Thursday 16 June 2011

Internship

I think it would be useful for me to do an internship with the train company so I can better understand what the hell is going on. There seem to be some things that seem rather simple to figure out, but must be very complicated behind the scenes.

I was running late this morning because I decided that caffeine was more important than anything else I had going today, so I missed my train by about a minute. That meant I had to take the next train with the mad dash changeover.

I went running through the station to find that my connecting train was running 5 minutes late. No problem. But, as I was looking at the departures board, it became evident that there was no way my train would arrive at that time, because there was one departing a minute before it on the same platform. About 2 minutes later, the delay and expected time changed to an 11 minute delay. But, the same problem was going to happen with another train, and then the next one after that. Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but it seems evident that there was never any chance that my delayed train was ever going to arrive at platform 14 only 5 minutes late when there were 3 others in the way. It eventually left 24 minutes late, and I'm guessing that they knew that at the outset. If they'd have just said that, I could have at least gone to get another coffee instead of freezing my butt off on the platform for 26 minutes.

Tuesday 14 June 2011

Epic

Train Buddy found this and shared it: <http://www.mentalcrumble.com/blog/2011/6/9/the-lost-swt-1830hrs-train-from-waterloo-to-portsmouth.html> http://www.mentalcrumble.com/blog/2011/6/9/the-lost-swt-1830hrs-train-from-waterloo-to-portsmouth.html

Not sure even my worst journey has stacked up against this. Suicide and snow days have come close, but there wasn't a dance floor.

A new word

Sodcasting - the word for people who play their tinny dance music from their phones like it's a boombox. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13749313

Special thanks to Dr Dee for the link.

Monday 13 June 2011

Commuting made me evil

I'm pretty sure I'm a jackass. I'm pretty sure I wasn't a jackass before I started this job and could walk to work.

This morning, there were two carriages and it was rammed. I managed to bag a seat at a table and get my laptop set up so I could work on a project with an imminent deadline. A couple in their early 60s came up waving seat reservations at me. When there are two carriages, seat reservations aren't honoured, but this fact is never announced. I decided not to do what old me would have done and give up my seat to the old people who are off to a day at the museums. New me politely refused, citing the lack of reservation flags on the seats. The regular commuter next to me did the same, which made me feel marginally less like a jackass. When did I become a harried self-preservationist? Once again, I thank you East Midlands Trains.