If Your Time Expires The Computer WIll Shut Down

Hey there,

Well, here I am, I made it. I'm intact, I'm tired, I'm a little lost, I'm jetlagged but I'm excited. I was going to do an update from Singapore as they have free internet in the airport, but it was a little slow and my patience was running a bit thin. That was before the thirteen hour hell flight into London. Let me say that 13 hours sitting in close confines with my father was an experience that I am not keen to relive, but one that I am sure to on the return flight. One thing I learnt though was that apparently if you have diabetes and it's playing up a bit, then your sweat can have a distinctly sweet smell. Lovely.

The first leg of the trip to Singapore was actually quite nice, my dad and I had a seat between us allowing us to stretch out a bit. The food was nice, the beer was cold and I wasn't too bored yet. I read a bit of my book, listened to a bit of the new Franz Ferdinand album and just sort of kicked back. My dad kept commenting on the stewardesses. They were quite attractive and their uniforms were quite striking.

Hanging out in Singapore was a bit of a pain, Dad was on a mission to find a shower, which with hindsight we both could have used. I picked up a bottle of vodka and read some more of my book. Getting on the jumbo for London was okay, but that's where things stopped being okay. That trip was uncomfortable. I really fucking detest people that feel a need to put their chairs back ALL the way ALL the time. Do they know how much of MY space they take up? Too much. It makes it almost impossible to see the screen on the back of the chair and makes even doing little things like picking your nose uncomfortable. Plus having a father to the right of me who puts up his armrest so that he can fit into the seat is not cool. It is not cool. Fortunately though I managed to get a couple of hours of shut eye in, although I don't think that it refreshed me. It just stole me away from the waking nightmare that was that flight.

We arrived in Heathrow tired and dishevelled, but it wasn't quite over yet. We were lucky enough to have our bags chosen to close the show on the luggage carousel. That was a nice touch. It only took an hour. After that though Customs was a breeze. As was getting the train into London, a bargain at only 14 pound each. We managed to get to our hotel with a minimum of fuss which was surprising considering our state. We stowed our luggage at the hotel at 9 o'clock on the Sunday morning, and only had to wait until 3 for the check in time. Bonza!

Actually, if I'm making this sound bad, it really wasn't too bad. I'm not making up the shit about the flight, that was pretty bad, but the rest of it was okay. I was glad to be on the move and getting to where we wanted to go.

Dad and I went out, had a bite to eat, a bit of coffee and figured out what we were going to hit on our first day in London town.

Taking the Tube was a bit of a novelty, they announced as we arrived that half of the scheduled trains for that day had been cancelled, but it didn't affect us. We headed into Victoria station which is sort of a transport hub type thing. From there we decided to take a walk down to the Thames to find our bearings a bit and to keep on the move. Well, we hit the Thames walked out onto a bridge and had a look at a guide map that we had picked up along the way.

It was at this moment that the lack of sleep started to catch up with us. You'd think that two intelligent men like my father and myself would be able to read a map and figure out which way to head if we wanted to run into London bridge and all the sights along the way. Wrong. We walked two kilometres along the Thames in the wrong direction. Across on the other bank there was a fun run being held which was interesting. 4000 people wearing bright red shirts moving up the river in both directions. We also passed the Peace Pagoda. Whatever that is. It looked pretty cool though from afar, massive. Once Dad and I had realised our mistake we hopped onto a red bus and headed back into Victoria. Dad was feeling a bit pooped at this point and I must admit I was feeling a little on edge myself.

It was only about lunch time now so we had to figure out what to do. We ended up getting on a sight seeing bus which was a double decker job with the roof cut off. This was a fun way to get our bearings and see all the things we'd been hoping to see on our walk, plus a few more. It was a glorious day, blue skies, shining sun, a cool breeze. Dad was whinging that maybe it was a little too cool, but I thought that it was nice. At one stage an Italian girl sat next to me, and that was a highlight.

At the end of the tour Dad realised that he had lost the tickets which were valid for 24 hours, so we weren't able to go for a different one. We ended up walking down to Buckingham Palace and looked at that for a couple of minutes then headed back to the hotel to go to bed. For 15 hours. It was great.

Today has been a very interesting day. Perhaps a little too interesting as I'm sitting here feeling a little overwhelmed. We managed to go the Natural History Museum, the Victoria and Albert museum as well as the Science Museum. They were all very impressive, especially the Victoria and Albert one. Some truly amazing stuff in there, a highlight being a replica of Michaelangelo's statue of David which was very impressive. Also some tapestries and examples of Japanese, Chinese and Korean artworks.

I also managed to get in touch with Rowan and Sarah which was pretty cool and I'll be seeing them later in the week I guess. I'm going to head off now, but I hope to be back again tomorrow to do another update thingo. Disco Stu gets into town tonight, so that'll be interesting. I hope that everybody at home had a great weekend.

Oh, one last thing before I go, when I'm at home my phone rarely goes off, but since being here I've received like 5 random sms's. It'll be interesting to see how much they cost me when I get back. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend either Damien's last performance or Josef and Alec's housewarming this Friday night.

Bye.