"Severe delays due to an earlier person under a train." That was a warning I saw on the Underground a week ago. (Jessica suggested the person was probably no longer "early" but now "late.") It was interesting, but not really relevant, and I didn't think about it again.
Until this morning, when that same person apparently climbed under the train I needed to get to my interview. Yes, interview! After a two-month dry spell (mostly self-inflicted), I finally had not one, but two interviews today! (And, oddly, both were with online marketing firms.) The first was 2 miles away, I had 45 minutes, I was wearing a suit, and there was a person under my train!
A reasonable person would have hailed a cab, but I've taken a cab two miles in London and it cost US $30! After paying the security deposit and one month's rent on my new flat (which I'm moving into tomorrow), my bank account is looking pretty anemic, which is why I was hoofing it through Kensington Gardens, arriving two minutes early, soaking wet.
Still, I must have made a favorable impession, as they invited me to a second interview, and asked to check some technical references. My second interview of the day was a phone screen, but they also asked me to come in for a face-to-face, so I was feeling pretty good. However, the reality remains that I only applied for these positions out of desperation, and there's no way an online marketing firm doing web pages and video animations is going to hire a conservative old-school Unix practitioner like me.
But in the end, I couldn't help but feel I was still better off than my friend under the train. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information on him over the web, except for a generic blurb in a BBC article from 1999.
"[The Jubilee line has] glass platform doors that match perfectly to the position of the train doors, making it difficult for passengers to fall in front of or under a train. 'The primary aim was to do with ventilation, and litter and human hair - we get tons and tons of human hair down the tunnels and it can take hours and hours of cleaning time,' [a spokeswoman] said. 'But of course there is the added safety benefit that it stops people committing suicide.'"
I also found that there are about 50 suicides per year (plus an undisclosed number of fatal accidents), the peak hour for tube suicides is 11am, and people who commit suicide by throwing themselves under a train are called 'one-unders'.
Thursday I should have photos of my new flat, but for now I've attached a picture of the marina right outside my flat. (That's the moon in the photo, although most days the sun looks about the same.)
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