Yesterday after the bbq at shawn's house, waited 50 mins for bus 14 to come and bring me to Tanah Merah MRT. Considering the efficiency of sg's transport system, 50 mins is like wtf, esp when the govt just emphasized the need for higher standards of service. In any case, I gained a few insights from the process of waiting, so perhaps the 50 mins of waiting was worth it after all.

Waiting, defined generally, means to put certain aspects of one's life on hold till a certain event occurs. Waiting for a bus is probably one of the more trivial type of waiting that one would experience in a lifetime, but it has implications that many of us never actually thought about. 2 of which i just thought of below.

First, why wait? Reasons generally fall under 2 catergories. 1) The event is highly likely to happen. 2) The event is highly unlikely to happen. The former is probably justified waiting, waiting that can justify itself. Like waiting for a bus or a plate of food at the hawker centre, they are justified as most of the times the event that you want occurs. In the latter case, it is more tricky, as waiting has to be justified by more than just the rewards of the event happening. The reasons then can be divided into voluntary and involuntary ones. In the involuntary case. waiting is not a choice as the event happening is the only way out. In the voluntary case, waiting is justified by a strong personal preference for the event over any others.

Secondly, is there a limit to waiting? More often than not, when we look at limit and waiting, we think of time. "The most i'll wait is 2 hrs" However, the idea that we can switch from waiting to not waiting mode instantaneously is rather absurd. Consider waitng for a bus. One can set a limit and say i'll wait for 30 mins. After 30 mins, u look for a taxi. Just when u were about to flag the taxi, u see the bus arriving. Would you then say, "nope, 30mins up, i'll take the taxi" ? The reason by which one would wait must be that taking the bus is much more favourable than taking a taxi. Hence, in a case where both are present, the bus is the natural choice, but due to other constraints, like needing to get to a place by a certain time, we might choose the alternative after 30 mins. Therefore, the conclusion we can draw is that time is measure of the ability to wait, not of the desire to. We never do give up on waiting, we only run out of time to be able to wait...

Boa's Waiting playing in the bg. It's national day today. Happy birthday Singapore! National Day celebrations yest were kinda sucky, but i guess it's still better than the NUS ppl doing flag day....