I rode the bus today to get home. I usually like riding the bus but when I got on I remembered one aspect of bus-riding I don’t like, buses show movies. Usually the drivers show action, suspense or horror movies, which I’m not fond of. Of course you can’t expect to watch chick flicks because almost all the drivers are males. Anyway, the movie that was showing was an American-Vietnam war movie. It was almost finished when I got on so I don’t really know the story. From what I can gather, it was about American soldiers trapped in the Vietnamese jungles or something. What was striking was that there was this American soldier that got trapped in one of the caves where there was a Vietnamese woman and two children. The Vietnamese woman was brandishing a knife while the American was holding a gun but he was telling the woman that he was not going to kill her but he just wanted to go up the tunnel. The woman was shouting I will kill you in Vietnamese and she was a bit hysterical because she was facing the enemy who could kill her and the children. The woman was yelling at the soldier while the soldier was trying to pacify the woman and gesturing towards the entrance of the tunnel. The woman made the children go into the tunnel while keeping the American at bay when suddenly there was a sudden explosion because unknown to them, an American fighter plane was bombing the area. When the explosing subsided, the man and the woman found themselves trapped in the cave and they tried to dig their way out together. Unfortunately, they were not able to do it in time. The movie ended with the woman losing consciousness due to lack of oxygen, then the man losing his consciousness also and the oil lamp lighting the cave also flickered out. So I guess the lesson of story is that in a dangerous situation, enemies should cooperate with each other to get out of the situation as fast as possible and just continue fighting when they get out.
After the movie was finished, I saw the conducter replacing the CD. I was wishing that the player would get broken because I did not want to suffer through another movie. But before that, I was made to realize how dirty public places really are because there was this old man who transferred to a seat in front but on the other aisle. When he was seating down I smelled something odorous. I was wondering if it was him then the woman seated beside him suddenly stood up and transferred to another seat so maybe I was right. Suddenly the man blew his nose using his finger and dropping it to the floor on the right side of the bus. Yikes. Then he took out his hanky and blew his nose again. When he got off, he held on the back of the chairs until he was able to get off the bus. Just imagine the bacteria or virus transmitted by that single act.
So anyway, the next movie was starting. I could sense that it was a horror movie and it was but what was surprising was that it was a French film with no subtitles. It was the third time I got on the bus and they were showing European films. Anyway, that bus film incident really brought home the fact that globalization is really at work because bus driver and passengers in the Philippines were watching a French thriller where the French characters were riding a Japanese SUV while listening and singing along to a British popsong while on vacation in Croatia (I checked the Internet. Hehehe). I should have taken note of the digicam one the girl characters was using. Maybe it was from another country also.
