Friday, July 4, 2014

Daily entertainment

What is it about Queensland? Both days I've been here have been endlessly amusing. 

Yesterday I took a quick day-trip to Brisbane for some museum-hopping and churros - both terrific. On the way back, a man got on to my bus which was about halfway back from the train station. 'Do you mind if I sit here?' he said. Sure, fine. Nice of you to ask. I was engrossed in my book anyway. 

I don't mind chatty strangers but this one seemed very eager for conversation, which put a full stop to my reading. In the first two minutes it emerged that he knew Japanese (when a non-Asian male stranger drops knowledge of [random East Asian language] into a conversation with me it is occasionally a hallmark of yellow fever - DING, on went my warning light) and how long had I lived in Australia? When I said I was from Singapore - oh they don't speak Japanese there do they - and in town to do the marathon, we talked about running. 

- Which one are you doing? The 10k? The half? 
- No, the full marathon.
- How many km? 
- All 42. *polite smile* 
- How did you get into running? Stole a wallet? 
- Ha, no I'm not that fast. 

Now he could just have been chatty, but it's not really promising when someone asks you 'So if you're doing the marathon then I guess you won't be having a drink' in a tone that suggests they'd like to buy you one. 

Eventually I re-engineered the conversation over to Japanese. 
- Did you live in Japan? 
- Oh yes, five years. Teaching English and then running a small business.
- Wow, that's amazing. Teaching English? Oh, JET? My husband did that for a while. 

Finally we got off - at the same stop, which was a stop or two late for me because 1) it was dark and I couldn't see where I was, gee thanks winter and 2) frigbiscuit if I'm going to let a total stranger know where my stop is! I paused to get my bearings and he'd gone off in the opposite direction. 

And then I fast-walked all the way back to my apartment. 

1 comment:

  1. Heh, you were nicer than I would have been. I would have suddenly become very, very interested in my extremely important book!

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