My Train Journeys

Is it rude to sit in the aisle seat with an empty window seat on your side and not offer it to someone who is standing? Or is it even more rude for someone who is standing to ask the person who is sitting in the aisle seat to allow them to sit in the window seat? So why do people not ask that. My train this morning was the busiest I've seen so far. I walked to the end of the carriage and seen an empty window seat which was being guarded by a man working on his laptop, acting like he can't see the people standing next to him. There was a young asian lad standing close by who was wearing his Adidas jacket and Adidas trainers. Why is that kind of attire so common with the young Asian lads? I'm not sure. Isn't that the sort of clothing you'd wear to go and workout? Recently, I travelled on a long flight to Pakistan and back and I saw a few young men wearing the full Adidas gear including the jackets, t shirts, bottoms and the shoes. The flight is almost 8 hours

Motivation to do something in your life is very important but I think more important than that is the commitment to work hard towards what you want to achieve. My taxi driver this morning was committed to having a conversation with me. Or it could be that he was gathering information from all his customers and compiling that into a book. He asked me where I worked, what I did, how long had I been travelling to London, if I enjoyed it, if I travelled daily etc etc. I think there's almost a sense of, ' I can ask all these things because we're both Pakistanis". That's a license to be nosy.. I'm surprised he didn't ask me what area I was from in Pakistan, as that is normally a question very commonly asked by a fellow Pakistanian who you're meeting for the first time...lol How can you not move your lips at all for almost 25 minutes. Thursday morning in my train to London, a girl wearing a long, white, thick fur coat caught my eye because she looked lik

When I woke up this morning, I was a bit tired and felt a little grumpy for some reason. When I ordered my taxi in the morning, it showed it was 5 minutes away. So I waited 5 minutes, it was still not moving towards me and it kept showing 5 minutes away even then. So instead of calling the driver and having a rant, I decided to cancel it and order a different one which arrived in 3 minutes. I was picked up by the same taxi driver who picked me on 9 December 2019. I've also mentioned him in my blog for that day and I remember him because he thought he could have a go at me for not entering the correct drop off details which I had.. Lol. Then I went to the coffee shop at the train station which was pretty busy for 6.30 in the morning. Not only it had a long queue but there was only one person serving. May be it was because there was only one person serving. I queued for 10 - 12 minutes but then chose to go to the shop in the train instead of wasting anymore time. Even though I

Asking questions is a skill and that's how we learn new things. The kids that ask a lot of questions turn out to be the smart ones. But turning what is a confident statement into a question right at the end is a skill in itself. This morning the girl who served me in the coffee shop, demonstrated that skill quite flawlessly. But I still feel she can't beat a pro who almost does that everyday and so perfectly and skillfully that he almost makes us believe (every single time) whatever he is saying is absolutely correct. But then at the end of the sentence he makes that sound like a question. I'm talking about someone who a couple of the readers would also know about. Going back to this morning, so the girl took my order and was repeating it very confidently, while looking at the croissants and said Almond croissaaaaannnt...? Making it sound like a question. Instead of saying we don't have the plain ones do you want the almond one instead. She saved herself from say

This morning at the coffee shop, I was served by the same young lad who's been mentioned in my previous blog, "Two types of people". He took my order and I placed my loyalty card on the counter. He was about to turn around to make my drink but stopped and said in a bit of a loud voice, "Oh you've got a loyalty card". That made me think.. "am I doing something wrong?". But there was nothing to worry about. I think he was excited to see someone use the card, so even before making the drink he grabbed the stamp and stamped it twice. I am not sure if that was due to the excitement of being able to stamp an actual customers loyalty card or if it was a gesture of good will. He then made an eye contact with me and I wasn't sure if that was a confident eye contact or just to check if I was looking that he'd stamped twice but, I gave him a nod of gratitude. I find this lads behaviours, actions and body language hard to understand because

Monday afternoon, when I got on to my train heading back to Birmingham, the carriage was quite full. I was standing next to a seat with a bag on it, but the lady who was sitting on the seat next to it looked like she didn't want to pick the bag up. She was spread across two seats and there was I standing there trying to find a seat. Why would you even do that?  What kind of a person you have to be to do that? She had the headphones on and was watching something on a tablet. I said to her, 'is anyone sitting here'. I'm sure she heard that but first pretended she couldn't hear me and said, "sorry", so I pointed at her bag and said, "is that yours?“. It looked and felt like she didn't want to answer that in an attempt to make me walk away and find a seat somewhere else. But because she behaved like that, I ensured she picked her bag and I sat in that seat. I could tell she wasn't pleased. She could have been a bit humanitarian (a person