Bus Routes

I think that everything I need is at a place called Fairview Park Mall, the biggest mall in the Kitchener-Waterloo area.  According to these bus route maps, it's a fairly simple trip.  It looks like there's a loop that has Conestoga on one end and Fairview Park on the other.  You can discern which bus stop to use because the route number is printed directly on the bus sign, along with arrival times.

Jeez, this is different.  In Guelph, we don't have this series of small individual loops, and we don't have the route number or arrival times printed on the bus signs.  Our bus routes and arrival times change too frequently to make such a committed posting.  Also, we have bus routes that overlap each other.  Having more than one bus go by a given sign discourages posting a singular route number.

But I think that different buses do go by bus stops that aren't there's... They just don't stop at them.  In Guelph, any bus stops at any bus stop.  I guess these buses would move faster, since they don't make as many stops.  Also, there aren't as many bus stops in general, out here.  And while Guelph has only one terminal, this place seems to have dozens of mini-terminals

The buses come at roughly 30 minute intervals.  The bus stop at Residence only operates after 6:00 PM, and according to my bus map, it also goes there all day on weekends.  The one directly at the college goes all day, looks like.

These bus route maps are weird, too.   I was expecting, like, a full map, with all the bus routes and a legend, but instead I got a bunch of different maps, each detailing their own individual route and covering only the part of the city that they travel.  It's like each is a piece in a much larger puzzle.  It's actually not even as straightforward as that, because they overlap each other.

Oh well, the route I'm planning looks straigthforward enough.  If I survive this journey, my next goal will be to locate the Greyhound. I wonder if you take a transfer to go from loop to loop, or if you have to pay each time.  That has the potential to be a real ripoff.

When I went to the bookstore to buy a bus map, they said they didn't have them (The bus website said that they sold them at the bookstore, and none of the local stores I checked had them) but they directed me to a place where they hang up free pamphlets, and that's where I got my maps.  I notice they have them hanging in the same format here in Residence, too.   I guess I glossed over them, because that type of thing oesn't  usually have information that interests me.  I should inform some of the people around here that were looking for maps.

Did I tell you guys that my calling card changed it's policy on overseas charges?  It used to charge as much for an overseas phone call as it did for a local one.  I discovered this by sheer coincidence, most calling cards will severely reduce the amount of time you get if it's an overseas call.  And even though every calling card company sells international phone cards, not a single one of them covers anywhere in Africa.

I learned about the usefulness of my card when I let my counterpart use it to call home, and he got 600 minutes vs everyone else's 20 minutes.  That was on a $20 and since then, I've bought and used a card in the same format, with the same results.  After that, I bought a $5 card, which you  would think would be like, 150-200 minutes, but it was 15 minutes.  Made a local call with the same card, 200 minutes.

So you'd think their policy changed.  It still seems to be the best deal, sadly, so I bought a $10 card for a half-hour call with the chief's son, and that's what I got.  Then I tried calling another Malian.  It was something like 400 minutes!  Why is there such a fluctuation of in-Mali calling?  Reflecting on it, only phone calls to the village have a reduced time.   All the city Malians have local charges.

Anyway, weirdest thing happened when I called the chief's son.  African music started playing.  It was pretty good, so I listened to it for four minutes.  I was wondering if it was a weird ring tone or something, but really, it should only ring like that on his side, right?  If he changed his ringtone, from my side, shouldn't it still sound like a uniform ringtone?

Well, it charged me for the four minutes, which it doesn't do unless someone picks up the phone or I get put through to the machine.  I wondered if maybe it was his machine message, but it isn't supposed to charge me until it starts recording my message.

For it to charge me, and so me to have heard sound from the other side, the only available scenario I can see is that somebody picked up the phone.  It's like he picked it up and stuck it next to the Karadie boombox.

Mali remains as mysterious and surprising as ever.  Can't even phone there without a mystery like this unfolding, causing one to question one's own sanity.