America and adventures on public transport

I have to write this down before I forget, because it was so surreal and I can't quite believe it happened. And I'm still laughing about it. 

So I was on my way home from a Harry Potter trivia night (thanks to introverted-ghost for the HP merchandise!), got on the train, was a bit too engrossed with my phone and realised I got on wrong train, got off train and got on the right train. And I was sitting in the open space area, and two girls with strong American accents ran onto the train huffing and puffing. I don't know how, because they were wearing ridiculously high heels. 

Anyway, a blue-collar-shirted guy got on the train and sat a few seats across from me and asked very loudly whether the train goes towards a suburb (which happened to be where I live). The American girls had no idea, they were just going clubbing, but I told him yes and got a high five from him. Then the American girls started chatting, and he asked where they were from and they said they were from Chicago. And they started going through all the famous people who came from Chicago like Barack Obama. The blue-shirted guy said he stayed for a while in New York, and they chatted generally about the States, and then somehow they got on the topic that they didn't like the Democrats and they were like "Yes, we're Republicans!" And all this high-fiving was going on. Then a bunch of guys emerged from a carriage next door (hearing our conversation) and said yeah we love the Republicans as well. Then the guys and the girls got off the train and I was left with blue-collar-shirted guy, who I'll call George, because he kept referring to himself as George. Although I found out his name was actually Julian. 

Now George, I figured straight off, was a little bit drunk (though like all drunks tried to convince me he wasn't) and so he launched into a largely one-sided conversation about the history of the Rolling Stones. He said his four-year-old son was really into the Rolling Stones. And he started singing and pretend-strumming lyrics from Mick Jagger. He told me he was 42, had a law practice, but he really wanted to make a TV documentary one day including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles as well. He wanted to drag Paul McCarthy and Ringo Starr into the picture and he wanted to throw them some curly questions. Especially about their creativity. 

He had a good term for that as well, and he repeated it throughout our rather one-sided conversation. It's amazing that they had this supernova of creativity and then suddenly it disappeared just like that after 12 years of golden times. Did wealth make them less creative, he wondered. He said he doesn't quite believe in journalism, he said he preferred to be called an inquisitor. 

Everyone thought he was a little crazy obsessing over this topic about their spectacular fall from success, according to him, but he says he's spent decades thinking about this and he really wants to do it one day. He joked that I might see him on TV one day, if he makes it. I soon learned he's actually an intellectual property lawyer working in the city who incidentally lives in the same suburb as me. He just had a big night out with a friend that he hadn't seen in two months at a fancy Italian restaurant in the eastern suburbs. Apparently drank the whole wine list. Somehow we managed to get off the train together without him making too much of a scene, and pretty much walked half the distance towards my house because we incidentally lived in the same proximate area. 

On the way, I confessed I was actually studying law, and immediately (and I swear he only did this because he was quite drunk) he said he was looking for people and he would definitely throw the door open for experience. It's funny, because he's actually the reverse of me. He got into journalism first apparently, writing for a few papers. At one point he was invited to see the CEO of Fairfax Media (one of the biggest newspaper companies here in Australia), Greg Hywood. But then the CEO told him that he better stick to law because he was about to sack 30 journos. So he stuck to law. But apparently he first did his bachelors of english literature during his early 30s (as you do) and then joined law school, and topped it to boot. And he was regaling me with how awesome IP law is. 

Unfortunately, I'm sure he didn't quite get the message that I was pretty happy to stay in medical journalism right now and didn't want to move into law. But he thinks it'll be great if I called him anytime and caught up. And you know, who knows. My life has had stranger changes. And quite literally in the sense of the word: strangers have probably changed my life in profound ways than the people I know the most, in many circumstances. 

The best part- it all seemed to be brought about by accident. What became a bit of an inconvenience catching the wrong train and having to catch the right one later probably yielded me an interesting contact and at best, a great story I won't forget for a while.

And people wonder why I don't want to buy a car. Public transport has been a creative hotspot (last two poems I've written being a good example) and a very random place to meet very random people.