Day 3: The Napping Seat.

I was all set to write a blog post about the best seats in the world on the TTC subway, and as I set out to google the image of that perfect seat, the first result I got was a picture perfect with the arrow done for me and everything…with the source from Blog UT!

Turns out a good 5 years ago, a lovely blogger by the name of Jermaine had already blogged about this.

(Source Here: The permalink is a bit wonky, which is why I attached a screenshot of the post )

Five years later, things have changed little. The best seats on the TTC train are still those ones, but now there are more of them. If you look at the picture in the blog post, the second seat counting from the right, these seats now have a plastic wall for you to lean and nap on now. What else? As mentioned in Blog TO:

The most noticeable change among the many — and the reason they will hold more passengers — is that the trains are now open-length, which means that a connecting passage allows riders to travel seamlessly from one car to the next (there are six cars in total). In an empty train, one can look straight from one end to the other.

On either side of this open seam, there are seats right next to the white walls of the train. Also a perfect place to lean against and nap on.

Three hurrahs for the Rocket and it’s brilliant napper-friendly designs! ‘Tis awesome!

Check out Louisa’s introduction to the challenge here.
Check out Day 1 of the challenge here.
Check out Day 2 of the challenge here.

Day 2: Subway Music

I personally really enjoy subway music. I love getting off a train to hear rather epic music playing, as if celebrating the fact that I finally, finally, finally got to where I needed to be. I love seeing the different kinds of instruments that people play; there are the familiar instruments like violins and guitars, but also the unfamiliar ones that resemble the modern day flute, or some kind of melodic percussion instrument… all of which I cannot name. I love hearing familiar songs that I haven’t heard in ages, that bring back nostalgic memories as they randomly find themselves in my life again, but I also like to hear the improvisation that goes on so freely and effortlessly. From experience, hearing these effortless improvised melodies happen just like that is pretty much like showing a clip of a professor expertly work out a calculus problem to a younger sibling who just learned the simplest of algebra: overwhelming, fascinating, and almost magically impossible. But… most of all, and probably geekiest of all, what do I love?

I love realizing that my mind is subdividing as the melodies intertwine, because it really goes to show that once you’re a music geek, you’re always a music geek. Music never leaves you. 

Check out Louisa’s introduction to the challenge here.
Check out Day 1 of the challenge here.

Day 1: The Couple

The first month of commuting for me was largely spent people watching, I’ll shamelessly admit. I wasn’t comfortable with falling asleep in a public place, nor could I accomplish any sort of reading because I would get motion sickness. Same goes for engaging in any kind of entertainment on my phone other than listening to music, which left my eyes largely free to wander (and hopefully not to often, to zone out and accidentally stare).

I remember on the first day of my commute I sat across from a young couple. They stood out more to me than anyone else because everyone else was either staring ahead with the blankest of stares, reading, or napping. There was an aura of happiness around the couple. The typical commuter face seems to be beyond miserable, reflecting rather accurately the experience of commuting for most people at rush hour in the morning, but these two were enjoying it in the simplest of ways. They were happy simply because they were with each other.

I see them time and time again now, in the morning, as we somehow coincidentally appear on the same train. It reminds me of a recent post that circulated tumblr quite a bit, about the word “sonder“.

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Commuting has always been about getting somewhere as quickly and most efficiently as you can, and even as you are moving, multitasking as efficiently as possible. People seldom stop and realise that of the other fellow commuter sardines packed into the train around them, each has a life as vivid and complex as their own. It’s inspiring to realise that someone else, in all the vividity and complexity of their lives, takes the time to enjoy their commute in the company of someone they love, and be happy, instead of mindlessly trying to accomplish three billion things at once.

This, I found, was rather awesome.

Check out Louisa’s introduction to the challenge here.

Lo and behold, it’s finally November, the strange month squished between the October and December! Packed with different events from Remembrance Day (don’t forget to wear a poppy!), to Movember and Nanowrimo, this is one of those months that promises to make an dent in your life, despite appearing rather uneventful at first.

The traditional Nanowrimo event is where you write around 1 666 words a day towards your 50 000 word novel, every day of November. By the end of the month, you’d have a novel. As a commuter, I’ve decided to take a spin on that.

Commuting, as I’ve heard from many others and have experienced myself, is probably one of the most mundane and tiring tasks of daily life. From dealing with passenger assistance alarms creating delays, to being packed like sardines as people behind you at Bloor-Yonge desperately try to get on the same train, sometimes even the thought of going home feels dreadful.

That’s why I’ve decided to take commuting and this month of November, both long and dull on first ponder, to collect one awesome thing about commuting a day and blog about it (much in the style of this blog). By the end of this, I should have 30 brilliant things about commuting tucked away in my mind, and perhaps I may even make an dent in another commuter’s life and brighten it up a bit.

Here goes! Hello, November!

As the last of my high school buddies said their farewells and moved into the residences of their respective universities all around the world, it hit me that, maybe, I should use the time I saved from not having to pack to research the possible savings of commuting. (more…)