Dear Shopaholic,

It's the time for shopping. Under a week to Christmas and people are eager to do their Christmas shopping. I know that malls are generally a little crowded and there seems to be a need to get all shopping done in one go.

But honestly, if you're going to be on the bus, could you not have probably around a dozen large shopping bags with you? Especially when it's during the peak times for students to be on bus and especially not when you have your bags taking up the two seats next to you. Not only is it inconsiderate to be taking up the seats with your shopping, it's also not very environmentally friendly to have so many plastic bags. Ever heard of cloth bags? They'll hold up to more wear and tear than plastic ever will and it's more reuseable.

If you're going to do massive amounts of shopping, try being a little bit considerate to your fellow transit patrons. After all, you don't see anyone else on the bus taking up three whole seats - two of the seats with their shopping!

Cheers and happy holidays.

Dear the Woman on the Train,

I saw you on the train when I boarded after my chemistry exam on Wednesday (December 12th). You were already sitting down, and holding yourself with perfect posture. And honestly, I probably wouldn't have noticed a thing about you if you hadn't taken off your hat, ran a hand through your hair and then put your hat back on. At first, I thought it was a trick of light, I thought that I couldn't possibly see what I thought I was seeing.

But... It is kind of hard to hide two black eyes, bruised cheeks and a bruised chin with a hair and your hair. It is also difficult to hide the fact that there are literally two bruises in the shapes of handprints around your neck. Now, I'm sure that if you are reading this, you'd be explaining them away - but it's difficult to do so when I could see the individual fingers in the bruise.

Your cell phone rang and you pressed a button to talk and addressed the person as 'honey' and then started to quickly apologizing, begging the person on the other end to not be angry at you for being late going home as you had no control over the traffic on the roads. You told him that you were already on the train and you wouldn't be more than fifteen minutes to the station. But it seemed that it didn't matter as you suddenly stopped speaking mid-sentence and put your phone back into your pocket.

The woman next to you was also paying attention and asked you if you needed help, she had motioned to the bruising on your face and neck. You shook your head and said that it happened when you had fallen down the stairs by accident. Now, with that extent of bruising, it would seem as if you had thrown yourself down the stairs once or twice and then had the railing wrap itself around your neck a few times in order to get to get that kind of bruising.

I hope you get some help and that you leave the SOB that's been beating you up. Maybe you think that you can't get help, but you can go to a local hospital or police station - people will help you. All you need to do is walk out the door.

Dear Promising,

On Friday I was on the bus going from the university campus to the train station. Nothing really of interest happened until about four stops away from said train station where this man, who was standing, suddenly got down on one knee in front of the woman that he had been talking to. You pulled out one of those velvet ring boxes and opened it to reveal a ring. An engagement ring.

One might thing that it was the most unromantic place to propose to your girlfriend, but she seemed to not care so much about that as you were just there, on your knee, holdingout the ring and promising forever and happiness and till-death-do-us-part. Which is, all in all, a very cheery thought to have. You asked her to marry you and she had her hands covering her mouth in surprise and shock. Obviously that is one woman who didn't find the ring ahead of time underneath your pillow or she just didn't go around snooping. Which is commendable for her as well.

She looked so happoy as she had no words to express the way she was feeling at that very moment and she just nodded her head rapidly in a way of saying yes. When she finally did say something, she said 'yes!' and got up and hugged you before she held out her shaking hand towards you and you slipped on that gold and diamond engagement ring. Everyone clapped and you gave us all a sheepish kind of look and someone called out where the free booze was and everyone laughed.

Congratulations. When's the date?

Dear Begging Man,

It was snowing quite a bit today, at least it was for the area that I live in. You were walking around the outside of the train station as my friend and myself were making our way towards the entrance. You walked by and were shouting "Could you please give me a fucking penny?"

Now, I am not exactly versed in the proper etiquette of begging money off of people (read: pan handling) but I'm pretty sure that you would be much more successful with asking people for money if you were not shouting at them and if you were also more polite and not swearing at the same time.

For example, here are some things that you could say that would make your pan handling days more successful:

1. Could you please spare me some change?
2. If you could give me a penny, that would be much obliged.
3. It would mean the world to me if you were to spare me some change.

It doesn't make that much of an effort to come up with some more positive, more polite sounding ways of asking people for money. Plus, you also do not come off as incredibly rude and loud and frightening.

I hope you found somewhere warm for the night though, it's pretty cold outside.

Dear Little Old Lady,

This afternoon when I was very tired and I got onto the bus after the train to go home, you were in the line to get onto said bus in front of me with your friend. Both of you are probably considered to be senior citizens and you both had the paper bus passes to put into the ticket machine to verify that you had, in fact, paid for your transfers.

Your friend's ticket was fine, your's however had expired and you continued to walk towards a seat anyways. The bus driver called you back to tell you that your ticket was no good and that you would have to pay again, he had checked the time stamp on your transfer and it had expired over an hour ago. You just smiled and waved to him, shaking your head before you sat down.

A man in front of you was trying to explain it to you and you spoke to him as if he was an annoying pest. The bus driver told the man to explain to you that you needed to pay, but the man just shook his head and said that you were speaking Korean and that he spoke Chinese and therefore could not successfully communicate with you.

The woman sitting next to this man who had tried to explain that you needed to pay for another transfer went up to the bus driver with some change and offered to pay for your transfer for you and the bus driver thanked the woman, but declined her offer. According to him, and he had been driving that particular bus that starts off at the station at 3:20pm, that you had been coming onto the bus every single day for the last two weeks with an expired transfer.

He said very loudly that you were lucky this time and that the next time he was going to get nasty and call the transit cops on you.

You got off a few stops later and gave the bus driver this huge smile as if he had done some great favour for you and you were on your way with your half a dozen grocery bags.

If you had enough money to buy junk food (white translucent bags showed off your collection of cans of Pringles and plastic tubs of candy) you obviously could afford to pay less than $3 so you wouldn't have to walk the 4 blocks that you took the bus for.

Dear Mummy-Boy,

A while ago, I was on the bus whilst traveling from the campus to the train station, I remember hearing you standing there. You looked quite nice. You had on a neat blazer and dark jeans. You had on clean shoes and a backpack on your shoulder. And I remember overhearing your conversation that you were having on your cell phone.

"Hello Mom? Yeah, it's me. Happy birthday!"
-short pause-
"You remember Ashley, my girlfriend?"
-another short pause-
"Yeah, she got these results back from the doctor at the clinic..."
-very short pause-
"No, she's not pregnant, Mom!"
-short pause-
"She has gonorrhea.."
-very long pause-
"I'm going to get tested this weekend, Mom."
-very short pause-
"I love you, Mom. Happy birthday."

Thank you for providing entertainment to me for those seven minutes in which you were speaking to your mother and wishing her a happy birthday while informing her seemingly casually that you may or may not have a STD.

Things that you have to look forward to if you do have gonorrhea and if you don't get treated is pain while going to the washroom, assorted pus discharge and other infection to your nether regions.

Cheers!

Dear Fellow Transit Patrons,

This morning I had been running late. I wanted to go to my voluntary math lab tutorial so that I could complete the lab with knowledgeable TAs around and with a printer in the vicinity because I know that if I were to print it at home, I'd probably jam my printer - again.

So I was running late. The train was literally crawling for the last two stations it took to get to the one where I get off. I'm not just saying that it was a little slower than normal... See, at the regular train speed, the rails on the sides of the track are a blur and I can't even tell that there are bars there. Today, I could count the bars that made up the rails as well as see that someone had tossed something that resembled paint out of a window once and it coated the bars in some spots. That is how slow it was going.

Which is all fine and dandy because then I got off at the right train station and got onto a bus. I had an excellent spot to sit and then approximately twenty minutes later, that all went to hell. A woman getting off (or on..?) the bus collapsed, hit her head and went unconscious. So obviously the bus driver had to completely stop the bus and was calling for an ambulance. This is all very good, but I was sitting near the back and since it is an extra long bus, I couldn't see what was happening at the front. Until people started filing off of the bus. When I realize that most of the people were off of the bus by now, I stand up and file off as well, single-file just like in kindergarten. I notice people standing around and, since that particular stop was near a hospital, there was already a nurse there (I believe that she was on the bus on her way into work).

This will probably sound completely callous and horrible... But I really wish that I didn't have to get off that bus and then board another one (that barely had any standing room).

But... I'm glad that the bus driver and other fellow transit patrons took the initiative to make sure that the woman was alright... Because occasionally I'm just a little too selfish for my own good. But I did realize that I was definitely no longer having a 'bad day'. I hope the woman was right...

And to my fellow transit patrons, I understand why you all were cursing the woman for collapsing. But I am almost 100% positive that she did not collapse and go unconscious to ruin your day. It wasn't someone out to ruin your morning or make you late for your first lecture of the day. She was a woman who fell and then couldn't get back up again. I hope that if anything like that ever happens to me, there'd be people around willing to actually help me.

And yes, I was late for my drop-in tutorial session, but it was fine as I had the lab completed within 16 minutes anyways.