Lifestyle:

Travails of a bus traveller

W. M. A. P. Perera

TRAVEL: I arrived at the main halt at 6.30 a.m. with the intention of reaching Colombo by 8.30 a.m. I waited for sometime in the bus stand as it was a rainy day. After the rains there were several mud puddles on the road.

An empty bus, like an elephant, rolled into where I was standing, overtaking three buses parked at the halt. Oh God! It stopped with a jerk, bolted, smashing the water puddles, sprinkling muddy water into my mouth.

There were a few drops of mud on my sari. The driver, with a roaring face, like a lion, appeared to have won in a battle. The conductor stepping out shouted ?Otuwa? ?Pitotuwa?.

I was the first to get in. I found a seat in a corner, sat and tried to be comfortable, with a heavenly thought of a little nap.

Just then a noisy large family got in, caterwauling and quarrelling for the corner seat by the three little boys. The mother, a young woman with a little girl on her lap sat beside the boys, whipping all three of them simultaneously. All the three started crying, the woman, supposed to be the mother, made me think she was completely deaf. I tried to take a nap.

Small nap

Just then somebody shouted ?my purse is lost.? Three men jumped out of the bus.

What a scene! The woman also jumped out of the bus, I was happy as I wanted to have a nap.

Just then the driver switched on the cassette player and I was wondering what to do. I turned round to see faces withering to the sound of music. The driver was tapping onto the wheel. Then he stopped at a halt.

The passengers were standing packed like a tin of sardine. However, the driver was not ready to move the bus. He wanted more passengers to get in. I peeped out of the window to watch the bus stopping at every place, even for a person who was standing to cross the road. The conductor was pleading them to get into the bus! So the bus was travelling at a snail?s speed, yet I did not mind because it was any how moving. I tried to get some sleep.

Then I heard a woman shouting ?Ai umbata hetthuwenna thenak nedda?. (Don?t you have any other place to lean against). And I saw a figure inside the crowd slowly moving.

He was having a hearty laugh. I tried to have a nap. Suddenly a beggar from nowhere, with stinking clothes started begging.

Jana kavi style

He stood by my seat. As I did not have coins I looked the other way. Just then I heard him cursing people in a Jana kavi style. Most of them were looking out of the window.

Then he went away. A tall man then started singing. Of course he had talent, I thought if he had taken part in the Super Star contest he would have become one of the first 12. I enjoyed the song but it soon became a nuisance as he was continuously singing.

It was a bit of a competition.

He was singing aloud, competing with the noise of the cassette. The sound was terrible but I tried to sleep.

Just then a standing passenger started coughing disturbing everyone. He sneezed aloud, sprinkling saliva on everybody?s clothes including me. Thinking of an evening shower at home, I tried to be comfortable. I was wondering why these people did not carry a handkerchief or a piece of cloth.

Motorcade

Oh! God, I felt the bus was not moving again. I peeped out and heard a person who was standing on the road saying that a VIP?s motorcade was heading on. I thought to myself after all we have to abide by the law. His security is our security. I tried to peep out of the window, just to have a glimpse of the VIP.

Oh! At last it was all over. I felt the bus was moving forward. I heard a man shouting ?stop the bus?. A commuter had fallen from the bus and all the men got off the bus to support the old man who was injured.

I looked at my watch. Only ten minutes to Pettah. I was still in Bambalapitiya. How to sign the register? By now the Head Clerk must be trotting towards the Register to draw the red line, I imagined. I tried to be comfortable, my inner heart weeping for the wasted time. Cheerfully I tried to pacify myself.

The bus jerked and I knocked my head on the front seat. Many others got the same treatment. We thanked our stars for saving our lives.

I suddenly remembered that the conductor had not returned my balance. I had to wriggle through the crowd to get hold of the conductor. He started arguing with me. I felt like giving a blow on his head. He reluctantly returned my balance of Rs. 5.

Thanking my stars I looked out of the window to find whether I had passed my destination! I knew I was late to office and was planning to apply for short leave, I started walking down the road to office.

World?s best whiskers vie for honours

MOUSTACHE TWISTING: One contestant had a moustache twisted into the shape of London?s Tower Bridge; others sported bushy beards that would make Grizzly Adams envious. In the end, Beard Team USA nabbed four of the top honours - by a whisker - at the World Beard and Mustache Championships.

About 250 shaggy men from around the world competed in 17 different classes of facial hair at the competition in Brighton, England.

The event had long been dominated by German beard clubs, but the Americans made a strong showing at this year?s competition, taking victories in four categories.

Jack Passion, a 23-year-old from San Francisco, won the highly competitive ?Full Natural Beard? competition with his flowing orange fuzz.

?I feel fantastic,? he said, ?I?m 23 and I have the best beard in the world.?

He attributed part of his success to his outfit, a blue tuxedo and bowler hat, which helped bring out the red in his beard.

?I looked like a groom,? he said. ?Too bad you never get married when you have a huge beard.? The mustache categories include the ?Dali? - slender with long tips, straight or arching up - and the big and bushy ?Hungarian,? while the beard categories ranged from the shorter ?Verdi? to the rounder, more expansive ?Garibaldi.?

Those with particularly fanciful fuzz - like the man with the Tower Bridge growing from his face - competed in freestyle categories.

Competitors were barred from using extensions or hair pins, although wax and hairspray were allowed in some cases. The first World Beard and Mustache Championship was held by beard enthusiasts in Germany in 1990.

The next championships in 2009 will be held in Anchorage, Alaska.

?Anchorage knows how to put on a show,? said David Traver, 42, who is organizing the 2009 event. ?And they have a fantastic appreciation for whiskers.?

 AP

Mythical beast turns up in Texas

UGLY CREATURE: Phylis Canion lived in Africa for four years. She?s been a hunter all her life and has the mounted heads of a zebra and other exotic animals in her house to prove it. But the roadkill she found last month outside her ranch was a new one even for her, worth putting in a freezer hidden from curious onlookers: Canion believes she may have the head of the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra.

?It is one ugly creature,? Canion said, holding the head of the mammal, which has big ears, large fanged teeth

 and grayish-blue, mostly hairless skin.

Canion and some of her neighbours discovered the 40-pound bodies of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 80 miles southeast of San Antonio. Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she can get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it for posterity.

Rural denizens

She suspects, as have many rural denizens over the years, that a chupacabra may have killed as many as 26 of her chickens in the past couple of years.

?I?ve seen a lot of nasty stuff. I?ve never seen anything like this,? she said.

What tipped Canion to the possibility that this was no ugly coyote, but perhaps the vampire-like beast, is that the chickens weren?t eaten or carried off - all the blood was drained from them, she said.

Goat sucker

Chupacabra means ?goat sucker? in Spanish, and it is said to have originated in Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico and Mexico.

Canion thinks recent heavy rains ran them right out of their dens.

?I think it could have wolf in it,? Canion said. ?It has to be a cross between two or three different things.?

She said the finding has captured the imagination of locals, just like purported sightings of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster have elsewhere.

But what folks are calling a chupacabra is probably just a strange breed of dog, said veterinarian Travis Schaar of the Main Street Animal Hospital in nearby Victoria.

?I?m not going to tell you that?s not a chupacabra. I just think in my opinion a chupacabra is a dog,? said Schaar, who has seen Canion?s find.

Litter of dogs

The ?chupacabras? could have all been part of a mutated litter of dogs, or they may be a new kind of mutt, he said.

As for the bloodsucking, Schaar said that this particular canine may simply have a preference for blood, letting its prey bleed out and licking it up.

Chupacabra or not, the discovery has spawned a local and international craze. Canion has started selling T-shirts that read: ?2007, The Summer of the Chupacabra, Cuero, Texas,? accompanied by a caricature of the creature. The $5 shirts have gone all over the world, including Japan, Australia and Brunei. Schaar also said he has one.

?If everyone has a fun time with it, we?ll keep doing it,? she said. ?It?s good for Cuero.?