London Beans

Friday, March 31, 2006

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

I had never seen it before, and it was a great show. It was kind of depressing at the end, but I didn’t really expect a comedy. It was neat to see Christian Slater’s energetic role as McMurphy and him act without his Jack Nicholson accent. He came out after the show briefly to sign autographs, but I didn’t get that close to him because of the crowd of fans but it was cool.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Quick Update

The last couple days have been quite busy for me. I have visited several museums, done a bit of aimless wandering (all wandering is aimless, right?), and met up with a few friends from my time at Queen Mary. I think the highlight was seeing “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” starring Christian Slater. There was even a scene in which he wore only a towel. I didn’t know a person could have a six-pack and a pot-belly at the same time. Go figure.

National Art Gallery and Natural History Museum

Last night, I went to the National Art Gallery because it was one of
the few times it was open late. Some people from work and I raced
over there at about 7 pm to try to see it all before it closed. I
think that we had plenty of time since we finished up in about 1.5
hours. There were famous paintings all the way back to the 1500s.
They had a great collection of Monet, Manet, Van Gough, Rembrandt, and
Picasso. I am glad I went but I think that I am done with art
galleries for London. After that, my friends and I went out to dinner
at this nice Malaysian restaurant and we spent 2 hours there, eating
and talking. Liz was out on the town with her friend Rachel and we
didn't meet up tonight until really late.

Today, I skipped out for about an hour and went to the Natural History
Museum. This place is so huge that I really didn't get to see much of
it. The dinosaur exhibit was lots of fun, and so was the meteorite
exhibit. I'll have to check this out again this weekend and try to
see some of the other wings that I completely missed, such as the
Earth and Rock Gallery.


Liz was able to procure some tickets for 3 folks from work, herself,
Rachel, and me to go to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest tonight, so we
are off to see another show. I haven't seen it before, so I am hoping
for an entertaining show.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

London Eye

Tonight was pretty fun. After a flurry of trying to get the night's plans organized with the people at work, and having them all bail at the last minute, we decided to go to the London Eye. This is a gigantic ferris wheel and takes you on a 25 minute ride up and around. You can see the whole city from the top. It was a bit cloudy and rainy, but I think that we got a pretty good view.

Platform 9 and 3/4

The last time I was in London, I took some time to wander about King’s Cross Station looking for platform nine and three quarters. Unfortunately, there was no barrier to be found between platforms nine and ten, only train tracks. It looked like this:


Happily, I found that the barrier between platforms four and five look remarkably like the description of the entrance to the magical platform from the Harry Potter series. I took a picture of myself running through it and was satisfied know that platform nine and three quarters is actually platform four and a half.

Today, I visited the station on my way to the British Library and found someone had made an attempt to correct the number confusion, and placed a sign so that curious muggles would be able to find what they sought. Apparently, the real entrance to platform nine and three quarters looks like this:


Yet something is still not right. The sign and partially disappeared trolley in the photograph are in between platforms eight and nine. Is it possible that Wizard children are to busy studying Arithmancy and Transfiguration to learn basic arithmetic and counting?

We Will Rock You Rocked

I had no idea what to expect from this show except a bunch of Queen
music, and I knew a couple Queen songs that I liked, but certainly not
that many. The show was awesome though. At first, it took a little
while to get used to everyone having an English accent and Liz found
herself explaining some of the local jokes to me, but after that
settling in period, it was great. The story was decent, at least
until the end, the dancing was very futuristic, and the lead performer
had a great singing voice. The whole thing was very well done.

One interesting thing is that they had a scene at "Heartbreak Hotel"
which took place in none other than the tube station that was right
outside the theatre house. I suppose that if they do this show in New
York, or in most places in America, that they would use the New York
subway station as the scene. But I wonder if they use the Bart
station for an SF performance or the T station for a Boston
performance.

There are no pictures to display because I didn't take any last night.
The show kept me up late, and somehow, I managed to find a defect in
the alarm clock that Liz's family gave me for Christmas. The silly
thing does not turn itself to "alarm on" mode at night when you forget
to do so. I woke up really late today and even missed an interview,
but luckily, things worked out since Danielle had my back and I was
able to trade interview slots with her. I have to double check that
alarm.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Interviews

Well, there are a lot of interviews, but I am happy to say that they
are completely manageable. I even have the chance to write this blog
from work.

Tonight, we are off to see We Will Rock You at the West End. I hope
to meet up with the group later at some pub.

Sunday in London

I am writing this a day late, but hopefully, you will survive.

We did a bunch of stuff on Sunday. We got up early to have breakfast
with the group at the hotel. It was a full English breakfast which
looked about the same as what you would get in the US. Then we were
off to Greenwich on the train. Our first stop was the Cutty Sark, an
old tea shipping vessel. We went aboard, learned the history, and
acted like pirates. It was a lot of fun.


The next big event after lunch was going to the Greenwich observatory
which was the center of time itself and the Prime Meridian. We got a
nice picture there and walked through the museum where we learned
about some of the first time pieces used for navigation and how to
calculate longitude and latitude.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Problem Solved

I didn’t need to find any points of interest near the Monument/Bank tube station, I just needed to transfer tube lines there, which I have already done three times without making any special effort to go that route. Unfortunately, the Bob Marley guy no longer plays in that station. I was disappointed that he was not there, but quite relived that I could stop obsessing about it.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Tower Bridge and Tate Museum

So, this is day two in London for me. Liz arrived at the hotel this morning earlier than expected, and her plane was a little later than expected, so go figure. After settling in, we started our long day of site seeing and hitting some of the major museums of London.

The first stop was Westminster Abbey, where we saw the tombs of Elizabeth I, Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin. We also saw loads and loads of people and wandered around the church for about an hour. After that, we quickly went to the tube and tried to find Brick Lane for lunch. After trying to find this small brick building lined street for a bit, we finally managed to discover it. One of the must do’s here according to Liz is curry on Brick Lane, so we ate at this Indian buffet where the food was much like it is in America, but the chicken curry had chicken drumsticks with the bones still in the chicken.

Next stop was the Tower and Tower Bridge where we got an hour long tour with one of the Beafeaters. Among other things, we got to see the crown jewels and learn a bit about the history of the kingdom. I have attached a picture of the view of Tower bridge for your enjoyment.



Lastly was the Tate modern art museum. While being quite exhausted, we managed to make it through the museum and see all the strange modern art of our century… some arguably pointless pieces and some that you could definitely gander at for a few minutes. It was like trying to find shapes in the clouds. Still, it was quite fun.

We ended the day with a nice pizza dinner at the restaurant right across the street from Victoria tube station.

Friday, March 24, 2006

First Day Down

Well, Virgin Atlantic had the most cramped seats that I have ever imagined. I could catch a wink of sleep on the 10 hour plane ride. Luckily, they had movies on demand and I watched Flightplan (of course), the Constant Gardener, Chicken Little, and a couple of Scrubs episodes. It was a seriously long flight and they also made us sit on the runway for 20 minutes after landing.

After I finally got settled in, I went exploring. I ended up meeting Ashwin, a buddy from Google who was on the same flight as I was and we did lunch. The food was pretty good and kept me happy.

The event of the day was seeing the British Museum, which is absolutely huge. It took me a couple hours to race through there, and I was certainly not reading all of the exhibits. I did get to see the Rosetta Stone and the mummy of Cleopatra which was rather exciting.




I think that I am heading out again to walk around at night, but I am heading to bed early tonight so that I can catch up on much needed sleep.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

The Tube

As I prepare for the trip I find myself obsessing about the strangest things. For example, is the guy who always played Bob Marley in the connection between the Bank and Monument tube stations still there? That was always my favorite tube station because of his jammin'. I have been scouring a map of central London trying to figuring out some good tourist attractions near the station so that I can see if the Bob Marley guy is still there.

I asked Erik if this was weird. He asked me, "do you try to think of things to do near the Union City BART station?"

One more day

Today is the day before I head off for my 10+ hour plane trip. I have
unwittingly given myself a sleep debt all week in anticipation and so
that I can konk out on the plane so that I can reset my internal clock
and overcome the jet lag. I don't know if it was such a good idea. I
still have to figure out how to get to the airport and still have to
pack. Hopefully, that won't take too long.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Off to London

Well, the trip is planned the tickets are purchased and I have still to pack. I can't wait.