I had a reunion feast with some of my former high school classmates yesterday. One of them recalled an interesting thing that happened to him when one day he was on the bus visiting me at my place, which was located somewhere in then-rural Taipei County.

You know, over fifty years ago, there was a lady conductor on each bus. The main job of the conductors was to sell the ticket to passengers or to punch on the monthly ticket card, but they did not often make announcements en route on where the next stop would be. There were no mobile phones, no GPS, and nothing guiding my classmate except the address of my place on his hand. He was nervous about missing the stop he was going to take.

So he asked the lady conductor if she could inform him of the stop he should get down where "Winan Village, Nanshan Rd., Hexing Alley" was. You know what? The conductor calmly answered, "The number?"

What a lovely young lady with deadpan humor she was!