The Long Walk...

It was an extra early morning for me due to a need for Dad to be in the office earlier than usual. Even the best laid plans go awry and we ended up leaving the house late...as usual...

In the interest of saving time, I suggested that he drop me off at the nearby LRT station where I could utilize the public transportation to head to my workplace.

Moments later, I walked up the steps leading to the station with a rather ominous feeling encapsulating me. I had heard some horror stories about jam packed trains and the long queues to board the train. It was still rather early so I surmised I would have enough time to wait for 2-3 trains thus almost guaranteeing a space to stand in the crowded train.

However, nothing could have prepared me for the sight that greeted me as I reached the top of the stairs. There were at least 12 queues in total with each queue having at least 15 people lining up. That came up to around 180 people waiting for the train!!!

"No problem", I thought. This must be an everyday occurrence. Since the past experiences shared by my colleagues and friends stated that the normal wait would be around 2-3 trains, i just meekly joined the queue. After all, I had already paid for my ticket.

At that moment, I felt extremely grateful to be blessed with a car of my own so as to avoid taking the public transport as an everyday necessity and only resorting to it when no other alternatives presented itself.

10 minutes later, the digital clock at the station flashed 8:41AM, 2 trains had come and gone, only successfully whisking away a grand total of 10 people from my queue.

I mentally calculated the amount of people left in the queue and taking into consideration that each train came at 4 minute intervals and each could only allow 5 passengers to board, I came to the conclusion that it would take me at least another 25 minutes to get a train!

Evaluating my options, I decided to quit the queue and take the long walk to my workplace instead. Doing one more quick recount to ensure that this was indeed the best option, I turned around and gave the bored looking Indian man behind me a quick shrug before heading towards the stairs yet again.

The Indian man smiled back at me and returned my shrug probably telling me that he didn't have the luxury of being able to walk to his destination even though he knew that he would definitely end up being late on this day to wherever he was going.

As I walking down the stairs, I entertained the possibility of snapping a quick photo of the crowd to post up here but finally decided against it due to the throngs of people staring at me. You will just have to take my word for it and imagine the almost 200 person crowd waiting grudgingly for their train to arrive.

During my exit from the station, I inquired to the station attendant whether such a drastic queue was typical of the morning crowd. She shook her head violently replying that today was a most unusual day as the trains coming to the station were already packed making most of the normal commuters wait much longer than usual.

With the morning sun already causing beads of sweat to appear on my brow, I started walking towards my own destination. I was reminded of how much I lacked exercise when my legs started to ache after a mere 10 minutes of walking...

Luckily for me, due to my brisk pace that I was maintaining, I managed to reach my office in only 15 minutes. Taking a final glance at the LRT station in the distance which I just came from, I grinned to myself; glad that I made the correct decision to walk instead of continuing to wait.

I mouthed a silent prayer for the massive group of commuters probably still waiting for their train hoping that they would be able to get to their destinations soon as well.