Saturday, December 13, 2003
Tram stories
I love tramming in Melbourne. Actually, I love public transport in general. Ok, not when I'm sitting next to an old guy with bad BO, but otherwise, it's great fun to stare at fellow passengers and make up weird stories about them. For instance, there was this lady across the aisle from me who breathed rather strangely- not through her nose, but in short little gasps at regular intervals. An alien, for sure.The other thing I love about tramming is that it's one of the few times I get to talk to my grandma properly. At home, my crazy grandpa is always lurking around, and there's also the distraction of TV. On the tram, though, we can talk in privacy (sometimes Vietnamese is useful). Usually it's just family gossip, but occasionally she tells me something surprising.
Today she told me how when she was in grade 6 or 7, she had a crush on a poet. He was a law student who, once he flunked out, was dumped by his girlfriend for a student who passed. Grandma was so enraptured by his poems of heartbreak and longing that she'd hide them in her schoolbag and read them in secret.
During the war, the poet was arrested and taken into a re-education camp. They sent him home just before he died, so that they wouldn't have to deal with the cost of burial.
Recently, grandma heard that his wife was ill and couldn't afford to pay for medicines. Her husband was a poet after all, he didn't make much money. So anyway, grandma sent over some of her pension money and received a thank-you letter from the son.
My grandma rocks.
# posted at 7:08 pm
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