Thursday, July 12, 2007
Flickr Post
I posted some photos to flickr, but it crashed halfway up. I'll post again in a bit. I've been running around seeing everything, and its a bit hard to keep up. I'll put more up tonight, and hopefully be able to write a bit more.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Back in the UK
Just arrived back in Britain yesterday. My flight was absolutely awesome. I had been gaming price search engines against each other for a week or so, and somehow British Airways ended up at the top. Seasonally speaking, it was much more expensive than my trip to Manchester in the spring. However, it was much more kick ass.
I arrived at the airport uneventfully after being dropped off by my dad. Checked in, bag got thrown on the belt butter-side down and all that good stuff. I was also given choice of window or exit aisle. I took an exit aisle, but after choosing I thought maybe I should consider a window. I had about three hours to roam around in the terminal. I bought a slice of pizza, and a cup of coffee and went to sit down. Read some of the ImageJ manual I printed. Started to fall asleep until they called our flight to board. After standing in a fairly epic line, we boarded.
I was between two interesting people, an immigrant to the US from the UK who was a programmer analyst, and a lady who was a third generation Tanzanian who grew up in Egypt, and went to school in Bombay. They were both extremely fun and interesting people to be sat by. Our cabin host, Roland Perez, who was a Spanish man who lived in Lyon was awesome. This man needs several raises. As soon as we got airborne, we were offered wine and snacks, at no extra cost. Stark contrast to US Airways, where we had to pay for everything we were offered, and in sucky quanities. I was given TWO small bottles straight away, which was plenty to get me decently happy. Dinner was server fairly quickly as well, with beef, potatoes, carrots, and peas. I slept for about three hours. I started playing Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance as well, burned a good two and a half hours.
We arrived about fifteen minutes early from our 7:05am arrival at Heathrow. This honestly made little difference in my ability to get out of this place. Arriving at terminal 4, the most remote terminal at Heathrow, afaik, we had to board a bus to get to the main area. Fair enough. Except at the offload point, there was an escalator we were all getting on, and the stairs next to it were blocked. Riding up the escalator I realized, the people at the top weren't quite moving ahead. I managed to skirt the edge of the people and get down the stairs, but less agile people ended up piling up at the top of the escalator trying to run the other way so they didn't push everyone down. The line started moving but a long wait was ahead. I ended up waiting nearly a hour in line before getting to the passport checking guys.
I was doing my typical "act sweet as pie and make things easy for people" but this guy was not having any of it. This guy was having none of it. I was met with the typical questions, which didn't bother me but this ass really wanted to piss me off. "Where you going?" "Who you seeing?" blah blah blah. Then I got this one: "Do you have a return ticket?" "Yes." A slight pause. He stares right at me. "May I see it?" "Er, I have an e-ticket, so I'll be printing it off the internet when I'm ready to go." "Well, wouldn't you print your return before you go?" This, makes no fucking sense, considering I'm going to a place where I can print anything I want. Of course, passport dudes do not give a shit about technology assholes who use the internet to save their lives every waking moment. I got the "you won't be leaving soon" look, and began rifling through my bag. Luckily, I had a printout of my itinerary from Orbitz. Note, this could easily be made the fuck up, and probably makes fuck all of a difference. He then did the State Trooper motion of, looking at the paper, looking at my passport, looking at me, all the while keeping everything still but his eyes. This went on for about three cycles, my documents were stamped and placed on the counter. About 30 seconds of silence passed. He simply did not even look at me. I then asked the burning question, "Am I... ok to go?" "You're free to go." Thanks warden. I'd like to illustrate that I was the most organized fuck out of the whole group of shits there, and I *still* managed to get held up. Electronic passport and all.
I went down the next pair of hallways to go fetch my bag from the luggage thinger, everything seemed in order. I then began slogging my backpack and main bag down to the door where we met people. I didn't take one of those trolleys for your bags, because all that does is serve to ram other people in the legs. Drag bags be damned. If you can't carry it, don't bring it! I've seen many morons trip over other morons drag bags and it just seems like a complete waste. Perhaps when I get older, I'll see the value. For now, I'll stick with body mounted storage.
Of course, everyone emerging from the two small doors that let out, stopped as if they had just seen the most amazing thing they've ever seen, leading to another fuckup right at the door. I just kept my head down and jumped the wall of idiots and their drag bags and caught up with Michelle. She was very glad to see me, and very astonished at the time it took for me to get there. I wasn't totally pissed, because I had been moving along the whole time.
We then jumped a train from Terminal 4, to Terminal 1. We waited 30 minutes for the next bus out to Watford Junction. The bus ride was fun, but it let me really find the scale of Heathrow, which is apparently UNBELIVABLY HUGE. At Watford Junction we had a 10 minute wait or so for the bus. A short ride, and we were off. We walked about another five minutes or so, down Leaford Crescent to Michelle's house. My back was pleased. Michelle's house reminds me of Okinawa housing. Its a brick rowhome in a typical English neighborhood. Things are all the right size and fit very well inside. There are several interesting things I'll review through later posts.
I got a good look at some digital TV here in the UK which is amazing. Not only do they have TeleText, like I found before on their ANALOG signal, they have a whizbang digital guide as well. Take that Comcast. Note, its not free, you have to pay TV license, but the programming sucks a lot less. The house is very well decorated in a nice, minimal style. Ikea would be jealous! Her back garden is very nice, lots of flowers and plants. England seems to be a very green kind of place in terms of plant life.
For dinner, we had our usual, Tikka Masala over basmati rice. Michelle's mom and dad came home from work and we had tea and biscuits. I asked all kinds of questions about their internet setup and their VoIP phone. Apparently BT had to be able to put DSL in 90% of the UK before they were allowed to roll it out. Last mile be damned! Michelle's dad gets a VoIP phone from work that actually connects to their DSL box/router/wifi/VoIP. Its all very integrated and nice. I saw most of Michelle's kid pics and made good fun.
I'll post a bit more about today tomorrow. We're going to go see the Tour De France in London and that should be epic. Hopefully Blogger will allow me to post some pictures to the blog again.
I arrived at the airport uneventfully after being dropped off by my dad. Checked in, bag got thrown on the belt butter-side down and all that good stuff. I was also given choice of window or exit aisle. I took an exit aisle, but after choosing I thought maybe I should consider a window. I had about three hours to roam around in the terminal. I bought a slice of pizza, and a cup of coffee and went to sit down. Read some of the ImageJ manual I printed. Started to fall asleep until they called our flight to board. After standing in a fairly epic line, we boarded.
I was between two interesting people, an immigrant to the US from the UK who was a programmer analyst, and a lady who was a third generation Tanzanian who grew up in Egypt, and went to school in Bombay. They were both extremely fun and interesting people to be sat by. Our cabin host, Roland Perez, who was a Spanish man who lived in Lyon was awesome. This man needs several raises. As soon as we got airborne, we were offered wine and snacks, at no extra cost. Stark contrast to US Airways, where we had to pay for everything we were offered, and in sucky quanities. I was given TWO small bottles straight away, which was plenty to get me decently happy. Dinner was server fairly quickly as well, with beef, potatoes, carrots, and peas. I slept for about three hours. I started playing Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance as well, burned a good two and a half hours.
We arrived about fifteen minutes early from our 7:05am arrival at Heathrow. This honestly made little difference in my ability to get out of this place. Arriving at terminal 4, the most remote terminal at Heathrow, afaik, we had to board a bus to get to the main area. Fair enough. Except at the offload point, there was an escalator we were all getting on, and the stairs next to it were blocked. Riding up the escalator I realized, the people at the top weren't quite moving ahead. I managed to skirt the edge of the people and get down the stairs, but less agile people ended up piling up at the top of the escalator trying to run the other way so they didn't push everyone down. The line started moving but a long wait was ahead. I ended up waiting nearly a hour in line before getting to the passport checking guys.
I was doing my typical "act sweet as pie and make things easy for people" but this guy was not having any of it. This guy was having none of it. I was met with the typical questions, which didn't bother me but this ass really wanted to piss me off. "Where you going?" "Who you seeing?" blah blah blah. Then I got this one: "Do you have a return ticket?" "Yes." A slight pause. He stares right at me. "May I see it?" "Er, I have an e-ticket, so I'll be printing it off the internet when I'm ready to go." "Well, wouldn't you print your return before you go?" This, makes no fucking sense, considering I'm going to a place where I can print anything I want. Of course, passport dudes do not give a shit about technology assholes who use the internet to save their lives every waking moment. I got the "you won't be leaving soon" look, and began rifling through my bag. Luckily, I had a printout of my itinerary from Orbitz. Note, this could easily be made the fuck up, and probably makes fuck all of a difference. He then did the State Trooper motion of, looking at the paper, looking at my passport, looking at me, all the while keeping everything still but his eyes. This went on for about three cycles, my documents were stamped and placed on the counter. About 30 seconds of silence passed. He simply did not even look at me. I then asked the burning question, "Am I... ok to go?" "You're free to go." Thanks warden. I'd like to illustrate that I was the most organized fuck out of the whole group of shits there, and I *still* managed to get held up. Electronic passport and all.
I went down the next pair of hallways to go fetch my bag from the luggage thinger, everything seemed in order. I then began slogging my backpack and main bag down to the door where we met people. I didn't take one of those trolleys for your bags, because all that does is serve to ram other people in the legs. Drag bags be damned. If you can't carry it, don't bring it! I've seen many morons trip over other morons drag bags and it just seems like a complete waste. Perhaps when I get older, I'll see the value. For now, I'll stick with body mounted storage.
Of course, everyone emerging from the two small doors that let out, stopped as if they had just seen the most amazing thing they've ever seen, leading to another fuckup right at the door. I just kept my head down and jumped the wall of idiots and their drag bags and caught up with Michelle. She was very glad to see me, and very astonished at the time it took for me to get there. I wasn't totally pissed, because I had been moving along the whole time.
We then jumped a train from Terminal 4, to Terminal 1. We waited 30 minutes for the next bus out to Watford Junction. The bus ride was fun, but it let me really find the scale of Heathrow, which is apparently UNBELIVABLY HUGE. At Watford Junction we had a 10 minute wait or so for the bus. A short ride, and we were off. We walked about another five minutes or so, down Leaford Crescent to Michelle's house. My back was pleased. Michelle's house reminds me of Okinawa housing. Its a brick rowhome in a typical English neighborhood. Things are all the right size and fit very well inside. There are several interesting things I'll review through later posts.
I got a good look at some digital TV here in the UK which is amazing. Not only do they have TeleText, like I found before on their ANALOG signal, they have a whizbang digital guide as well. Take that Comcast. Note, its not free, you have to pay TV license, but the programming sucks a lot less. The house is very well decorated in a nice, minimal style. Ikea would be jealous! Her back garden is very nice, lots of flowers and plants. England seems to be a very green kind of place in terms of plant life.
For dinner, we had our usual, Tikka Masala over basmati rice. Michelle's mom and dad came home from work and we had tea and biscuits. I asked all kinds of questions about their internet setup and their VoIP phone. Apparently BT had to be able to put DSL in 90% of the UK before they were allowed to roll it out. Last mile be damned! Michelle's dad gets a VoIP phone from work that actually connects to their DSL box/router/wifi/VoIP. Its all very integrated and nice. I saw most of Michelle's kid pics and made good fun.
I'll post a bit more about today tomorrow. We're going to go see the Tour De France in London and that should be epic. Hopefully Blogger will allow me to post some pictures to the blog again.
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