news that a bunch of dugongs have found their way to the body of water between Prai and the Island. You and your fellow ferry commuters stand on the Poop Deck (hehehe… Poop) watching those beautiful creatures swin around, free as birds in their natural habitat, their skin glistening in the morning sun. What will you commuters all do next? The answer is SOOOOOO obvious. Move the ferry full speed ahead, and grind the silly creatures into fish bait. C’mon! You’re gona be late for work, dammit!

Going to work by motorcycle.
It takes you far lesser petrol and time to get to work. But you bikers are in my way on the fuckin’ highway!

Going to work by bicycle.
I’m sure it’s very environmentally friendly and healthy and shit, but you cyclists are in my way!

Going to work by walking.
Sheeeesh. Haven’t seen that in a while. Move over! You pedestrians are in my way!

Going to work by carpool.
Isn’t your life bad enough already? I mean, you gotta see these people for 8 hours at work, and now you gotta spend another hour each way sitting in a cramped space with them? Do you really need to see them so early in the morning. If I carpool, I wouldn’t be able to smoke, eat the banana I brought from home, pick my nose, remove the crust from my eye, or talk to SpongeBob SquarePants. And someone in that carpool wouldn’t like me changing radio channels every 13 seconds. And I’m pretty sure that none of my colleagues who might carpool with me appreciate me headbanging to local Tamil music at volumes of 200 decibels.
Carpooling is bad. Not for the traffic and the environment. It’s bad for you.