Translation for 140 languages by ALS
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowline.
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sail.
Explore. Dream. Discover
.
---Mark Twain

1/14/14

Bus drivers on the phone


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Imagine the bus driver on the phone. Or the train engine texting. Or the pilot checking his Facebook updates. Or the court judge cruising porn sites on the bench. Or the pig playing online poker in his patrol car.

Bet you wouldn't like any of those scenarios. And I bet you'd swear you'd speak out against them on the spot, right? In the name of, oh, safety? common sense? survival?

Well in Tepic and Vallarta (towns in the Mexican state of Jalisco) one sees bus drivers (and cab drivers, too) yapping on their phones while speeding through the streets. I've witnessed it in Guadalajara as well. No one says anything. After the Mr Rey Nayar bodybuilding contest in Tepic I caught the city bus back to the bus terminal. The driver was chatting his ass off on the phone. I took a picture.
"Hey! Why you take my picture?" he kept demanding; reasoning, as they always do, "This is Mexico." He was pissed but so what? Fuck him. Even long-distance bus operators (ETN, Primera Plus, Vallarta Plus and, worse of all, Pacifico busline) think nothing of putting the receiver to the ear and blah, blah, blah....

I emailed a complaint to the bus company but nothing came of it (at least no one ever replied). Doesn't surprise me none.

This experience inspired me to write a short story. 

C'mon, readers, I can't be the only soul who has noticed this.... What was your experience like riding the buses in a Third World country?


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