What a farcical evening

It was raining heavily this evening. When I left work, I had no idea how bad my evening was going to be. I arrived at Queen St Mall bus stop just before 5:40pm. Due to the heavy rain, there were major delays with the buses, so the bus I was waiting on, that was meant to come at 5:45pm, was majorly delayed. Fair enough, that can’t be helped. But everyone at the stop was kept waiting & waiting. By the time 6:20pm arrived, our bus still had not arrived! Then a few minutes later, I heard a splash & turned around. An Asian guy in wearing a white t-shirt had vomited. He was seated 20m away from where I was standing. His group of friends (all Asian) helped him clean up. One of them was a guy in an orange t-shirt (read further down for his contribution to the evening). The vomiting incident hardly improved my mood (nothing against the guy, though). Fortunately, the vents at the Queen St Mall bus stop prevented me from smelling the stench.

Then a while later (around 6:35pm), our bus finally arrived. Sooooo late!! Once it filled up, the bus took off & ventured along Coronation Drive, but then the bus driver decided to stop at the stop across the Regatta. Quite why the driver stopped mid-way, I don’t know. But all passengers had to vacate & board another bus that was already at the Regatta stop. Oh, well, let’s just get on with it. So once everyone boarded the second bus, it was hoped that we could get home sooner rather than later without further dramas.

But guess what? There was more drama. The bus had only travelled no more than 100m away from the Regatta stop when a couple of people from the back yelled: “Someone threw up” & “Yuck! Someone at the back spewed”. A few passengers at the back were covering their noses. Some left their seats & all the standing passengers had to push forward to make space. Fortunately, I was seated at the front – but the front was now overcrowded by people moving away from the vomit scene. I never saw the vomit, & just as well. Nevertheless, I quickly took out my white flower liniment & placed it in front of my nose to prevent the vomit smell from reaching my nose. I looked around & saw Belinda Hong standing in the middle of the bus (& closer to the vomit than I was). Belle gave a sheepish smile & shrugged as if to say “what’s going on”. I nodded, then pulled a long face & shook my head as if to say “this is horrible”. I then motioned Belle to come closer to where I was seated, & Belle shrugged further as if to indicate she wasn’t able to – the bus was packed.

The bus was thus forced to stop at the stop outside a pub just across Toowong Village. Everyone got out quickly. Belle somehow disappeared, so I never got to talk to her about it. It turns out that the person who vomited on the bus was the orange-shirt guy from the Queen St Mall stop. So now, I had to wait for a third bus to get home. That duly arrived 10-15 minutes later, just past 7pm. Everyone boarded the bus, including the orange-shirt guy. Before the bus took off, one of the passengers, a rather feisty young lady, asked the bus driver to eject the orange-shirt guy as he had vomited on the previous bus (she obviously did not want a repeat performance). The driver duly obliged. Though he was polite to the guy, he was crankier to subsequent passengers coming on board as he was already 1-1.5 hours late due to bad weather. Finally, we got going. And finally, I managed to arrive at my stop & eventually home around 7:30pm.

Bad weather. People throwing up. Taking 3 buses to get me home on a route that would normally only need just 1 bus ride. Arriving home at 7:30pm when I would have done by 6:20pm. What a farcical evening! One that I hope would never be repeated ever again.