Seeing as I was in a vehicular accident today (don't worry everyone, I am a'okay), I thought it would be interesting to write about the mishap that occured earlier today (plus this is the only way I am staying awake and it is somewhat hard falling asleep knowing that there is a 7 inch long lizard crawling around on the wall near where you keep your computer at night...the lizards do help with the mosquito population so I really shouldn't be complaining too much but I have never seen one so big crawling around on the walls in India).
As I was saying, a vehicular accident happened today involving two buses, one of which I happened to be on. As I was standing up to move down the bus so I could get off at the metro stop, the bus came to an abrupt halt and a loud noise could be heard. I peeked out the window and realized that the bus next to us had decided to merge a little prematurely and had gauged the distance between their bus and ours to be a wider gap than what it truly was. As I looked out the window I thought to myself, "Oh crap, now I am gonna be late to the metro because they need to get out and look at the damage." To my surprise the driver of our bus shifted into gear and just kept along his intended course without so much as a mutter. I think the only way to get traffic to stop in India is for someone to get run over (and even then it is not a certain thing). Many of you are probably thinking, "How can Indians be such horrible drivers?" On the contrary, Indians are probably some of the greatest drivers I have ever seen. There are no designated lanes, rarely do people use turn signals, and most of the cars are stick shift, and yet people manuever around like race car drivers, unheeding of the speed limit and avoiding pedestrians/other cars. In India, everyone agrees that you cannot hit the car in front of you so it doesn't matter if you swerve in and out of traffic (which most people do), you just have to be aware of the driver in front of you.
Many of you who have skyped me have also commented on the incessant car horns that you hear outside of my window. The lanes outside of my house can barely fit 2 cars through so the cars honk to let other cars know that they are turning onto the same street and that the other driver needs to make enough room for the car to pass. It is a very intricate system and for the first week or 2 it made it hard to sleep with the constant blaring of horns, but after awhile everyone gets used to it.
I also think that I have mentioned in a previous blog about the words painted on the side of vehicles and that Indians do not always check their spelling and grammar before painting things on the side of their vehicles. I know my mom always finds it funny when I tell her the interesting things people have painted, so I thought I would let everyone in on the fun. This week I have seen two misspellings on the side of vehicles. The first was on a public bus which was supposed to say "emergency exit" but instead said "emegency exit". The second was on a small flat-bed which said "plese horn" instead of "please horn". I always get a kick out of seeing misspellings and grammatical errors so I thought I would mention it in my blog so everyone could get a small chuckle out of it.
And finally, even though it does not pertain to transportation at all; we had Kunal Basu, author of The Japanese Wife, come to talk to us about writing and his works. It was an interesting meet and greet and we learned about what inspired him to write such unique stories and a little about his life teaching at Oxford and his childhood in Kolkata. We walked around Park Street Cemetary with him and talked about the historical relevance of many of the tombstones. Then we went to St. Xavier's to listen to his lecture with the Indian students and then afterwards we went to tea at a restaurant called Flury's (also located on Park Street near our school). It was an interesting day and seeing as I can no longer find where my rather large lizard-friend has run off to, I think I will just say...Goodnight!
As I was saying, a vehicular accident happened today involving two buses, one of which I happened to be on. As I was standing up to move down the bus so I could get off at the metro stop, the bus came to an abrupt halt and a loud noise could be heard. I peeked out the window and realized that the bus next to us had decided to merge a little prematurely and had gauged the distance between their bus and ours to be a wider gap than what it truly was. As I looked out the window I thought to myself, "Oh crap, now I am gonna be late to the metro because they need to get out and look at the damage." To my surprise the driver of our bus shifted into gear and just kept along his intended course without so much as a mutter. I think the only way to get traffic to stop in India is for someone to get run over (and even then it is not a certain thing). Many of you are probably thinking, "How can Indians be such horrible drivers?" On the contrary, Indians are probably some of the greatest drivers I have ever seen. There are no designated lanes, rarely do people use turn signals, and most of the cars are stick shift, and yet people manuever around like race car drivers, unheeding of the speed limit and avoiding pedestrians/other cars. In India, everyone agrees that you cannot hit the car in front of you so it doesn't matter if you swerve in and out of traffic (which most people do), you just have to be aware of the driver in front of you.
Many of you who have skyped me have also commented on the incessant car horns that you hear outside of my window. The lanes outside of my house can barely fit 2 cars through so the cars honk to let other cars know that they are turning onto the same street and that the other driver needs to make enough room for the car to pass. It is a very intricate system and for the first week or 2 it made it hard to sleep with the constant blaring of horns, but after awhile everyone gets used to it.
I also think that I have mentioned in a previous blog about the words painted on the side of vehicles and that Indians do not always check their spelling and grammar before painting things on the side of their vehicles. I know my mom always finds it funny when I tell her the interesting things people have painted, so I thought I would let everyone in on the fun. This week I have seen two misspellings on the side of vehicles. The first was on a public bus which was supposed to say "emergency exit" but instead said "emegency exit". The second was on a small flat-bed which said "plese horn" instead of "please horn". I always get a kick out of seeing misspellings and grammatical errors so I thought I would mention it in my blog so everyone could get a small chuckle out of it.
And finally, even though it does not pertain to transportation at all; we had Kunal Basu, author of The Japanese Wife, come to talk to us about writing and his works. It was an interesting meet and greet and we learned about what inspired him to write such unique stories and a little about his life teaching at Oxford and his childhood in Kolkata. We walked around Park Street Cemetary with him and talked about the historical relevance of many of the tombstones. Then we went to St. Xavier's to listen to his lecture with the Indian students and then afterwards we went to tea at a restaurant called Flury's (also located on Park Street near our school). It was an interesting day and seeing as I can no longer find where my rather large lizard-friend has run off to, I think I will just say...Goodnight!
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