Symbiosis

For the daily commuter, rituals such as staring aimlessly out the window at soccer fields and storm-laden clouds will no longer define the way travel is experienced once trains go underground. I will miss glancing at the contours of passing suburbs to gauge the time remaining before my next stop. Many times, they have triggered a mental note about what to cook for dinner that night based on a restaurant I happen to notice at Blacktown station. I will no longer be able to note the additions of bright pot plants to newly renovated apartments, or the development of large tracts of empty vegetation into housing lots.

Generally, Filipinos are very superstitious. Dad gets creeped out anytime I wear something second-hand. ‘What if you’re wearing a dead person’s clothes?’ he asks. He prefers to live in new homes, as he believes old ones are haunted by the ghosts of previous residents. He scolded me as a child for cutting my nails at night because it brings bad luck and he warned me not to sleep with wet hair in case I woke up blind.

In this pocket universe, time is unwavering and inescapable. The paper is printed daily, the waste collectors drive round neighbourhood streets picking up rubbish weekly, and trains are patiently waiting to deliver their passengers from one end of the line to the other at every given moment.