The Guy To My Left

Barreling into Shanghai along a train shot of urban core build out from Suzhou down south.  Ninety seconds isn’t much time.  I’d say I got on this train about ninety seconds before the bell rang and the doors closed.  I was lucky the gals at the door let me through and on to the escalator.  I’d resigned myself to not making it in the cab.  Tried to let that calming notion flood my veins.  The driver, like many DiDi drivers we seem to get in Beijing was from Henan and he was pleasant but he drove his car rather conservatively, which wasn’t what I needed.  Arriving there was just enough time to see a pathway on the train.  I had to tear through the door, sweet talk myself to the head of the security line and up to the head of the ticket line.  It was very fortunate that it was the two-oh-five and not the two-o’clock train as I’d otherwise been assuming.

These train trips can be productive and this one was.  Ten days of lesson plans largely mapped out. Felt tired and napped for two hours.  Did my best to ignore the attractive woman who sat down across the aisle from me at Qufu station.  The man to my left was unobtrusive.  I don’t know if it was the luck of the draw or the fact that this was a first and not a second-class compartment or that the Sunday ride to Shanghai tends to attract a more civilized clientele, but there were few flagrant examples of noise pollution.  I trained the guy to my left quickly early, when he was playing the moments-videos from his wechat feed without any headset.  I stared and stared again.  No words were spoken but soon he had his head set out. 

I was just about to say something to a guy across the aisle, had the dry comment all planned out, but he put his phone away before I needed to act.  One or two phone calls.  Loud but not unbearable.  And so, for this ride, I was fortunate.  I’d been worried as I packed up my things and got ready to leave.  I couldn’t find my headset.  Those things are damn expensive.  How did I lose that?  Couldn’t tell you.  Perhaps its somewhere in the bottom of my bag or in my gym shorts.  But fortunately, my cousin, who’d been visiting overnight suggested he had an extra pair at the last minute. 

I charged my phone up to 100% before I indulged in any music.  There wasn’t any pressing reason to try out these new buds.  Somewhere after Qufu, after this charming young lady sat down, I had Boards of Canada up and in the ears.  We had one of those seats that is between windows so while I couldn’t consider much of sunny day Shandong as it turned into sunny day Jiangsu, but it all seemed to reinforce the focus towards my laptop, towards my work, which proceeded uninterrupted, aside from those glances over to my right which could not be helped.

Sunday 5/20/18