Filthy cars, vandals, noisy women and silent men

Some punk had the nerve to vandalize my car last night. One of my neighbors, no doubt, since the car hasn't left the garage since Saturday night. I wanted to file a report, but thought it wasn't going to go anywhere, anyway.

You're probably as shocked as I am, where has decency gone in this world of ours? When had respect for private property gone to the dogs?! Of course I should report the incident, you say. Was it spray-painted with gang-letters? All four tires punctured? Scratched with a bottle cap or keys perhaps? One of those toilet paper pranks?

Before you go take that pitchfork out of the barn, here's what the little vandal wrote: [translated] 'What a nice car, too bad the owner never cleans it, though. Please have mercy and take this car to the carwash?' Irritatingly polite delinquent, I know. Pretty clever too, he wrote this on the passenger's side of the car so I never spotted it myself. Learned of it from an officemate, who showed me a picture of the graffiti via his camera phone. She's posting it on facebook, she says, even added a little note of her own that read 'You should tell the owner to take a bath, as well.' Nice little trap, I thought. When the perp shows his cheeky little mug at last I'll use his face to wipe the dust and grime off my windshield.

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So why don't I take the car to the wash more often? Besides the laziness, of course. I usually tell people it's because I want to make a statement, be a 'rebel' of the filthy sort. Then, while driving home, in one of those rare instances that I turn on the radio, Jewel's distinct melancholy floats through the air and whispers "...you were, fashionably sensitive, but too cool to care." Perfect!

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I was talking to another officemate last week, and we got to the topic of her daily commute. She usually takes the MRT, that elevated train that runs through the city, to save on time. In the afternoons, while commuting home, the volume of passengers waiting to get on the train gets too much at times that she takes the train going the opposite direction, stays there until it reaches the last terminal and waits in the same car until it switches tracks and goes her way. This little trick of her has given her a unique look at the differences between men and women.

You see, the MRT is divided by women's only cars up in front and men's only cars in the rear. Of course, women are free to mix it up with the menfolk if they so wished, but the men are restricted from boarding the women only cars. By the time the train switches track, the cars also switch in order, thereby the men's cars becomes the women's and vice versa.

In the women's cars, which she usually rides, the drone of the metal wheels on the track is no match for the chattering of female voices. Everyone talks in the car, whether it's with their buddies, on the cell phone or singing a tune while listening to their mp3 players. Someone could be giving birth right beside these women and they'd still be blabbering away. During the rush hour, it gets worse. Every inch of space is occupied, they're packed like sardines, and yet they still talk. Imagine all those voices straining to be heard, transforming into a collective buzz, like a plague of a million locusts about to infest a cornfield the size of your backyard.

Then, sometimes, she's in the men's car. Crickets chirp, and you could hear the noise of a pin dropping. She'd witness a group of men talking boisterously on the station's platform, then as if a switch was suddenly turned off, they shut up and board the car. Sometimes one would cough, then everything went eerily silent again. A cellphone would ring, a man's voice answers, "I'm on the train, I'll call you when I get off." and it's back to 'normal'. Just as she'd thought she was in the twilight zone, the doors open and close and she'd hear someone's voice at last. She'd look for where it was coming from, and see a woman, chatting up her boyfriend, while he just nodded yeses and nos.

"Why is that?" she asked. I only gave her a silent shrug in reply.