I got my Schengen visa last week; it is valid for a year! (Rock’n’Roll!)

I’m going to spend a weekend in Paris for 9-10 December, see you guys!.

I'm one week into London and finally get some spare time to write something.

At the beginning it’s the same story all over again. I went up 6:30 am, Beijing time, to catch a plane for Beijing. Then I took the Air China plane for London. The plane was 1 hour late, which triggered a chain reaction: first we were 30 minutes late in London and so we’re caught in the 500-people queue at the Heathrow Immigration; when I finally went through they pointed me to that health control… and I waited another hour or so for a chest X-Ray. So I spent 3 hours at the airport and got fully consumed. Fortunately I met a few people I could talk with all the way of the travel, thus it was still an OK journey.

Then comes up the Tube test. I somehow managed to drag myself and my 33kg suitcase across Greater London. When I finally landed in my new place, it was 11:30 pm London time, exactly 24 hours later. It’s not unusual, I’ve done more than that.

Here are a few other highlights:

-          London food was so bad that I almost cried in the first days. Now I seem to have got back my eating instinct and even do some cooking myself each evening. There’s a supermarket around here where everything is so outrageously cheap.

-          I use Sir Gangloff’s computer and can catch a very instable wireless broadband sent by God in some unknown neighbourhood. If you see me dropping off suddenly from MSN, it’s just the wifi somehow got cut.

Sorry for all this messy writing. More details will hopefully come up later.

Though at home, I'm online almost everyday,  I can't hardly find any topic worth being dealt with on this space.  Inspirations only come in REAL LIFE, and real life is only in nature, among people, with at most some radios and a cellphone.  A life online is at best a VIRTUAL life, so nothing of interest happens. Besides, laziness overtook me for a long while.

 

That’s why I left my space unchanged for a whole month. Sorry.

 

Now I finally found a pretext to write something. I watched Garfield 2 yesterday. I loved the wordplay ‘A tail of 2 kitties’.  The movie was overall light, funny and cool. A good time that, yet, I would soon forget. One of the 2 kitties is supposed to speak in American while the other in British, it’s a pity it isn’t distinct in the Chinese version.

 

A question that may emerge on your mind: how do I spend all that time online? One answer: www.guanshui.info.

 Westminster vs. Da Vinci Code

 

Despite the impression Dan Brown gave me, Westminster Abbey was quite small, no bigger than the main church of any average French city. And it is full of tourists all the time, wonder how all the actions could happen.

As it is small, people honoured there are often allocated only a tiny space, no matter how important they are. The Bronte sisters, for instance, have just a little engraving of their names on the wall at the Poets' Corner; Darwin's name is on the floor and people walk on him; only royal members get more room.

 

I still looked for the spots Da Vinci Code referred to. I found Newton's statue. And the Chapter House, where the final fighting between Langdon and Teabing took place. A note at the entrance wrote: "As rose is the flower of flowers, the Chapter House is the house of houses." And I would say to the female reader that had read me to this point: "You are the lady of ladies."

"The less you know about a place, the more you can talk about it." -Watashi.mpg

 

The one good decision I made on Dec 8 was to opt for the bus rather than the Tube (or London Underground). Sitting in front of the top-deck of a double-decker bus is a sensational experience. There is maybe no better way to see London.

 

The next day, I randomly jumped in a 159 bus on the South bank of the Westminster Bridge to get back to the North. The bus happened to be a famous RouteMaster, and Friday Dec 9 happened to be RM's last day of service. Let's quote FT: "The 'London bus' - the iconic, ever-popular double-decker with its half-cab, old-fashioned bell, conductor and open rear platform, will run for last time on Dec 9..."

Without being aware of it, I just became one of the last witness of a legend. Lucky, huh; why didn't I buy a Euromillions ticket that day?

I spent a weekend in London a few days ago, and this would be the start of a serie of articles on my trip there.

 

 

1. I'd like to first present my gratitude to Miss DOTE Chika and Miss FANG Yuan, without whose help this trip would not have been possible. At decisive moments throughout my life I have been helped out by charming ladies, but since I'm in my 20s, those ladies tend increasingly to be other people's girlfriends, sigh.

2. I didn't spend much money in London (on its standards), but the opportunity costs of my trip are high, since I missed the end of that fantastic JE campaign. Imagine 20 girls from each of the 3 lists ready for (almost) anything to get your vote... oh I missed that.

 

 

 

Sometimes I needed to recall to myself: "I'm a tourist", because I didn't appear to be one:

I was alone. Travelling alone? do it all the time; tourism alone? that was wierd.

I wasn't carrying a camera! well this is a differentiating factor. Remember when I went to Chateaux de la Loire with ESCP students, at whatever spot 40 cameras stood out in all angles, just nowhere to hide.