It has already been two weeks since I moved to my new apartment, and a week since I commenced classes. It is the first time I am attending night school, and I do have to admit that it has brought some sleep alterations. Nothing too bad, though, and I thought I would bring myself to normalize my sleeping habits a couple nights ago. It was then when I became aware of the buses.
I live in a sixteenth floor, one block and a half away from this area's bus terminal. I can actually see the platforms from my window, but in terms of sounds nothing much reaches all the way up to where I live. I mean, I do hear traffic noise but it is not loud enough to keep me from sleeping. Or so I thought. Ten o'clock at night, and the city is still humming its engine-run tune, softer and softer as the minutes go by. Eleven o'clock, it is almost a whisper; sleeping time. Wash dishes, brush teeth, stare at the guitar in the living room; off to bed. And there they come. Closer to midnight, it was almost as if a swarm of petrol-driven locusts had attacked the streets. Here goes one, with a big 'varoom', there comes another, coughing a loud 'put-put-put-put'. One by one they enter the scene until they gather into quite an ensemble of dissonant pumps and cylinders. They spend around half an hour playing, catching up and singing mechanic tunes, and then they disappear as suddenly as they arrived. It has been a continuous trend for the last few nights, which makes me think I will have to reschedule my sleeping times.
