I've been awake

For the past 19 hours. Make that 20.

"I'm preparing myself for the future as an auditor."
"I'm being hardworking to finish up the backlog of submissions due."
"Reliance on caffeine has been the worst decision ever."
"Going to bed makes me think of how much I've left undone."
"It's another feeble attempt to avoid trashing out certain life issues."

I must write about the interesting day. There was this woman who was on the same train carriage as me. A misfortune to all the other passengers within her 20m radius. My eyes were shut and I was trying to get some sleep before I reach my destination. I heard her entire phone conversation while the train was passing Outram Park station, or rather, the whole world heard it because it was on loudspeaker. Her 'walkie-talkie' blasted all the way till Redhill with life-saving breaks in between when her line got cut off in the tunnel. The moment the train got out of the tunnel, all our nightmares started.

This same person, I presume, kept calling her and she kept talking loudly over the phone before hanging up abruptly. So the entire process repeated itself from Redhill to Buona Vista to Clementi to Dover to Jurong East to Boon Lay. And I'm so serious, I can name all the stations because everytime her handphone is set to loudspeaker mode I hear the announcement of the next train station concurrently. And I haven't even got to the content of the conversation.

(at one point in time when she finally had some sense not to turn on the loudspeaker)
"You go first no need wait for me."
"I only at Clementi now, you go first."
"NO, I say you go first."
"NO, GO FIRST."
"GO FIRST."
"No, I say you go first ah don't wait."
"Go first! You like that I don't talk to you already ah."
"GO FIRST, DON'T LIKE THAT."
"I say you go first. GO FIRST."
"You don't make me angry ah! I say go first."
"I SAY YOU GO FIRST!"

I counted the number of times such senseless sentences were repeated okay. THIRTEEN TIMES. And that was excluding a few before that I missed before I decided to start counting. It's seriously crap, I had so much trouble trying to recall the above conversation you know, and after much effort I only managed to come up with like eleven sentences only????

I would have imagined myself going up to her saying "hey madam now you are the one making me very angry."

After that she would hang up, the person would call again and ask "Where are you now ah?"

I mean, you call in intervals of like 40 seconds? How fast can the train travel?Obviously after Clementi she'll be heading to Jurong East. Don't have to call at every single station right????!!!!!! Then if you decide to pick up the call, can don't force the whole world to hear that meaningless conversation?

My greatest nightmare train ride. And thanks, I didn't get to sleep a wink. Not even the earphones helped.

At that time I suddenly appreciated the fact that the Japanese had a "silence is golden" rule in their subways. All phones in silent mode, no one spoke loudly nor behaved crudely in the trains. Maybe we should get bubble gums back and ban something like "coercing people to hear your phone conversations".