On The Train (Knowledge is contextual), June 28, 2007

I was late again and again took the same 2209 train home. However, today the crowd was bigger. My bet is not because of them being late or most of them decided to go home late but one Seremban train went missing from the schedule. The other problem was that we got the train with the blue compact unpractical seats. I had to squeeze my self to be able to do my writing. It was a bit cramped for me. Just after Serdang I felt really tired and there was no way I was going to continue to work at home. I decided I needed to be fresh for my presentation the next day. Sometimes back I wrote about never commuting home with the same set of commuters that I travel with every morning. This could only mean one thing, most of them go home early and I am always late. Today was even more obvious as almost 90 per cent of them I have never met on the train before. We even had a DBKL lady officer on board. As predicted the crowd only got thinner at UKM. Talking about UKM station I remember one incident yesterday with three lady commuters, I suspected out towners, attending a training program at one of the bank’s training institutes in Persiaran Institut Bangi. There have gone to MidValley and on the way home was given wrong information at which station to disembark. Of course in their case the nearest and easiest would be Serdang station and the second easiest would be UKM. If you do not know the train route and the stations along that route you will give wrong information. In this case, I was told by the ladies that, in trying to be helpful upon hearing that the girls would want to go to Persiaran Institut Bangi, the guard had a logical answer for a station would be Bangi station. The only problem Bangi station is actually located at Bangi Lama. So the three ladies disembarked with me at Bangi station on the last train wondering aloud as to why there wasn’t any taxi except for ‘teksi sapu’. I overheard them asking the teksi sapu and was surprised that the fare would be RM 30 and even more surprising to hear that their institute actually was further. They mentioned the fare from Serdang would only be RM 10. Luckily the teksi sapu man was actually honest enough and did not try to fleece them. Trying to help them I mentioned to them that they should have gotten down at UKM and it was indeed far to Persiaran Institut. Still not satisfied later they asked me again to confirm and I concurred. In the end, rather then risking sleeping, or even worse risking their safety, at the station they went with one of the teksi sapu that I knew. This reminded me of a story of Dave getting down at the worst part of downtown New York because he thought the route would be shorter but could have jeopardized his health if not life. The same here knowledge sharing is contextual. There is nowhere the guard could have known that the Bangi station was not the right station had not somebody knowledgeable explain that to him or he himself had experienced the ride and been to Bangi station.