Of trains and getaways

You gotta love travelling in London. The rush hour, the sardine-packed tubes, delays, bad breaths - they certainly make the 9-to-5 routine much more appealing.

As much as I hate the very nature of it all, I have become quite reliant on the public transports here. And despite a lot of things, I have grown to appreciate it lately. Simply because I feel that that's the only time when I can really.... escape.

These days I take the train a lot. Funny, but everytime I'm on it, I have to sit facing the direction of the motion of the train. One, because I get easily sick when I travel against motion. And two, I do believe that it gives me a sense of looking ahead. A silly way of leaving trails of the past behind, but whatever works, ey?

When everyone else is either engrossed in a book to kill time on the train, or bobbing their heads to the tunes on their iPod, I on the other hand just let the little wheels and machines in my head do what they do best. I look out the window and it is within these 30 minutes that I paint the greatest picture of my future. I'm either a CEO, an event planner for a big charity event or a guest on a prime-time TV's greatest talk show. I give my parents the best lives they've ever dreamed of. My beautiful daughter is a heart-breaker and my son sings like John Legend.

I become a best-friend to many and become their favorite listener. I enter a room and people turn their heads towards me - probably because they just saw me on the cover of Fortune or okay, Tatler. When I walk, I walk with pride - even for the simplest fact that my son won 3rd in 'lari dalam guni'. I make changes to the Malaysian corporate culture, and who knows, a key investor in Jhabudd's. I touch lives, I make a change to the world.

But as soon as I reach my stop, that is when those dreams just wither away. I put on my scarf, get off the train and within seconds I see before me a life, remotely connected to what it could possibly be. But yet, hesitantly, I live it anyway.