Across Weirdish Wild Space

Seriously, 28 Oct and the snow is coming down in huge, big fluffy flakes and sticking to everything. It’s actually very beautiful but I can’t believe it’s snowing this early already.

Wow… I am seriously jonezing for some snowboarding now though. Anyone got any ski trips planned yet ?

So, spent the weekend at Alton Towers grace of a friend who makes a yearly pilgimmage there.

I have to admit I was a little sceptical about a British theme park. As a friend stated back in Canada when I was IMing with them once I got back, “Theme parks seem rather un-English.”

But it was scads of fun.

And besides pondering how much fun it must be to be a roller coaster designer and that a good book scam would be travelling the world and rating all the world’s amusement rides (and getting soaked because of the drizzle, a maniac insisting on a water ride and catching a rather bad cold in time for work on Monday), I have to say that Alton Towers, while small, was absolutely loads of fun. Doubly so if you stay overnight in the hotels. Stay in the Alton not the SplashLandings which is more for kids (but has a waterpark !).

Anyhow, here is my list of rollercoasters tops list :

1. Rita: Queen of Speed
   Just damn fun because of the speed. 100mph in 2.5 seconds off launch. It’s fast… sooo fast…
2. Oblivion
   For sheer holy shit ! value, this had to take it. Literally it’s just a freefall plunge from roughly 200ft up into a dark hole in the ground and pulling about 4Gs but the absolute evil part if they hold the coaster for a few seconds with you dangling over the edge of nothing, before they suddenly drop it. Plus the production value on the slightly orwellian tv screens and commentary as you go up are fantastic
3. Air
   I had never seen a coaster like this, so it was a bit of a first for me. You are strapped in and then tilted up so you are literally doing a Superman around the entire ride. Massively fun with loads of loops, spins and through some engineering marvel, one of the most incredibly smooth rides I’ve ever been on. Way better than Nemesis which is similar in that you dangle your feet.
4. Pinball-Whizzer
   The great thing about this coaster is that the entire car can freely rotate 360 degrees so you are spun about while moving round corners and up and down hills. Fantastically fun and twice as good if you get into the seats facing backwards.

Oh, and a special mention to Hex which takes place inside the semi-restored and absolutely gorgeous castle of Alton Towers (will someone please give them some money to restore this beautiful edifice up to its former glory ?). A ghost story of super high production values with a fabulous little finale that is part ride and a fantastic bit of optical illusion. I have to say I was impressed even though I knew what they were doing.

Hammed it up with loads of posed photos taken on the rides but didn’t think in advance enough to get the oh so important chess playing photo :

[Actually, I did this last Saturday, it’s just taken me this long to get to write about it.]

While I’m not really plugged into what an iconic (happy, CG ?) part of life a flutter on the dogs was for the regular punters in the East End of London, it would be difficult to pass up the historic (and somewhat sad) occasion of the last greyhound races at the fabled Walthamstow Stadium before it closed its doors for good and made way for (yet more) boring and architecturally bankrupt London residential development.

So, I went down the dogs… to watch them burst from the traps for the last time.

And it was pretty great, despite the fact that, unlike the (ok, the one time) I went to the track and bet on the geegees and made a killing, I couldn’t pick a winning greyhound for the life of me despite using my time tested horsey method of picking by the stats in the racing form. Also, I kept thinking how much fun it would be to have other breeds race as well. Imagine a dachshund steeples for instance !

But the closing of Walthamstow was a bit sad, even for me, who it isn’t really a part of life for (and who hopes his grandparents, who would be quite disappointed, don’t find out about. Dog racing in general has been in decline for quite a while in England exacerbated by off-track high street betting (in every major street in London) and internet bookmaking. The Chandler family who runs the concern, and who originally opened it 75 years ago in 1933, claimed a loss last year of £500k which was unsustainable from a business perspective.

Still, it is always sad to see a piece of history go. Winston Churchill famously did his first address after the end of World War II from the stadium and it graces the cover of Blur’s Parklife album cover, was the set for films, TV, commercials and generally a stalwart part of the East End for its run.

After the last race, people burst out and starting running (the wrong way mind you) round the track and were joined by probably a third of the entire stadium before they started saying they were going to turn out the lights and lads and ladettes starting ripping pieces of the Stadium and tracks in order to have some memorabilia from this little piece of history (some of which I imagine are up on eBay already).

It was a very fun evening out and even with the losses, still worth it being there (but damn I wish we’d booked ahead for dinner and box seats). Pretty cool all round and even if you’re upset you missed it and want to contribute a bit to history and the memory of the place, there is a retirement fund for the those greyhounds that will be retired (rather than moved to the few other remaining tracks in the country) so that good, peaceful homes can be found for the speedy little puppies.

Another interesting side note is that the famous Walthamstow neon sign pictured here is apparently considered historic and therefore untouchable, so the new residential development, even in this downturn market of housing starts, will apparently be incorporated into the new design of the residential complex.

[OK, I did this last weekend actually, but only just got round to doing a little writeup on it.]

You do have to hand it to the Brit Museum.

Besides being one of the world’s premiere museums (I still prefer the Louvre), holding the Hadrian exhibit inside the Pantheon-inspired Museum Reading Room while speaking about Hadrian’s contributions to architecture is a self-referential masterstroke. While considering how he rebuilt Agrippa’s building and a still staple reminder of Rome’s ancient glories inside a room where you can look up and see how that Dome influenced the modern world gives a certain relevance to Hadrian’s contributions that a dry recounting of his life in other surrounds would never convey.

It does set the scene, much like the dramatic trailer video that starts off the exhibit does (and having Patrick Stewart do the voiceover is yet another brilliant coup) . Which basically reminds me of those line from the Princess Bride,

“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”

Well, you get the idea, though it is very well produced. Like a trailer for a television documentary on the Beeb. And it does its job well in letting you know that this exhibit is going to be about the stories around Hadrian’s life, rather than the dry artifacts. Which immediately makes it a lot more interesting than the dry retelling of the facts despite the scandalous £12 entry price (since I’m a member, I got my friend and I in free though ;-) )

The incredible thing is how little is actually known of Hadrian except from a few scant sources, and how this exhibit was largely possible through recent discoveries in places like Sargalassos in Turkey. It goes over his achievements as architect, statesman (I love the cancelling of all public debts owed to the Republic to the amount of 900 million sestertii which provided an immense economic impetus to a moribund empire – How much would that be in today’s money ?), and military leader as well as the way he became emperor, and his marriage with a beautiful woman even while he had a male lover (only the British would dedicate an entire room of the exhibit to this, regardless of how the Antinous cult carried on after his death and somewhat competed with Christianity. We get it already. Hadrian was gay. Move on, please. Just about everybody was then, thanks.).

All in all, a pretty impressive exhibit, which gives you the storied impression Hadrian behaved differently, looked differently and acted differently, and came to power differently than any other emperor before or after him and provides a great base for wanting to learn more about the emperors and understanding the legacy of ancient Rome (and Hadrian !). Definitely worth the visit though I think the price is a little high, particularly considering BP is sponsoring this thing rather heavily.

One thing I really have to start wishing though of British museums in general. If you’re not going to allow people to take pictures in the exihibit—or at least openly disocourage it even if it’s practically impossible in this age of camera phones, and particularly of unique little bits of wall display you might have created which might represent maps of ancient cities, overlay of empires or other material which is going to help people expand their understanding of what you’re representing, please put this stuff online and get a greater understanding of your audience. I still can’t believe I had to snag a pirated video of the trailer off YouTube when the British Museum should have it up there already.

I don’t know what it is, but ever since seeing Macbeth with Patrick Stewart, my expectations of what I deserve to see when I go to see Shakespeare have been radically altered (yes, Jean-Luc starring in the direction in that play was that good ).

It’s not enough that someone throws a few interesting stage directions, or in this case a third dimension, to the production by putting Cirque du Soleil-esque netting overhead and allowing people to bounce down with bungees from overhead. There has to be an internal consistency to the play, an addition of something not seen before, a compelling take on its direction.

First off, though, the lead was absolutely fantastic even if he did have to spend the entire post-intermission running around in his undewear. And despite the addition of scatological farce after the intermission (and I did really love the way the intermission happened, with people being herded out, with the house livery screaming at them), he did an astounding job as Timon. Apemantus is also surprisingly good in his role as gadfly and critic of Timon and his Fool like ways.

And Timon is interesting for a lot of reasons. It’s one of Bill’s problem plays, plays that his most serious scholars have difficulty reconciling with the rest of his works. It’s darkness suggests it being written around the time of Lear, but there is no record of it ever being performed. And in fact, some doubt that the bard wrote it at all. It is, nevertheless, an interesting, dark and satirical take on the subject of a man who gives away all to his friends and is denied by them in his time of need and becomes a misanthrope because of it.

But overall, the entire production, really seemed designed more for critics’ enjoyment than the audience, and the experimental takes on different parts of the play (the ersatz vultures, for instance) just kinda fell flat for me overall.

Still, worth it for the excellent lead and Apemanus and as always, good to see one of Bill’s irregularly performed plays showing the round wooden ‘O’ in any case.

Well, ended up not making the Last Tube Party I spoke about, which seems like it was a good thing.

While most likely a fun crowd showed up to just toast off the end of an era, apparently the yobs were out in full force. Underground staff were assaulted, there were loads of disturbances, fights and there ended up being 17 arrests overall (and I get the feeling those must have been real hard cases as well).

Just sad : Details here on the Beeb website.

On top of that a member of my staff got jumped in a separate incident last night. What has become of London ? Really ? Jeez…

Well, seemed a little topical considering the last post om the last underground party, but I ran across these “tube map” animals in my random surfing. Gives me some interesting ideas for pub crawls. Hmmmm…

Animals on the underground.

Well, at last for now. The election of Boris over Ken has an incoming ban on drinking on the Tube starting Jun 1 2008.

Boris thinks he can do something about criminality and hooliganism in London based on New York’s example of apparent success with broken window theory zero tolerance enforcement. Personally, I’m as skeptical of this as the ubiquitous and largely useless CCTV everywhere here in London, but the ban will be law 1st of June so the People are planning one last hurrah on the neverending loop that is the Circle Line on the 31st of May (though I do think banning alcohol on the metro is a good idea, as the people who seem to indulge in the liberty tend towards intimidating and berating their other passengers). Nevertheless, a party is a totally different animal, so…

Details for the facebook viral are here.

And yep, planning to be there barring the usual chaos that is my life. A bit ironic since I’ve never had a drink on the Tueb in my entire life, but hey… I do like the idea of sipping champagne on the metro.

Partypeople of London!

Come one, come all, lend us your ears – this one’s a bit special..

So Boris has been elected, and he’s banning drinking on the underground. Fair enough you might think. No more being harassed by crazies. But it also means no more last drink before the club, no more champagne frolics at new year’s and no more tanked up Aussie guys singing.

First a smoking ban, now a drinking ban, what’s next?

But we’re not giving in so easily! No no Monsieur. We’re organising one last party, one high-glamour, weird-ass shindig on the circle line to royally give the finger to Big Brother and this culture of legislation and regulations. What’s more, we’re holding it on the night before the drinking ban! Vive la revolucion!

OK, I’ve been here a while now and have to say I just looked outside and it’s snowing. Never seen that in London. Weird Easter weekend.

A lot of you are aware of the problems with my current apartment (I seriously have not lived in a place this bad since I was an undergraduate. Easily in the top 3 of the worst places I have ever lived).

In any case, I’m now looking for a place for the end of August so if you know anyone, have some leads or even have some advice, I’d appreciate the assistance.

I’m looking for a good sized one bedroom, or a two bedroom and am currently partial to the Crouch End, Turnpike Lane and Wood Green area though really, any nice multicultural neighbourhood that is inexpensive and stays open late would be great for me. And preferably looking to pay under the £210 per week/ £900 per month I’m currently paying.

And I’m living in it… :-(

Mercer has released its 2007 ranking of the world’s most expensive cities to live in.

While I don’t get how Moscow could beat out London (London shot up from number 5 to number 2 this year), it does definitely explain why my charity paycheque makes me feel like I’ve gone back to living like an undergrad compared to my nice beachfront place in Vancouver (did I mention my apartment ceiling was actually leaking water the last two weeks ?). US cities fell because of the failing American peso, now at 2:1 to the sound British pound. I should also point out that no Canadian city appears in the top 20. In fact, no Canadian city appears in the top 50, so think about that all you fellow Canucks dwelling in cheap global cities ! Looking at the list, Paris is looking better day by day.

Anyhow, here’s the top 20 in case you were wondering :

1. Moscow
2. London
3. Seoul
4. Tokyo
5. Hong Kong
6. Copenhagen
7. Geneva
8. Osaka
9. Zurich
10. Oslo
11. Milan
12. St. Petersburg
13. Paris
14. Singapore
15. New York
16. Dublin
17. Tel Aviv
18. Rome
19. Vienna
20. Beijing

I think the last time I bowled was for my nephew’s seventh birthday party. I can’t even remember the time I bowled before that. And it’s something I associate with the past glory days of middle America (a la Robert Putnam’s fascinating book Bowling Alone).

So, when one of my staff here in London suggested we do it as an outing, the simple bizarreness of the idea of bowling in England really appealed to me.

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There were more than a few differences than I remember from the home town bowling alley in small town Canada where we would often go. Amongst the first was the payment of an entry fee (£2) to get in. I expect this is a nominal charge to keep troublemakers out as Finsbury is apparently a bit of a rough area. This was further reinforced by the fact that the alley had very large security people wandering to and fro, no doubt also because of the fact that alcohol is cheaply served to the bowling patrons. In fact, the bar facility is quite large compared to any other place I’ve ever seen and it is definitely designed with people hanging out in mind.

It had this weirdly hybrid feel of Americana intersecting England which felt surreal and oddly comforting at the same time. One of my staff called the pins ‘skittles’ even. Pints of beer probably only added to this.

But it was actually loads of fun. None of us were particularly good so it was mostly a lot of laughing and drinking and then retiring to the pool room to shoot some stick when we had to give up our lane.

The strangest thing was how popular it was. There were literally long line-ups for the lanes and we were actually forced off our lane after we’d done 2 games and forced to go on a waiting list. To say nothing of the fact, the JB, one of my staffers, had to reserve a few days in advance just to get us in.

Um, and no… I didn’t even break 100.

Well since I’d been burgled it seemed like kinda of a good opportunity to focus on the apartment a little after asking the landlord to kindly install a security door.

The detective that called me to discuss the crime suggested it claiming they “take an entry team to get through” (I really like the sound of that) and personally I’m hoping the landlord will go for it. I had a porte blandé (sp ?) in Paris in my apartment at Chateau Landon with steel bars that would chunk mightily from the steel door into reinforced holes in the ceiling, floor and sides when you locked it and I have to say it is the most secure I’ve ever felt behind something in my life. Not that I’m worried about anyone getting in while I’m here. I’d actually feel sorry for the unarmed fool that might try.

But I do like feeling that when I lock the door in the morning, it stays that way until I get home. After being burgled I now know why all archaeological crypts have super fancy booby traps to kill, maim and otherwise fabulously curse intruders. I’m still considering one if the landlord won’t give it up on a security door.

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Now my place is small and quirky but has a certain charm. While I’ve lived in smaller places (my boat, the Neilali, springs to mind), the fact is those places accepted the fact they were small and worked around it somehow. On the boat, thing were cleverly designed to get things out of the way and maximize free space. The same with other apartments I’ve been in. Here though, the landlord for some crazed reason for a small, very tall space (my ceiling are a good 15 feet high) bought short, squat furnishings which completely don’t work for the place. A broad glass table taking up about 10% of the living room and a short, thick chest of drawers as well as a super fat TV (with a small screen however) are amongst the worst offenders even after we get past the problem of the two-seater “pimpin’ couch” which is both ugly and virtually non-functional other than as a big chair (thanks for SlowNewsDay and GiantLaser for their characterization).

So, really the problem redefined is not about the apartment which is adequate size wise, but a problem of how that space is used.

The solution really was mad tetris skillz (and a big thank you to my Gifted Children program schooling which made me rotate things in 3D in my head endlessly in grade school).

First off, I dismantled the TV stand and placed the DVD, TV and its stand in the sole mini closet available to me. I’ve done without TV for over a year and a half now in Canada and it was one of the wisest things I ever did in terms of freeing my mind and helping me get real stuff done. Besides, I don’t really want to pay a TV license anyhow for something I’m never going to use. It fit like a charm and freed up so much space that I knew I must be on the right track. I swapped the pimpin’ couch over to the small niche alcove where the chest of drawers had been which accomplished two things… it put the couch near the radiator which is much nicer as it is starting to get colder and the apartment is a bit chilly and also keep s me from having to snake powercords across the apartment as the sole electrical outlets and cable connection are in that corner. Slowly, slowly my fiendish space plan was taking shape.

As mentioned, the glass table which is really a funky piece of rebent freestanding glass sheet couldn’t be moved anywhere. This is where Tetris really came in, rotating the table on its side, I could fit it beneath the counter in the kitchen and fit everything else underneath it. Table gone ! The space this frees up is amazing. Seriously, it has got me pumped about fixing up the apartment a bit more when I was considering if just a short time place before I could find something better (provided the landlord puts that security door in).

The fiendish master plan now consists of moving the single seater (damaged in the burglary so it might have to go) or getting rid of it and dismantling the marble topped table that I assume the old landlord used as a desk (albeit an uncomfortable RSI inducing one).

This should free up more than enough space to bring in a proper 3 seater (if not chaise lounge) sofa like the one I had in Vancouver which was excellent and super comfortable for guests coming over to stay. Add a small desk against the former fireplace niche and I’ve got a workspace. And then add a thin, tall wardrobe in the bedroom and I have actual space to put things and clothes away.

It may still be a pinch to figure out where the snowboard is going to go when my things get here, but the fact is the place is comparatively inexpensive (which means I free up money for travel, part of the big reason I am here), the neighbourhood is quite poshy (and my best chance of hooking up with some rich supermodel… ;-) ) and it’s only four stops away from work which is a little too fine to beat. I also like the proximity to Camden Town and my gym. Not only that, smaller is better. I buy less, use less, and leave a gentler footprint on the planet which is really important to me considering its current state.

Really it’s all a matter of adapting to your environment.

Today is Guy Fawkes Day here in England, commemorating the foiling of the infamous Gunpowder Plot 401 years ago to blow up the British Parliament along with the Protestant king James I by Catholic insurgents.

Now the British are normally a deeply reserved lot. They queue. They dress identically. They rarely talk to strangers (ie. me).

However, give them alcohol and pyrotechnics and they utterly lose all their prohibitions and become as flawed and human as the rest of us. Really, it’s a wonder to see the transformation.

Right now, fireworks (rather than the original bonfires that originally commemorated this day) are going off all over the UK. Now, generally that means big fireworks displays if you were in Canada. But not for the English. Crazy Londoners are firing off the damn things right in their backyards. And we’re not talking firecrackers and sparklers here. We’re talking full on Victoria Day/Fourth of July/Symphony of Fire type fireworks here, screaming up into the sky only meters from my house, flammability of old Victorian houses be damned (it does make one wonder about the true causes of the Great Fire of London however).

I’m serious. My neighbour kitty corner to me (no, not Sadie Frost, the other kitty corner) is literally firing these things up into the air to the point that I can smell gunpowder and despite my love of all things that whistle, scream and go bang with bright colours, it’s making even me a little twitchy from the proximity. And we’re not talking some wussy 30 minute send off here. Fireworks have been going continually since dark and lighting up the sky. I’m thinking at least an hour and half from my neighbour across the way and it’s a private display (of course, I do have an unusual number of Porsches and Ferraris parked along my street as well). The pictures at right were taken out my front room window.

Oh, and it’s not even just one crazed pyromaniac neighbour. In between salvos I can hear the pops across the hillside that normally indicate full scale Blitz-style attacks or the British on Magners having their way with China’s finest invention.

Wow.

I guess I’ve kinda been lucky up to this point in my life. I’ve lived in a lot of different places and never in particularly good neighbourhoods (the irony here being that I move to a good neighbourhood finally and what happens) in a great many cities around out fair globe and I have never had a break in.

In fact, the worst thing I have ever had happen property crime-wise up until today was a smash and grab in Paris when someone managed to get my cell phone.

Today, however, the good karma gods that have been getting me this far in London and blessing me with this new spectacular job and city had to let the scales balance a bit, and while I was at work, someone broke into the house I now live at and systematically burgled all the flats.

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For every door but mine, they kicked it in. The apartment next to me is currently empty and kicking in the downstairs neighbour’s triggered a loud audio alarm which probably sent the thieves scurrying but apparently they start at the top of houses and work down towards the door and so mine got hit first. They didn’t even bother kicking down the door since apparently my lock was a snap to get past and so entered, rifled my things and made off with some of my valuables. Interestingly the CSI investigators have determined from the footprint that the thieves wore Nike trainers.

Luckily, I had my laptop, blackberry (from work), new digital camera and iPod nano with me so the few important valuables I had with me are fine, but they did make off with the Airport Express I was using for wireless as well as an older iPod I use for data backups (and which means I am now systematically calling banks and credit card companies changing passwords, and making sure they can’t manage to hijack things that way. I imagine they’re unsophisticated thieves, but you never know). They also grabbed a sum of Canadian cash in some drawer but appear to have left chequebooks, passports and other stuff alone which is kinda a relief. Could have been much worse for me just having got here if those things were missing.

The lawyer downstairs who has the loud alarm system that probably made them run is getting the door altered as they let themselves in apparently by sticking a wire through the mail slot and triggering the door opening button on the inside latch (which would be pretty easy actually).

Still, it does really, really suck having just moved here. Kind of a bad apartment omen along with the fact that the apartment is quite cold and damp now that winter has started sticking its fork in a bit.

I guess even in unluck I am lucky though since my main cargo shipment of things from Canada has not yet arrived at the house which means they got a lot less than they could have. It is making me think that along with all the other quirks about the house I maybe need to think of moving. I’m sure insurance will not cover something so close to the time I started getting it and the amount is pretty small anyway. Obviously, these guys were grabbing small, valuable, easily portable things they could hide on their person in pockets as they ran out the door. The stranger thing is what they didn’t steal though. A cell phone loaner from a friend, a boxed wireless router, chequebooks and other things I would have thought they’d grab. Weird.

I don’t know why I carve the Jack O’ Lantern every year.

Maybe it’s some half-felt need to believe that I still form an unbroken line of descendants from long forgotten Irish ancestors. Maybe just the feeling that some traditions are better than others, or a vague nod of the head in sympathy and honour to my own peoples’ trickster stories. Who knows ? But every year, I grab a pumpkin and carve him. A little root in an age of global rootlessness.

Maybe this is really how traditions continue. The motions and rituals go on, long after their meaning forgotten. Or at least, how they perhaps evolve.

But the fact is, there is something therapeutic and amazingly cathartic about it in the modern world. So, even as I ironically type this in the dark, keyboard lit up from the laptop LCD screen, I’ve got the internal orange fire lit glow of the pumpkin facing out on my windowsill keeping me company, guiding back the spirits of the my peoples’ honoured dead before the religion came to emerald isles and standing to scare away the evil spirits after they built their churches.

Happy Halloween everybody !!!

Ok, I’m not sure why this is blogworthy but it never seemed like we had even one good bolt of lightning the entire time I was in Vancouver.

We just had one bad-ass, torrential monsoon rain dropping, sky shredding thunderstorm just roll over London. Was quite the show. Thunder so loud and close it was setting off car alarms all over the Hill.

One of the things that made it very hard to leave my old office was just how many great and cool people worked there. Even people who weren’t working directly with you would just be amazing to work with.

Part of the TV production crew for the music label was doing a timelapse test of some of their equipment out my office window the day before I left and I asked them if they’d give it to me. Absolutely no problem. Thanks C !

Of course, this is just going to make me really miss the old place. It’s been pouring in London ever since I got here this morning. =<

My assault on English shores already has a forward beachhead.

I hate apartment hunting. While friends, especially in Vancouver, will snort derisively at this comment and point out my inconceivable good fortune where housing karma is concerned and bring attention to the Neilali, my apartment in the 10th in Paris and my current ocean-side palatial one bedroom, they conveniently forget craptacular instances like my time in Amsterdam (where I moved three times in a single year).

The important thing is usually focus in these instances (as it is with most things in life) and knowing what you want.

So, a few guidelines :

1. Big as it needs to be and no larger
   
   My current apartment is quite large, and I pay a lot extra for that (as I do for the fact I am smack on the beach). This is silly as I can’t even fill the damn thing with furniture to make it not look empty and don’t want to be a collector of stuff but of experiences and knowledge. However, the British definition of one bedroom sometimes borders on a closet with a murphy bed, so still need something cozy yet not claustrophobic.
2. Affordable
   
   Must be in my budget. In London this still means it is unequivocally absurd what I am paying for rent, but I want to be using my money for travelling, exploring, learning, activities and generally amusing myself (and, er… paying down debt). Not rent, furnishings and bills.
3. Striking Distance
   
   Within short commuting or walking (and rollerblading) distance of work. I don’t like commuting and if I am moving to London, I want to live in London, not bordering Scotland. And I definitely don’t want the expense or hassle of a car.
4. Interesting Area
   
   One thing living in the 10th in Paris taught me was that I thrive living in and being a part of a neighbourhood. Real neighbourhoods that have character not constructed from chain stores and faux atmosphere (Yaletown here in Vancouver need not apply).
   

Other than a pre-emptive asking of questions of many a cabbie in London on where the best places to live that optimizing going bankrupt and getting mugged, I have to admit my knowledge of the neighbourhoods of London is somewhat filtered through the lens of childhood visits, my parents’ being twenty years out of country and friends with varying degrees of poshiness advising me on what the minimum acceptable place to live is.

In any case, persistence and organization seem to have paid off somewhat in this case as has the lowered search costs the Internet graces one with. An interesting ad for a small, affordable, fully furnished place on Craigslist four tube stops out from work (I’ve had to work very hard to say tube instead of metro) and coincidentally owned by a couple here in Vancouver has been agreed to in principle after a proxy visit from my Fruli-fueled ersatz estate agent giantlaser (despite his being down with a killer virus and such – thanks man !!!).

It feels weird renting an apartment in London from Vancouver that has only been seen with photos and by my proxy but I feel sooooo much better this particular headache is taken care of. The owners seem quite nice as well from our extended coffee klatch around the signing of the lease.

The other nice thing is that instead of spending all my time when I get to England running in about in a stress trying to find an acceptable flat, I can actually take a little time to really settle in and do a runner across to Bordeaux to visit my friend’s vineyard and chill out doing some grape harvest picking for a weekend before starting my new job. Could use a little break as I am losing my 3 weeks of built up vacation leaving my current role.

It had been a long time since I had seen GiantLaser, so he is one of the people I was really looking forward to seeing on this trip. In the intervening years he’d moved himself to Iraq, become head of a small satellite ISP company and (shockingly) gotten married.

So, the deal was that I would stumble up to Hampstead heath where he was living for drinks at his favourite pub, the garden gate, meet the wife and we would go to dinner. It wouldn’t be GL if he hadn’t shown up to meet me in a huge black trenchcoat of matrix-esque proportions. He hadn’t changed though and it was awesome to see him and we walked to the Heath and the pub.

SlowNewsDay is very nice and effortlessly friendly (though possibly Fruli fueled). It’s always a bit strange meeting old friends’ spouses, which she seemed to sense, so she was cool and laid back and generally we had a great time mowing through chips with chilli mayo and Fruli, a fruit beer which tastes like strawberries and is deceptively easy to drink. Way too easy to drink.

After three of them, I was about ready to fall off my stool so I was really happy when people suggested a walk on the Heath. I needed the fresh air and it was fascinating listening to stories of Iraq and the plan if “they” had ever come to get them.

Post-walk we had decided on Indian (actually Bangledeshi as the waiter reminded me) and went to this fantastic place that the pair of them get take out from all the time. It rocked and they seemed completely bemused by the fact I could ask for things by quite a few things by their Indian names. Definitely gave Canada a good name there.

It was a really nice night and I have to say I was a little sad to see it go. We said we’d try and fix for a second date for dinner but the fact is with little time and too many people to visit I’ll have to wait till next time which is a shame.

Jet lag and surrealism are natural allies, so the idea of going to the Tate Modern on the lack of sleep I had and checking out the UBS photography and surrealists’ exhibit seemed like a good thing to be doing on my first full rainy day in England.

It was my first trip to the Tate Modern and I have to say all the things they say about the building are true. It’s a fantastic venue and the idea of renovating the retired power plant was a brilliant one. You really have to love the space it gives and the obvious synergy with the exhibits.

The Kandinsky exhibit was interesting but ultimately over-rateed I felt. It’s really a nice retropsective of his work, but unless you’re wild about him it’s really his earlier works that draw and hold you but it’s interesting to see the link between impressionism and abstraction and most of his most famous works are here including the seminal and historically significant The Blue Rider (which I like more than many of his later works). You really have to read a lot about Kandinsky, IMHO, to get Kandinsky so the intelligentsia tend to love him. Personally, I don’t get his art though I have a great deal of respect for his theories about art and especially his philosophy.

The photo exhibit is great as well though really I felt the entire price of admission was really the surrealists’ exhibit there. Featuring a wide gamut of works from various artists, it really gives you a breadth of the movement, the depth of the influence and the ideas (or complete rejection of them) that were trying to be conveyed.

Looking forward to more time at the Tate Modern when I come back again. Hopefully without jet lag which would help a lot more when touring the galleries.

Oh, and ifg you don’t know the restaurant upstairs has a fantastic view of the Thames, the Millenium (wobbly) bridge, St. Paul’s the the ‘Gherkin’ Swiss RE tower.

Well, with no shortage of notice… I will be parachuting into London in 2 days time to wreak havoc amongst the inhabitants and generally carry on in ways unseemly in the land of my birth.

Details are sketchy at present, but this I know for sure :

I’m flying out of Vancouver the evening of the 11th and will arrive mid-day on the 12th at Heathrow.

I’m meeting with an NGO on the 15th so plan to stay in London proper over the weekend till then and have picked my usual quaint hotel near the British Museum. I imagine I’ll probably visit friends and family slightly north of the city after that and the temptation to do a runner across the channel to France and see friends in Paris when so close is probably going to be too much to bear.

I’ll be flying out on the 20th back here to Vancouver.

Anyhow, clear the landing decks… will be there very soon !