Life on the tube

First off, many people have commented about the lack of pictures in blog as well as the low-rate I post things. Since I’m a big believer in customer service… I will cater to both of those comments. First off, I’ll try to add pictures when possible (this post is still all text) and second, in place of long infrequent posts I’ll do much shorter much more often posts. Which means that this will (or should be) the last long post (and I mean long…)

It’s been about 2 weeks now and London is yet to loose its magic. Leaving home at 8am on the other hand has gotten quite old quite quickly. Luckily taken the tube (aka: subway) every day provides me with vast insight to the British commuting culture and I have came up with a few rules to follow while commuting in the UK (a survival guide if you may)

1) Entertainment is a must:

Probably the first thing you’ll notice while commuting on the tube is that 80% of the white-collar travellers are reading. Many opt for the free newspapers (which actually reports REAL news, not just phony tabloid junk) but others have real books, magazines and a few seem to use e-books (I’ve seen 2 Sony digital readers in the wild and a few people using iPods). The amazing thing about this is that nothing seems to break their concentration… reading while standing, walking, talking or even gripping the handle bars for dear life – THEY NEVER TAKE THEIR EYES OFF THE PAPER.
About 18% (where I fall in – podcasts make a 40min commute THAT much better) opts for some sort of music player. iPods are super common (no surprise there) but CD players are not as rare as you would expect them to be.
The other 2% is usually playing with their phone – which is always a BlackBerry, Nokia or iPhone. Some commuter must have a serious addiction to brick-breaker at this point.

2) Silence is golden:

Maybe this is just a consequence of everyone having some form of entertainment or maybe the entertainment came about because of this…. But which ever came first… the fact is that nobody… I mean NOBODY says a word in the tube. If you need somebody to move out of your way, simply tap them of the shoulder or nudge them with your elbow. I once said “thank you” to somebody for moving… and they looked at me as if I had gone mad.

3) Each white-collar for them self:

Just the other day…as I waited for the Jubilee line and watched people pack into the tube like canned lemmings, a guy had a little roller back which got stuck in the doors. As the poor guys struggled to get the doors open and his bag in… 2 other fellow commuters helped him. The joint effort did indeed manage the for the automated door open…but as soon as that happened, the 2 guys who were helping simply crammed into the train with total disregard for the person they seemed to be helping. So while it appeared as if they were helping this guy get his bag into the train… their true intentions were just to get the door open so they can squeeze into it as well. As of course, the other 300 people who were queued up for the train had no reaction (or comment) at all.

Of course…. These rules only hold place during rush hours. On the weekends it seems to be a free-for-all. People are a lot friendlier when to commuting to/from work too. Last Saturday night…I actually had a lady join our conversation on the tube, which I found quite refreshing :-)

For those interested in what my commute is like (distance wise), here you can download a PDF version of the tube map…. And below is my commute route marked in red (from Sloane Square to Canary Wharf)

Cheers,
Maurice W.