Just Looking Around

7:20 – Bus:
There was a young adult sitting at my bus stop listening to music without headphones. When I looked at him, he looked back with a daring gaze. I interpreted that as "yeah, I'm playing my music very loud, what will you do about that?" Confronted with that look I immediately looked away. But then the feeling of weakness flew in. On the bus I noticed that there seems to be an unspoken rule. One is allowed to make eye contact with another person for a brief moment only. Otherwise, as I tested, the person will look away and then look back at you as if he/she was trying to make sure that they are actually the person you're looking at. Is this learned? Are these people aware of their behaviours? Or are we genetically predisposed to know and understand these norms? I don't recall my parents telling me to look at strangers for no more than 2 second. Those who don't have a book or a phone (there was only one person reading) to occupy their gaze will stare at one spot until that spot is filled by a body. In a very crowded bus, I've noticed that people traveling alone tend to look down. 

12:00 – Cafeteria:

Active observation: I immersed myself in a group of people that I knew but that weren't my friends. Since they weren't close to me, I was able to take notes without looking suspicious, they thought I was texting. 

That was the first thing that I noticed was excessive swearing. In order to emphasize an emotion or a feeling they used very vulgar swearing. As someone who values proper English, it was a bit shocking to deal with this. Is this normal? Is this how the majority talks?
It was clear to me that one of the leaders clearly lacked the ability to interest his audience by using only speech. To get this attention, he grabbed hands and gently pushed his interlocutors. To what extend is it all right to touch other individuals? Are there certain norms?

French! Confusingly enough, the conversation often shifted from English to French. French was used in a sarcastic tone, to make fun if an expression. This joke with the same expression was repeated by the same person numerous times. He kept doing that because of the immediate success. I was only annoyed by the redundancy of the joke. Their whole conversation was based on stereotypes. They spoke of Jewish people in a certain way, giving then very pejorative attributes. Then the conversation shifted towards German. At that point I wanted to leave, what they were saying was loud and obnoxious (or maybe I just sympathize too much with Jews and Germans). Right before I left, the apparent leader was bragging quite loudly about his past sexual experiences. While he was preaching, the other 4 people around the table were listening to him quietly, nodding. Was this a way of asserting his position as an "alpha" male? That's what I took out from it. The way he objectified hid partner certainly gave me that impression. To say the least I was embarrassed to be sitting with them, so I got up and left.

4:15 – Bus Back Home:
In the bus I was one again confronted with cocky adolescence of Russian ethnic origin. Since they all spoke Russian and thought nobody understood them they judged every single female person present in the bus. Do they have nothing else to talk about? Do they really think that if they speak Russian it's all right to do that? I've never encountered someone doing that so openly in English or French.