This morning walking out of the flat to work, I saw the bright sun and felt the warm breeze. I thought, “Nice Weather!! It should be a great day!” Oh well … I was being naive … how would I know whether today was going to be great day when the day had only started. What do I know?!?
Going to the Tube, the underground, and things just went “down” from there. Just after I missed my train waiting for the next one, the board that indicated the time for the next train to come was empty. After 10 minutes, something showed up on the board indicating the next train was to arrive in a few minutes. I got on to the train and then the station announced that my line (Piccadilly line) was delayed due to signal failure at some other station. It took me too long (20 minutes) to give up waiting for the line to run, and I finally decided to take another line to get to work. It was going quite smoothly, then 4 stops before mine …. the train announced the line had problems due to signal failure!
WTF?!?!? What is wrong with the tube system?!! It just so happens that the only two lines I can take to work have problems? It was too far for me to walk, plus I don’t know the streets in London very well so I knew for sure that I would get lost. So, I stayed calm, and hoped the problem would resolve soon and take me to my stop. It didn’t take too long, and the train started moving, and slowly crawled to the next station. By that time, I was really late to work already, but thought I would at least get out from the station I wanted and get to work alright. NO! Life was not meant to be so simply and easy!! Just before the train arrived at the station two stations before mine, the train driver amused me by announcing that my station was closed for “security reasons”. It was getting personal!!! I didn’t have a choice but to get out and walk to work from there. I knew it wasn’t far to walk from there to work … I just didn’t know my way. I asked a stranger for directions, used my map, tried to find the street signs that were mounted high up on the buildings somewhere to locate myself. In the end, I got to work, but very late … but found out I was not alone. There were other people who didn’t make it to work on time for the same reasons.
A usual 40 minute journey to work became a two hours journey. I guess maybe my day wasn’t so wonderful. A moral lesson from this …. don’t make your judgement too early. You never know what’s going to happen!!!
urggg, I sure don’t miss taking the Tube. You handled the situation quite well though. I’m sorry you had to deal with it
Wanna move to Austin soon?!
I was working a co-op term at the Metrotowers (in Vancouver, Canada), which is a 20-minute bus+Skytrain ride (20 minutes from my door into the office). On Christmas Eve morning, it was dumping snow, and it took me over an hour to get to work because of Skytrain delays. When I got to work, they told me that anyone that tried to but couldn’t get to work would get paid for the day (and then it’s customary to get the afternoon off anyway). So after getting frustrated about *getting* to work, I didn’t even stay that long!
But your story still takes the cake. Poor you. =(