If You Lived in your car, You'd Be Home by now

It took me about 1:21 hours (81 minutes) to get from college to home today! And it never used to take more than 30 min about a year back.. The traffic situation is maddening, the number of traffic lights seem to have quadrupled.. the number of one-ways doubled..where is this heading??They say, this city wasn't built for such expansion (Fact-700 new vehicles are added each day to our roads).. I mean fine..it wasn’t build for that..but still comeon.. is a pothole free road too much to ask for? With the temperature scorching and the waits at the signals nearing the 5 minute maximum limit, set by the “I-will-go-insane-if-I-don’t-get-out-of-here” confederation, people’s blood pressure is rising.. road rage is escalating.. I could see that today.. but I learned a few techniques to keep me smiling all through the trip, and I think it would be helpful to you all.. If u develop the right attitude.. u can find humor everywhere.. Riders screaming on their cell phones, after finding out that their spouse is cheating on them, while this poor soul is stuck in traffic.. Someone picking their nose is always a delight to watch aint it?? To entertain your traffic mates.. u can scream loudly, point at that person and laugh.. HEY what’s the worst that can happen?? You can always blame the heat if you end up in a mental asylum, now cant u??
If your hearing is awesome u can almost listen that constant prayer emanating from the crowd (God, Please let me reach office on time, if you cant do that, make sure my boss reaches after me.).. or was it the constant abuse directed towards the traffic cop, who cant seem to do anything right..but the day u forget to take your license with you, they emerge, slapping you with a 100 Re (that’s around 2.2$ for my Friends in U.S and as for my European friends, sorry, I dont know the current conversion rates) fine.. But if aren’t so gutsy enough, and stuck in yet another jam, look around.. you might find a familiar face. Look at your neighboring vehicle, Catch up on what that person’s up to (makeup, cell, music, talking to themselves… is all I got today), if your eyes meet, drop in a smile.. and if he/she ‘s very cute, drop in a bigger smile, they surely would smile back, sighing at the helplessness of the situation… and try your best to get the phone number of the cell sitting on the dashboard… and if you tried and failed hey the cell’s all yours (the flick and run offer)… if love cant keep you happy, a new cell surely would…

If you getting really really bored... I mean REALLY bored, then come up with witty, funny, weird, stupid, dumb excuses as to why you are late, or why you didn’t complete the assignment…and NO, my dog ran away with it, is no longer an excuse… But “This guy came home, he asked for my brother, when I said he wasn’t home… he got so disappointed that he banged his head on the wall several times, before collapsing… when he did wake up he’d lost his memory… then I spend whole afternoon trying to revive it to no avail… then I hooked him up to the parallel port of my pc, wrote a complex c program to send high frequency sinusoidal waves with specified magnitude and phase to his brains… after the first shock... he asked... “is your brother there” so I knew it was working.. after 3 hours of extensive sine-wave treatment...he was fully functional again, at which time I became aware of the fact that the chip for power control of my parallel port had burned out… so I couldn’t take print outs of the assignment” definitely qualifies as one …
Singing also really helps... a good song can take off about half the time at a jam...If you dont have a voice box of a canary...then i suggest keeping the visors and windows rolled down… if you are blessed with a I-will-make-it-big-one-day voice then hey, sing !! you never know which music director is at the same signal??Waiting for the next singing sensation! Another fun thing to do is translate songs... if you know two or more languages pretty well, then translate a song in one language to another keeping the same tune, try it, its sooo much fun. I use English-Hindi and vice-versa… think Beethoven turned in his grave once!!
Thinking of good bumper stickers is also a good idea.. stuff like "There are only three types of people in this world, those who can count and those who cant" "Rehab is for quitters" " Despite the cost of living, have u noticed how popular it is" really put a smile on my face...

So my fellow sufferers, head my advice, if you aren’t that lucky enough to see a upturned truck in the middle of the road… or catch up on a good fist fight… then do give a try at the humor thing. Lots of energy saved, and hey its better than honking at the guy in front of you, and definitely better than the questions you ask yourself “If only I left a little earlier...i woudnt be stuck here..” trust me… I was there before you,, and the situation was much worse!!!


Fact :- 3 weeks of your life is how long you will be waiting for the light to turn green.

P.S And hey do reply with things you do or end up doing when stuck in traffic… or things you think are vital for traffic improvement!