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Idiom: Like sardines (in a can)
Have you ever heard anyone say that they enjoy being packed like sardines on a commuter train in the morning?
Me neither.
It’s one of the things that convinced my wife and me to purchase a home in the countryside.
We had both travelled together and lived in big cities in various countries.
We had both spent hours and hours squished like sardines in a can onto buses and trains.
The idiom, like sardines (in a can), means people are crowded into a small space, similar to the way sardines are packed into a can.
New Zealand is the country where we had the worst experience.
Yeah, I know, New Zealand doesn’t immediately conjure up images of packed public transportation, but it does for us.
Every morning we travelled by bus from Avondale to Midtown.
We were lucky because we boarded at the beginning of the line and could always get a seat.
That didn’t make us enjoy the trips anymore, though.
Long before we got anywhere near Lakeside Park, the bus would be standing room only.
K’road was always a traffic nightmare.
Of all the places I’ve worked, lived and visited, the traffic in Auckland was the worst I’ve ever seen, and the people jammed onto those buses like sardines in a can.
You know, as I said yesterday, travel when you’re young, and frustrations like that will roll off you like water off a duck’s back.
It’s all a part of the experience of living and working in a foreign country.
All I can say now is thank God we live in Wakayama.
There’s very little traffic, and people do not squish onto the trains or busses like sardines.
Of course, where I live the bus comes once an hour and the trains arrive at the station every 30 minutes.
Did I mention the station is 9km from my house?
I’m never, ever squished into my car like sardines.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 77.
The easier the passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
