pantsfarm

I had another gross experience on the train today. Not quite as gross I think as the last one, but, even so, you may consider not reading the rest of this post if you thought the last too disgusting.

Today I was taking Line 4 back from the Shanghai Train Station to my apartment, and so I got on and sat down for the fairly long trip (30 minutes maybe).

Then, I noticed this guy across from me a few seats away sitting there digging away in his nose with his pinky. I thought to myself, “oh, another dude picking his nose. Ah, China.” See, this was at T+0:01 or something.

This dude spent the entirety of the train ride picking his nose (until T+0:30). I mean the whole trip, he was sitting there just happily scooping out boogers and not doing a very good job of concealing anything from anybody on the train.

But, that’s not all! Get this, he was carrying on a conversation the whole time! Some other dude was there chatting with him and they were like “blah blah blah” everything is totally cool even though he had a finger buried in his nostril.

He’d pick his nose for a while, then collect whatever nasty shit on his fingernail and do one of two things:

• flick it off
• roll it around in his apparently filthy palms until it was blackened and could no longer absorb dirt, then flick it off

I was sitting there visibly disgusted I think the whole time, and I admit it might have been rude but, I mean, come on! Stuff that comes out of your nose is not for “cleaning” your hands.

I’m pretty sure at least one or two got across the whole train, but nobody seemed to notice or care except for me. I was really glad I was not across from him because that is nasty.

Ok, and the final observation I made was that he and his buddy were wearing suits! Such cognitive dissonance to see reasonably well dressed people carrying around their man purses slinging boogers on the train. I don’t know what more I can comment on without coming across as some sort of intolerant condescending asshole, which I probably already come across too much as.

I am afraid to touch anything outside for fear that it was touched first by booger-rubbers. At least I’ve been good about washing my hands often.