"So Philly - does that stand for Pennsylvania?"
Perhaps it's the fact that I spend more time near random people than ever before. Maybe it's just that a lot of very friendly people live around San Francisco. Either way, I don't mind letting people know where the train station is or how to buy a ticket.

The quote above is from a guy I met while walking towards the train from work a few days ago. I was waiting to cross a street when he asked me if I knew where the McDonalds was. I pointed in the direction that he had just come from. He then asked me if there was a train station around here and I told him where it was and that I was headed there myself. The light changed and we crossed the street as he proceded to tell me about the idiocy of people he meets. He mentioned that a woman had told him that the closest train station was Hillsdale, a stop farther than Hayward Park and not comfortable walking distance. He then asked the woman if there was one close by and she gave him vague directions to Hayward. He said that he's been traveling through the pacific northwest and he was headed back to where he's from - somewhere in east bay. About halfway through our walk to the station, he asked where I was from. I said Philly. Hence the quote. Afterwards I tried to explain that Philly was short for Philadelphia in the nicest way possible. It's a city. In Pennsylvania. That's a state.

I have a pretty regular route to work in the mornings and that's when I get queried the most. People want to know the time because they can't wait less than a minute for it to scroll by on the station information boards. People are also quite interested in exactly how you go about buying tickets for Caltrain. I've had quite a few seniors ask about that - they're insistant on getting their senior fare on the train. I think my favorite is a grandmother that takes the train on Tuesdays to see her granddaughter and has made a point say hello to me since a few weeks ago when I simply answered her question about what stop we were at. You get used to the randomness after a while.