The weather here also is similar to London for its uncertainty. The day will sunny and all of a sudden it becomes cloudy and rains! So better always keep an umbrella and be ready for the rain anytime. And when it rains, I am seeing a lot of snails on the roads and the pathways, sadly half of them crushed to paste :(.My first day to office, I partially made up for the loss with taxi. There are no counters or ticket machine in Evere station; it is so small. The train will have one conductor who will be walking across the train to check your passes and give tickets, like UK trains. It is not a tough job to walk across 3-4 compartments (that’s all this train consists of) and check the passes, and issue tickets to one or two people. Even in the peak hours, it will have very less people. The whole train will contain less than 10 passengers by the time it reaches Halle. The conductor didn’t come, and my first Belgian train travel became a ticket-less travel! There are no checks at the stations. Evere station doesn’t even have a single employee, not even a sweeper!
Applied for a train pass at Halle station, you have to come out of the station for the counter. Sham helped me with his memory on what he filled in a few months ago, as the form was in Dutch (I assume it is Dutch). For unclear ones, we cleared them with the person at the counter, who speaks English like an outline story. We mentioned that the
pass is needed for bus and train, and he noted that also down. It came around €84 for a month which was much less than what Sham paid a few days ago. Then we tried to check why it is, and realised on comparison that the pass doesn’t include travel in Metro trains and buses running in and around the city (like Evere). I can only use it in the train to Halle and the buses in Halle! It is all so confusing; I have to take another so-called jump card for using in the city transports. The card is issued for 10 jumps costing around €11.Now, what is a jump? Whatever trains, trams or buses I take in one hour will be counted as one jump. So if I have to go to a place taking a bus and then a train and it took me 20 minutes to reach there, finish my work and make it back to my destination with my last boarding within the next 40 mins, I will only be using one jump!
But that was all theory; I was initially not fully clear on its usage and successfully showed the pass in a wrong bus (it needs to be showed to the driver, not the scanner. As except for what is included in the pass printed, it is the same pass) and later when I learnt it; I was more confident that I can use it comfortably, I did it some more times when Sham was warning me I have to pay €50 if caught. I was just showing off my frustration in my helplessness to understand their system and was planning to explain it clearly if caught (surely was keeping a €50 note in my purse always). I stopped it when I got through the frustration, and did stop before I was fined :). Now Sham travels with me much more relaxed :). But I am also relaxed on being able to fully make up for my loss with the taxi.
Office is different from my previous offices, onsite or offshore. They are made of many cabins, and some are big to contain 10 people and some for one person. I am sharing my cabin with 2 others, looks far better in terms of non-distracted work. I have to swipe to enter as any other offices, but here the system updates my entry and everyone (including Chennai office) can see if I am in or not. The card’s use doesn’t end there. If I fire a print out in the central printer, I have to swipe my card to get my printout. It is security for me, none will see my documents, and traceability for the management.
Tailpiece:-
There is a solution I found here to make sure the buses doesn’t start before time from their starting point. There is a digital board kept at the station, which displays the time, then a random number. This random number changes every minute. The driver have to note the number at the time he has started from that point and report it as a part of his trip sheet. The route supervisor checks this number with what would have displayed for that time and confirm if the bus has not started before time. We could use this for our clock rooms, which is there to avoid over speeding.
