The Global Citizen's guide to: London transport (part 1)

Familiarity with London's transport system is a source of great satisfaction for the seasoned Londoner. The unwritten rules of public transport in the city can be mastered only after many years of stringent training and daily practice, and are the cause of many a faux pas for those outsiders unfamiliar with the social subtleties that accompany mass travel with millions of fellow inhabitants. For this reason, I have decided to compile a series of blog entries on the subject, with the aim of helping the bourgeoning Londoner to avoid some common pitfalls. Herewith, I offer part one:

Mastering the art of London transport is not simply a matter of becoming familiar with the tube [subway/underground/métro] map, or knowing that the number 73 bus takes you from Tottenham Court Road to Angel (but takes bloody ages during rush hour). The first rule of London transport that you should internalize is this: TRUST NO ONE.

Repeat after me: "TRUST NO ONE".

The sooner you accept this, the less unbearable your commuting will be. Let me illustrate this with an example:

The newly-arrived at London's City Airport might decide to take the Jubilee Line [that's the gray one] into London from Canning Town station and be quietly reassured on hearing the following announcement over the tannoy system:

"The Jubilee Line is operating a good service in both directions from Canning Town."

That's good news, right?

"Nuh-ah, you sucker!" would respond the savvy commuter. It's merely your naïve interpretation that leads you to this flawed conclusion. While you might think you're interpreting this announcement literally, what you should in fact be hearing is this: "The Jubilee Line is operating a good service in both directions from Canning Town [but service is crap everywhere else on the line]." It is only by interpreting the unspoken part of this announcement that you come to fully grasp its true literal meaning, i.e., that service is indeed good out of Canning Town, but that this in no way guarantees that any trains are running 100 metres down the line. And so it is with this in mind that you come to North Greenwich [the next stop] two minutes later, without any such prior misguided expectation, but strangely content of actually having gotten there. And so on, one stop at a time, until you reach your final destination, two and a half hours later, completely free of stress.......

génève...

city of international banking, global health, the jet d'eau, fine Swiss chocolate, blah, blah, blah. Whatever.....

In the four hours that I was there, I actually saw canine excrement and two pieces of clementine peel, lying just like that, on the sidewalk! Man, that city's really going downhill; one can only hope that the offending parties and their owners have been deported already. Incidentally, the two pieces of clementine peel were next to a woman wearing bright orange stilettos with a matching sweater (lady, only traffic lights should be that bright....), and 3/4 length jeans over fishnet stockings, which must be a mistake in any part of the world... I deduce by chromological association that she was probably the clementine peel offender, and should be deported for anti-social behaviour and crimes against wardrobe sense and traffic lights.

And what's with all the tacky plastic cows everywhere? I mean, they might have been cute seven years ago, but give it a rest already!

FURTHERMORE, on ordering lunch at a department store restaurant, the woman passed me a plate and told me to serve myself. I know it's a self-service restaurant, but if someone's paying 13 francs for a démi-poulet, you'd think they could at least go so far as to put it on a plate for you. I mean, what is this? London?? If I were in Colorado, they'd probably even offer to eat the thing for me, so that I'd be spared the inconvenience of mastication...

Alors, à mon avis, Geneva, you suck....... hands up y'all that agree.

la marche longue...

et finalement, après quelques jours sur la montagne, on est arrivé à sa destination:

Oh, ok, I'm kidding.....

Le glacier des Bossons

La vallée de Chamonix

dimanche....

p.d.:

D.:

Ah! Des vitamines.....

not a vegetable in sight.....almost

Chez Le Carlina (76 av Michel Croz 74400 CHAMONIX MONT BLANC):

Asiette de bresaola

Magret de canard

Coupe Liégeois

Oof! Il me manque des vitamines...... je pense qu'il faut faire une randonnée longue demain....

Quatre jours à Chamonix (continuation...)

p.d.:


D.:

Crevettes cuites, celeri

Poulet fermier, salade, pain aux noix

En celebrant le 28ème anniversaire (encore une fois...):

Chez l'Atmosphère à Chamonix (123, place Balmat, F-74400 CHAMONIX MONT-BLANC, Tel: +33(0)450559797: à côté du fleuve, ambience agréable, bon service)

Soupe gratinée à l'oignon

Filet de rascasse à l'aïoli, pommes de terre au safran

Pain perdu

Petit café

the oatcake...

Attention: Ça c'est une galette d'avoine. C'est l'alimentation du randonneur (farineux complexes, etc...). Elle a un goût de popcorn carbonisé. Ce n'est pas propre à la consommation humaine. Ne mangez pas ça!

Quatre jours à Chamonix (part deux)

Deuxième jour:

Petit déjeuner:
Sur la montagne:

Quatre jours à Chamonix

Premier jour:

Dîner:










Pagre grillé, salade de poivres rouges, riz










Tarte aux pommes/raisins/noix










Petit déca

Happy Birthday, Sue!!!

축 생일

I have no idea what that means, so I'm trusting that the online translator can do Korean....

Have a great day. Hope someone's giving you cake, but if not, well, this is the best I can do at the moment....

thought of the day....

How come it's McDO-nald's, McAD-ams, McDOUG-all, McSHAN-e and McMAN-aman, but it's MACK-Enroe? Shouldn't it be McEN-roe??

That's McWeird.......

PS - BTW, I hope at least some of you have Chinese language support installed on your machines, as sometimes I feel like writing stuff in Mandarin and if you don't, well, all you'll see is a bunch of question marks...

龙火龙青龙白

There comes a point during a 5-hour play when your seat just isn't comfortable any more. You can try and shuffle around (although this is highly unlikely, as by this point you will most probably have become one with your chair), but the fact is that humans were simply not designed to sit through any form of entertainment for more than about two hours. That said, and despite the need for subsequent back surgery, the play in question was actually worth the physical pain. It was "The Dragons' Trilogy" by Jonathan LePage, which I went to see with schmandrea at the Barbican on Saturday.

The evening got off to a great start, as on my way to the Barbican, I had to interrupt a mobile phone call to a friend when I spotted a music student (the Barbican is next to the Guildhall School of Music), carrying a seriously cool violin case. "Uh-oh", I hear you say collectively. "Luggage junkie!" Well, you're right.... I want one..... although my violin's undergoing surgery right now, so it'll have to wait a while.

Anyway, there was dangerous moment when I might have floored the annoying usher at the Barbican Theatre for making me go back to the cloakroom to leave a bag of purchases from Chinatown. This followed another unfortunate episode, during which the security guy at a cinema in Whitechapel made me check a bag of bagels at reception, because he insisted that it was the company's policy not to allow food into the auditoria. "But they're bagels! I'm hardly gonna sit there eating bagels, am I?", I protested to no avail. And, yes, I guess it's possible they might have read my previous blog entry (see "today's calories" below), although I think I wrote that after. In any case, I managed to contain myself and humour said annoying usher, and we traipsed back to the cloakroom, left my stuff and went back to said annoying usher, who then proceeded to suggest that schmandrea should also go back to the cloakroom to leave her bag of tennis balls. "Well, couldn't you have said that when we were here the first time? What a friggin' waste of time!", yelled schmandrea, and then *WHACK*, she headbutted the woman!

Oh, OK then.... so in a far more entertaining, imaginary universe, that's what would have happened. In reality, she managed to get away with it by saying she'd sit on them, which probably wouldn't have been any less comfortable than sitting on those chairs for 5 hours....

Anyway, the play was excellent- an epic spanning some 50 years and three generations, following characters at the intersection between French Canadian, English, Chinese and Japanese cultures in three Canadian cities and performed in four languages: English, French, Cantonese and Japanese. Although the Cantonese was appalling. And one of the actors sounded like Jean-Claude van Damme. I think maybe he was Belgian... oh, and there was no kung fu....

today's calories

Breakfast:

2 x plain bagels
1 x scrambled eggs with roasted peppers (2 medium eggs, ~50g roasted peppers)
1 x cappuccino
1 x glass apple juice

Lunch (which actually turned into an early afternoon mid-meeting snack):

1 x poppy seed bagel with smoked salmon, salad and cream cheese (I didn't ask for the cream cheese. I hate this assumption that smoked salmon in a bagel has to come with cream cheese. Who invented that, anyway? If I want cream cheese, I'll ask for it! But you're a nice guy, and your cappuccino's not bad, so I'll let you off this time....)
1 x raisin scone
0.5l water

Dinner:

1 x salmon nigiri
1 x tuna nigiri
1 x snapper nigiri
1 x sweet prawn nigiri
1 x squid nigiri
1 x octopus nigiri
1 x clam nigiri
4 x cucumber rolls
4 x spicy tuna rolls
2 x cups green tea

By the way, for those times when you're yearning for a quick Japanese meal, Taro on Brewer Street is a good bet. It's small and crazy busy most of the time, but their mixed sushi's great (even if all everyone seems to order is chicken teriyaki. The poor sushi guy was bored out of his mind. I felt like ordering a tuna hand roll just to give him something to do.....).

Post-dinner:

Dunno... might have a peach....

Anyone know how many calories that is? I think maybe I exceeded my recommended daily allowance of bagels.

CCT's birthday feast

How to turn 28......

On the menu:


Siu mai








Chinese broccoli with oyster mushrooms







Pak choi with garlic








Spare ribs








Spring onion cakes








Raspberry cheesecake and raspberries








Hurrah to the chefs: Hopi, schmandrea and, well, me....

Much mah-jong was played and green tea drunk till 3am

erm...is that a question..... or is your ego not getting enough attention, eh?

One thing (admittedly of many) that gets on my nerves - people who seem to think that the time reserved for questions at the end of a seminar is, in fact, an opportunity for them to give a speech. Seriously, if you have a question, then for crying out loud ask it already, we really don't need to be given an abridged autobiography or a list of your objections against humanity. The worst ones are the ones who begin with:

"Well, in my experience as a medical doctor.....",

as if, somehow, a *medical* experience were worth ten merely human ones. And then they tend to go on like this,

"... and when I was in Bangladesh last year blah, blah, blah.....",

and finish thus,

"... and quite frankly, I think that's appalling."

Please note: a series of statements is not a question. Even if the statements are all about yourself, they're still not a question. You can repeat these statements as many times as you want, but it's not going to change this basic grammatical fact. A question ends in one of these, "?", and, in most languages, involves a natural upward inflexion of tone. In some cultures, it's even common to add ", eh?" at the end of a question, in order to make it even more obvious. Although sometimes, people add "eh?" at the end of a sentence, even though it's not a question, which is very strange. But kind of endearing....

luggage

"The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs - if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. It's one of the reasons why I roomed with a stupid bastard like Stradlater. At least his suitcases were as good as mine."

- Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye

It's only fitting, of course, for the global citizen to have appropriate luggage. After all, you wouln't want anyone not to room with you now, would ya? So this is my latest acquisition: a 65 litre Tatonka barrel bag in burgundy.



It's waterproof, and has retractable shoulder straps so you can carry it like a backpack. It comes in a range of swanky colours, and sizes from 25 to 130 litres. There's even roller versions with wheels. Really, isn't this, like, the most functional bag ever? I think everyone should own one. And it's coming with me to Chamonix at the end of the month.

PS - I declare that I have no conflicts of interest. I am not employed by Tatonka, nor do I receive any commission from them.....

Greetings

ermmm..... so is there a way to re-name a blog? I may have been rather reactionary and given this one a somewhat inappropriate name, inspired in part by having recently watched 'Mean Girls' (which has some great lines, as you can see (check out also the alternate subtitles on the DVD version: "This is a shot of Africa. You can tell because of the giraffes")), and having just interacted with one such person, for whom I'm now going to coin the acronym NSB.....

So, I'm kinda new to this whole blogging phenomenon and somewhat apprehensive about starting one of these things. This is despite repeated urgings from my friend schmandrea (of whom more at schmandrea.blogspot.com). I imagine she feels that one's musings should have an outlet other than her phone's inbox, and having just sent her another long, acerbic text message, I suppose she has a point (it went something along the lines of "Hmmm.... love the smell of fried chicken on a hot day's train ride [=sarcasm]. Gd grief [=expression of dismay and (possibly misplaced) appeal for sympathy]. Also hate pasty-faced, white-ass, condescending, mid-aged nasty skank brit byotch women... [=vitriol, and aforementioned inspiration for title]", followed by an indirect reference to the greatness of Scarlett Johansson to counterbalance the general negative tone....

So I should say that this particular NSB was a woman I encountered in my office building. Some weekends they hire out the teaching rooms to external courses (on what appear to be weird self-improvement tutorials). I imagine this woman was the organizer of one of these, as I've never seen her before. So I signed in at reception (as one does out of hours) and was walking to my office when this woman, who was loitering in the hallway chatting to some other guy, turns to me and says: "Hello, are you ok there?" in that certain British middle-aged, slightly high-pitched, over-enunciated, condescending tone of voice that makes it seem like one is being nice to you when, in fact, they're thinking "Hmmm.... he doesn't look white like the rest of us. Clearly he must be in the wrong place." To which I replied: "Yes, I'm fine" and started to walk away. But then she goes: "Do you know where you're going?" "Yeah...", I say in a slightly irritated tone of voice. "Are you here to meet someone?" "No, I work here, you nosy cow. Who the heck are YOU???" OK, I didn't quite say the last part... "Oh, you work here. That's fine then..." I should friggin' well hope that's fine, 'cos I've been here for six years, and who the heck are you to tell me what is and isn't fine, since you don't even work here anyway?? What a nerve...

So to all of you NSBs out there, next time you see a person of non-pasty complexion, yes, we do speak English, we do have jobs, and we can find our own way. OK?? So shut it!