Take The Last Train To Clarkson

Or, in this case, I took the first train to Mandurah this morning!

I got onto the train at Greenwood at about 11:10am, noting that it had "Mandurah" on the front (rather than "Esplanade"). After a couple of stops, the driver made an announcement, congratulating us for being on the first Mandurah train.

It was a reasonably busy train already, and the situation got much worse when it arrived at Perth. Every man and their dog decided that they wanted to be on that train! We were packed in quite tightly, and I don't think many people were able to get on after Esplanade.

The route was quite scenic for the first part, with the river on the right-hand side. Going over the Narrows and the Mount Henry Bridge were nice too.

Just before we reached Bull Creek station, the train suddenly applied brakes and came to a complete standstill. Then it started moving away again, very slowly. The driver came onto the intercom and said that, not due to anything on her part, the train had automatically applied the brakes, but that it seemed to be alright again. It's just teething problems, I think.

As we went through Cockburn Central, I noticed the Cockburn Central shopping centre on the right. I made a mental note to get off there on the way back and have a look.

The last part of the journey was boring; not scenic, not interesting. We finally got into Mandurah, and there was a rush of people going to a bus service that I think was taking people to the foreshore. I declined; instead I picked up some souvineers (a commemorative flag, badge, card, and a timetable) and hopped back onto the train. This time it wasn't anywhere near as busy.

I did get off at Cockburn, and walked to that shopping centre. There's a Dick Smith's there which was quite big, with heaps of products; also there's a Big W and a Sanity where I bought 3 DVDs for $40 (Team Hi-5, Travelling Circus, and Jimeoin & Bob Live At The Famous Spiegeltent).

I also came across an award-winning bakery, where I had a meat pie and an LA Maxi Ice. It's exceedingly rare to find places that sell 600ml bottles of LA Ice, and the last place I saw one was in Melbourne! So I was pleased about that.

The Sanity didn't really have many CDs. It mostly had little plastic cards with the CD title and tracklist on it, and you take it to a kiosk which burns a CD for you. What's really completely dumbass is that it's the same price as buying a real copy of the CD in the first place, and it's not like you can buy a digitally-downloaded CD as a present! You can also bet that they compress the music too, making it useless for listening on a Dolby Pro-logic compatible surround sound system.

That's my day. Oh, a few minutes ago another Chinese chick tried to practice her English with me on Skype, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with these Chinese girls again, and I started talking non-stop about sex. She's not responding anymore.