Sunday, November 23, 2003
Why are humans such deluded beings? We always disregard the kind advice of others and only start regretting our folly when we crash into the proverbial wall and end up having to pick up the sorry pieces while the world laughs.
Asterisk Ampersand Hex. You might start thinking that this is the start of another bitter exclamation against the world, and frankly you wouldn't be wrong.
I should start at the beginning but then again that might be like sprinkling salt on a laceration so I'd better just get to some kind of point. You would think that I would be clever enough not to go around inviting trouble like some overenthusiastic tourism board but no, I have to throw stones at beehives and stand around grinning like some mad fool at the maddened swarms. I really have no right to complain about the toxicaemia now do I? Argh. And argh again. I am a fool. No right I had to take things for granted, to think that others will be nice to me just because I'm nice to them. Was it too much for me to even expect some courtesy? I suppose so, and thus I am greatly chastened by my folly. Frustrated I am. Very. Frustrated. I don't think I've been this frustrated in a long time. I'll need to go and cool off.
~~intermission~~
Okay, now I'm feeling a bit better. (Intriguing. I do feel better after writing that I'm feeling better. How fascinating.) You might be wondering what that was all about. Rest assured it has no relation to any of you reading this blog. Just some domestic problems =). Well, then. Back to other things on the blogfront.
Firstly, many thanks to asphodel and "guess who" (i know who asphodel is, but "guess who" is leaving me guessing. The ah-choo is a good hint though.) for the extremely heartwarming helloes on the chatterbox. I'm sure Chatterbox is very happy too. Aren't you, Chatterbox?
~~Chatterbox nods head vigorously~~ I'll try to do something about the font, though. Do you think enlarging the font will help. I realise the font is a tad tiny, but with all the writing I do the page already stretches beyond ethical limits. Maybe I'll make it a pale purple so it's less glaring. Hope it works.
Second, a few notes on the sorry state of public transport that I've been at the receiving end of. Then again there's nothing much I can say except to complain yet again that there were three consecutive 95s that I couldn't get on yesterday. Where do all those people come from, I wonder. The appallingly poor frequency of the 95 bus service, what with it being the only bus service plying the road between NUS and Buona Vista which is used in great popularity (the alternatives being 198 and the NUH shuttle service), is not likely to change even if I send a thousand letters of complaint to SBS Transit, so I shall not flog a dead horse here. 96 is in a far worse state, too. It's time SBS Transit took a long and hard look at the situation, but I suppose it's got its hands full with the death knells of the NEL right now.
CG's entries on
vicious cycles strikes something of a cord, and so I am tempted to most humbly give my penny's worth on cyclists in our fine city. I must disagree with the opinion that it is "all very romantic and exciting for those who walk, watching a pack of cyclists rumble down cobbled lanes". On the contrary, I only find it very romantic and exciting when I'm walking in east coast park and the cyclists are rumbling down the bicycle path while I'm on the pedestrian counterpart. I don't know what the situation is there, but I certainly can't stand cyclists on pedestrian walkways.
For one things, pedestrian walkways are for pedestrians to walk on. Why else do you think they are called pedestrian walkways? They certainly aren't called cyclist pedalways. So you can imagine why I take umbrage at the most nerve-wracking usurpation of the walkways by the growing population of cyclists. Granted, there are as yet few cyclists here, so the situation isn't quite so bad, but the occasional encounter with the typical local on a bicycle is indescribably frustrating.
Locals being locals, everyone thinks the world revolves around one person. Themselves. When they drive, the road belongs to them. When they walk, the pedestrian walkway belongs to them. So where does that leave cyclists? Cyclists own everything. Despite the flimsy nature of the mode of transport they utilise, cyclists, depending on where they cycle, think that the pedestrian walkways and roads all belong to them. If they were cartoons drawn by an artist with poor grammar, their thought bubbles would read
"All your roads and paths are belong to us!" And that is the problem.
It never fails to aggravate me when I'm peacefully strolling along a pedestrian walkway, talking to some friends, and I hear that irritating "blling-blling" that heralds the ominous approach of a bicycle. Then everyone will have to perform some complex orchestration of movements so that all of us shift to the same side of the path to let the happy cyclist pass. We continue walking, and but a few moments later, we hear another "blling-blling". It's like in those period dramas when the eunuchs and palace maids, by some miraculous prescience, leap out of the way of their enraged monarch or mother or concubine thereof and in one graceful pirrouette manage to flap their voluminous sleeves and prostrate themselves on the ground wherever they are without soiling their creaseless robes and give appropriate blessings to the longevity of the object of their reverent adolation as that same object stalks by. Well I'm certainly not as graceful or flawless or adept at multitasking, and that cyclist is no royalty. It is simply due to the fact that flesh is not impervious to a construct of metal pipes and rubber that we pedestrians are forced to give way to a bicycle, and we are certainly not going to happily humble ourselves, us being the typical locals that we are. I can't tell you how many times I've been tempted to shoot an elbow out as the cyclist speeds by, oblivious to the cold looks shot in his or her direction.
I can't even begin to tell you what I think of cyclists who do not install bells on their bicycles. You might as well be smoking while driving an oil tanker, for all the menace you're posing to yourself and society. I mean, if you can't bother to put a bell on your bicycle, you can jolly well stop and ask politely to be excused before I let you pass. Why do pedestrians like us have to keep glancing over our shoulders as we walk and leap off the path reflexively when someone shouts "Bicycle!", like we're doing something illegal, such as walking in the middle of the road?
And do I even need to start on the menace cyclists pose to themselves and others when they cycle on the road? Especially to buses and taxis, which need to stop along the road periodically.
I suppose the best solution is to have paths specially designated to cyclists, but that is hardly going to manifest itself magically over a few years. What with the rapidly increasing numbers of people taking to cycling as a means of transport, though, it would appear to be the solution that will make everyone happy, rather than having cyclists encroach into our roads and pedestrian walkways like some neoplasm. Otherwise, the only way everyone is going to enjoy cycling is if it is kept within the confines of our beautiful parks.
Avaris / 11/23/2003 09:28:00 PM
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