On The Train, Mar. 21, 2005

(Knowledge Management: Story Telling)

With the normal Monday crowd at the station I thought I was going to have a normal ride to the office. I was wrong!. The train was crowded than the usual and I sat sandwiched between a gentleman and a sleeping lady on my right. What I realised was the existence of a group of students sitting in front of me across the isle. They were not the usual students. There were seven of them conversing in English and looked a bit different. I knew instantly that they were from Seremban. I could not read it at first glance and when I looked carefully the name of the school SMK St Paul was obvious on their badges. They were accompanied by a teacher and I deduced from their conversation that they were attending an event at a school somewhere in PJ. They were chatty lots. What I really wanted to write was not so much about them but their association to the school that I used to familiar with. SPI as the school was popularly known then was a powerhouse in school hockey in Negeri Sembilan. They trounced us whenever we played them. I can remember only on few occasions that we managed to beat them and that during the early days of SDAR in Seremban when for a few years we made a clean sweep. But in 1977 and 1980 we managed to give them a good fight but lost narrowly. We beat them in football all the time and only managed one win when I was playing. Obviously they celebrated after that win. They did not even had a rugby team then and I guess still is now.

They were really chatty on the train. They started with complaining on how long the journey was and took ages to get to the KL Sentral. Moved to about football, computers, Internet and eventually to movies. They were the only sound apart form the noise created by the train. In fact their teacher made a remark ‘you guys were the only people talking’, when they arrived at KL Sentral. Of course all of them were relieved to have arrived at the station. At last they said.

It was raining on the way home and I dreaded the thought of getting stranded before Serdang. I thought it was going to be a hot day, that’s what all the experts were saying. Equinox effect or something. Suddenly my mind just refused to ‘flow’, I drew blank on what next to write and as always automatically switched into a thinking mode. The question on my mind was should we tour Malaysia at the end of the year or should we go to Sabah. My family definitely would want to go to Sabah but the idea of touring Malaysia (West) intrigued me. Tiring but fun. At the same time I could visit my friends along the route.

So lesson learnt today. It is true in your life you set a lot of triggers. Triggers that associated you with strong feeling of attachment. To me Seremban and anything associated to it would set me onto memory lane in an instance