Do they have the HVAC on backup power as well?

The next day we had more meetings, fairly short, a visit to a pub, and then a walk through the town of Newbury.  Interestingly, they had Chicken Tikki Masala in the english pub, which my  new friends told me was perfectly normal.  Huh.   Downtown Newbury was as charming as one might imagine, and there was one fabulous church to take photos of before we reached the train to head back to London.  On the train, I found out that a couple of the MySociety fellows had access to Parliament, and Adam said he was more than willing to set up a tour for my next visit.  Woot!

Later that night, for dinner, we walked to a chinese restaurant in Soho. No evidence of any werewolves walking the streets in the rain. The waitresses somehow spoke with an english/chinese accent, which was neat.  Afterwards, I guided us all home. Ellen has appointed me official navigator.  I live to serve!

The last night we stayed in another hotel, the something Mayfair, on Half Moon street, whose name escapes me.  It was very posh, but apparently less expensive than the one in Knightsbridge.  The room was smaller, and had a bizarre half-shower door for some reason.  I’m told that John and Ellen had the same thing in Knightsbridge, so I guess it’s typical.  Also they charged me 15 pounds for Internet access - the nerve!  And their use of my invention was sloppy and error-prone.

I tried to stay up fairly late that night, and researched houses in Maryland on Redfin.  It turns out there are a lot of houses under $350k with 4+ bedrooms, or 3+ and an unfinished basement.  I sent about 40-50 potentials to Christy.  Financially, this move has been stressful, and knowing there are decent-sized houses at an affordable price will be quite helpful.

The next morning, I was awakened by construction noises - they’re refurbishing the hotel, and that apparently means that I get woken up at 7:30 after going to bed at 2.   I managed to drift off again for a while, but I was never fully asleep after that.

When I finally woke up, I looked around briefly for my compatriots, but they weren’t in the lobby, so I decided to set out for Heathrow, meandering through Picadilly Circus along the way.  Lots of shops, none of them interesting.   Managed to spend my last 5 pounds to get a ticket on the Tube to the airport, thus ridding myself of British paper currency, leaving only 5 casino-chip-like 2 pounders, and various smaller coins for the kids.

As I’m writing this, I’m inside Heathrow airport, inside the secure area, with my bag checked (you have to check your carry on luggage here) and one hour to go before my gate opens.  I have power, but no Wi Fi, so I’m a little unsettled, but I suppose it’s all for the best.  I’ll have to pop the laptop open on the plane to see if there is wifi.   (Later - no, no wireless.)

Other notes:

• Lots of foreign languages here, far more than in the US or Canada
• Lots of advertisements to visit Turkey, Finland and other places.
• John W. and I violated (inadvertantly) the “take away vs stay in” pricing differential, by buying something from a shop for takeway, and them proceeding to sit down at a table and eating.  No one bothered us, of course, since they’re British, but I did feel bad.
• Christmas is out in force already, just like back home.
• It seems like most everyone lives in townhomes.  Since the houses also follow the “same price as the US, but in pounds” rule, it’s easy to see why - the houses are incredibly expensive!   There were rows and rows and rows of houses between Newbury and London.
• There are not a lot of skyscrapers in London.  The most notable looked like a giant pickle (note,  it’s 30 St Mary Axe, and it is, in fact, nicknamed The Gherkin).
• Don’t tell Christy, but I finally found my soulmate.

Newbury is a quiet town, about 60 miles west of London, according to our hosts (MySociety.org).  We had dinner the first night at the hotel (more like a B&B, I think), the Carnavon Arms, with a bunch of MySociety people - Tom, Julian, Francis, Angie, Adam, Deborah, Sam, Richard, Matthew, Keith and Rob.  I’m not sure if that was all of them, but it’s close.

They do stuff similar to Sunlight, but w/much less money.  They also focus more on communications - connecting people to government, instead of making government data more open.  They don’t have campaign finance issues like we do, because the government fixes the amount of money that can be spent on any campaign at 6000 pounds.  At the end of the day, I think this means less corruption around election campaigns, but a pretty nasty precedent in terms of free speech, but I think there’s room for intelligent people to differ on this subject.

In any case, they have a ton of little websites - TheyWorkForYou.com, LetThemHearYou, HearFromYourMP, FixMyStreet, Number10Petitions  (I’ll have to check on these URLS), and more.  Rob is a fellow Ruby-On-Rails and Agile fan, and is also in charge of TheyWorkForYou.co.nz, which he runs all by himself.

Dinner was pleasant, if not particularly notable. Afterwards, I visited with a few of the folks and had one of my three Guinesses for the year.

The next day we started early, but not as early as I would like. My computer apparently feels strongly that it is in the EST timezone, even though I told it otherwise.  I didn’t realize this until after the second day, at which point it was too late.  So I slept in.   I also discovered that they have on-off switches next to every outlet.   Different, but not annoying.   Instead of coffee in the rooms, they have instant Hot Chocolate and Nescafe and tea, and portable jugs for heating water quickly.  So I had lots of coffee-infused hot chocolate, which was delicious.   Oh, the shower had a near pair of small doors that slide away from the corner, which allows the clearance to be much smaller than a normal shower, at the cost of leaking water on the floor.

We had a full day of meetings and discussions, punctuated at lunchtime with a walk to nearby Highclere Castle.  It was a great walk - horses came right up to the window, I saw some strange and interesting Fir trees, saw a procession of aristocrats on a hunting trip, with a car for the wives, a car for the men, a car for the dogs, a car for the guns and a car for the beaters.   Oh, and apparently we trespassed on the castle grounds, and had to scurry away like wayward orphans.     The castle was built by the same guy who designed Parliament, which makes sense, given how much they look alike.

More meetings, and then out to dinner at an Italian restaraunt, where I got in a long and somewhat boisterous debate about Global Warming, Asteroids, Self Defense, the culpability of people in the deaths of others, innovation, high speed rail, quantum cryptography, rocketry, health care and other subjects.  Mostly it was me against Julian, Francis and Keith, but sometimes Francis would agree with me.

Afterwards, I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go to bed.

I wasn’t able to get back to the blog for several days - it seems like a week, but it’s only been 3 days.

Went on a long walk through the heart of London - Buckingham Palace (again), St. James Park, Parliament and Westminster Abbey (both from the outside) - 10 pounds entry fee - yowza.  Too rich for me.

Then we walked across the Golden Jubilee Footbridge to the South Bank, which had street performers and Star Wars exhibits and the London Eye and mushy hot dogs that tasted like Vienna sausages.

Then we turned ’round and headed north, visiting the Tate Modern museum of art.  John W. had always wanted to see the Tate, so I was happy to come along.  I was absolutely dismayed at the terrible condition there - the floor has a huge crack running through it, from one end to the other, a foot wide or more in some places, although conveniently never more than a foot and a half deep, almost as though it was part of the exhibit.

After carefully stepping over the crack a few times, and dipping our toes in to prove it was real, John W. and I went upstairs.  yes, that’s right, I actually entered a modern museum of art.  Christy will never let me hear the end of it.  I saw Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko paintings, some sort of anti-capitalist exhibit that made little sense (other than the mass-produced copy of Das Kapital - brilliant!).  At this point, we were both pretty tired, so we sat for a while.

We went outside, walked briefly on the Millenium Bridge, but neither of us were particularly keen on walking all the way across, so we headed north again, still along the South Bank.   Starbucks has absolutely conquered London, as far as I can tell - it is by far the most dominant restaurant I saw.   I had to go out of my way to find local coffee shops to visit.

Eat. comes in second.   I never did manage to eat there.  McDonalds and Burger King both had a strong presence as well, but I avoided them as well.

Eventually we got to London Bridge, which was notable only in its complete lack of notability.  It wasn’t falling down, it didn’t have towers, no shanties perched along the edges.  Dis. A. Pointing.   I did get a picture of the Globe Theater… sorry, Theatre, which was neat.   There are some touristy things near London Bridge, including the Clink (the original prision called “The Clink”) and some dungeon/haunted house thing.

Both of us were exhausted at this point, and we rode the Tube back to Knightsbridge.  We recovered enough that I managed to stumble through Harrods.  I’m sure Rowan and Christy will enjoy it more.  I was mostly amused by the pricing - everything is pretty much the same price as in the US, except the prices are in pounds.  So a book that costs $6 in the US, costs 6 pounds in England.  Note that they do not earn twice the salary we do - somewhat like 10-15% less as I recall.  which means they pay double for everything, on less discretionary income.

After Harrods, and buying some gifts for the kids, we got on another train to Paddington Station.  There was no platform 9 3/4 - that’s at Kings Cross, which I never managed to visit.   We found our train, and got on, and headed out to Newbury.

Went for a walk in Hyde Park, and ended up getting fairly well soaked by rain. We decided to check out Speaker’s Corner, alas, it was completely empty. No free speech on a rainy day!

So John W and I wandered around the park for a bit longer, before we found Ellen (my boss) and we decided to see Buckingham Palace. It rained even harder as we journeyed there, to the point that we had to seek shelter inside Constitution Arch. I’m talking torrential, Florida-style rain, but with chilly UK temperatures. Brr..

Buckingham Palace was neat, but with the overcast skies and the lack of a changing of the guard event, not super-exciting. So we hung out for a bit, and then walked back to the hotel. I decided to go grab a snack - this was around 5 pm - and I wanted to try out a local place, instead of the Starbucks around the corner. But there were two little cafes, and both were closing up as I walked by. So I ended up at Starbucks after all.

Dinner was nice - Indian dishes of various stripes - but nothing particularly better or more memorable than the Indian in the US. Bombay Grill (in Atlanta) is still my favorite.

All in all, so far, this is really not much different than going to Canada, in terms of “exoticness” - I’d say it’s mostly a cross between Toronto and NYC. It’s a very busy city, like New York, but not as smelly, and with nicer-looking buildings, like Toronto. They have a different currency, but not particularly different. The newspapers shout a lot (lots of ALL CAPS HEADLINES). Because the streets are so complicated, you have to look for cars coming from just about every direction, again, just like NYC. There are parks everywhere, which is a litle different. The people are not particularly friendly or unfriendly, and always in a hurry. In other words, it feels like a fun adventure, without being overwhelming.

Oh, most amusing geeky note - we’re coming in on the train from Heathrow, aboveground, and I get a distinct feeling of deja vu - when I realized that the tunnels and pipes look almost exactly like the tunnels in Half Life 2.

I seem to have managed to convert to local time. It’s 6:30 am here, which should be 1:30 back home, but after a full night’s sleep, I feel pretty good. Later, we’re probably going to go check out Westminster Abbey/Cathedral/Big Ben/Tower Bridge/Parliament/etc.

Jeremy sent me a humorous map of London. We’re definitely in the “Rich People” part of town.

The internet is fairly spotty here. Hopefully this will save, but I’ll have to cut-and-paste it locally to be safe.

Note: this was written as the events unfolded but will be posted once I return to the States.

My first trip to England. Took a redeye from Dulles. The last time I was at Dulles the security screening line took two hour to get through. Egads. This time, it was almost non-existant. The plane was nice. I got a decent amount of sleep on the plane, enough that I have not had to nap since I landed.

I was worried about the baggage retrieval system they’ve got at Heathrow, but it turns out those worries were unwarranted. Everything went smoothly - customs was pleasant, no lines, and the tube ride into London proper was uneventful.

We do need a better map - finding our way around is definitely a challenge. But we will persevere!

The hotel is very nice - the rooms are almost certainly old apartments, oddly shaped, with various amenities I’m not used to seeing. But they have wireless internet, and they use my inventions to deliver them, so I’m happy there.

My “plug converter” kit worked flawlessly, which is why I’m able to write this. Now, I have about an hour to kill before going out to explore the city. be back later.