risking my life in the photobooth

As I might have mentioned, I take the bus into town every morning in order to get to my math lecture. The drive is about ten minutes or so. There aren’t that many morning buses, so I have to leave the house at seven, even though my class doesn’t start until nine. I also think that there’s a rule around here that says the busses have to be at least ten minutes late. This rule applies with one exception: if you’re not on time, it’ll turn up five minutes early and leave before it’s supposed to, so that you miss it. When that happens, you stand there forever, confused, because unless you actually see the damn thing, there’s no telling whether it’s gone already or if it’s just late again.

It’s not as light out in the morning as it used to be, only a few weeks ago (although I’m still denying the existence of fall until I see snow), so the bus had the inside lights on. None of which worked properly. They all blinked in unison every five seconds. I counted. It was a bit like riding a photobooth.

Another thing about the morning bus, is that it always drives in the middle of the road. This has nothing to do with who is actually driving, because all the drivers do the very same thing. I guess that’s just another one of those weird rules.. It will (and does) stop absolutely anywhere. There aren’t all that many actual busstops, so you just pull it over where it’s most convenient to you. Even if that happens to be in the middle of an intersection, where you can’t see a damn thing in either direction. Not that there’s any traffic to speak of. This is Hellhole, after all. Of course, the moment someone decides to take a morning drive, we might all be screwed.

Sometimes, riding the bus into town is the most exciting point of my day.

Grand Island

Friday night, I went to a rock concert. It was held at a student night club in town. The club bears a striking resemblance to a set from some cheesy vampire movie. Your first impression when walking through the doors (after having your handbag checked for bottles and your arm stamped), is that someone must be desperate to save on electricity. The fact that the walls and the sparse furniture are also painted pitch black, adds to the whole vampire theme. The only thing that messes with the impression, are the large, red candles placed everywhere with the words “merry Christmas” on them. There’s always music blaring out of the speakers, loud enough to make you permanently deaf, and since the new smoking law came through and banned smoking in all public places, they’ve gone a bit nuts with the smoke machine. People need to be able to hide behind a cloud of smoke if they want to, law or no law, dammit.

The concert was scheduled to start at nine, but since no rock band ever goes on stage as scheduled, we turned up at around eleven. It was still to early, and we spent the next hour trying to have a conversation by finding clever ways to combine shouting, eye movements and gesturing. Thinking back, I’m not sure either of us had the same conversation.

It’s not as if Grand Island wasn’t worth waiting for though, and I crawled happily into bed around three am with a loud ringing in my ears.