I spent the day in London today. Primarily for a job interview, but I also had the good fortune to run into one George Kokoris and one Mitu Khandaker. Well, all right, we'd pre-arranged to meet. But "had the good fortune to run into" sounds so much nicer, doesn't it?
Anyway, the actual reasons I was in London are fairly unimportant for the purposes of this entry. I want to talk about London itself.
London is simultaneously one of the most English places you can be, and one of the most un-English places you can be. Many people who come to visit England begin and end their visits with London. Many of them don't even get outside the city limits of our capital. Which is fair enough; there's plenty to see there, after all.
But the city has a unique character all of its own that isn't replicated anywhere else in the whole country. Sure, there are other big cities, but none quite have the same feeling as London.
It's a combination of things. Not all of them good. First of all, there's the fact that everyone's always in a hurry. Everyone has places to be, things to do and people to see that are far more important than whatever it is you're up to at the time. As a result, God help you if you dare to stand on the left-hand side while you're on an escalator or travelator, as you'll probably end up with someone physically pushing you out of the way, as I witnessed happening to another person earlier. And it's not as if charging down the escalators saves you any more than one or two seconds at most.
Then there's the traffic. I have a complete phobia of driving in London. I've only done it once and have absolutely no intention of ever doing it again. I'm not sure entirely why that is. Again, it's probably an aggression thing. See a light turn amber in preparation of going green and almost immediately horns start beeping and other drivers start getting impatient.
But on the flip side, there's the curious little hideaways that the city offers. Just today, near Waterloo, we wandered down an innocuous and borderline scabby-looking side street only to come across a little row of three lovely restaurants bordered by some gorgeous trees and bushes. Stepping into this restaurant was like escaping reality for a little while. The noise of the city was gone, and we were in a land of Thai curries, Lionel Richie advertising Walkers crisps on the TV, and a selection of R&B and soul from the last twenty years. Most peculiar. And an experience that can't be replicated easily anywhere else.
Somewhere else, somewhere near Regent Street (and I can't remember where, so stop hassling me and stuff) there's an awesome American barbecue and grill place that is pretty much a place where they give you an enormous plate of meat, some implements with which to eat it and the possibility of some bread and/or fries, and then it's up to you how to deal with it.
Then there's the theatres. Scattered around the place, there's hundreds of shows to see, things to do, stuff to enjoy.
It's a bombardment for the senses. And it's utterly exhausting. But I think, today, I came to appreciate it a little for once. Perhaps it was sharing it with other people. Perhaps it was having a sense of purpose for being there. Or maybe it's just one of those changes in my outlook. I couldn't say.
Just remember, though, if you're visiting England or the UK in general, we have a whole lot more to offer than that bustling metropolis!
Hello! I'm back from a day in London that's left my feet aching. I really need some new shoes. The revolting sweatiness of my feet has all but destroyed the inner soles of most of my pairs of shoes. Nice. Anyway, sweaty feet and shoes that are falling to bits are not what today's entry is about.
We went to the London Aquarium, or the London Sea-Life Aquarium to give it its full title. It was Jane's birthday the other day and she decided a few weeks back that she wanted to come and see the fish. We'd seen some great displays of fish and underwater life at zoos in both Toronto and New York over the last year, and we'd resolved to go and see more things that were a little closer to home. After all, London is a little over an hour's train journey away, and there's tons of cool stuff there to see and do, even if you do have to deal with taking your life into your hands every time you cross a London street. That said, it's no worse than Italian streets, from my limited experience with them. Probably better.
First challenge of the day was, of course, trying to buy a train ticket from the machines at the station. You'd think this would be as easy as selecting "London" as your destination, indicating that yet, you would like to come back as well as go there, and then purchasing your ticket.
No.
Do you want a Standard Day Return? A Super Saver Off-Peak Day Return? A Mega Buster Super-Fantastic Awesome Only Valid For Three Minutes A Day Which You've Already Missed Day Return? All of these cost varying amounts of money. If you remember to book in advance they cost different amounts again – considerably less, usually, but that requires pre-planning. Which is, let's face it, not always on the cards.
Battle with the ticket machine won, we got on the train and headed to Waterloo before walking down to the South Bank to find the Aquarium. For my international readers unfamiliar with London, the South Bank of the River Thames is a pretty vibrant area that always has loads of things going on. There's a whole bunch of concert halls there which see everything from black tie classical performances to Video Games Live, several museums, lots of places to eat, the London Eye, boat trips, and today there appeared to be some sort of world culture event going on. This was mostly filled with stalls selling food, tat made to look faintly "ethnic" and, bizarrely, what looked like the opportunity to have one's photo taken with an African man. How odd.
But I digress. The Aquarium beckoned, and Jane had had the foresight to print out some of the 2 for 1 offers on this site, meaning the two of us effectively got to go in for half price. Or only one of us paid. Or however you want to look at it. We went in and immediately discovered that the London Sea-Life Aquarium do not have a very good toilet strategy. There is one toilet by the entrance, along with a sign saying that "The next toilets are 20-30 minutes into your journey" – so naturally, there was a huge queue, even before we'd got in. (Wee-d got in. Do you see what I… oh, never mind.)
The Aquarium itself was great. Plenty of huge fishtanks with lots of interesting fish from all over the world to see, including many from Britain, too, as well as some of the more exotic fish (and other… things) from tropical waters. And, of course, sharks.
I remember someone saying a while back that under the sea is one of the only places on earth where you legitimately get things that you can call "monsters". And it's true. There are things down there that would be terrifying to find yourself confronted with. Even the monsters of Lovecraft (themselves from beneath the waves) aren't that outlandish compared to some of the things that really do exist, particularly in the deep. It's interesting to see creatures that are just so completely alien in design and function to land-based creatures.
Take a jellyfish, for example. No brain, almost completely seethrough body and four balls that you can see in the middle of its body. Sorry, "gonads", to use the technical term. (I always find it amusing that "gonads" is a scientific term, particularly in light of this gentleman from British comic history) Weird shit. And certainly not something you'd want to wake up with on your face, for example. And sharks. They have big teeth. Sounds obvious, I know, but it's not until you see one up close in a big tank with glass windows that you realise quite how vicious those things look.
The other interesting thing I thought about while looking around is how easy it is to look at these creatures and see human characteristics in them. Sharks, for example, look pissed off all the time. Manta rays look like they enjoy flying out and surprising things like ghosts. There were a bunch of fish that looked like they were belming. And, of course, there's Happy Fish. Now, who knows whether or not these undersea things really are feeling these things that they look like they're feeling, but it's certainly fun (or the sign of an overactive imagination!).
The only disappointing thing about the Aquarium was the "Shark Walk", which is hyped as one of the big attractions there and I was assuming was one of those "glass tunnels" where you walk through the middle of a tank full of sharks. (The promotional picture I have posted at the top of this entry probably went some way to making me think this.) However, what it actually was turned out to be, essentially, the attic of the Aquarium with a glass floor. The sharks were quite a long way below where you stand, and the water was a bit murky. It was very disappointing, but the fact that you could see the same shark tank earlier in the tour of the place with much bigger windows made up for it.
It was a good trip, and I'd recommend it to anyone who, well, likes fish. I believe there's times when there are proper tours – there was some guy with a mildly annoying voice rabbiting on about sharks as we passed one area – but otherwise you can wander around and read the (relatively simple) information and quizzes scattered around the place. To be honest, it's quite pleasant just looking at the fish, even if you don't learn that much.
After the Aquarium, we wandered over to St. James's Park, which looks just like it does in Project Gotham Racing, only with more people and pelicans in residence. Yes, pelicans. The area in the centre of the park is set aside as a sort of "nature reserve", with a variety of non-native birds making their home their. There are pelicans, canada geese, other kinds of geese whose name I've forgotten and a whole bunch of other things there. Jane freaked out a bit when we noticed there was a pelican on the loose in the main part of the park. It was just wandering around. It wasn't causing any trouble, but it was amusing to see the people sitting on the grass look around and react with shock, fright or amusement. "OMG WTF PELICANZORZ", they seemed to say.
OMG WTF PELICANZORZ
Then we had a hot dog in the park, walked back to Waterloo via Trafalgar Square (which is much closer to Waterloo than I realised) and then caught the train home, accompanied by people who don't know where the volume control on their ringtones are. Now we're sitting watching The Cube. Well, I'm blogging too. But The Cube is on next to me.
So yes. A nice day. I'd recommend it, as I say, to anyone who likes fish.
(With apologies to Carl Honore for shamelessly liberating the title of his book, which I haven't read, but respect the sentiment behind the title.)
I sauntered to work today. Tomorrow I might amble, stroll, perambulate or, you know, walk. This is nothing unusual, you might think, but I've noticed a curious phenomenon develop over the last few years, and that is the fact that everyone seems to have somewhere more important than the place I'm going to get to, preferably much quicker than I do. As such, as I wander down the street, it's almost inevitable, even at unsociable hours in the morning, that at least one person will come charging past me – not running, because that would look panicky – but walking at at least twice the speed I do. I don't walk as slowly as, say, an elderly gentleman, but I still walk considerably slower than these people who are inevitably dressed in some sort of suit, wearing clip-cloppy shoes that immediately makes them somehow seem incredibly arrogant. Quite how shoes can be arrogant is anyone's guess, but that's what it makes me think.
Then there's London. Anyone who's ever visited London, however much you may have liked it, will have noticed how much of a hurry every damn person in that city is in. Traffic lights go amber and horns sound immediately like some sort of automatic reaction. Dare to stand slightly left-of-centre on the escalators leading down to the Underground and some greased-up City-boy businessman will make a snide comment like "Slow lane's over there, mate". Stand in a queue at Pret and you'll see at least five people who have been waiting roughly fifteen seconds storm out in seeming disgust, muttering about inefficiency. (Contrast this with my experience a few years back when an entire symphony orchestra descended on one tiny kebab shop in the middle of Warsaw which was staffed by one rather uncomfortable looking man. Now that was inefficiency, although to be fair he was somewhat up against the wall. Almost literally.)
Then there's the laziness of people who use computers. "Why can't I drag that text into my subject header?" I heard one person ask of an email application – because using two keyboard shortcuts to copy and paste it was obviously just such a hassle. "Why can't it do this?" "Why doesn't this do my work for me?" "Computers are supposed to be efficient!"
And then – then – there's the attention span of people on the Internet. Dare to write in more than one paragraph on a message board and there will be at least one response along the lines of "OMFG WALL OF TEXT" with nothing more meaningful to say. Well, thanks for that.
You'd think there'd be a point to this wall of text. And I guess there is. It's to say to these people "slow the fuck down". Leave ten minutes earlier so you can enjoy a walk to work without barging past people. Take your time over writing your emails and they might actually be spelled and punctuated correctly. Read someone's wall of text and you might actually find something interesting that they had to say. And London? Just climb out of your own arse and realise that some people don't want to live their lives at 300 miles per hour before dying of a heart attack at 28.
This post is dedicated to the people who take the time to sit down, chill out, relax, enjoy some time, some space and don't mind being a little bit wordy and pretentious along the way. If you're reading this and you've got this far, chances are you're one of them. And to you I say, "Good job. Keep it up."
I spent the day in London today. Primarily for a job interview, but I also had the good fortune to run into one George Kokoris and one Mitu Khandaker. Well, all right, we'd pre-arranged to meet. But "had the good fortune to run into" sounds so much nicer, doesn't it?