Bus Ride

My love-hate relationship with bus-rides is almost like riding a roller-coaster.

When I was a child, I used to like buses. The rides were smooth and I could nap throughout the ride so that I woke up refreshed. With the advent of MRT, I preferred MRT as they were cleaner, faster and more comfortable. At that time, many buses were still non-air-conditioned while train cabins were certainly air-conditioned. I used to shun away from buses as the journeys were long-winded. The increasing crowd heightened claustrophobia and created a rowdier ride. Bus drivers who were more reckless with intervals of fast driving accompanied by fast brakes exacerbated car-sickness. Thus, given a choice, I would opt for MRT over buses.

Recently, I become more acceptable to buses again as buses can offer me a faster and more convenient mode of transport than MRT. My residence is between 2 train stations. This means it is a long walk if I would to take train. Even if I take train, travelling to places in the East will take at least an hour. As some buses will only take 45 min (eg Bugis), I turn to the buses instead. With the new airconditioned buses and the wider seats, at least I felt less claustrophic in a bus. Some of the revamped routes are also less long-winded so it made me less susceptible to bus-sickness.

When I was going to Hui's house for ber baby's showers, I took a 30-minute bus from Plaza Singapura to her house. She was surprised when she heard I took the bus. She thought it was a pretty long journey while I took a 30-minute ride was quite manageable, frankly. When I overcome the jerkiness of certain rides, I am able to better appreciate the journey - the local sceneries that are often not available in the underground tunnels.

Hey, I start to enjoy taking buses. :-)