Who sits next to you?

So I have been doing this commuting into London on the train thing for about three months now. Various things have struck me and I have got used to them over the time I have been using public transport. When I first started doing it the noise from other people, the train announcing tanoy-robot-lady (I can now recount every single train announcement) and the hassle of having to put up with everyone else really irritated me but I have got used to all that and kinda switch off to it.

However as time has gone on one particular thing has started to catch my interest more. Where people sit or, more specifically, who other people sit next to. Now obviously I am principally thinking of who sits next to me.

In the morning the train gets way crowded. At Maidenhead I always get a seat to myself because it is one of the first stops. However by the time it gets to Southall sometimes there is not room on the train for some folks there to actually get on (usually accompanied by banging on the windows and shouts of move down the isle). Anyway I usually have someone sitting next to me by Langley or West Drayton.

This is where it gets a bit odd.

This is totally unscientific but I would guess that by the time I get off the train at Ealing Broadway the demographics of the train population are around about 60% white, 30% Indian-Asian (although this is massively skewed by the Southall effect) and the remaining 10% being oriental or black. It’s around a 50:50 male to female ratio. The boarding of the various different ethnic origins is generally pretty consistent in terms of where they get on too with the exception of Southall (which is very busy and pretty much 100% Indian-Asian) So it’s a wide mix.

However, around about two to three days a week I end up having an oriental girl sitting next to me. And not the same one either, lots of different oriental girls, although I think a few times the same girl has sat next to me (but I am not sure as I usually stick my head in my book and keep it there). Now given the train demographics the chances of this happening at random so often are pretty slim. I mean like generally there is only one oriental girl per section of the train I am in and they are almost always sitting next to me. Furthermore, white guys never sit next to me but girls of all races do and Asian, black and oriental guys do.

So why do I end up with oriental girls next to me so often? When I get on the train on the way home I generally stand until a pair of seats become available that I can have to myself but if I had to pick someone to sit next to I would apply three tests as to whether I would sit next to them; in this order:

1. Is the person in question a hot girl? If so I would sit next to them.
2. Does the person look clean, quiet, normal, not fat and unlikely to invade my personal space. If so I would sit next to them.
3. Does the person look like they are going to get off at the next stop. If so I might sit next to them but probably wouldn't because that kind of thing is really difficult to thin-slice.

If neither of these options are available I would stand. So running my own thought processes on the oriental girls I must either look hot to oriental girls or look clean, quiet, normal, not fat and unlikely to invade personal space. Neither of which I consider to be bad things. But I really don’t know if this is their motivation. Perhaps my fellow passengers are all more unappealing to sit next to than me for other reasons. Perhaps, like me, oriental girls favour the south side of the train (for the morning sun) and forward travelling airline style seats like I do (but I would be surprised if many people had thought about train seating positions quite as much as I have).

My ego isn’t sufficiently big (but it’s a close thing) so as to be convinced that all oriental girls think I am hot. Nevertheless I can’t think of any other reasonably explicable reason why this situation occurs so often.

Regardless, the oriental girl sitting next to me phenomenon is not so objectionable. They are almost always quiet and don't invade my personal space which is about as good as I can reasonably ask of a seating partner.