Chapter Fifteen: Lateness and Loneliness (~jinghan)

Much is to be said about Melbourne’s public transportation. Much has been said.

Every week day, I walk to the train station, catch a train to the city, and tram down to the uni. A journey that takes, surprisingly, an hour from beginning to end. At the end of this day, reverse the process, and I head home.

If you ask any Melbournian they can give you a fairly good run down of why our public transport system is really bad. (Late trains, cancelled trains, packed trains, late trams, packed trams, dodgy old ticketing system, dodgy new ticketing system, late trains, cancelled trains, packed trains, very late trains.) When I went to countries such as Japan and London I was jealous to find that I did not have to run for a train because another one would come in a mere three minutes. It seems only a Melbournian sprints up/down the ramp onto the platform and between the already closing doors, or tugs desperately at the already closed doors. One writer in the newspaper even wrote that an international friend asked why Melbournians did not wait for passengers to finish getting out of the carriage before bording – to which the writer, slightly ashamed, wrote that it is born out of our desperation and frustration due to delayed and cancelled trains, not to mention the packed ones that the less pushy passenger has no hope of even getting on board.

There’s been many mornings where I have looked around at the people on the train and thought how lonely everyone looks. Each of us getting up to a cold silent house, dressing and eating in the grey of the morning before stumbling or driving to the nearest train station, where a long cold wait, or a short hot sprint precedes a lonely uncomfortable trip on the train to work, school or uni.

Only it isn’t so lonely: a carriage full of strangers united by our bleary eyed morning.

And despite all the lateness and all that, I must say that there’s something calm and comfortable about taking a trip on a train. With the busy hectic world left outside, and being propelled swiftly past the house-tops and colourful street-art. It always surprises me to go down a different train line and find the scenery very different. On the Whereby line they have a chinese temple! And on the upfield line goes under the freeway! But whatever is outside the window, the inside is lazy and still. And when it isn’t so full, the train carriage is much like a lounge room where strangers come in to rest momentarily. Outside we have to be somewhere, always connected, always competing for something, but once inside the train, there is (ironically) a slowing down and a moment to stop without really stopping.

On the way home the other day, a black man with a bandage over his nose stares through me, at some vacant point beyond my existence. It is a look of exhaustion, the sort you feel when all the motivation and optimism of the day is used up. I knew exactly how he felt. And I stared, in return, at the vacant space beyond his existence as if he were a mirror into my own emotions.

Trains a space for shared emotions.

The train is also my rare moment of reading for the day. In the morning I read my book, and in the afternoon I read the paper. Everywhere else in my life its walking and walking across the campus, or sitting and sitting in front of a desk.

And there’s often someone to run into on the tram. Many friends-of-friends have been converted into friends in the short tram ride between the uni and the train station. It’s just the perfect amount of time for an interesting discussion, without making the connection too awkwardly formal.

As you read this, someone is probably sitting frustrated at their station listening to the forever apologetic automated voice: “The next Flinder’s Street train has been delayed, and is now expected in seven minutes. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.” Or some poor passenger is furiously stabbing their ticket into a machine that refuses to admit them out of the station. And somedays the distance from uni to home seems like half a world. But, despite all the little rusty joints in the Melbourne transportation system, once on the train, whether I am sitting or standing jammed against strangers, there’s some little hidden reward in the journey I make each day.