Down memory lane

I happened to catch a ride on an old CSS bus today. CSS used to stand for something like City Shuttle Service. I don't know at what point the company was absorbed by SBS Transit, Singapore's "leading transport operator", but I suspect it's one of those things that transpired while I was living overseas. One minute I was catching bus numbers 3 or 5 from school to head downtown; the next, there was a "6-0" prefixing all the formerly single-digit route numbers, and the license plate numbers had changed with the new ownership.

The buses are still the right colours, though: orange and beige, faded now to the grungier hues of smashed eggshells. Despite the clean blue ez-link card machines (circa 2002) that flank you as you enter, boarding a CSS bus is like entering a tiny timewarp, welcoming you a wholly different dimension of bus-riding. There are no advertisements crowding overhead and no dreaded TVMobile screens. The seats are spaced further apart, roomy enough to make me feel like a child dangling among seats designed for the real adults. Even the little details differ: the rear door slides to the right, not folding outwards, to open, and the windows that you used to be able to open --- before they installed airconditioning and wedged them shut --- you open them by pushing them up off the sill.

It's mercifully quiet within, partly because there weren't many passengers at the time of day, partly because there was no TVMobile broadcast caterwauling for attention. The blank advertising slots harked back to a simpler time, when not every public space was swathed three times over in commercialistic appeals. Even the bus driver was older: a weathered, leathery fella, no doubt close to retirement. I wondered if he used to drive the bus in the CSS days, then quashed that flicker of sentimentality. Just be grateful the bus is still around.

It was the most peaceful bus ride I've had in years. I was almost sad to have to get off.