37

well, in what will be unsurprising to some people, it turns out the reading vs watford match was actually in reading. clearly, i should pay more attention. however, i would say it’s not a total loss as otherwise i never would have gone to watford. good thing i didn’t call in advance for tickets.

to say watford is in london, well greater london, is a bit like saying cullman is in birmingham. i’m not sure how far exactly it is, but it must have been at least a 45 minute tube ride (it’s last stop on the metropolitan line). the stadium, vicarage road, is a about 1 1/4 miles from the tube stop, not optimal. same goes for the town centre. after walking to the stadium with about 2 hours ’til game time, i noticed it seemed a bit inactive. you would think that there would be some kind of activity if a game was going to be occuring shortly, regardless the size of the town. undeterred, i walked down the street and had lunch. can you really pass up somewhere named the “football cafe”?

of course you can’t. at least i can’t. is that a diner or is it dinner? english was not their first language. decent cheeseburger, fresh cooked, grilled onions, decent fries. in the cafe eating were also what can only be described as 3 dumb skanks. they couldn’t have been more than 18. not really attractive, but skinny. too skinny. anyway, the point is 2 of them are wearing mid-driff shirts with some thin looking sweaters or something and not jacket. it’s like 35 degrees! it didn’t seem like a good idea to take a picture. i might have caught something. this wouldn’t be the last instance of this moronic fashion behaviour. there was a girl similarly dressed, probably older, up at the shopping area that was standing there shivering. i wanted to ask if her brain actually functioned, but i probably wouldn’t have gotten anything more than a blank stare.

the population of watford is only about 80,000 according to the u.k. gov statistics. it seems like a decent small town. although, even with such a small place, there’s still graffiti in random areas. i guess you can never escape bored teenagers. in the “watford observer”, the front page article from yesterday was about an early morning drug raid that caught 17 crack cocaine dealers in the area. i would say that the western side of town, where the stadium is, didn’t seem quite as nice as the town centre. i suspect that the more upscale areas are to the south and east of the town centre.

the town centre has a nice blocked off shopping high street. i think you can take some sort of train that has a stop right next to it, but i haven’t looked into that yet.

decent amount of shops and restaurants. mom would be happy because there’s a laura ashley.

how that chelsea fan get in there? is that john terry? overall, seems like it wouldn’t be too bad a place to live. well, maybe not for me. the general town layout is still all wrong.

on the tube ride back to london, i found this blip in the observer about the voodoo knife block. i definitely have to have one of those. but, what would i do with the knives?

there were 2 things i forgot from the other day. the “v for vendetta” premier was on thursday in london. that would have been pretty nice to check out had i known it was going on. the other is a little depressing. it appears “my name is earl” comes on broadcast tv here. while it can be a funny show and i’m a big fan of jason lee, it does show american’s in a bad light. but is it true? of course it is. in the same way that it’s true for everywhere else in the world with people that don’t live in bigger cities. it doesn’t have anything to do with the country your from. big cities are all alike. rednecks, sorry, rural folk are all the same.

not sure what’s up for tonight. i may be meeting ze germans. it’s looking like another unfortunate weekend without a live match. i’m fairly certain i’m going to go ahead and drop the 145 pounds for the fulham vs chelsea match next weekend. the sw6 derby should probably be pretty huge. maybe i should try and get in touch with the yanks-abroad.com guy to see if i could be a correspondent. hell, maybe there are some other yanks abroad, rabid soccer types here i should get in touch with anyway.

did i ever mention that things just seem to always fall into place for me? where to begin. i’ll guess i’ll just fill in starting with the 8th.

i believe i spent most of the day shopping. did i just say that? most of the day is probably a stretch. i was man shopping. it was probably about an hour including travel time (which was not insignificant). it had been raining off and on since the previous day. not good when your shoes have mesh on the tops. i got some new shoes at this mostly dr. martens shop near the leceister square tube stop. done. i can’t remember the order, but at some point i got a mobile phone. apparently, most people in europe do pay-as-you-go instead of a monthly fee. it’s also a different cost for text messages. this would probably explain why they say europeans use  text more than americans. anyways, this should have been done the first day.

i also picked up a copy of “goal!” and “revolver”. “goal!” was pretty good. the usual cliche sports movie scenes though. i haven’t watched “revolver” yet. it’s the newest guy ritchie movie. not released in the u.s. either. it supposedly is complex, socritics panned it. i’ll have to ship them to the u.s. when i’m done.
that night, i went to highbury to check out the atmosphere at the arsenal vs real madrid game. tickets were a touch expensive at ~$400 from scalpers (touts) so i had to pass. it would probably be a pretty nice area to live in. you would, of course, have to be a gooner. i also walked around and checked out the new emirate stadium. you too could live in the new condos next to the stadium and have guaranteed season tickets for a measly $400k. kind of makes those downtown homewood condos look crappy since they only have an ugly town hall. no stadium, no season tickets for a major english premier league clubs. losers.

anyway, it was pretty amazing. i walked around for most of the first half. the pubs up the street were all packed to the point people were turned away. there were even people looking through the windows of the pubs.

pretty amazing. the other pictures didn’t really come out too well. it would have been awesome to be in the stadium, but at what price? oh, and interestingly, the same crazy religious woman was down the street from the tube stop standing in the road yelling at people. telling them they should turn away from football. sacrilege! i took some video with the camera. i’ll have to try and upload it somewhere.
that was about all for that day. all in all, it was a good day.

the 9th i was going to actually try and get around to looking at some more areas. i ended up walking across the millinium bridge, saw the replica globe theatre. no pictures, i’m sure there are plenty already in existance. i then went out on the d.l.r. (docklands light rail) to the “all saints” stop to look at a flat. i wasn’t supposed to meet the guy until night, but i wanted to go ahead and look at the area since it would be faster if it sucked to just cancel. it sucked, i cancelled. however, while i was out that way i headed down to canary wharf where the flat on the thames i previously mentioned is. nicer area. i went today and checked it out. more on that later. the canary wharf area really isn’t what you picture when you think of london. it’s all new and modern. it used to be a big port and shipping area (shocking), but when that died off i think it was pretty vacant for a while. at this point, the flat situation was looking pretty gloomy. i ended up at some point working out a deal with the hotel guy to where he would give me the next week at 25 pounds a night. that was in range of what i was looking to spend weekly. that would give me time to not have to rush into anything.

i guess it was after that i went up to  kensington high street and bayswater tube stops. a “high street” is apparently equivalent to a “main street” with shops and what not flanked by housing on adjacent streets. kensington high street has a lot of expensive shops. (mom, there was a laura ashley, but it was closed. i’ll have to go back at some point to get you that catalogue.) it’s seems in a lot of these areas that the shops usually close fairly early, 19-ish. the restaurants stay open longer.

bayswater was decent, however, it seemed like a large number of american chain shops in this area though. i’m not sure why.

i spent the rest of the night watching “goal!”. i’m sure there’s a lot that i’m leaving out. i probably should record things the same day if i can’t post directly.

today, finally, i did laundry this morning. exciting. i then moved back into a new room, next to my first one, that’s even smaller than the first. i know, it’s difficulty to believe. if you weighed 200 lbs you would be screwed. i almost can’t move in it. i should be here too much so it’s not a problem.

i think after eating at benjys at victoria station shopping centre i went up to the baker street tube station. it’s where madame tussaud’s is. i didn’t go in though. from there, i ended up walking to the marleybone high street area. i think this would be a pretty decent area to live. good feel. it was a bit away from tussaud’s so it wasn’t touristy. i don’t think most tourists get very far from tussaud’s.

i had gotten an e-mail from the guy at the flat on the thames in canary wharf this morning and had arranged to see it at 18:00. it was probably around 15:30 so i started making my way towards canary wharf since it’s a bit east of the central city. almost everything around canary wharf is brand new. a lot of glass and steal skyscrapers. looks like every other modern city. the canary wharf tube station is very large and nice. from there, you can get into a couple of different malls. they are all fairly nice, maybe high end. i didn’t go in any stores (shock). i was really too busy trying to find a toilet. it’s all very nice if you want to go shopping. especially if it’s raining or freezing cold (the wind off the water is a bit much) or both. you never have to go outside.

i walked from there over to look at the flat. it was extremely nice. i think 4 stories. i meant to take pictures. there’s a roof top terrace that looks over the thames to onside (with the millinium dome on the other side of the river) and the skyscrapers in the opposite direction. at 160 pounds, including all bills, internet and a cleaning service, it seems too good to be true. i was going to sleep on it, but decided on the way home that i just couldn’t pass it up. at least for a month while the guy i talked to was going to be out. the only real downside is that it’s not really “london” when you picture “london”. i always think of close buildings, with narrow streets and shops. so starting in about a week, i’ll be living there for at least a month-ish. i’m supposed to meet the othere guys that live there either tomorrow or sunday just to make sure there’s no problems. part of the goodness is that the guys that live there are german investment bankers! that means i can work on them to generate funding for a startup (then think of an idea) and work on my german before the world cup. it’s as if there’s a higher power watching over me. of course, if that was true, everyone’s really wasting a lot of time on sunday mornings.

i went to the pub around the corner to eat dinner. fish and chips. it was pretty good. the music choice in the place was total crap. luckily, i can only here out of 1 ear and even that one i think might still be a little stopped up. it’s hard to tell for sure.

so, a few quick comments. apparently black is the new black here, because pretty much everyone seems to not where any color at all. even my tan pants seem to stick out. would it kill these people to put a little color on? does the weather cause the fashion or the fashion cause the weather? it’s a mystery. i wore my purple dino socks today since i was doing the wash. i made sure when i was on the tube to cross my leg to make sure the purple stuck out.

i really like that the price on the item in stores is the price you pay. vat included. what i don’t like is the stupidity that they’ll make stuff cost 99p. what the hell? i’m reading “memoirs of a geisha”. in it, they comment that there’s a unit of money in japan called a ’sen’ that’s 1/100th of a ‘yen’. even at the point of the book, 1920’s, a sen is a worthless amount. when is the u.s and u.k. going to get a clue and get rid of this ridiculous fractional money. useless. either that or start saying things a 8000 cents. doesn’t go with the easy character input though. the 1 and 2 pound coins also makes it difficult to not have any change on you.

so, a start at a checklist for how to move to london.

1. if you’re going to be staying for an extended period to watch football matches and don’t have somewhere to stay the whole time, it would be a good idea to get your visa in advance. time saver.
2. make sure not to rupture your ear drum. to avoid flight ear, it’s probably a good idea to not chew gum so it won’t pull your filling out (forgot to mention that earlier). it makes it annoying to try and communicate with these people with poor pronunciation if you lose hearing in one ear.
3. when you get into victoria station, i think it’s impossible not to come through there regardless of airport, go to the tourist information center or any tube ticket booth and get yourself an oyster card. apparently 50 pounds is the limit. there’s an additional 3 pound deposit for the card that you supposedly get back when you turn it in. they’ll give you a thing to register it, but according to the website it’s not required. so don’t do it. you won’t have an address anyway.
4. go up the escalator to the shopping centre and walk straight to “the carphone warehouse” and get yourself a pay-as-go mobile phone. this will give you 5p /min (20 minutes for a pound) calling to the u.s. and 15p/min local calls and 7p local texts. the phone i got was free with a 50 pound top-up (that’s the phrase for pretty much anything where your pre-paying on an account, no idea where it comes from).
5. go to your hotel and take the rest of the day to bum around as your already way ahead.
6. while bumming around, check out gumtree.com for short term flatshares to let. luck into finding some germans with a nice place.

that list alone probably would have saved me about 4 or 5 days.

tomorrow, no pressure. all i have to do is get up to watford (way out at the end of a tube line) and try and get tickets for the watford vs reading match. i will have to support reading since they have 2 u.s. players. i suppose i should try calling in the morning to see if they still have tickets. it should be a decent game since reading is first in the 1st division and watford is 4th. i’m also kind of looking forward to seeing what kind of area watford is as an extreme suburb. hopefully it will be very village like. hopefully, after that i’ll head to canary wharf to have a pint with the germans.

i really have to try to not get stopped up like that. i know there are all kind of things i’ve left out. oh well.

this is just a quick note that i’m still alive. i had to temporarily switch rooms at the hotel and have now switched into yet a 3rd room next door to the first one. i couldn’t get any free wireless access from the last room, whence no posts. i do have access from this new room (even smaller than the first one if you can believe that, i’ll post pictures) so i’ll be trying to fill in all the gaps tonight over the past couple of days, including going up to highbury for the arsenal vs real madrid game. i didn’t actually go in since the tickets were starting at £250. although, it may have been worth it.

i watched it at an italian restaurant. decent lasagna. it’s all about your big players stepping up, chelseas’ didn’t. i glad barca went out with a win and didn’t just take it on agregate. it’s weird to watch a champions league game at night. the game was on itv which is a broadcast station. afterwards, they showed an hour special, “the truth about referees”. there was also not really any commercials. half-time was dominated by a recap of the other games and league games, even highlights from yesterday’s manu vs wigan. it’s supposed to rain tomorrow so the game at highbury will probably be nasty.

we’ll just edit his in since nobody’s probably read it yet anyway. i forgot to mention that the match on itv was a “soccer special”. something that was just mentioned as coming up this week was “soccer night”. see, it’s apparently not just us stupid americans. however, i have to agree that the name soccer is stupid (especially after hearing the explanation) and football makes all the sense. if we could just get all the stupid americans (literally) to start calling nfl “american football” or maybe “slowball” or “the games not over until christmas ball”.

i think i’m going to try and go to this yamato drummers thing. i wonder what the dress code is?

so i went over to regent’s street this rainy day. it’s apparently one of those big shopping/fashion type things. like the meaningless mile in chicago. i was, of course, there to find the important stuff.

i actually missed this the first time i walked by. there was a double decker bus blocking it, common problem. i could only see the top of the arched windows and was thinking it was a nice looking building. other than the outside, if you’ve seen one apple store, you’ve seen them all. they did have the new mac book pros in stock. they’re a nice size. i need to find out for sure what the wifi status with linux will be.

this is niketown with the nikefootball window displays. there’s actually didn’t really seem like that much stuff in the store. more escalators and walkways than anything else. also, you can just sort of make out the crazy woman with a megaphone, to the right just below the stop sign (ironic?). you guessed it, she’s preaching and being completely ignored. it was a lot of anti-consumerism type stuff. not that people shouldn’t be a little less greedy, but when the catholic church gives up all there gold we can all start thinking about listening.

on a lighter note, i think i have a ruptured ear drum from the flight. i read some stuff from the mayo clinic on it (including that you can get it from flying). lots of pressure and pain from fluid buildup in the middle ear, then pain relief and possible drainage (pus, blood, etc. like the thing from the other day) and hearing loss. of course, the only part i missed was they said while it was hearing you should avoid getting water in your ear. oops. i guess directly spraying water in my ear in the shower to try and clear it out wasn’t such a good idea. they even suggest ear plugs for showers. the good news is that it should heal in a couple of weeks or less. there’s also no point in going to the doctor since they say there isn’t a real treatment other than some crazy stuff where there putting a patch on your ear drum or some kind of surgery. even the article seemed to be on the just wait it out side.

i suppose i need a “please speak up. i have a ruptured ear drum sign” to hang around my neck. i’ve actually often thought that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some sort of programmable sign people could wear that you could use in instances like these. maybe on a hat. for example, “i’m in a bad mood”, “i don’t have a sense of humor”, “yes, you are bothering me”, “of course you look stupid”, “no, that doesn’t make you look fat”,… maybe you could have several pre-programmed so you could switch between them at appropriate moments. great time saver for the modern age. no more repeating yourself.

one more thing. from the paper (and elsewhere i’m sure), glen johnson (defender for chelsea) forgot his passport when trying to get on the plane at gatwick to go to barcelona. he then couldn’t join the team because he couldn’t find it. shouldn’t that immediately get you fired?