all of the evils of this town

for barbecue reasons i went out to rachel's parents last weekend, barbecueing some ever-so-funny-looking veggie sausages and eating a salad with top players such as mango and honey-roasted macadamia nuts. good times! but it is not really the point of this post. on the way back, we were going to catch the usual train to the city, but alas, repairs and improvements were being made on the train tracks and there were replacement buses that were very slow (but air-conditioned). on the bus, a guy started talking to me, first asking how long the bus would go, then the usual where i'm from and then, after a while, we pass a hospital and he says "see that, that's windsor hospital, i have to go there". silence. "i've got cancer, but i won't do the chemo cause i saw how it hurt and killed my dad". he then talks about how he would be alright with dying, but that it would just kill his mom. then he starts crying.

i won't say that it's something about australians and being open, because he was actually irish, i'll just stick with the fact that i don't think any stranger has been that open and honest with me before, and i'm sure i'd never be. we go on to talk about music and he asks me about alex harvey, jim morrison, jethro tull and a lot of other old rock bands that i sometimes know and sometimes don't know. he starts talking about his junkie life and hows he's wasted his whole life on drugs and how they've taken everything from him - money, house, wife and screwed with his brain, how he's been in mental hospitals, had paranoia and some of the worst things he did while on drugs. i feel genuinely sorry for him and think that life certainly isn't fair and an easy thing, and how this guy is just beyond any hope. life wrecked by drug addictions and terminal lung cancer, hard to top that for bad situation. i think that he's just incredibly strong to be able to deal with that and not be ashamed of it and talk about it. when strangers start talking to me on buses i usually get very uncomfortable, but i'm genuinely happy that this guy did and it made my day an interesting one instead of an annoying one spent on a slow bus because the trains were cancelled.

also, this is the second person i've met here that's got terminal lung cancer and decided not to get it treated. chances of treatment success are pretty low, and it's very painful. so please, people i love and care about, don't smoke.