Owing to some minor disruptions at Melbourne's equivalent of Grand Central Station, I alighted upon a different train to travel home from university this afternoon. Perhaps it's just a measure of the banality of my everyday existence to say that I was utterly captivated by the novelty of this experience: new trackside sights, stations of whose names I'd never heard - it was the first time in, well, ages, that I have spent the entire journey with my head pressed up against the carriage window watching the scenery.

After disembarking from the train (and feeling vaguely disoriented) I was rather puzzled at how much I had actually enjoyed this momentary sensual contrast. For the empoverirshed, car-less law student, travelling around Melbourne is normally a rather jejune affair, pervaded by a sense of irritation at the painfully inefficient operation of our (privatised) public transport system. Passengers awaken from their sullen-faced stupour only on rare occasions of hilarity: the ravings of the line's resident drunkard, some reckless teenager attempting to cross the tracks, and the like. Who would have thought that the mystique of a new set of scenery would be enough to enrapture the weary traveller. I await with interest my journey to university tomorrow...