Britain - experiences and waypoints
-----------------------------------


This document contains two separate things - a story on my
experiences in Britain plus (at the end) a list of waypoints
of places in (mainly) London.  Because of the fact that the
experiences were obtained long before I bought my first GPS,
the two things were "integrated" long after the event.  As
such, it's not the best it could have been.  Both parts are
still useful though (in my opinion).

This document is released to the public domain.

Claimer: Everything you read below is a true and accurate
representation of all British people.  For more claims and
warranties see world.c in ozpd.



Paul & Xiayi take Britain by Storm
----------------------------------

1998-01-29:
Prior to departure, I received sound advice from various people who
shall remain nameless (mainly my mother) that Britain was so cold
that you needed to wear thermal underwear otherwise you could only
walk for about 5 minutes before freezing solid whilst icicles started
forming on you, and that this was the coldest winter on record, and 
that it rained all the time, so you needed to wear leather shoes.  
Accordingly most of our clothes were chosen along those lines.  At 
the last minute I took my normal shoes anyway, but no matching socks.  
I was going to take gel-cell car batteries on the plane to give me 
sufficient battery power for my laptop, but found out that what you're 
meant to do is watch the free inflight movies.  There was some confusion 
about the inflight movies though, the long and the short of it were that 
the flight attendant didn't know about some of the fine print in the 
movie guide I found and was unable to tell me if and when "Saturday 
Night Live" was on, so I still don't know what the yanks were on about.

The only trouble with the inflight movies is the interruptions.  Is it 
just me, or does everyone else think that pilots have all the social 
graces of a dead cat at a Rat's Anonymous convention?  I mean, if these
pathetic morons feel the need to boost their egos by forcing everyone
to listen to their pathetic announcements "the plane is still in the
air", "the plane still has 2 wings", can't they at least wait until
the movie finishes?  Or if they REALLY can't wait, it's a reasonably
simple procedure that you need to follow.  PAUSE the tapes and THEN
speak, don't SPEAK and then PAUSE.  Reminds me of a skit on LA cops.
Blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam.  Stop, or I'll shoot.

1998-01-30:
We arrive safely (the wings didn't fall off thanks to good piloting)
in London.  Despite holding a British passport, I had to line up in
the "foreign scum" line because I was with Xiayi, who is one of
these refos from Australia.  Anyway, it was quite an embarassing
experience, but even more so when they sent us to the Diseased
Animals Centre for a checkup.  Instead of pointing at us and saying
"is that a foreigner?", little kids started saying "is that what a
lepper looks like?".  Anyway, it was Xiayi they wanted to see.
After explaining that her yellow skin was a harmless genetic defect
that runs in the family and not something she contracted in Australia,
they let her off with a warning.

Anyway, we exchanged some US$ for UK$ (actually they call them pounds,
but I don't have a pound symbol on my keyboard, and even if I did, I
don't believe everyone should have their own stupid word for dollar
and their own symbol so I'm going to start a trend).  We then went out
into the open air, and it was genuinely cold (at 5am).  We caught a
taxi back to our place, and it was to be another 3 minutes before I
realised (after close inspection of the Mickey Mouse Money) that the 
taxi driver had shortchanged me UK$5 (AUS$12.50) and I had no way of 
knowing who he was.  We agreed that I was an irresponsible person and
I gave all the change to Xiayi and I was not to buy anything myself, I
was just meant to safe-keep the money, to avoid a repeat of this
fiasco.

Our room wasn't ready so we waited in someone else's.  Xiayi had a
wander around outside in search of a shopping centre and place to
buy a phone card, but didn't find either.  I asked the hotel lady
where the nearest supermarket was and she gave us directions to a
Sainsbury's.  So off we went, along the main road.  The first shop
on the left had a sign outside saying they sold phone cards but
being a gentleman, I didn't point this out to Xiayi and rub her nose
in it.  We then walked along the street that I understood had the
shopping centre in it, and after a while Xiayi assured me that she
had already been on this street and there was no shopping centre on
it.  I said that before turning back we should check out that large
building on the other side of the road, and then went to Sainsbury's.

Now, there were 3 things we went out to do.  Buy a newspaper with
the computer contracting jobs in it (a newsagent on the way had
suggested we try a big newsagent in High Street), do supermarket
shopping to buy milk, and Xiayi needed to pop in to work.  I had a
rough idea of the order that these things should to be done in, but
failed to convey my opinion.  I went into Sainsbury's first to see
if they sold the paper I wanted.  They didn't, although they did
sell other papers.  Meanwhile Xiayi went and did grocery shopping.
I then had the dubious pleasure of carting around the shopping all
over Britain, looking for High Street.  As you know, only wimps with
no sense of direction actually carry maps, so it took a while.  I
then discovered that you DO sweat in Britain, and you don't even
need a jacket, a T-shirt is sufficient.  I eventually gave in and
went back to the units with the shopping, whilst Xiayi went to work.

I then looked at the map and came up with a plan to get to High Street.
On the way I suddenly realised I didn't have any money with which to
buy the newspaper, so started to come back.  Then I realised that I
could probably use my mastercard.  Then I realised that I did have
cash after all, I just wasn't supposed to be spending it.  I found the
newsagent but they hadn't heard of it, and sent me off to another of
their stores in another suburb, so I caught a train there.  They hadn't
heard of it either, but did point out the 2 that they did sell.  So I
bought them anyway, in desperation.  I found out that magazines that I
wanted were free ones, but one of them did come bundled with one of the
ones I bought.

I went back, found a potential job, rang them up, told them I only had
my resume on floppy disk, and asked if I could bring it in.  They agreed
and I rushed in, only to find that I didn't know the guy's name and they
wouldn't accept things on floppies anyway, due to virus risk.  However,
I had spoken to a woman before the man, and remembered her name, so asked
for her.  She remembered me, but wouldn't accept the floppy.  She then
went and got the bloke she passed me on to, and he came down, but he
didn't want the floppy either!  I explained to him that that's what we
agreed on the phone and he said he thought I was going to print it out.
Anyway, I explained that you couldn't get a virus from a text file and
he went away and printed it, and I went back home.

Xiayi came home eventually too, although she didn't likely do anything
as interesting as I did in that time so there's no need to elaborate.

1998-01-31:
Saturday we went to St Paul's Cathedral (STPAUL), nearest tube
St Paul (USPAUL)!  We climbed to the top so that we could spit on 
all the priests from a great height.  Or at least that was the plan.  
It was so high and scary that Xiayi preferred to practice "remote 
viewing" from the doorway.  I looked around and saw London, but I 
already knew that's where I was so it was a bit of a fizzer.  Oh, 
today it rained for about 1/2 hour, which was to be the only rain 
we saw for about 3 weeks.  Yet another whacky theory down the 
drain.  We then went and visited Covent Garden market (COVENT) 
where you will find the only Dr Marten's shoe store in the world 
(DRMRTN), then to Picadilly Circus (PICDLY) where the only highlight 
was some street performers, then we wandered aimlessly around the 
rest of West End.  We passed the Royal Academy of Arts where I saw 
a large statue/object with lots of people standing around looking at 
it.  So we went in to have a closer look.  It would appear that 
Xiayi's theory that the people were queued up to get into the 
building, not to look at the statue may have been correct after all.

Then we went to the "famous" Burlington Arcade (BRLARC) but Xiayi got too 
tired and was bored with the shops so we only saw a little bit of it.
We went down St James Street and found an alleyway with a chair where 
we could eat an apple we had brought.  We continued down the street 
and came to St James Palace.  It had one of these non-moving guards 
outside it and I couldn't help smiling at the thought of Mr Bean.  We 
crossed over the road pretending to be casually going across but 
actually we wanted to see if he moved at all.  His eyes moved.  I said 
"gidday" but I don't think he heard me.  We tried seeing if there was 
a back entrance to the palace, which there was, but a policeman saw us 
and whistled at us to move, as far as I can tell.  There was a posted 
sign, but I took a closer look at it and it said "No Parking", there 
was nothing saying "No Stickybeaking".  Anyway, the policeman left 
before we did so I don't know for sure it was us that he was after.
Appently St James Palace was abandoned because it wasn't impressive
enough.  Judging by the Old World Charm style windows, I'm not surprised.
You'd think they could have afforded something a bit more modern, being
King of England and all that.

After leaving St James Palace, we came across a huge park, with a huge
lake.  To the distance on the left was a huge tower, maybe London Tower.
To the right in the near distance there was what looked to be a large
building.  I wanted to visit the lake, but wanted to find out what the
large building was first.  Xiayi wasn't keen on visiting that though,
I think she wanted to head towards the tower.  Anyway, I thought it was
better to see this building first, what did the map say it was?  Nothing.
There's nothing there.  I insisted that they didn't create such a large
building and not put it on the map, so she checked again and decided it
was the Admiral's Arch.  I know what an arch looks like, and there was
nothing archy about that building, so I said "I don't think it is".  She
then said that either that was the arch, or it's in the opposite direction.
I looked back, and in the distance was a grotty little building that
looked like it might have an arch in it.  By this time, we were getting
so close to the building that you could see grand gates and crowds and
the massive building all by itself.  I suggested that if the Admiral's
Arch was the other end, what was on this end?  Xiayi looked again and
this time came up with "Buckingham Palace" (BUKPAL).  We were within 
spitting  distance of a building that she's seen pictures of for the last 
30 years, and she needed to consult her map to know what she was looking at.
Admittedly there were no signs on the palace, so it's easy to confuse it
with the other well-known attraction, the Admiral's Arch.

We wandered around a bit and then caught a bus to Chinatown, but since
we had a travelpass we just stayed on the bus and went past.  It took
us to the East End.  We then had to get out of the bus depot and back
to civilisation, if you can call anything in the East End that.  It
would appear that people who live in the East End are too poor to keep
a 4m * 3m backyard clean and tidy and prefer instead to use it as a
rubbish tip, because they presumably can't afford rubbish bins either.
I shouldn't talk - I'm one of the people who can afford bread AND water.
Literally.  We were trying to make the $280 (minus $40 taxi) last 2
weeks, when Xiayi was due to be paid in British pounds.  Xiayi's work
calculated that Britain was 10% more expensive than Sydney.  They are
correct, assuming your diet consists purely of bread and water.  Diverge
from that and it's more like 2.5 times the price!!!  Toast became an
integral part of our lives in that time.  That and almost-expired
sausages.  Cornflakes were also OK, although I don't like the smell or
taste of the milk compared to Australia.  The milk here is advertised
as being pasteurised, but not advertised as homogenised.  I can't
remember about Australia, but I shake the milk just in case.  I still
think they should make the taste of milk standardised though, perhaps
by using standardised cows.

After the East End, we went to Chinatown (they call it "Soho" here, I'm
not sure why they used the acronym for "Small Office/Home Office" and 
no-one I asked seemed to know, probably because they didn't understand 
English very well).  We came home, and I discovered that I had got 
sunburnt.  I decided that next time we went holidaying, we would go to 
a place with a decent climate, perhaps Siberia.

1998-02-01:
We decided to go to the British Museum (BRMUSM), but it only opened at 
2pm.  We had learnt that it was easier to catch a bus than walk, so we
caught a bus going North/South.  We passed London University (Xiayi
swears blind that that's what the locals call what foreigners refer
to as Westminster Abbey (WESTMN), the heart of the oldest democracy on 
the planet).  We then went and sat in a park to eat lunch, and it was
bloody cold.  There was construction work going on which I found
interesting but Xiayi didn't.  There were some people filming there
(Hyde Park Corner) as well, but actually it turned out that they
were just support people, the filming proper was being done in the
Ritz (RITZ), so we went searching for that.  All I can say is it's very
strange that they put support people a million miles from where the
filming is taking place.  Anyway, we then went to Hyde Park itself.
We saw a squirrel!  Apparently squirrels in London don't hibernate
in the winter since they can make money all year long.  Then we came
across a lake and saw some animals which I identified as swans.  Xiayi 
thought that swans were meant to be prettier than that, which is the 
typical whinging Australian attitude you find around here.  They can't 
have been ducks, because there were ducks there too, and they looked
different (even uglier!).  It's possible that they were actually
geese.  I'd had enough excitement for one year so we went home.

1998-02-04:
We were invited to someone's place to dinner, which was 7-8 minutes
walk from the station.  I timed it, and it was about 7 minutes 13
seconds, not bad instructions!  This dinner threw me out of my
otherwise brilliant time schedule though, which had previously been
wake up at 5:30am go to bed at about 7:30pm.  On the way back along
that 7:13 stretch we came across a car accident, so bad that a van
was on the foothpath, along with a tree.  It was a good place to not
be a pedestrian at that time.

1998-02-05:
Xiayi found out from a workmate that the heaters in our house can
actually be turned down, so I had a close look, and found out where
to switch it off.  These apartments are boiling hot otherwise.

1998-02-06:
Found our local laundromat.  Also found that Xiayi had bought 2
bottles of liquid stain remover rather than powdered detergent
as required by the laundromat machines.

1998-02-07:
We did our washing today, and the laundromat was advertising for
a Laundromat Attendant from 8.30am to 11am.  I knocked on a few
doors but there was no reply.  I figured the attendant must have
been disguised as one of the customers, but I couldn't figure out
which one it was so wasn't able to start my new career.  I mean,
just what sort of experience do you require to be an attendant in
a self-service laundromat?  Xiayi thinks it's quite funny that I
want to be what she calls a "laundromat boy".  I keep having to
explain to her that those of us in the industry prefer to use the
term "attendant", it's not so sexist.

I have been loathe to open and close the windows, the cleaning ladies
do that themselves and after all, they're the professionals so will
know the likely impact on the building's overall heating system.  Well,
it was so hot today that I decided they didn't know what they were
doing, and I opened the window myself.  But I still couldn't get to
sleep.  I was so desperate that I ended up using the fan that they
provided.  Two unfortunate things about that were that I could only
get it to go full blast (inspection in the morning revealed that the
knobs were missing for the other speeds), and secondly the cord was
only long enough to reach from the head of the bed to the foot of the
bed, and I had visions of my foot falling off the bed during the night
and landing in a high-speed fan.  Goodbye one foot.  Fortunately I
survived the night without incident.

1998-02-08:
Our funds were rapidly diminishing so we had to go and do free things.
So we went to the British Museum.  If you're the sort of person who
goes to Woolies and spends hours pouring over the splendour of the
tupperware section, you'll love the British Museum.  Xiayi was
wondering how they managed to get all this old stuff from the other
countries to Britain.  She was singularly unimpressed by my theory 
that the Chinese likely exchanged their stuff for a "magic ticking 
machine".

If you're the sort of person who thinks that spending the day looking
at some old pots that look like they haven't even been washed yet, after
thousands of years of housewives, sounds about as interesting as watching
a snail trying to mow the lawn, try the science museum instead.  After 
one hour (it's only free for 1 hour/day) I hadn't even got past the V2 
rocket on the ground floor!  I developed tonsilitis that day and this 
was to prevent me from entering the laundromat business for an entire 
week.  I had an extremely high temperature that night, and ended up 
having a bath with just cold water, something I can't even do in the 
Australian summer!  Cold water here is quite strange, it can range
from very cold to too hot to touch!

1998-02-09:
I went to a hospital that I had seen on my travels, but that turned out
to be a private one.  They suggested I go to Town Hall near High Street,
but I had another idea, which was to go to the Chemist and ask them.
They gave me a printout of the location of the doctors that took NHS.
Sick as a dog I went to the first one, who said that they stopped taking
NHS a few months ago.  Went back to where I had come from and they were
full up.  Onto a 3rd and they were full of NHS patients too.  The last
available one, open 11am-1pm on Monday, 9am-10am on Tuesday-Friday did,
after a bit of debate, take NHS.  I turned up at 12:45am and they
preferred for me to come back tomorrow, but let me in anyway.  Tonsilitis
it was and I was on to the penicillin.

1998-02-12:
Due to the soaring heat (highest temperature ever recorded in February,
20 degrees), we bit the bullet, withdrew some cash, bought some T-shirts
(6 for $14), and Xiayi as usual got carried away and bought some Stephen
King books (3 for $6) on the pretext that we wouldn't have a TV in the
new place so she was buying it in advance.

1998-02-13:
We did our washing tonight, and this time I got to meet the current
laundromat attendant, but he was only a casual night-person and said
I needed to speak to the day-shift people who he never even saw.  I
had a natural raporre with him that made me feel I belonged in the
laundromat industry.

1998-02-14:
My illness totally destroyed my sleeping patterns, and I woke up at
11am by my mum ringing to ask for me to write a letter detailing what
I had been up to.  Xiayi came home at about 2pm, totally broke again.
We went to the theatre today, $16 each to see a comedy.  If you are
the sort of person who enjoys comedies such as "Winnie the Pooh Eats
Lots of Honey", you're onto a winner with "The Magistrate".  Other
ways of kidding yourself that it was more enjoyable that putting your
feet up and watching Blackadder on TV include having a lobotomy or
having an subzero IQ.  Unfortunately neither applied to me whilst
I was watching it.  Xiayi had spent the morning visiting High Street
in Kensington (Marks and Spencer etc) then on to Knightsbridge
(Harvey Nichols and United Colors(!!!) of Benneton where she bought
a dress and jacket) and then went to Harrods (HARROD).


1998-02-15:
Went to Camden Town to look at markets.  Pretty boring if you're not
into looking at clothes from 20 million different angles.

1998-02-16:
Turned up to the laundromat at 8:05am (it opens at 8am) but there was
no sign of life.  I left at 8:40am without a job.  I went to the
science museum at 4:30pm and by 5:50pm (closing time) I had managed
to complete the ground floor, do the basement and do the 1st floor,
all at a hectic pace.

1998-02-17:
Maintaining my hectic pace, I managed to do half of the second floor.
Xiayi went window shopping in Oxford St in Oxford Circus.

1998-02-18:
Finished off the second floor, and made a start on the 3rd floor, but
towards the end I found that I needed to adopt a technique of closing 
my eyes and running really fast in order to make progress.  Babbage's 
engine (partially built) was on display, plus the recent completely-built 
version!  They seemed to skip any mention of the transistor though, 
although maybe I just didn't see the display.  I will look harder when 
I have completed all floors.

1998-02-19:
Went to local library.  I was late to the museum so went to Natural
History Museum instead of Science Museum since the former is closer.
Saw most of it.  It was OK.

1998-02-20:
Finished off floor 3 and did floors 4 + 5 of science museum.  Only
thing I missed was one experiment I wanted to do on 3rd floor.  Did
washing, and whilst waiting for that we tried unsuccessfully to see
inside the London Fashion Week buildings erected at the Natural
History Museum.  By the time we got back the wino occupying one of
the benches had left.

1998-02-21:
Went to Westminster where we saw Parliament House, but couldn't find
a way in.  Parliament House has Big Ben (BIGBEN) on it, although 
there's no sign on the clock saying that's what it is.  It's actually 
4 clocks on the one tower, although I could only see 3 of them when I was
counting them.  I thought Parliament House was also known as Westminster
Abbey, but it isn't, when you hear people saying "live from Westminster"
they must mean the suburb/county/shire/burrough not the church.  The church
also seems to have something called "St Margaret's" attached to it which
is what threw me.  We worked out how to use the camera on this trip so
Xiayi got a bit carried away.  I keep telling her it's better to buy a
book of pictures of Britain because it's better quality and cheaper, but
she has some pretty whacky theories.  I managed to get into one of the
photos, because Xiayi didn't like the bin, and on my way to pretending to
move the bin I realised I could just stand in front of it!  Simply taking
the photo from a different position where you couldn't see the bin didn't
occur to either of us at the time.

We then went to the War Rooms which were mildly interesting.  It's more
the war itself (movement of fronts etc) that interest me, not the actual
people doing it.  Interesting to hear the diary of someone around the
time that an invasion was expected.  We then attempted to go to 10
Downing Street.  Xiayi managed to take us in the opposite direction to
where we wanted to go, but in the process took us through the Horse
Guards where she got her photo taken trying to push the Horse Guard
off the horse because it was "her turn".  Then we ended up going through
the "other" Admiral's Arch where I took the photo because Xiayi was of
the opinion that standing in the middle of the road was likely dangerous.

I then took over the navigation, found that we had gone the wrong way,
and went back to the war room.  I was then confused by roads myself and
managed to take us full circle the other way.  By then we had sufficient
experience to know that the place we wanted to go was between the two
circles, and we managed to find it, although you can't walk along Downing
St it is blocked off, but we think it was the dark brown building.  There
was a protest on the other side of the road "Don't bomb Iraq" which we
went and had a closer look at.  I've seen morons on TV waving foreign
flags before, but it was simply astounding seeing it close up.  Full of
rag-heads interspersed with "socialists".  You can actually see them
yelling out their slogans close up.  Totally unbelievable.  The sort of
people you would expect to see in countries like Iran, full of so-called
"fundamentalists" banging their heads (and not to AC/DC), not people who
have escaped to (or were born in) the free west.  The police cordon was
quite strange though, they were all linked up at one spot, presumably to
stop them going forward, but they couldn't go forward anyway without
trampling on some of their people sitting on the ground.  If it was me
I would have just had the police standing around, not forming a cordon.
They were just standing around on the other sides.

By this time it was >1:30pm so Westminster Abbey was open.  It was a
total non-event.  We then headed home.  Then we went to Knightsbridge.
Xiayi checked out United Colors of Benneton again.  We then passed
a wino with a Gucci bag and I made a comment "Even winos can afford
Gucci can they?" which even after explaining, Xiayi didn't get.  We then
went into Harrods, Xiayi saw "Gucci" somewhere, and then got the joke.
Harrods was a total fizzer.  I thought it was meant to sell EVERYTHING.
ie if they don't have it, it doesn't exist.  I was after two things.  I
wanted to see a whole stack of space-age microwaves, which Xiayi saw in
Tokyo but failed to take a photo of.  They didn't quite have them, and
in fact I'm not sure the range was particulary more than Grace Bros etc.

The other thing I was looking for was a breakfast bowl.  This is a bowl
that I bought in Woolworth's Variety in the city when I first came to 
Sydney in 1986.  It is a metal bowl, "tinny" in nature, but yellow in
colour.  I think it might actually be a baking dish or something like
that (enamelled?), and not meant to be used for eating Weetbix (someone 
once told me that they preferred not to eat out of a bucket!).  Anyway, 
apparently it is the perfect thing to use to steam fish and Xiayi kept 
stealing my breakfast bowl for a purpose I never intended it for (and 
sometimes it wasn't washed by the time I had breakfast the next day), 
so anyway I got a bit pissed off and suggested she buy her own breakfast 
bowl.  She couldn't find one.  I didn't believe her, and now it is part 
of our lifestyle that whenever we go shopping we always try to find 
another one of these bowls.  I figured if I could find one in Harrods 
(that sells everything) I could take a few of them back to Australia 
and sell them on the black market.  Xiayi reckons that those bowls are 
commonly used in China, but they're not used by overseas Chinese (probably 
because they're not available for love or money, not even in Chinatown).
Anyway, the quest for the holy breakfast bowl continues, with Harrods 
struck off the list.

By the way, this morning was the first time it rained for about 3 weeks.
It was so heavy that I had to use an umbrella.  Radical, man!

Anyway, after Harrods we went to the Science Museum for about 20 minutes
so that I could finish off the flight experiment, which didn't work, but
then there was another demo, basically they've got a wind tunnel and you
put an aerofoil on your hand and you felt the lift.  And instead of
convincing me of the whacky theory that air molecules decide to "speed
up" to get around the non-flat side of the wing thus lowering the
pressure, I found that actually there was NO lift if the flat side is
dead horizontal.  It's only when you put the flat side at an angle that
you get the lift.  And the reason for that is bloody obvious!  The wind
bangs into it and bounces downwards, thus exerting an upward force.  Not
much different from a sailing boat (you don't see sailors coming up with
whacky theories about needing a stupid-shaped sail otherwise the air
molecules don't know that they need to speed up).

Then it was off to the Natural History Museum.  First of all I showed
Xiayi my favourite exhibit in the spider section.  Apparently spiders
don't bother looking at their prey, they just decide that if it moves
quickly, it's edible.  So when a male spider comes up it actually just
taps nervously on the spider web, a dangerous game as it may get eaten?!
Anyway, you press a button and feel what is happening and you chose
whether it is a fly or a mate and press the corresponding button.  When
you successfully choose "mate" it says "congratulations, you've just
been seduced".  I thought that was really funny, being seduced by slight
tapping.

We decided to buy takeaway for dinner, and Xiayi came up with 2 places
from her book, one Thai and one Portuguese.  I mapped out the route with
the best hit/walking-distance ratio, but it ended up the first place
(Thai) had closed down.  The second was successful and we bought
Portuguese flame-grilled chicken for $12.  Xiayi ordered "very hot" and
on the way home I reminded her that there's lots of Indians in Britain
and she started to get worried.  But it was just normal "very hot".  We
caught the train home which was a great relief as my feet had been
killing me for the latter half of the day.  I think maybe I need new
shoes but the shoes aren't obviously worn (they are obviously dirty
though!).

1998-02-22:
Woke up with a sore throat.  I think Xiayi's flu (contracted about
Thursday) has been passed on to me, and probably converted into
tonsilitis again as usual.  Bloody hell that pisses me off.  Reminds
me of the Black Plague I saw in one of the museums.  They thought it
was passed by dogs (along with lots of other whacky theories mostly
involving various gods) and killed lots of dogs.  Apparently we now
know that it is actually passed by fleas on rats.  You have to wonder
about the Good Old Days.  I mean, were these people too poor to be
able to afford things like bins and holes to put rubbish and dead people
into or did they think that rats made good pets and every home should
have one?  I also had an aching back.  So much for the chiropractor's
whacky theory that someone my height as a hunter/gatherer was meant
to walk 20-30km/day.  I've decided that I'm a hypochondriac that should
be shot for the good of the state.  We both spent the day drifting in
and out of consciousness, not leaving the apartment.

1998-02-23:
Went to the doctor who is open between 11pm and 1am on Monday's which
is much more convenient than the normal 9-10am.  Turns out I've got a
sore throat that merely requires dissolvable aspirin that is only
meant to last 2-3 days.  Rang up BT to get the telephone in the new
place connected.  Gas was far more complicated, they said it wasn't
even connected, wasn't showing up on their computer.  I asked the Gas
person what possibilities there were, given that it was an immutable
fact that gas was connected, suggesting that there was "a problem with
your computer" and "we're connected via another company" as two options.
She went away and asked someone else about the "computer problem" and
came back and agreed that we were connected after all.  I asked what
the problem was, and didn't get an intelligible reply, another list or
something.  The story didn't stop there though, they wanted me to give
them the meter reading.  I was tempted to say 9 billion, send me cash
or bank cheque for what you owe me.

Xiayi came home and we packed and left.  I had managed to rack up a
massive UK$60 (AUS$150) in phone calls.  Sounds a bit dodgy to me, but
it is possible.  And that's not counting the other phone calls made on
our Telstra card!  The hotel called a cab which turned out to be a car!
Possibly this is called a minicab, but anyway, it was a lot cheaper
($10) than the last cab.

The new place previously tenanted by the world's fussiest person by all
accounts wasn't quite what the hype suggested.  I agree with her that
the pineapple pattern on the lounge suite sucks.  The lights in the
main bathroom are blown so we use the ensuite.  The ensuite has a towel
warmer, but it doesn't really fit 2 towels.  I suppose we could then
share a single towel, but then I'd pick up the infamous yellow-skin
disease.  Yikes!  It looks like I already have.  False alarm, it was
just a freckle.  The toilet has a handle to flush, just like in the 
old place.  Presumably the British haven't heard of "buttons" yet.  
For whatever reason, you have to pull the lever x times before it 
catches.  Sometimes first go.  The current record is held by Xiayi at 
5.  The old place didn't have that problem, it had a different problem - 
the lever was right next to the upright seat, so when you pulled it down, 
it banged into the seat and it was right on the edge, the seat may fall 
down with a thundering crash or it may stay up.  Completely bizarre.  
Presumably this is some long-standing tradition or something.  

One thing I've noticed about Britain is that it is totally amazing to 
see buildings that are more than 200 years old.  All my life I have 
basically been under the impression that civilisation only began 200 
years ago.  Sure, you read about some mythical palaces in the Northern 
Hemisphere, the same place that Santa Claus lives, but nothing remotely 
believable.  It is shocking to see dates on things before 1788.
Although it seems that they didn't speak English very well back in those
days, if some of the documents in St Paul's church are anything to go
by.  That's another strange thing, they seem to have spent a lot of
money on churches, instead of building skyscrapers.  Go figure.
Presumably very paranoid people worried about earthquakes.

Anyway, I took some washing out of the washing machine, just a couple
of towels, and they stunk to buggery, reason unknown.  We put them into
a cupboard and used our own towels instead!  The bed doesn't have
proper sheets on it either, it's some Indian cotton or something.

I then went and attempted to use the washing machine to wash some
clothes.  It took about 5 hours from woe to go, mainly because I
had this weird belief that it took less than 20 minutes to dry
clothes, and after several iterations of that (in between watching
TV), I gave up, set it to 120 minutes and went to bed.  They were
dry the next morning.  But stunk!  Although not as badly as the
towels.  We decided that it was probably the washing powder, one of
these "let's all be greenies and make our clothes smell like dead
fish" type powders.

Today I also went and bought some milk and chips from a late-night
store.  The milk is more expensive than Sainsbury's but it's real
milk, the stuff that doesn't stink of cow's poop.  Just like back
in Oz!

1998-02-24:
Got the PCMCIA modem (on loan) to work.  I am actually dialling
Australia to get the internet to work!  I figure I can do it in
about 1-2 minutes per week, which is cheaper than trying to
establish a "permanent" account here for temporary use.  The 50
hours free internet CD that I got with some magazine I bought
was of no use because it requires Windows, and OS/2's windows
didn't work, and even if it did, I don't think I have PCMCIA
drivers installed.  It's all a complete mess really.  The dial
string I use is a wonder to behold.  Censored, this is what it
looks like...

ATDT08008566100,,,,,,1,,,,,,123456789012,,,0293719199#,,,,^M

I dial the local number for Telstra, wait a few seconds for an
answer, 1 for English, which rings another number, wait for that
to answer, enter my pin number (censored), wait for that to be
accepted, then dial the ISP, # to say I've finished entering the
number, wait a few seconds for it to tell me how much credit I
have, then let it ring and answer!  I'm using a shell account
and simply uploading a script file which has all my mail messages
with input redirection to the script, chmod'ing it and executing
it.  I go "mail" to read my mail, capturing it to a log file.

When Xiayi came home we went out to find Sainsbury's, but she
took us in the exact opposite direction!  We passed a laundromat
on the way, but no vacancies.  The only vacancy advertised was for
work in Odd Bins, a place selling wine.  I don't know whether or
not they will accept teetotallers who think wine tastes disgusting
and don't know the last thing about it.  I'll probably find out
when I get over my current illness!  "I recommend a good red wine,
sir"!  We decided Sainsbury's could wait till tomorrow, and bought
some Chinese chicken wings from Marks & Spencer, a supermarket &
food hall chain.  Two things Xiayi likes about Britain the most are 
this particular food hall, plus the wide variety of shoes available.
That's probably a good cue for a female/shoe joke, but I can't be 
bothered, it's less aggro to just buy the shoes!

At Marks and Spencer we also bought some washing powder, to try our
luck again.  The next morning, everything had turned green (from the
green T-shirts).  As far as I know this was a controlled experiment,
and thus the washing powder is deadly (or the quantity I used was,
anyway).  Ever since I started high school in Fiji where we had a
white uniform, I have bought skin-coloured underpants, so that I
always beat the other kids at the "guess your underpant colour"
competition.  I get used to something and stick with it, so this
tradition has remained intact for a whopping 18 years.  Now it's
just been shattered, as I've got green underpants.  I've never worn
anything like that in my life, as far as I can remember.  It's totally
disgusting.

By the way, I didn't manage to find the gas meter, but there was a
note here saying that there was an account opened since 9th Dec.
So much for the theory that the gas account had been closed down?!

1998-02-25:
I tried tuning the TV today, to see if satellite was available (for
CNN + Sky like I had at the hotel).  No such luck.  The TV belongs
to the previous tenant (Bronwyn) and is meant to be taken away by
arrangement sometime soon.  We had planned to do without the TV when
that happened, but I'm also formulating a secret plan whereby I 
either party all day and all night so that they can't contact me, or
alternatively take the phone off the hook.  And then, a week before
I leave, ring up and complain that they haven't contacted me.  Bloody
brilliant!  The original plan was that I was to be working on PDOS,
not watching TV, but being sick puts me off that sort of work.  The
free-to-air stations here are quite good.  Not quite what I expected
though.

As anyone with any degree of taste knows, all the best comedies come
from Britain, e.g. Young Ones and Fawlty Towers.  What I expected was
that British TV would be showing reruns of all these shows, non-stop
British brilliance!  I asked someone about this (at the dinner soon
after we arrived), and explained that Australian TV showed this stuff,
e.g. Blackadder was on a short time ago, Fawlty Towers was on recently,
Chance in a Million was currently on, and he reckoned that the reason
they weren't being shown in Britain was because it was only Australia
who reckoned the old shows were still relevant!!!

Anyway, the most brilliant thing about British TV is that there is
bugger-all ads.  There's 2 government channels, BBC 1 and BBC 2,
with no ads, and unlike the ABC and SBS who specialise in shows that
no-one wants to watch, but are meant to have high artistic value
(yeah, right), the BBC is not afraid to show popular movies, ie the
usual beat-em-up type American movies.  E.g. Hot Shots (the Top Gun
spoof, "Mail Man" instead of "Ice Man" etc) was on one night.
Unbelievable.  Then there's 3 commercial channels, 3, 4 + 5.  3 is
also called "ITV", but possibly only in London.  Slightly more
organized than Australia's 2, 7, 9, 10 + (28), before we move to the
country and get Channel 5A!!!.  Britain's streets are far more 
disorganized than in Australia, they seem to think that if you stick 
a street sign on a building 5 blocks down, that's just as good as 
Australia's signpost on every intersection.  I thought that might have
been for when Hitler was about to invade, and they never got around to
putting them back up, but apparently it was city signposts, not street
signposts, that they did that with.  Anyway, they show about 30 minutes 
of movie (instead of Australia's 10-15) before an ad break.  An 
interesting thing is that "The Bill" is on channel 3.  I thought it was 
a BBC thing.

Another funny thing about Britain is that they call places "Circus".
I thought I misheard first time I heard it, and asked for it to be
repeated.  I then looked up the map and sure enough, it really is
circus.  And there were lots of them.  I thought it was fairly
unlikely that they had circuses (ie dancing animals, people swinging
from rooftops) in the heart of London, and multiple ones at that, so
I looked up my dictionary, and a "circus" is also a place where 
streets converge.  Presumably "intersection" is too big a word.
Other funny things are "Home Counties" which aren't on any map, but
are the counties just above London, and the abbreviation for
Hampshire is "Hants", and no-one knows how they derived a "t" from
"Hampshire".  Presumably they got the "sh" sound from the "t" in
"nation" etc and decided to use it in the abbreviation.

We made it to Sainsbury's tonight, but decided not to buy more
detergent (I couldn't find the one I remembered from the laundromat).
I also managed to find where we're supposed to put the rubbish (out
in the car park!).

1998-02-26:
Xiayi has now contracted the sore throat back from me.  I can see
what's going to happen from here if we don't take some sort of
action.  The only practical solution I can think of is divorce.
It's something I've been meaning to get around to for years anyway.

Today I decided to have a closer look at the plastic bag in the
bookshelf that looked like it contained manuals.  It did.  I found
out that I was not putting the detergent in the right place, you're
meant to put it in a dispenser, not in with the clothes.  I also
found out how to clean the washing machine, so did so.  I also chose
a different wash, and tried just washing whites (or previously
whites anyway!).  Bloody brilliant!  A lot of the green appears to
have been removed from my underpants!  So now they're more "grey"
than green.  From opening the windows it appears to be bloody cold
outside so I'm going to venture out to see if I turn into a popsicle.
I was waiting for my socks to dry.  Just that small load turned out
to take 1 hour to dry!  No, it is cold, very cold, but you don't
die in it, although if you didn't wear any clothes at all you probably
would die of exposure (or at least be arrested for same!), but I've
updated my diary to remind me not to do that.

A light bulb blew today, but it wasn't really a blow, it was more it
fell out!  Tripped the circuit breaker too.  Luckily I had been
snooping around today (with images of "The Burbs") and had found the
circuit breaker location, so after a brief while, the other affected
lights were back in action.

1998-02-27:
This date intentionally left blank.

1998-02-28:
Got woken at 6:30am by a call from Jenny in Australia.  Thanks to this
call we actually managed to get to see the changing of the guard (what
some people who shall remain nameless call "Change Guard!"), which we
have actually attempted to see every single weekend since we got here,
but there's always been one thing or another that has prevented us from
doing so!  Anyway, I wanted to go back to Buckingham Palace via St
James Palace so I could re-experience the Admiral's Arch mixup.  Mostly
I wanted to see if I really had seen an arch-like object from the middle
of the road on that fateful day.  I could actually see 2 arches, I was
only expecting one.  It will be interesting to see the photos developed
so that I can see if that really is the same thing.

Xiayi wasn't sure how big the film was (she had some idea that my mother
had given her some free film, but it was only a 12).  So I suggested she
took lots of photos of the changing of the guard so that we could use up
all the photos without using up lots of places.  So she snapped away and
was up to nearly 20 before it had even started!  We took up a vantage spot
where there were some other people (in front of the main gates) and we
were kicked out after about 5 minutes thanks to the baton-wielding of an
angry cop.  We then went and stood on a footpath and got front-row
standing room, although various people attempted to take it away from us
(but the cops got rid of most of them).  The guy next to us got out of
the way so that some people could get through, ostensibly to the back,
and they just filed through and then stopped, leaving him right at the
back!  Bloody amazing.

Anyway, there were various guards wandering around making lots of noise
and that was it (40 minutes worth).  The highlight of the show was some
skinheads wearing T-shirts on what was a bloody cold day (I had a leather
jacket on myself).  The guards were mostly wearing grey uniforms instead
of red, presumably for camoflauge with the sky.  After that we tried to
get into the palace, so we walked around looking for an entrance.  We
didn't find one, but we did find a shop.  Xiayi bought some things there
while I asked if the palace was open, and apparently its only open
August and September.  During the show, Xiayi had gotten up to shot 37
where it remained stuck.  So now we took the opportunity to change the
film, which was a 12!  I suggested we simply bought one of the books
that they had there on Buckingham Palace which was full of higher
quality photos than we could take, and she almost did buy one, but then
decided to just check out the local book store for a book with pictures
of all of Britain.  With a bit of luck I'll then have her convinced she
really needs a book with pictures of the whole world, then convince her
it should have explanations, and then suddenly remember we've already
got one of those at home, called an encyclopedia.  Anyway, the bloody
camera says that it's supposed to refuse to "fast-rewind" (the button
to go onto the next shot) when it reaches the end, not go up to 37!
The new film we put in was a 36.

We were then lost and needed to look at the map, but it was too cold to
be looking at maps so instead we decided to catch a bus.  The first bus
wouldn't stop for us, but the second did.  It then turned the corner and
stopped!  Since that's where Victoria Station was.  Which was where we
wanted to go anyway.  We then caught the tube to Tower Hill (TWRHIL), and 
walked to the Tower of London (TWRLON) (not otherwise known as Big Ben as 
Xiayi constantly reminds me - how petty can you get?).  We got there at 
1:30pm and it shuts at 5pm so we thought we had plenty of time.  It turns 
out that it's not just one tower, it's a compound, some sort of fortress.  
As far as I can tell, it got its name because it started life out as a 
single tower, but when they added all the extra things (including a wall), 
they couldn't afford to re-trademark the name so just left it as it was.  
We saw the crown jewels.  The real ones.  Like the queen actually puts it
on her head.  She actually puts two different ones on her head, one for
coronation, one for opening parliament.  Just like most Brits have 2
T-shirts.  One they wear on weekdays and one they wear on weekends.  Bath
Night is where they change T-shirts.  We got to see the Tower Bridge 
(TWRBRG) as well, but didn't walk on it (we'd had enough, for by now it 
was 4:30pm).

Next we went to Southhall, to try out the Indian cuisine.  It wasn't
just hype, there really is an Indian area, more currymunchers than you
care to throw sticks at.  I got 3 sorts of Indian hot peas, only one 
of which looks like what I'm traditionally used to.  We also bought 
some Indian takeaway.  By this time I could tell that my back was giving 
way so we went back home.  I had had quite enough by the time I got home.
I had a blocked nose, a sore throat, sunburn, sore feet, a sore back and 
a headache.  Amputation of the affected areas seems to be the only 
reasonable solution.  The lamb dish we got wasn't very good but the 
chicken was.  We went to sleep defeated.

1998-03-01:
Woke up still sick and not likely to be able to go anywhere that
requires walking, because of my lingering back pains.  Xiayi suggested
that if only I didn't look healthy she could push me around in a wheelchair!
I explained to her that that's not what they meant by "in sickness and
in health".  After a shower I felt that I could go some place, like
catching buses around the city.  But before we left, the back pains
started coming back and Xiayi realised it was cold outside and didn't
want to go out.  Xiayi handwashed her clothes today, after complaining
that I had shrunk, recoloured or otherwise destroyed any clothes that
I had washed.  I wasn't so fussy so threw caution to the wind and
washed mine.

There was a smell coming from the kitchen as Xiayi burnt the rice she
was cooking.  This place doesn't have a microwave, and apparently white
women don't cook rice which is why they don't have a problem with it.
Other things wrong with this place are that one of the drawers doesn't
open unless it scrapes up against the oven door; no toothbrush holder;
no toilet-roll holder; doors that auto-shut thus requiring door stops
which aren't impressive; towel rack only has room for one towel.  One
interesting thing is that finally someone has created a shower where
you can set the temperature you want and just leave it at that, instead
of having to reinvent the position every time you have a shower.  A
great productivity gain!  I came up with some ideas of my own.  A touch
panel so that you can set the temperature and volume by punching in
numbers.  Plus the ability to use at least 2 different preset values.
Plus intelligence to account for different water pressure (ie when
someone else in the house not mentioning any names is handwashing their
clothes when I'm trying to have a shower).  Plus a few "holders" where
you put detergent etc, and there's a date/time + elapsed setting on it
so that you know when you last used it.  That way you don't forget that
you've already shampooed your hair, no need to do it again - another
productivity gain.  Not as large a productivity gain as the 2 in 1
provided, but still not something to overlook!

Xiayi changed her mind later on and we decided to go somewhere by
bus.  We started off by catching a bus to Camden Town, but by the
time we got there she had decided to just catch the same bus back
rather than attempt the round-the-world-in-a-bus trick.  On the way
back she decided to get out at High Street, Kensington, to take a
look at United Colors of Bennington.  I did my best to not look like
one of these gay transvestite perverts that hangs around in women's
clothes stores, complete with handbag.  I saw one though, and gave
him a dirty look when he selected a dress.  Sheesh!  After explaining
to Xiayi that the baggy-trouser look went out with Groucho Marx
when films were still black & white, we left, no poorer than when we
went in.  Which was about time, since my back was starting to hurt.

Whilst waiting for the bus home, I popped into the ironmongers to see
if they had a breakfast bowl, no luck.  No antistatic bags either.
That night we coughed ourselves to sleep.

1998-03-02:
After discussion, Xiayi decided to go to work, even though she was
sick, and I would make an appointment with the doctor and then she'd
come home.  Later she rang me up and told me where the doctor was, so
I was able to go more or less straight there (I obviously had a
different opinion as to which way South was), and the medical centre
doesn't require an appointment for when you rock up at 4:30pm.

Xiayi came home at about 1pm.  Shortly after, I saw what I thought
to be falling snow, if you looked really closely at the raindrops,
they seemed to be whitish.  Xiayi wasn't so easily impressed.
Incidentally, according to some newspaper I was to read later, this
February was the warmest since 1810 or something ridiculous and the
driest since 1956 or something ridiculous.  Which probably goes some
way to explaining the disparity between the story from Australia and
the reality on the ground.

We rocked up at 4:30pm and they weren't very happy, saying they were
already full.  I explained that I was in earlier and they told me to
come back at this time, so she relented.  I only put Xiayi down to see
the doctor so as to not stretch the "friendship".  2.5 hours later I
asked how long it would be before Xiayi was likely to be seen.  They said 
she had already been seen.  Yeah, right.  After a bit of discussion they 
agreed that she hadn't been seen, that she'd been waiting for 2 hours, 
which I agreed to.  They said I should have said something earlier.  
Considering I have waited about 3 hours at a medical centre in Australia, 
and about 16 hours at casualty in an Australian hospital, I told them 
I didn't know how long these things normally took.

It turned out that Xiayi had a throat infection that had turned into
a chest infection and needed amoxycillin, which disturbed me somewhat, 
as I thought it would be a throat infection like I supposedly had.  
So I went back to see the doctor myself (we were in the pharmacy at 
this stage) and they said to come back at 9am.

1998-03-03:
I saw the doctor in the morning and was independently given the same
thing that Xiayi had been given.  I noticed that they had signs saying
that because of the vast number of throat infections this year, that
they had reorganized the surgery to get rid of appointments.

1998-03-07:
We had mostly recovered from sickness by today.  Xiayi was still
coughing, but had returned to work on Friday.  I still woke up with a
sore throat, but it disappeared later in the day.  We went to Oxford
today.  When we got there we hopped on a tourist bus.  They gave us
headphones, and initially we sat on the lower deck (before we found
out that only being able to see the doormat of famous universities
was not that exciting).  The most amazing thing about the bus was that
this prerecorded (I could see that the driver wasn't speaking) message
in English was bloody well synchronised, and amazingly brilliant.  They
even managed to predict that there was going to be a traffic jam on
Saturday afternoon so put that into the message!  Actually mentioned
Saturday afternoon explicitly!  All possible with modern technology of
course, although I was surprised that they had put all that technology
onto a bus tour!  I mean, you either need GPS to know where you are, or
you need fixed sensors transmitting from the ground.  Not only that, but
the GPS is only accurate to something like 100 metres for non-military
use, and the buildings were closer than that.  Presumably the GPS tracking
was combined with some timing mechanism and linked up with the odometer
in the bus itself.  Anyway, it's a computer engineering feat worth
writing home about!  A whole lot of people got off at Christchurch
University which gave us an opportunity to move to the top deck, where
we sat just 2 metres away from the guide.

The top half of the universities were much more majestic than the
doormats.  Xiayi kept seeing me and my ancestors in the various gargoyles
on the buildings.  One thing about Britain is that it is full of lots of
things, as opposed to a string of prefabricated houses.  Nice stone
buildings too, not "old world charm" haunted houses.  Come to think of it,
they don't seem to have timber buildings over here, presumably because
they let the cold in or something.  The other thing that is totally
amazing is that they say "so-and-so went to uni there", where so-and-so
included Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Oscar Wilde etc.  The real 
Alice from Alice-in-Wonderland had a shop there.  Also, Florey (from 
Australia, although they didn't mention that!) who co-invented penicillin.

We did the complete circle (about 1 hour) then got out at Christchurch 
University).  We then wandereded around the surrounding colleges and
into some church (St Martins Church in Carfax Tower?) where Xiayi bought 
some tourist stuff.  We didn't know the names of the colleges we went to,
or how many.  One that we arrived at appeared to specialize in teaching
reindeer how to headbutt each other.  This was called Magdalen College
(not Reindeer College as I thought) according to Xiayi.  Oh, the
reindeer might have just been deer.  Presumably a reindeer is just a
deer that has a Santa Claus attached to it, in the same way that a Loch
is just a Lake with a monster in it (according to some Friday Night comedy).
This college was also amazing in that you think you're at the end and
then you go through some small doorway and voila, you were suddenly in
some hidden courtyard, even bigger than the one you left!

We then went to the botanic gardens where the tropical greenhouses had a
large selection of Australian plants to look at.  Then Xiayi went and
chased a duck whilst I sat patiently watching.  Then we went back to the
road and waited 35 minutes for the buses which were running every 20
minutes.  We got out at some shops that Xiayi thought were famous
(not the Alice in Wonderland shop though).  This was simply boring.  It
might have been interesting if we had done the Oxford Story, but we were
pressed for time so we just caught the next bus back.

On the way back we changed trains and went to Southall, as although I
wasn't sure whether or not I was allowed to get out on the way back,
I hadn't had any tickets taken from me at all so I could theoretically
give them the outbound ticket to get out at Southall (sorry, didn't
make it to Oxford), and the return ticket (sorry, didn't make it to
Oxford) to get back in again!  As it was I wasn't checked anyway.  The
backup plan was for just Xiayi to get out and I was to either wait for
her or continue home.  After later reading of the book we've got, at
the time of them writing the book, you could get out up to 3 times on
the return journey, but they said it was subject to change.

We checked out the rest of the Indian area.  Picked up some barfi
(Indian sweet), but it wasn't as good as in Fiji still.  I think it
just needs to be dried out or something.  In Fiji it was dry and hard
which I like, but everywhere else it is soggy which I don't like.
We then picked up some more hot peas, this time we got a larger bag,
but the peas turned out to be not as good.  On the way back I was
attracted to a sign which was selling some potato dish for $1.50, so
I bought one of them, although they took payment in arrears, which was
when I found out that it was $2.50, the small print on the sign said
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday of NEXT week.  Phenomenal.  He knew I had
been attracted by the sign but didn't point out to me that there was
a catch.  

We were both sunburnt at the end of today.  Other things that happened
today is that I saw a pretty nifty window for the train.  Instead of
opening it by having the bottom bit come into the carriage they made
the top move, which means that the rain can't get in.  Although now
that I think about it, if you make the bottom move out, it would also
be rain-protected.  Hmmm.  Another thing that I noticed on the trip
is that everything has something in it.  Rather than just setting aside
2000 hectares of land and saying "yep, that's my farm, there's even a
barbed wire fence around it, and if you look way over there, you can
see a cow", they're actually genuinely using all the land.  Every farm 
has a farmhouse.  There's industry and everything.  Not just empty 
fields.  Basically there's a feeling that someone is actually interested 
in developing.

1998-03-08:
We went to the Rock Circus in Picadilly Circus (!).  This was a whole
lot of wax figures of rock stars.  It was a bit educational for me, as
it put some of the older stars into time-perspective.  As far as
entertainment though, the music, whilst good, was nothing that can't
be had on a compilation album.  So I didn't think it was worth it, but
Xiayi thought it was great.  I thought the headphones were pretty
brilliant, as you walk near a particular singer, the sensors pick this
up and the soundtrack changes.  I think the headphones might have been
powered by something in the building too.

Then Xiayi had the nous to get me to get us to some street, so that I
got the blame for getting us lost.  We got there in the end, but the
market that was supposed to be there wasn't.  So then we went to China
Town (CHNTWN) and Xiayi got various foul-smelling potions as is usual 
for these sorts of trips.

As we were walking home we saw some flowers, which I guessed were
daffodils.  Xiayi came up with some whacky theory that daffodils
cause cancer, which is ludicrous, since we all know that it is
actually vegetables that cause cancer (almost 100% of all cancer
victims ate vegetables sometime in their lifetime).  Most of the
trees are still bare.  I'm hoping that I'll get to see either falling
snow or green trees by the time I leave.  Preferably both.  Might have
to go to Scotland to see the snow.

1998-03-12:
Well cock-a-doodle-doo Neil!  Finally I woke up without a sore
throat, so I'm officially cured.  Which is more than can be said
for Xiayi who yesterday went to the doctor and got 3 different
medicines for the 4 reported problems (endless coughing despite
having tried 2 different cough cures, ulcers, cold sore and runny
nose).  Xiayi is keen to go back!  I still want to go Loch Ness
Monster hunting before heading back, but it's not very conveniently
located!  You'd think they could have had the decency to drain the
lake and move it (and Nessie) somewhere around London.  That's exactly
the sort of lack of foresight you would expect from people who wear
dresses.

Yesterday I got a letter from British Gas addressed to Xiayi (actually
Miss Z Edwards) and had a hell of a time getting it sorted.  Bronwyn
had told us that she'd opened an account under Xiayi's name, backdated
to 6/12/97.  The card we got was basically after a meter reading.  But
when I rang up to enquire about exactly how they were going to do this,
the guy I spoke to said that there was no record of such an account,
and no record of the card that I held in my hand.  The only record he
had was one in MY name, which was a pending account I had sort of set
up before Bronwyn told us that she had set it up.  He refused to do
anything, refused to believe I had a card in my hand from British Gas
and refused to pass me on to someone with a brain.  This is the first
time I've been in such a dogmatic situation so didn't think to get his
name and ask to speak to his supervisor, instead I rang a different
number and try my luck there.  I got on to a woman who was very helpful,
but both she and her supervisor failed to turn up the account.  I had
another contact so by agreement I tried her, to get 3 people working on
the problem.  That third person managed to find the account after about
an hour and the account is actually going to be backdated to 9/1/98
since that's the earliest meter reading they have after 6/12/97, which
means they miss a month's gas, but there's nothing they can do about it.
She got quite upset when I was trying to ascertain why they didn't have
a reading from the previous "tenant", which was the builders.  She didn't
want to give out information about the previous tenants, she's not
allowed to.  Seems the date that the previous account was closed is some
sort of National Security threat likely to be used by the IRA.  And here
I thought Australia's privacy laws were pretty bizarre, restricting my 
brother-in-law from finding out the address of the guy who banged into 
his car which means he can't get payment!

Yesterday I tried to get a TV License but the Post Office (in the back
of a shop) was closed for lunch.  I wonder why Australia seems to have
a proper big busy post office in every suburb but Britain "gets by" with
the back of a corner store?  Quite bizarre, just like the street signs.
So today I went to the post office in another attempt to buy a TV
license, but you can't buy one for 2 months, you have to buy one for a
year and get a refund for the unused quarters.  Combined with the fact
that the TV could be reclaimed at any time (the people who are meant to
be picking it up asked us to hold on to it for a while, presumably they
don't really want a TV that doesn't have remote control), I'm not sure
what to do.  I'm actually due back in Australia in less than a month
unless I get an extension.  So it would probably make more sense to just
take up Yoga for the remainder of my stay.  On the way I went and got a
replacement set of keys for the house keys that Xiayi lost.  Cost $12
($30!!!).  One thing that is really annoying is having to translate
every single price into Australian dollars so that I can find out how
much things really cost.  Given that the Europeans are going to have
a single currency, is there any particular reason the whole world can't
have a single currency to avoid this and similar problems?  The US
dollar is universally recognized, why don't we mark our prices in that,
and hell, let's go the full hog and use US dollars in Australia and the
rest of the world.

I tried ringing up the home office to organize permanent residence for
Xiayi, but the place just told me to wait in a queue and then 3 minutes
later hung up on me.  I then tried ringing the hotline for urgent matters
and they told me to try ringing the other number when it was fixed, maybe
in half an hour.  I decided to leave it till tomorrow.

This week I tried to organize a trip to Scotland, world centre for
transvestites (or is that the wrong word, is crossdresser more correct?).
Anyway, the book we've got shows this beautiful picture of Balmoral
Hotel, in Edinburgh.  But it is not listed as one of the places to stay,
so I don't know if we can stay there and how much it costs.  Nor is it
listed as a site to visit!!!  So all I've got is this photo!  So I asked
Xiayi to try to find someone at work who knew about Scotland.  Unfortunately
most of the people she works with are from India, because of the project
she is working on!  Which is how she managed to find Indian spicy peas
so quickly, but Scotland's not so easy.  Incidentally, the sign that says
"Southall" at the train station actually has a translation into Hindi!
Not the sort of thing I would have expected in England!  Anyway, my
current Scotland plan is to go to Edinburgh early Friday morning, look
at the castle, then stay at this fancy hotel or else any old hotel for
a night then go to Glasgow the next morning, where there is nothing to
see as far as I can tell, then return to London.

Unfortunately this itineray means that we don't get to see the Loch Ness
Monster, which is a bit of a shame.  From childhood memory, there were
3 things worth believing in - the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot (aka Yeti)
and I think the 3rd one was UFOs.  I think Bigfoot is in USA.  I suppose
USA is where most of the UFOs seem to reside too, along with all the
alien abductees and every other whacko you care to name.  Apparently the
world record for remembering that you have a video camera plus 2 ordinary
cameras in the house whilst witnessing green people walking around,
currently stands at 33 feet 2 inches.  But that's no reason to not visit
Loch Ness!  The main problem with being a tourist is that although I have
about as much interest in old pottery and grass as I do in piercing my
eyebrows like quite a number of people around here seem to have done, I 
don't want to waste this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  So I have this 
great desire to tear around the country doing ludicrous things like 
visiting cold empty lakes in the middle of a Scottish winter just in case 
I die tomorrow and when my life flashes before my eyes all that comes
up is a dos prompt and I suddenly regret not going monster-hunting.  How
else can I justify a trip to Wales?

I don't think this book has Northern Ireland in it, it's only the British
mainland.  So I've also been reading about Wales, another place to visit.
In actual fact, someone told me that "Edwards" is a Welsh name, but I have
no knowledge of any relos/ancestors in Wales.  Xiayi managed to find some
promising pictures in the book, but it turned out that they were actually
goats on a farm.  The most incredible thing is that there is actually a
Welsh language (called "Welsh" for reasons not immediately obvious) and
it's actually known by 20% of the population of Wales and they even have
schools where all the subjects are taught in Welsh!  All this in a
population of 2.5 million.  Bizarre.  Not just bizarre but a great
embarassment.  To think that I might have a non-native-English-speaker
forefather!  Yikes!  I don't mind being descended from monkeys, but I
have grave misgivings about foreign languages!  Admittedly English is
only my 5th language anyway (Basic, 6502 assembler, Pascal, C, English),
but that's no excuse.  They've also got the world's most subsidised TV
station - broadcasting in Welsh!  You hear most about some of the Irish 
wanting to secede from Britain to join Ireland, but it appears that
the Scottish and Welsh have a similar element.  I think it's about time
that the English gave the finger to the lot of them and THEY secede from
Britain!!!  Britain is actually officially called "The United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland".  Or alternatively, I'd like to see
Ireland give the finger to the IRA and become part of Britain itself!
Anyway, that lot should enable me to get into a bar fight in any part of
Britain I care to go to.  It's a bit of a shame I don't actually drink
and can't stand a smoke-filled environment even if I did.  I actually
saw a smoke-free restaurant in Southall.  And that's smoke-free as in
no smoking allowed, not the pathetic spectacle I saw in a smoke-free
Korean BBQ restaurant I went to in Sydney, where they were referring to
the absence of smoke eminating from the food!  What next, a drug free
rehab centre where they inject heroin into you but leave your goldfish
unscathed?

On TV last night (not that I was watching TV, I just heard about it
at the pub since I don't have a TV licence) they had a show showing
a new "minimalist" trend, where you hide all your belongings in
cupboards in walls so that everything is uncluttered.  I really liked
the concept, and I spent today trying to come up with some specifications
for a new house for when I next move in Sydney.  I think it's about time
we actually had bleeding obvious things, like doors that slide open when
you press a button, and make the same whirring noise you hear on space
ships on TV.  I'm developing another theory that if you have too much
free time on your hands you go insane.

Today I washed clothes again.  All pretence of owning sort-of-white 
underpants has long since disappeared.  They are all either green or 
blue, depending on what else was in the wash.  I know that additive 
colours need red green and blue (RGB) to form white, so all I would 
need to do is buy some red clothes, but in this situation, I actually 
need subtractive colours.  I can't remember what the 3 base subtractive 
colours are.  Perhaps yellow, blue and red?  Anyway, I'm not currently 
in a position to tactically wash clothes.  Xiayi actually rang
me up today to see if I wanted to complain to the landlady about the
washing machine not working.  She obviously has little concept of the
need for a controlled environment during emperical observations!  Anyway,
this time when I washed clothes I didn't make the mistake I made last
time, where I attempted to put it right on the edge of the "A" cycle,
whereby I actually missed and it remained on the "sun" symbol so I
actually spent 2 hours drying already-dry, dirty clothes.  The 2 in 1
washer/dryer is a great idea, but I don't like the machine.  The one at
home senses when things are dry and stops.  I suppose a lot of the
problem is that we've spent years carefully building up the environment
in Australia, and when we come here we're suddenly thrown into someone
else's ideas of good taste.

1998-03-13:
I changed my mind just in the nick of time about going to Scotland.  Yes,
I want to go there, but I realised that what I should be doing now is
making use of the free London accommodation, worth $50 ($125) per night,
rather than tearing around the countryside.  We can do that next time we
come (ie when Xiayi gets her long service leave).  Priority should be
given on this trip to make sure that we never come to London again,
because we've seen everything you could possibly want to see in a 2
month European tour.  So what we really need is say a 2.5 month plan
for Europe, including London, and then seeing how long we would want to
spend in London, e.g. .5 month, and then see all those things now, so
that when we come here for our "2.5 month trip" it actually only takes
us 2 months.  I rang up the home office to see about applying for
permanent residency for Xiayi.  I don't think we're going to be
successful.

Xiayi rang today to say that she is going to organize the TV licence
herself through work, ie Qantas will keep a year's subscription rather
than us having one of our own.  Which is just as well considering she
actually had nightmares last night about being put in jail for TV 
licence avoidance.  Presumably the fact that we watched The Bill last 
night and they said "we're not even likely to catch them without a TV 
licence" didn't help.  Anyway, I saw an amazing show on TV today called
"Robot Wars" where remote-controlled robots fight it out!  Most amusing
was when the woman interviewing the owners said to one of them (but it
was typical of all of them), "you saw r2d2 and c3po, didn't you?",
"yes".  "did they inspire your robot design?", "no".  Then he walks away.
And the woman chases after him and says "they must have inspired you a 
little bit!".  I mean, where else do you see that?  Any other TV show
anywhere, and there's always tame interviewees who will never just say
"no" to something like that, they will ALWAYS say some rubbish like
"there were some aspects of it that I found interesting".

Incidentally, another interesting thing about Britain (TV and otherwise)
is that Australia features prominently in everything.  Probably more than
Britain features in Australia even!  Not quite as much as USA features in
Australia though.  E.g. the "Coke" ads here feature the Australian outback.
And they have a comedy "Is it Bill Bailey?" where he is an Australian
hitchhiker.  Last week he got into the car and started whacking it to see
how hard you needed to whack it before the air bags popped out.  He always
gets turfed out of the car and yells out "you miserable pommy bastard!".

1998-03-14:
Today I received permission to extend my leave, so I now have 7 weekends
left instead of 3.  Thus Scotland is back on the agenda, possibly over
the Easter break.

I got up early this morning, only getting something like 3-4 hours of
sleep, so that I would be ready for the electrician's arrival at 9:30am
to fix the bulb-blowing problem we have.  At 10:00am I rang the landlady
and she said that the electrician appeared to have missed the
appointment, and that I should feel free to go out.  So we did, first
port of call the Imperial War Museum.

It turned out that the Imperial War Museum, like so many of the other
museums, is actually free after 4:30pm, but our book didn't mention
that.  Nor did it mention that you get $1 off entry to the Cabinet
War Rooms if you keep your Imperial War Museum ticket!  We decided to 
go in anyway, maybe it was like the science museum where you can't even 
complete it in a day.  Well, it turned out to be a bit of a fizzer.  
Sure, some of the stuff was interesting, but there wasn't that much of 
it, it was a relatively small place.  I had managed to do one of the 
displays ("Secret War") in reverse.  Instead of having a sign saying 
"exit only" they had a sign saying "entrance at left arch", with an 
arrow pointing to the right, and the sign was on the left hand side 
of the exit!  So I assumed that I was meant to go in this door, and 
then go through the left arch.  There was a pilon in the middle of 
the room, so I went to the left of that.  Not much of an arch, and I 
didn't see much point in that, since I ended up at the same place as 
if I'd gone to the right of the pilon!  By the end of the display I
thought it was quite strange that everything appeared to be in reverse
chronological order, and found the proper entrance.  We had covered
it all in about 2 hours and were about to leave when I thought I'd check
the "medals" section, which didn't sound that appealing, sounded like
rows of medals, all the same.  But it was more interesting than that,
it had a battle summary for each one, so I read a few of them.

I was still surprised at the lack of entertainment, so checked out the
handbook again, and saw them mention "The Trench Experience", and I
didn't recall having seen anything to do with trenches, so I decided I
would ask someone before we left.  Then I saw a sign saying that the
specialist stuff was down the stairs, so we went down, back to the
ground floor, and I tried walking along the Cafe side, to see if there
was a hidden exhibition in there or something.  There wasn't, but after
the Cafe there was a WWI exhibition, and I concluded that this was the
trench experience referenced.  So we were about to leave, roughly
satisfied, when I decided to check out the back of the ground floor
again, which I did, and there were stairs going down, so I checked them
out too, and suddenly we were in an area with about 5 signs saying
the various things you could see.  Xiayi took one look, moaned, and then
said we should leave.  I said I wanted to check out the modern war
exhibit first.

It turned out that this was where they held all the good stuff, and
the trench experience allowed you to actually walk through "real"
trenches, it wasn't just a dry exhibit.  I eventually caught up with
Xiayi, all excited having just been in "The Blitz" exhibit, another
"real" experience.  Plenty more to see down there.  I left when the
guards kicked us out at 6pm.  So we spent something like 7 hours there
on our feet, so at the end of the day I had sore feet and a sore back,
predominantly the former.  The market we were going to go to closed
at 5pm or something so we just went home, but not before I got a
chance to spraypaint a bit of the Berlin wall outside.  One thing I
still haven't seen is a photo showing hundreds of planes in the air
at one time, assuming that ever did happen.  They had an exhibit
talking about the 1000-plane raid on Germany, but failed to take a
photo of it.  By the way, one advantage of it being winter was that
the view from the giant periscope was not blocked by trees, meaning
we could see St Paul's Cathedral.

1998-03-15:
Awoke late.  Xiayi went to Southall to buy more spicy peas.  Then we
went to Baker Street (BAKERS), saw Sherlock Holmes (but Xiayi failed to 
bring her camera), and on to Madame Tusauds (MADTUS).  Had a bit of 
trouble finding the place, "London Planetarium" was plastered everywhere.  
A huge queue was fortunately avoided thanks to our pre-bought tickets.  
It was mostly fairly lame, until we went into the Chamber of Horrors
which was excellent.  Basically lots of dead or dying people being
tortured back in the good old days.  Then they had a London Experience
or something, where you went into a car and it took you through various
animated things happening back in the good old days.  Shakespeare was
signing a book!  I think these things are extremely dangerous, many
times I could have missed an entrance and missed half the show!  E.g.
one door you have to go through has a sign saying "silence, recording
in progress"!  As if life isn't complicated enough already.

We were about to leave when they came up with a last-minute chance to
enter the Planitarium, and it was relatively cheap at $2.25 or
something.  Xiayi wasn't that keen, but I thought we might as well.
Once again we could have missed the (assumed) main attraction, which
was a dome that they projected a picture onto which takes you on a
space flight to our solar system from some other one.  I thought it was
great.  Xiayi wasn't so impressed, because she didn't know about the
various planets (despite the fact that that's what they were bloody
teaching us!).

We then walked to Regents Park, where there were genuine swans, both
white and black.  Very close too.  Then as we were walking along, a
couple of swans were swimming in the same direction.  I veered close
to the edge to see if they veered away, which they didn't.  I then
squatted down to get really close to them, and they still didn't go
away.  I thought I might actually get pecked by the swan.  So I said
"good swan, nice swan" to calm it down.  It stuck it's head under the
water (Xiayi reckons it was bored with my conversation, along with the
rest of the animal kingdom), so I used the opportunity to pat it!  It
took it's head out of the water but by then it was too late, no proof
it was me that touched it, so it just kept going.  I don't know why
London has parks like that in the middle of the city, whilst Sydney
doesn't (that I've seen, anyway).  We actually went to some park with
a lake out west in Sydney just a couple of months before we left, and
although there was wildlife, there wasn't as much as over here.

A bit further up we came to the London Mosque (for Muslims).  This was
totally amazing, I expected to see a tin shed with a sign saying "Mecca
that way", but it was a huge thing with a dome.  I informed Xiayi that
if anyone should ask, my name was Mohammed Ali and I was a devote
Muslim coming to pray, got that Mrs Ali?  But in the event, we didn't
go in, so I probably won't go to Muslim Heaven after all.  We kept
going and got to the Lords Cricket Ground.  After a lot of poking
around we managed to see a bit of the green.  Rather than go back the
way we'd come, I thought I could get a shortcut if we went down another
street.  In that street we saw a canal, so we went down there, crossed
through a tunnel, and then back out through some housing estate.  I had
managed to get totally disoriented, and in fact we'd crossed over to
the other side of the road.  I was about to go back to where we'd come
from, but Xiayi insisted we needed to go the other way, citing various
landmarks that we had passed (and I'd forgotten already), but it was
only after she explained that we'd crossed the road, and that's what
accounted for us not having the road on our right by going in that
direction, that I agreed.

Finally we reached a bus stop.  But I'm obviously not British, because
after waiting for 15 minutes, I didn't believe the Number 9 bus WOULD
eventually arrive, and instead we set off walking down some other
street, which I had sort of deduced from looking at the map at the bus
stop.  Eventually I found the good old underground sign.  Unfortunately,
after going down the subway, and following all the signs, we came out at
another subway, with signs directing us to go back to where we'd come
from.  Another couple of iterations of that, and we eventually went up
some unmarked subway, and walked around on top, and came across the
station entrance.

By this stage I was exhausted, in a tin-pot railway station, and just
wanted to get on the first train going to somewhere recognizable.  So
I hopped onto the one going to Oxford Circus.  Whilst on the train I
looked at the connections and found that after about 5 stops we would
eventually be at a station with the required connection, but it would
have just been 1 stop if I'd gone the opposite direction!  And quicker!
Nevermind, we got home in the end, although we had no interest in going
to the other places we have on our London list, ie Hampton Court and
some nearby garden.

Today I also found out some interesting information.  If you've ever
read "How to be Normal in Australia" by Robert Trebalong? you will
know that Australians never make assumptions.  E.g. in WWII Hitler saw
that he was about to be defeated and set fire to himself.  Wouldn't
happen in Australia.  "Are they my troops or theirs?".  Anyway, we have
been getting mail in our letterbox for a "Tanners Hills Finance".  We
know that the previous tennants consisted of Bronwyn, a Qantas employee,
and Peter, a computer contracter.  There was no way that this was mail
belonging to either of them.  Not only that, but the address, instead of
being "14/214 Chiswick High Road" was "14 Windmill Flats, Windmill Road".
Basically, the postman hadn't even got the right address!  But rather
than put "RTS" or "not at 14/214 Chiswick High Rd" etc on the envelope,
I held on to it.  Xiayi wanted to put it in the common area, and I said
that's not on either.  I wanted her to ask Bronwyn if she knew anything
about it.  Xiayi got really mad that I refused to just ditch the letters
into the common area.  Anyway, after that, the letters started disappearing
and I never heard anything more.  I even checked the common area and she
didn't appear to have surreptitiously put them there.  So today I asked
her what had happened to them.  Turns out that that same day she turned
up to work and she had an email from Bronwyn waiting for her, saying that
she had forgotten to mention that "Tanners Hill Finance" was mail for
Peter!  Xiayi had hoped that I would forget about it so that she didn't
have to retract all the aspersions she cast on my ancestry.

1998-03-16:
I had a phone call from work, one from the electrician, one from the
landlady and one from Xiayi, all of which combined to keep me asleep
until about 2pm or something equally ridiculous.  The electrician is
coming over tomorrow to look at the reason for the mass bulb-blowing
that occurs here.  I went out to take a stack of forms to the Qantas
office, to avoid having the next person having to go through this huge
hassle with council, water etc etc after we leave in 1.5 months time!

On the way an old lady stopped me.  I've been stopped by old ladies
before.  Normally they want to know the answer to some complicated
question, e.g. is it better to catch the Number 9 to Hammersmith and
then change to Number 10, or would you suggest catching the Number 11.
Once I was stopped only to be asked if I wanted to donate some of my
money to the "People who are already getting handouts from my taxes
but want to double dip" charity.  Anyway, I gave her the benefit of the
doubt and was about to say "I'm from Australia.  I know nothing.".

But she actually asked me to help her cross the road!  Incredible!  I've
never been asked that in Australia, and you see skits where that happens
to people in a Scouts uniform (not that you see many people in Scouts
uniforms!), but I didn't think it happened in real life.  There was a
legitimate problem though, the council had trashed the zebra crossing
that she presumably used, and you did have to dodge traffic to get to
the other side.  So I took her hand and led her across.  She obviously
had a different opinion to me on what a safe travelling speed was to
avoid sonic booms, but after lurking suspiciously at the council truck
(a council guy even walked by, so I gave him a dirty "You took away the
bloody zebra crossing, don't look at me suspiciously you barbarian"
look, and he didn't say anything).  At the pretend island there was a
break in the traffic and a red light ahead, but I didn't want to be
prevented from leaving Britain in 1.5 months time to have to face a
charge of pensioner-slaughter and end up like that British woman in
America, so I waited.  The guy flashed his lights at me so I continued
across, although I was quite nervous that the guy behind him would
attempt to overtake him on the left, since it was technically feasibly
to change lanes, overtake the other driver and myself, and then get
back into the right lane.  He didn't, and we cleared the lane without
anyone even beeping!  Once we got to the other side the woman didn't
let me go, so I had to emphasize that we were on the other side already,
and that was the deal, and she let me go.  I wasn't sure if I was meant
to have been escorting her from the edge of the pavement to the middle
of the pavement or something.  In hindsight it was a bit gravelly at
the edge, and I had visions of her sliding on the gravel and ending up
with a hip replacement (which is all old people have time to do, after
all).  So on the way back I looked for evidence of blood and skin on
the pavement, but didn't see any.  Just to be on the safe side, I decided
to take off my jacket and mess up my hair so that no-one would recognize
me.  I also cunningly adopted a New Zealand accent, singing "I've got
suxty-sux sheep and I'm OK" for the remainder of the journey.

The remainder of the journey was to check out the local travel agents,
and buy some milk.  Incidentally, the milk I now get from Sainsbury's
is fine.  I expect the problem before was just that ridiculous fridge
at the old place, I already had it on maximum and it was hardly cold.
It's about time all fridges had a temperature gauge on them so that
there's no doubt about it.  Funnily, an Australian manufacturer used
to do just that, but the line didn't sell well.  The fridges were $50
more expensive with the temperature gauge.  Which I think is worth it,
but obviously others reckoned if you could get a thermometer for $1 at
Woolies, why should you have to pay $50 to the fridge company?  Which
is a typical luddite attitude.  Why put a man on the moon when you can
buy cheese at Woolies for $1 too.  Anyway, it turns out that no travel
agent in my area will do the rail portion of a trip around Britain.
Which is bloody incredible, how do people in Britain coordinate travel
and accomodation?  I am not even sure if my plan is feasible or
advisable.  My plan is that on the Easter weekend, I go from London to
Edinburgh to Inverness on Friday.  Then on Saturday go to Kyle of
Localsh and back to Inverness, then a little Loch Ness monster hunting.
Then go to Edinburgh on Sunday and do a day trip.  Then Monday go to
Glasgow and another day trip.  Then back to London.  Anyway, after a
lot of ringing around I am now talking to Thomas Cook travel.

1998-03-17:
The worst things about these auto-shutting doors is that if it's dark
and you didn't want to switch the light on to put in the door stop, so
just leave the door shut, then when you walk out the door at night, you
bang straight into the door!  Not that that happened to me today or
anything like that.  Just thought I'd mention it.

1998-03-20:
By accident I left the living room door closed overnight, so if there
were any phone calls for me before midday I missed them.  The advantage
being that I didn't get stood up by an electrician for the FIFTH time,
since there was no promise of one coming today.  Due to a communication
problem, the potplants that I gave away to whoever picked them up were
actually wanted by the landlady, especially the green pot one of them
was in.  The notice I left downstairs was taken away, but no green pot!
Bloody hell.  Anyway, I faxed something to Australia today (bank request)
and it cost $4!!!

I then booked a rental car.  What an experience!  You know how there's
always 50 people in the queue in front of you, and those at the desk
are always telling the guy their whole life story, what they expect
from a car, entire medical history in case the car doesn't properly
cater for their needs, whereas when it's your turn you just slap the
money down and you're out before the coins have settled?  Well, this
time I was one of the life-timers.  It wasn't so much me telling them
my history as them telling me.  They didn't have my booking.  Then
they asked me whether Paul was my family name or not (it was an Indian
guy on).  I had to ring up the people I booked through though.  Then 
they found my booking under Edwards.  I said that was fairly common 
in this country (I just guessed that though, it's common in Australia, 
and Britain appears to copy most things of us, right?).  Then they
tried to get me to rent a bigger car, giving me a variety of reasons
why I should, but I insisted to try the small one.  Then they tried to
charge me an extra $22 for government charges, and I asked to ring up
the people I booked with again.  This time they changed their mind,
and got a couple of other people to work on the computer to get rid of
it.

Then it was time to leave.  It was an effort to find the seat adjustment.
It was an effort to find out how to use the gearstick, where all on the
top they have R, 1, 3, 5!!!  I couldn't get all of them.  Then I found
out there's a little round thing you pull up to get the extra ones.
Then I couldn't find the indicator, I kept on turning on the windscreen
wipers instead.  Turned out they're on the left and they don't show a
single arrow to which way you're going, they show a double-arrow so
you've got no idea!

But I still had to get home.  Armed with a rudimentary map of London,
I set off.  Well, the car is totally amazingly smooth and quiet
compared to my car at home.  In addition, the trip was pretty nice.
The traffic wasn't as bad as I expected, and as far as I can tell,
the other drivers are very courteous, it wasn't anywhere near as
much as pressurised as in Australia.  When I was in the wrong lane,
they just let me in, really great.  The signposts weren't so great,
couldn't find the street names on the map.  The most I had was
signs saying "Hammersmith", and I was pretty sure that was where
Chiswick was, even though I coulnd't find it on the map.  I thought
I might be unlucky and end up on the A4.  Finally I saw a signpost
with Chiswick marked on it, but when I got to the road itself, it
was not signposted, so I just hoped it was the right one, because
it looked like no-man's land.  Believe it or not, I was on Chiswick
High Road and coasted home!

There was one other hitch.  I heard a siren whilst stopped at the
lights (I was in the front in the slow lane).  Turned out he was
behind me, only in the fast lane.  After a while some people near
me started beeping, so I realised it was my lane, so started edging
forward over the line.  Luckily the lights changed and the problem
solved itself.  I am still disappointed that I may have potentially
contributed to a crook getting away (it was a police car).

1998-03-21:
Got up relatively early and set off to Wales at about 9:30am, so
that we could visit the Centre for Alternative Technology.  I am
basically interested in anything that I can do that makes economic
sense, even if it means a long-term payback time.  We got to see
some interesting scenery, lush green fields as opposed to the dry
fields I'm used to.  One mountain in Wales looked like it was a
picture taken out of focus!  I don't know what sort of trees caused
that effect.  In another it looked like someone had painted a red
picture on the green mountain - reminded me of the HOLLYWOOD sign,
except it wasn't a word.  It wasn't a picture either really, more
of a "modern 'art'" type thing.  Turned out to be caused by small
red plants.  We also went along the coast (on the way back from the
CAT) so got to see the sea.  They don't have beaches, but they do
have nice cliffs.

The CAT was quite interesting.  The diesel engine was operating
whilst we were there, since there was no wind and it was overcast!
There was lots of exhibits, I even ate some of the berries and leaves
from various plants they had there for taste tests.  Turns out that
solar cells only last 20 years (I thought they lasted forever) and
they were claiming them as 15% (I thought they were 80% efficient).
In spots they came up with their usual pack of lies, the government
is subsidising the nuclear and coal industries by enormous sums of
money which are enough to convert the whole country to solar/wind
by next Tuesday etc, but it was in no way the dominant theme.  They
even said if you're already connected to the grid, it's not economical
to change to the green alternatives.  Except for solar heating and
insulated house design.  They said it was unrealistic economically to
grow your own food too.  The most important thing about this place is
it is not a theoretical "if only the government would shell out heaps
of our money for ridiculous causes we could all live in paradise and
smile at each other" exhibit.  It is a real functional place.  The
majority of their electricity is not from their diesel.

Some of the things they had like compost require turning over once
a month or better.  I think what I would like to see/create is an
automated house.  Get computers into the equation.  Sure, it may not
be cost-effective just like their place, but that's not the point.

Rather than go back home the way we had come (and thus see the same
scenery), I decided to go along the coast, as it didn't look much
further.  Well, I was right in that we got the new scenery, at least
along the west coast, but I was very wrong about the time, it took
6 hours to get back, and that was at a faster pace than getting there.
It became dusk as we finished the west coast.  The M4 took us past
Swansea and Cardiff, but although we might have seen the lights in
Swansea, we didn't see anything of Cardiff, so being able to say we
circumnavigated Wales in one day isn't all that it could have been.
We arrived home at about 11pm!  On the way home my right leg got
sore (the muscle) and my knee got very sore (where I tore the muscle
playing squash some years ago).  Obviously I will have to do some
warm-up exercises in future driving, it being such a strenuous
exercise and all that.

One other observation is that because of their ridiculous language,
they've put all the street signs in both English and Welsh.  As if
it isn't hard enough to read street signs already, but there's twice
as much information there, making it twice as difficult.  I almost
learnt Welsh for "reduce speed", but luckily have forgotten it now.
What can I say?  If I were an Englishman I'd have to vote for
seccession - "what do you get when you go north - whinging Scots!
what do you get when you go west - whinging Welshman then whinging
Irish, who hardly speak English anyway - time to secede".  Modelled
off a whinging Scotsman I once saw on TV complaining about the north
oil going south.  Maybe I should live in Tasmania and complain about
"my" lovely Bass Strait oil being sent to the north island of Australia.

1998-03-22:
Today we went to Bath.  This was excellent, an entire city made out
of sandstone!  Everywhere you look you see something that you figure
must be a historic site!  We were lucky with the parking.  On Sunday
it only cost $1.60 for the whole day instead of the $5 or whatever if
we had done it on Saturday.  Unfortunately the ticket machine was
miles away, so we had to traipse all the way over and back to get it.
It was only when we went home that we found there was a ticket
vending machine on each end of each level of the car park, and thus
there was one just 5 metres away from where we parked.  Personally I
blame Xiayi.

Then we wandered around, trying to get to an abbey.  We could actually
see it in the distance, but the route I took us took us past a church,
and I wanted to see if it was significant.  Xiayi was disorientated and
thought that was the abbey.  We got to the abbey where Xiayi attempted
to gatecrash someone else's tour group.  The tour group was in Italian
and English, and the people around looked like Italians.  Except for
Xiayi, who I slowly edged away from.  She eventually realised she was
going to be sprung so we left and went into the baths ourselves.

The Roman baths were brilliant.  It is absolutely dumfounding that the 
Romans really were in Britain.  And so long ago.  And were actually 
capable of building buildings instead of wandering around banging 
animals on the head with sticks as my impression of the world prior 
to 1788 has always been.  Even in 1788 it wasn't that much better, 
panning for gold whilst living in tin shacks.  The Romans built a huge 
complex of baths, and long after it had collapsed, just 100-200 years 
ago, the king decided to build a bath there, and it was completely 
pathetic compared to the Roman one.  The water was hot.  I had a drink 
of the treated stuff, which was OK, but didn't cure me of anything in 
particular that I could see.  Xiayi thought the water tasted foul.  
Considering the sorts of things I've seen her eat and drink, I thought 
that was a bit rich.  One thing that was strange is that they were 
anxious for people to not touch or smell the water, or if you did touch 
it, make sure you wash your hands.  I wondered whether the Romans and 
Kings had to wear wetsuits when they took a bath.

We then walked from the bath to the other thing on our combined ticket,
which was a meeting hall, about as interesting as a big empty building
gets, and a 200/400 years of fashion display, which was less
interesting than it sounds.  I listened to the recording on the first
display, realised they weren't going to spruce up the exhibit by having
leprachauns leaping out at you whilst you looked at incredibly boring
dress number 57, and just kept walking until I reached the end, and
went to wait at the meeting hall.  After a while I thought Xiayi might
have been lost so I went back in, and believe it or not, she was still
looking at the display.  Presumably she thought they would have (yet
another) "once in a lifetime" sale where she could "save" extraordinary
amounts of money, where "saving" inevitably means a lightening of the
wallet/purse!  I've never once heard Xiayi say "I saved $30 today, here,
you take $15 and I'll take $15".  If I was sexist I'd probably concede
that all women are the same and I shouldn't take the mickey out of
Xiayi in particular, but because I'm not, I do.  I hope she appreciates
me not being sexist, I've certainly never heard any thanks to date.

We then attempted to see the Royal Crescent which Xiayi bought a postcard
showing.  I had plotted a course to get us there from the meeting hall.
It was right nearby, you couldn't possibly miss it.  Well, unfortunately
when I got outside there was a wall, and I couldn't see where the place
was, and had to choose to go left (downhill) or right (uphill but close).
I was about to go uphill when I saw a couple of people who looked like
they knew what they were doing and were walking downhill.  So I followed
them.  Turned out to be a bumsteer, and in another spot we had to walk
uphill all over again.  It's no wonder tourists have such a bad
reputation, giving me a bumsteer like that.  Why didn't they look at
the map or something?  There was one conveniently located on the wall
outside.  Presumably they were foreigners or something.  I didn't read
the map personally because I didn't want to lose sight of our guides.

Anyway, we got to the Royal Circus in the end, and obviously went into
the middle.  I'd suggest they have a pathway to do that so that we
don't all make personal paths across the grass, trampling everything
in sight, but given the calibre of tourists I've seen recently, they
presumably wouldn't know what paths were for either.  I picked the
street to get to the crescent.  It wasn't difficult.  One we'd just
come up at great expense.  One was the one we would have come along
if our tourist colleagues had had a brain between them.  That only
left one other.  The crescent was crescent-shaped.  I presume that's
why they named it "crescent".  Not sure why they called it "Royal".
Presumably because it's a royal pain in the arse to get there if you
follow brain-dead tourists.  We walked back to the car park, changing 
route about 5 times as the various people we followed proved that they 
had absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever.

On the way back we went to Stonehenge.  It really does exist!  The
car park closed at 6pm and we turned up at 5:40pm so we didn't go
for the tour, we just peeked over the fence.  I was tall enough to
take a photo without the fence.  The most amazing thing is that way
back then, they managed to shift what are MASSIVE boulders, for many
miles.  Or even that they would wish to!  And that they were actually
organized enough to get sufficient people to do it.  And presumably
had rope even.  Yet another challenge to my beliefs on history.
Actually, another reason for my belief that civilisation only recently
began is that there's bugger all books available from the past that
are actually interesting reads.  Shakespeare is pathetic.  Sherlock
Holmes is good.  Pygmalion is good.  And that's about the extent of
the history of books after supposedly thousands of years of civilisation.

But the adventure didn't stop on arriving home.  Xiayi was operating
her smoke-generator (or else she was cooking, depending on who you
believe), and she set off the smoke alarm which was in the hallway
(not the kitchen) and it screamed!  But I didn't know how to switch
off the alarm.  I've tripped a few in my time (both by unscrewing the
cap to see if it was a water pipe and water would come gushing out,
and also by spraying a dusty area with insect spray), but never switched
any off.  I looked at the circuit breaker but there was no sign of a
smoke alarm switcher-offer.  I thought maybe switching the electricity
to the whole flat was what you were meant to do, but I didn't really
think it would work, and I wasn't sure of any other ramifications.
Then I remembered Rain Man, and how Tom Cruise used a broom handle to
switch it off.  On closer inspection, there was a button there, with
instructions "do not paint".  Yeah, right.  I decided that "do not
paint" was Transylvanian (ref "Young Ones") for "switch off this
screeching noise", so pressed it.  But it kept on restarting.  I opened
the door and closed it violently trying to help, no change.  I also
opened the living room door.  Xiayi had already shut the kitchen door.
Eventually I pressed the button and it stopped.  The Fire Brigade didn't
come, nor did any residents pop out to make sure they weren't about to
be burnt to death (probably Neighbours was on or something else that
is more important than being burnt at the stake).

Now for the really interesting part - calculating stats for the weekend
of car hire!  The mileage was 3673 on hire, 4226 on Sunday morning, and
4444 on Sunday night.  So we travelled for 771 miles (553, 218).  We
bought petrol at a few stops, 10+15+15+21 = $61 total.  An estimate at
the fuel price was 68p/litre.  This would make it 61/.68 = 90 litres.
This tallies with my guess of the fuel used at 13+25+20+30 = 88.  We
drove 771 miles for 90 litres so we get 771/90 = 8.5 miles/litre.
771/61 = 12.6 miles/$, or 8p/mile.  On the first day (553 miles) it took
us 4 hours to travel ~200 miles, and 6 hours to get back, ie 353 miles.
This comes to 553 miles/10 hours = average speed of 55 miles/hour.

Entry to the various exhibits over the weekend was $28.  Entrance to
the CAT was $4 each instead of $4.50 as the book said, probably because
the book had the summer price which had an operational train.

1998-03-24:
I have an observation to make about BBC news.  As we all know, the BBC
has the best news service in the world.  Both in content and in an
unbiased, world view of things.  Well, maybe satellite TV is different,
but the broadcast news is quite pathetic.  E.g. the headlines today were
something about the Newcastle soccer team.  Yeah, right.  Only slightly
up from the commercial Australian channels which show the same car
crash every single day forever!  The most they ever do is dub on the
sounds of different bones cracking under the strain of 1 tonne of metal.
So the ABC news is better, and of course, SBS beats the lot.  With one
exception!  The advantage of British TV is that I don't have to watch,
every single night, some Aboriginal (or their politician representatives)
spreading his normal message of joy, that if I belong in the country I 
was born it at all, it should be as a second class citizen.

1998-03-25:
Thomas Cook rang me up with accommodation for all 3 places in Scotland,
so I booked a car for the Easter weekend.  Cost $119.20.  I'd previously
been quoted $116 with a better pickup and return date, but nevermind.
I have been putting all these things on my mastercard, it's the only
convenient thing.  That means we have more British pounds, so we can
wean ourselves off the baked beans (9p per can) since we don't have to
scrimp for the Scotland holiday.  Xiayi reckons that a packet of noodles
from Chinatown here costs 39p, which is 39c in Australia.  In both cases
they are imported from Hong Kong, it's exactly the same packet.  Making
Britain 2.5 times more expensive than Australia.  Although Xiayi reckons
it's only 1.5 times on average.  I'd be extremely interested to know how
the same product can be 2.5 times more expensive in UK than Australia.
Sounds like opportunity knocking to me.  Possibly it's the high rent in
Chinatown making the difference though.

Tonight I managed to snare the number for a free Scottish brochure.
Hopefully this will help with our itinery.  Interestingly, on the
phone they took my postcode, and from it got the street name!!!
I couldn't help myself but to congratulate the woman I spoke to on
her Scottish accent.  It really is beautiful.  I wonder if they know
that they're practically singing when they talk.  It's highly amusing
to listen to!  If we were to get all the English accents in the world,
American edges out New Guinea pidgin for worst, and Scottish edges out
Irish for best.  Russian is pretty good too.  The current itinerary 
doesn't actually have any room for conversing with the locals, but 
maybe I'll see if I can invent some situation.  Maybe I can accuse a
Scotsman of being a sissy wearing a skirt, get into a fight, and get
questioned by a policeman?  The funny thing is that I've got pseudo
Scottish relos, and I don't recall any of them singing as they speak.
I do recall them saying "don't do this, don't do that" though.  But
that ranks more with the pidgin speakers than the singing Scots(wo)man.

1998-03-26:
I was working out the incredibly hectic Easter schedule (it's going to
be a killer!) and needed to check the opening time of the Loch Ness
exhibition.  I called them up, and didn't speak to any singing Scotsmen,
so maybe there's a catch, or maybe the exhibition is staffed by English
invaders.  Regardless, I'm not going to be able to get to Loch Ness on
the second day of travel.  Instead I'll have to retrace my steps (sort 
of) on the third day.

Hmmm, on TV today I saw a woman announce that she was from Scotland,
and she definitely had the right accent.  Instead of pronouncing
Scotland as Scotland she pronounced it "Scootland", where "Scoot"
rhymes with "foot".  Isn't it funny how foreigners don't even know
how to pronounce the name of their own bloody country?!  I mean, even
Xiayi can pronounce "Scotland" properly, and she's never been there,
got no Scottish relos, and English is her 27th language!  Anyway, I've
been practising my Scottish so now I can blend in to both NZ and
Scotland, not just Australia.  I haven't mastered English though,
haven't found a word that stands out.

Another observation on the Australian involvement in Britain is that
they don't just have Neighbours on here every day, they repeat the
SAME episode in the SAME day!!!  Ye gads.  I've NEVER heard of that
happening in Australia.  By the way, they also refer to us as
Antipodeans from the Antipodes.  Even when I got a wrong number they
said to me "well good luck back in the antipodes".  They called me
accidentally.  Incidentally, there actually is a place called
Antipodes, a small island in New Zealand's waters.  That is presumably
the closest to the true antipodes of London.

Another miscellaneous observation is that (British) people on TV are 
complaining about how strong the pound is.  Yeah, right.  Can you
imagine Australia complaining about the strength (or lack thereof!)
of the Australian dollar? 

1998-03-27:
Today I decided to try my luck at casual unskilled employment, since
we could well do with the money, and I'm only here for another month
so it's not feasible to get skilled labour.  Another factor is that
as far as I can tell, my back has recovered from the last major injury
of a year or so ago.  Previously it never really recovered, if I moved
a particular way it would reinvoke the pain.  The last 2 months have
allowed me to give it a decent rest.  One more factor is that the
financial year here starts 1 April, so at least I could avoid making
my tax super incredibly complex.

So anyway, I decided to pop into the employment agency office that I
saw up the street.  Well, it appears that it has gone bust!  I tried
the door without success.  So then I tried the "Odd Bins" wine shop,
but it turned out that they only had fulltime jobs, and in another
store.  So I decided to try ringing around instead.  The second
number I got sounded the most promising, wanting people to do filing
and photocopying.  Wages start at $5/hour.  I have an interview on
Monday at 2pm.

1998-03-28:
Yesterday I successfully booked an all-encompassing tour of Leeds
Castle near Maidstone.  Supposedly a fairy-tale castle.  Considering
I had a fairy-tale wedding and a fairy-tale wife, what better way to
top it off than a visit to a fairy-tale castle.  Admittedly most
fairy-tales I remember are things like "Little Red Riding Hood" and
"Three Little Pigs" and "Hansel and Gretel" all of which are invariably
centred around death and mayhem and I'm surprised they actually get a
G rating (incidentally, over here G means Guidance unlike Australia
where it means General Exhibition).  Unfortunately I didn't take into 
account the fact that after going to bed at 12:30am, I would still be 
awake at 6am.  On the plus side I did come up with some new plans on 
solar power generation, house security, and code security on individual 
computer parts.  Anyway, I had a shower and breakfast and then went to 
sleep at about 7am, and Xiayi woke me up at 8:30am.

We needed to pick up our tickets from Victoria Station, so we caught
the tube there.  When we got out there was no sign of what to do, so
it was just as well we turned up at 9am instead of the 9:30am they
requested.  Anyway, we finally found the National Express booth in
the Tourist Information Centre!  They might have mentioned that!  After
queuing for 1/2 hour we found out that this wasn't the place, we had to
go down the street for 5 minutes.  I pointed to the sign that said 
National Express and the guy said that was just an early April Fool's
joke.

We found the place eventually, and short-tracked the queue (since we
had pre-booked tickets) and soon we were on the bus and on to our
fairy-tale castle.  Yes, there is a castle.  Yes, it is on an island
and surrounded by water.  Yes, inside some of the walls could be seen
to be solid stone.  But that's about it.  Fairy-tales aren't all they're
cracked up to be.  The one thing I found interesting was that the place
had been sacked by the Vikings.  I asked them how they managed to do
that, given that the building was solid stone.  Apparently it was made
out of wood back in those days (circa 900 AD).

The bird sanctuary in the grounds was quite interesting.  Lots of
beautiful Australian birds.  The most interesting one was a Palm
Cockatoo, who was sticking his foot through the bars, trying to grab
hold of the tree, so that it could eat it.  I obliged by pushing the
branch to it.  I managed to spend about an hour playing with the
cockatoo.  But the South American birds were the most magnificent.
Huge and beautiful.

There was also one of those mazes made from hedges, which you see on
TV but never see in real life.  Presumably maze-shaped hedges aren't
a native Australian plant so that's why we don't have any.  Especially
given that when you think about Australian attractions, you have the
Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and that's it.
Anything else of interest is something that grows naturally and we
haven't got around to putting a tin shack on it yet.  Pretty pathetic
really.

Anyway, Xiayi initially took us around the maze, and of course, being
a woman and having no sense of direction, got us totally lost.  I then
took over, but I deliberately didn't take us to the centre because I
wanted to give Xiayi some badly needed walking exercise.  After I
explained to her that I was just playing with her, she took over
navigation again and we eventually got there.  We then went down to
some grotto or something.  This was a mildly interesting cave.

I also had fun wandering around near the swans, and attracting the ones
in the water over with offers of grass or other plant material, or 
bread that other people had thrown on the ground.  It's not that we
didn't have our own bread, I could have easily taken the crust of the
remaining sandwich, but Xiayi has some policy that we should always eat
the crust when there's birds around to otherwise feed it to, but when
we're at home and birdless, we should leave the crust and chuck it in
the bin.  This policy is easily understood by anyone who's had a brain
transplant with a bird.

I managed to get a bit of sleep on the bus both going there and
returning, but once home I was able to watch TV until 10:30pm or
something.

1998-03-29:
I didn't wake this morning until 12 noon or 1pm or something.  And to 
add insult to injury, BST (presumably British Summer Time) came into 
effect, making the time more like 2pm.  We decided not to go out today,
although Xiayi did make it to Sainsbury's, where she bought Turkey or
something.  Later that night I decided to snack on the last two legs
by heating them up in the wok on max power for about 3 minutes during
an ad.  This gave me half-hot half-cold turkey legs, with the only
side effect being the entire house was filled up with smoke, which
caused yet more sleeping problems.

1998-03-30:
Today was the big interview day, so I grudgingly got up at about
12:30pm.  I planned to go in jeans + T-shirt but then decided to go
formal.  It was pretty hot in the unit and I was sweating, so I rushed
to get outside into the cool.  I really love that about Britain.  In
Australia I would have jumped out of the pot and into the fire by doing
that.  I hate the way Australia has adopted business attire which is
fine in Britain but completely inappropriate for Australian weather.
That's one of the great things about my Australian job.  I'm only 5.5
minutes walk away from work AND I can wear jeans + T-shirt there, so
the whole hot experience is at least only for 10-20 minutes.

Anyway, when I got to the interview, I professed basic knowledge of
Word and Excel, plus a typing speed of 40 wpm.  And then they tested
me!  I got 100% for the Word and Excel basics, but the intermediate
and advanced skills were more like 80% and 60%.  One thing that was
not really fair was that in the time that I had, I had enough time to
go and look some of the things up in the help, which is REAL LIFE,
no-one asks you to do a task without using the online help, but when
I tried that I got marked down (by the program).  Some of the things
I didn't know how to do, like centre text, but I looked at the little
pictures and got it right.  An amusing thing is that I had previously
professed on the phone to not know how to do complex things like "bold"
and Xiayi had told me I was stupid, all you had to do was highlight
the text and press the "B" icon.  And that was one of the test questions!
So I got it right!!!  Two things that I got wrong that were of concern
to me were that I didn't manage to set an upper margin in Word, and
didn't manage to copy a formula in Excel.

Anyway, then they had a typing speed test and at last someone with a
brain has at least understood REAL LIFE slightly, where I was allowed
to correct mistakes without being marked down.  Unfortunately they
didn't let you correct mistakes after you had finished a word, which
meant I had to tone down my typing speed a bit, and managed to foul
up on a couple of small words, like putting "a" instead of "an" and
not being able to do anything about it.  In REAL LIFE they don't stop
you correcting mistakes like that!!!

The final thing was "filing", where you have to file "fred" under
"FFF-FZZ" or "FAA-FFE" etc.  There they said that you should guess
if you don't know, you won't be marked down for an incorrect answer.
Bloody hell!  If I were writing the program I would have ensured that
an incorrect answer in filing sent an electric shock to the operator
and activated a mechanical booter that kicked them all the way out of
the office!  Anyway, I got 100% for that trivial exercise.  Sheesh.
I thought they were going to test out whether I knew that 001.235 is
filed AFTER 001.

Anyway, my typing speed of 63 wpm impressed the hell out of them, saying
I had been hiding under a bushell.  They asked why I said 40 and I told 
them I thought it was 50 but didn't want to rock up at a job that was 
expecting 50 out of me and I couldn't deliver.  He said that my speed was
more than they normally get.  Then they asked me what rate of pay I was 
looking for and I said I'd take that under advice.  He explained that the
wages started at $5 and varied depending on various things to $6 or even
$7.  Crikey!  I thought it would vary from $5-$15.  He said that the
bigger money comes in when you're a PA Secretary (PA means Personal
Assistant).  I ended up putting down $6, he thought that was reasonable
to ensure I was in work, he seems to think I will have work by next week.
What an interesting industry!  He also said that if I tried getting
labouring work it would be at $3.50-$4/hour.

So in the end, I'm looking at $6/hr for 40 hours, ie $240/week.  Compared
to rich snobs like Xiayi who get $200/week just in the British component
of her wage!  Not to mention contract programmers getting more like
$30-$40/hour.  Right.  That does it.  I'm going to start a People's Party
and have a Glorious People's Revolution where us temp secretaries shall
rise up and massacre all programmers.  Well, it's a tossup between that
and returning to being a programmer in a month's time.  Whichever one
happens first I suppose.  And I suppose I'll need to return to programming
after all the other programmers are dead anyway.  Well, they've only got
themselves to blame.  They knew the risks when they took on the job.

I also overheard from someone else's interview that you needed a National
Insurance number before you could work.  I asked him about that (called
it a National Security number!) and he directed me to the wrong place
(when I finally found the wrong place they directed me elsewhere).  I'll
have to go there tomorrow as it was about 4pm by the time I was back.
One interesting thing is that I originally thought I was unlikely to get
a job as a secretary because there would be 30 young women in front of
me, who wants to employ a middle-aged old man when the skills are
commonplace?  But there has been no indication of a problem in that area
to date.

Today I also came up with a brilliant marketing strategy.  Second only
to our fridge, which has a "quick chill zone" in the fridge compartment,
where you're supposed to put things there for half and hour and then
move them away.  Obviously the fridge is designed so that the cool air
comes in from there, which unfortunately means you need to keep that
bit clear, and rather than just say it's an unfortunate part of the
design they attempt to market it as some "feature".  Well, I've noticed
that our floorboards are uneven here.  So rather than just market uneven
chairs as poorly manufactured chairs, you can instead market them as
"deliberately uneven chairs for use with normally uneven floorboards".
Works for me.

1998-03-31:
Today I went on a journey to the DSS which was miles away from where
I live.  On the way I saw an "information" button at one of the train
stations and wondered how they had managed to implement such a thing
with only one button.  Presumably there was a selection list come up,
and you pressed the button again when the thing you were interested in
came up.  Turns out it's just an intercom and the guy wasn't very
friendly when I asked how to get to Shepherd's Bush.  Very confusing
answer, leave the station!  So I left the station, and then crossed
the road, and got into another station!!!  There's bound to be a really
good reason why there's no subway between the stations.  I got to
Shepherd's Bush, caught the bus the wrong way, got off, walked back to
the station, and then I think I picked up the same bus going back!!!
He might have told me to stay on the bus, it would take me back (after
I asked him where Bromyard Avenue was).

Boy oh boy, I obviously turned up on a bad day, there's no way life 
forms like that could turn up every day.  I was greeted by a string 
of smokers, and once inside, some mum and her kid appeared to have 
spilled drink all over the floor.  I took a ticket and then went the 
wrong way, checked it out, then went back, and then the correct way.  
There I was surrounded by mothers letting their kids run wild (it
costs too much money to control kids these days and dole bludgers
can't afford it) and various other despots.  Some old woman complained 
about the world today with drugs etc, and I said it was better than
having a world war.  She mustn't have understood me because she then
complained about Saddam, and how they should have got him.  I agree
with our politicians on this one, and said that it would have cost more
allied lives to get him personally.  She wasn't impressed.

I finally got served and was told I needed to have a job before I got
a National Insurance number.  Luckily I had a card from the agent and
they accepted that.  And then told me to go to the main waiting room!!!
Sheesh!  That wait took about 2 hours.  Around me was an Arab with the
full headgear with "Ayatollah 4 me" stamped on her hat, and what appeared
to be an 18 y.o. mother who obviously hadn't heard about birth control,
with a 2 y.o. kid.  While I was there a black woman with a kid and a 
couple of fat white women with a kid (running wild) started hurling abuse 
at each other across the room.  The gist of it was that the white woman 
was accusing the black woman of slapping her kid, a charge she denied.  
Personally I believed the black woman to be in the right, she was sitting 
relatively quietly and her kid was relatively quiet.  They were really 
getting stuck into it though, very vile swearing.  I was planning on 
intervening if they came to blows, but wasn't sure about doing anything 
before that.  Also it may well have been better to let the white woman
strike a blow with me as an independent witness, so that she could be
locked up rather than live to pick on someone else.  A guy inbetween the 
two of them said to the white woman that it wasn't worth it, and she told
him to stay out of it it wasn't his business.  Yeah right, swearing in
a public place is a private matter is it?  They eventually quietened down
but I kept an eye out just in case.

I could smell smoke where I was sitting, but couldn't see anyone smoking.
Eventually I found that some people thought that smoking in the doorway
was acceptable, and I could see the smoke wafting in.  And then I saw
it from a more immediate quarter, the black guy with sunglasses and a
trenchcoat hanging around outside the men's toilet was smoking.  There
was also a "no alcohol" sign.  I saw him open a can of beer.  I also
noticed that he kept following men into the toilet.  I assumed he was
either gay, a thief, a drugs dealer, or a very helpful person, wanting
to know if he could help any of the customers with their personal
problems, and thought it was best to do it in private.

My number finally came up and I went into a booth.  I told the lady
what I had seen and she asked if the guy was black or white.  She was
jet black herself so I said sheepishly that he was black, then switched
the emphasis to the trenchcoat and baseball cap, since they were really
and truly the first things I noticed in the description.  She rang up
security and said that "Raymond xyz was up to his old tricks".  She
said she knew exactly who it was.  Presumably he's the only guy with a
long white trenchcoat.  Anyway, she gave me what I came for, and then
I left, no sign of him anymore.  I wouldn't have minded brushing
shoulders with the scum of Britain had I actually been queuing up for
the dole myself, but all I wanted was a bloody National Insurance number
so I could work!  When I got home, I rang up the agent again, and voila, 
I start work tomorrow, putting pre-printed labels on envelopes.

Tonight I was invited to a dinner with Xiayi's workmates (paid for by
the manager of an Indian company doing work there).  I'm not sure why
I was invited, but I didn't object.  We went to an Italian restaurant.
As entree, I was going to have shrimps, even though the prawns and
calamari looked better (but at twice the cost!).  But others had the
latter and it was recommended by the waitress.  Bloody hell, $11.50
(ie almost $30!!!) and it was not much more than you get when you
order fish and chips!  I then had the veal and egg for main course.
I reckon the whole meal came to something like AUS$70 just for me.

1998-04-01:
No, it wasn't an April Fool's Joke.  I turned up and they genuinely
wanted me to stick labels on envelopes.  It took 20 minutes to get
there by tube, just catching the trains.  Cost $2.20 return.  I
followed the directions until they ran out, then saw a large building
in the distance, and asked a garbo if that was the hospital, and he
said it was.  I went there, absolutely amazed at the huge walls around
the place.  Not only that, but the top of the wall had a huge cylindrical
top, which means the usual trick of throwing an anchor over the wall
wouldn't work, unless you had an anchor from the USS Nimitz.  I couldn't
find the entrance for quite a while, and then I got lost.  But there was
a sign there.  I had just walked past the prison!!!  Wormald Scrubs
Prison or something, and it appeared on the news that night, to say that
half of the staff had called in sick (they're not allowed to strike)
because of something that's happening.  I was that close to death by the
hands of a prison escapee!

I eventually found the hospital, and found out that I'd snuck in the back
way instead of going through the front door.  They sat me down and I
started sticking on labels.  Not only that but I had to check for
duplicates!  Not only that, but the duplicates weren't straightforward.
I had to match "Mrs Edwards Xiayi" with "Ms Edwards X".  Which meant
some people with a common name and initial may have been skipped.

Rather than waste the entire day sticking labels on envelopes, I decided
to analyse the computer systems of the NHS from the point of view of the
label-sticker.  Assuming the answers to my questions were all correct,
the situation is this.  The machine that puts the documents into the
envelopes and seals them can also automatically put labels on, but it
needs to know the addresses in advance obviously.  This is the first
fault - printing envelopes before the list was available.

This was largely brought about because different offices of the NHS were
responsible for getting their own lists - the computer problem is that
the networks aren't linked.  The next problem is within this one area
of the NHS (presumably "London" or something), they are unable to produce
a distinct list of employees!  Two problems here.  One is there are
duplicate entries in the individual departments.  The second is that
there is no index on something unique like the National Insurance
number, although you wouldn't be able to put a unique index on that if
you allow newcomers who don't yet have an NI number.

Another problem is that the labels were printed surname then first name,
without a comma separating the two, as is usual when you put it the wrong
way around.  Another problem was data quality, wrong name casing, mixture
of initials and full name.  Another problem was that the data was not
sorted properly enough, ie in name format, where "p e" would come after
"paul", because although space comes before "a" in ASCII, "p" and "paul"
are equal when the first is an initial.  This prevented me from finding
some duplicates, since they were too far apart in the printout.

I calculated that it took 12 seconds per envelope, adding 2p to the cost
of each letter.  I tried improving on the 12 seconds, inspired by the
Japanese car manufacturers, but was largely unsuccessful.  I also
calculated how long it was going to take to do the job.  There were 10
boxes of envelopes and I finished the first in an hour, so I said it would
make sense to stay an extra 2 hours tonight instead of coming in tomorrow.
She had actually estimated 3 days to do the job!

But after the second box, I found it took 1.5 hours per box!  I was
perplexed by this, and told her that I'd miscalculated, it took 1.5
hours (when timed with stopwatch, actually 1 hour and 21 minutes).
I was worried that she would think I was deliberately being slack,
hence the productivity decrease, when in actual fact I was going at
breakneck speed.  Later I remembered that the first box was not full,
and figured that they must have done some from the first box
themselves, in order to estimate the 3 days!  There are apparently
400 envelopes per box, but I didn't count them myself.

Anyway, 1.5 hours meant that I would finish 5 boxes today, and do the
other 5 tomorrow, meaning I was free on Friday.  Because they actually
didn't know how many employees they had (I wonder if any of them are
actually fake and still getting paid - who would know?), they didn't
know how many envelopes to print.  I estimated that they really needed
20-25 boxes, which worried her somewhat.  This was based on the fact
that I was still in the C's after 2.5 boxes (from memory).  However,
by the end of the day, I had gotten up to G with the 5 boxes.

Another thing interesting thing is the different names people have.
Some people are named after animals, e.g. "finch" and "fox".  Presumably
this is descendant from the Red Indian days where they named their kids
after whatever they first saw, hence "so and so Running Bear" or "so and
so Pretty Moon" or "so and so Two Dogs Screwing" (with courtesy to an
age-old joke and my father's description of English names being named
after employment, e.g. so and so Butcher, so and so Baker, so and so
Candlestick Maker).  Another thing I found was a deep appreciation of 
foreign names!  I had to continually remind myself the fundamental 
problem was that the National Insurance number hadn't been used as a key, 
and that the proper solution was not what immediately came to mind, which 
was to ban "Jones" etc as surnames and make everyone come up with a unique 
surname, whatever the cost.

I had a 20 minute break today to eat skittles (lollies).  The trip home
wasn't as quick as getting in, something like 40 minutes just on the
train, 10 minutes walk to the hospital.

1998-04-02:
Trains weren't as lucky as yesterday, 1 hour door to door.  On the way
from the train station I met my boss!  I confronted her about doing some
of the labels from the first box, and she came clean, confessed it was a
gigantic conspiracy to make me try and do all boxes in 1 hour or face
being sacked.  I told her my funny story about trying to get a contract.

Specifically, what happened was for years I have seen 3 month contracts
advertised in the paper.  I thought it was strange that employers only
had 3 months worth of work for people and then got rid of them, given
that most computer systems take months just to learn!  But hey, the
employer probably knows what he's doing, so so be it.  And since I was
over here for 3 months (well, initially it was only meant to be 2 months),
I put on my resume that I was looking for a short term contract, for 2 or
3 months.  I basically looked at all those 3 month contracts in the
magazine and said "yep, I'll have one of them".  It was to be 1 month
before an agency told me that I shouldn't put that in my resume!  The
situation is that although they initially only want you for 3 months,
they will normally want to extend that, so it's a 3 month rolling
contract!!!  And it was to be a further month before another agency told
me the reason that no agencies were contacting me was because I am meant
to be contacting them regularly, to let them know I'm still looking.
They have a field that they update to say when I last called, and if it's
too old (like a month) they assume I've got a contract through someone
else.  I mentioned that I expected regular calls from the agencies because
of the dire computer skills shortage mentioned in the magazines, and he
told me that there were 30,000 unfilled computer jobs in Britain - but
they're permanent positions!  There's no contractor shortage!

Anyway, my labeling muscles weren't want they used (yesterday morning!)
to be and had to keep stretching to keep going, meaning that I was on
the 1:30 per box, not 1:21.  So I didn't take a lunch break, I wanted
to make sure I could finish.  I started at 9am and finished at about
4:34pm.  I stayed a bit longer to tidy up, and on my timesheet I put
7+7:45 = 14.75 hours which should be $73.75 gross.  With $4.40 travelling.

In summary, what can I say?  So many thousands of people employed by
the NHS?  What a bunch of hypochondriacs there must be in this country!
You'd think they would have had the decency to die out in the black
plague?  What do you think we had it for?  Oh, and what was in all the
letters?  A letter to all staff with an opportunity to suggest changes
to the NHS.  Sheesh, I'd hate to be the person who has to open all the
replies and read them!!!  It only took me 12 seconds to label them,
but imagine the secretary of health having to read, analyse, possibly 
make changes, and reply to the individual (as promised)?!

On TV tonight they had a great statistic.  Something like 9 million
people watch Neighbours in Britain.  About 7 million people don't know
their real neighbours!!!  A lot like me really.

1998-04-03:
I think my tax is going to be incredibly complex.  But after ringing
around, I just followed what the agency wanted.  I went and bought
another halogen bulb ($6 each), after getting confirmation from Qantas
that that's what I should do.  Also paid the phone bill which I had
been delaying until we could afford it!  We recalculated our expenses
and can easily afford it now that we've had cheap weekends plus paid
for things by mastercard.

And today I realised why the hemispheric (forget racism and sexism)
stinking Northern Hemispherans often refer to calendar times as
"spring" and "autumn" etc which is completely inappropriate for 2
reasons.  The first reason is that Southern Hemispherans have all
the seasons at completely different times to the Northern Hemisperans.
The second reason is that the Southern Hemispherans (generalising from
me) have no concept of the seasons as calendar positions, except summer
and winter.  We don't know when spring is and when autumn is, only that
both of them are neither winter or summer.  And yes, we've heard rumours
that plants grow leaves in the spring and shed them in winter, but that
is not in the least believable because it simply never happens.  Leaves
are on trees all year round, in case you've never noticed.  Well, in
Britain the leaves really are off during winter, and now that it's spring,
you can see the leaves coming back.

Another observation I have on Britain is that Woolies isn't predominate
here, Sainsbury's is.  And another thing is that Sainsbury's have done
something really nice.  Under the price, they put (11p/100 grams) or
equivalent, which is the calculation I normally have to estimate and do
myself.  Brilliant!  E.g. today 1.5 litre water was on special, 6 for the
price of 3.  They'd redone the calculation, and it was still more
expensive than the 2 litre water!  Amazing!  I had a bit of a run-in with
the Sainsbury's staff today.  Normally you have to fill your own bags
with groceries.  They had a really old man on the checkout today (amazing!)
and I wasn't taking great notice of the people in front of me.  But as I
went to fill up my bags, one of them took my milk.  I said "hey, hey,
that's mine" and grabbed it off him and put it in my own bag.  Then I
started to fill the next bag with water and he complained that he already
had a bag.  Turned out that this old man was not the customer before me
but Sainsbury's staff filling bags.  I told him I was sorry, I thought he
was the previous customer but he still didn't look too happy.  Poor guy,
getting so much stick from snobby label-stickerers in his drudgery job.

1998-04-04:
Time to get to the Brixton markets, which is supposedly the Afro-Carribean
market of London.  Well, it should more accurately be famous for the number
of oranges sold.  Every stall has oranges.  If you've ever wanted to know
what the colour of oranges is, this is the place to go.  Absolutely jam
packed with people, presumably trying to find out the colour of oranges.
It's orange by the way.  I was trying to figure out how the people in
the middle of the market could sell oranges.  I mean, do people get to
the first stall, see that there's oranges, and start thinking about
oranges.  Next stall, they see they're still selling them, so it's obvious
chic to buy oranges.  3rd stall they check out the price.  By the 7th
stall they've calculated how much the oranges cost as a percentage of
their wage.  On the 8th they check the price again to see if they missed
out the only chance of a bargain back at the 3rd.  On the 9th they feel
that they have taken a representative survey of orange prices, and
consider themselves to be an authority on the subject.  Then they decide
that oranges might have different size and texture, and go through the
whole process again, so it's not until they get to the 35th stall that
they actually shell out some money, which is why the people in the
middle don't go broke, and come back week after week.  The market also
had a few fish shops, which were not really part of the market.

On to the Ideal Home Show.  Entrance was $9 each.  We tried out lots of 
massage machines and chairs, Xiayi got her shoes polished, but I held
her back from buying the polish, a decision she was later to be pleased
about, since the shoe colour was migrating to her trousers.  I saved us
$10!  They even had an eye massager!  We saw one home called an "Oyster 
House" which I thought was pretty cool.  Instead of having vertical walls 
meeting horizontal walls, it was sort of rounded, so you could lie on it.
It also had some sort of home automation system, which said "for more
information see RGB electronics".  So I asked the girl about that, and
she didn't know about it, and suggested I ask a security guard.  I didn't
find one of them, but I eventually found the information desk.  They
didn't know anything about it.  They didn't even know what "home automation"
was!  They thought it was a company name at first!  They suggested I speak
to the press office.  I eventually got there, just as they were closing.
They reopened, gave me some literature, but not what I was after.  I then
tried asking some of the security people if they had a computer linkup
as part of home automation, no joy.  We did get one good thing out of the
place.  We are thinking of bathroom renovation and I want an electronic
tap.  I found two.  One was actually as part of an entire shower, which
was actually a steam shower, looked really great, you can even sit down
in the shower.  All yours for just $5000 ($12500)!!!  It's something to
work towards though.  I like to spend money on house infrastructure like
that because it can't really be stolen!

1998-04-05:
I set out to something I'd seen on TV - Powerhouse UK, in the Horse
Guard Square.  In the train I was sitting opposite some woman who
had a plastic bag on the chair next to her.  There was no proof that
it was hers though, and indeed, when she left she didn't take it with
her, so it was probably litter, but no proof she was the litterbug.
She almost ran out of the train though, I think because she wanted
to change lines, rushing into the train on the other side of the
platform.  Other people sat down around the litter.  Then I saw the
woman rush back to the train, press the button to open the door, but
it was too late, the train had locked and started moving.  She looked
despondantly at the bag on the chair as the train moved off.  I wasn't
sure what action to take so didn't do anything, something I regretted
a couple of minutes on.  The Indians who had sat down opposite now
controlled the situation, but all they did was move the bag onto the
floor, so that another one of their group could sit down.

At the next stop, just as the train stopped, and there was no bag
action, I decided to take the bag and catch a train going the other
way.  I told the Indian lady I'd take it back, and she shrugged her
shoulders or something similar, either way meaning she had no interest
in being in charge of the stray bag incident.  She probably didn't
know as much about the situation as me either, as she was facing the
wrong way throughout.  Wasn't enough time to give her the extra
details either.  In the meantime, Xiayi had spent the entire incident
doing what she did best - keeping an uncluttered mind, clean of any
prejudice against litterbugs or seat-hoggers.  So she was not
impressed when I suddenly announced that I thought we should return
that plastic bag and get off the train, as to her it was an unattended
package, and she believed the British propaganda that unattended
packages usually had IRA bombs in them.  I personally believe the IRA
propaganda, that unattended bags are things that should be returned
to their owner (after taking out any pins from hand-grenades), and
that if I happen to stumble across one of their bombs and get my arm
blown off, it's my own fault for visiting a western capitalist fascist
nazi country in the first place, instead of signing up to join the IRA,
to give freedom for all Irish people, except for the Protestant
scumbags who should be driven into the ocean.

By the time I had actually taken action, I regretted not having waved
to the woman to indicate for her to stay put.  In addition I suspected
it was just some baked beans and she would have no real interest in
chasing it up, she'd just abandon all hope of seeing it again and buy
another can of baked beans (9p at Sainsbury's).  She probably wouldn't
think of reporting it to the train station, she may just go to the
police (which I had no intention of doing, too difficult to explain why
I was carrying around an IRA bomb).  I thought there was only likely to
be a 10% chance of the bag being successfully returned, but that was no
reason not to try.  If she can't be bothered reporting it, that's her
tough luck.  I don't like litterbugs anyway.

I wasn't even sure what train station she got off at, or where I now was, 
but just caught the same train going the other way, and hoped for the 
best.  I remembered she was a woman wearing a green dress.  I saw one of 
them soon after I got off, and asked her if she left this package on the 
train, but she denied all knowledge of it (standard IRA tactics).  I then 
went over to the other side in case she was still waiting for a train 
given that she'd probably missed both previously.  There was another woman 
in green there, but I decided to not to use the direct approach and she
wasn't looking my way, so I just walked right in front of her, swinging
the bag and singing "I've got a missing bag and I'm OK", but no luck.
I tried walking on the edge the whole way, hoping someone would wake
up.  No-one did.

I went upstairs and told a station attendant that I had a lost bag and
he asked me what train it was etc, and herded me towards an office.  He
popped in and then popped out again saying "she's here!".  Sure enough,
the Woman in Green came out, and was most grateful to get her baked
beans back.  I might add that the baked beans were wrapped in Christmas
wrapping paper, and it was only afterwards that I realised it was nowhere
near Christmas!!!  Who knows what goes through other people's minds -
wrapping baked beans in Christmas paper when it's Easter?!?!?!?!  We soon
caught a train putting us back on course.

It cost $3 each to get into Powerhouse UK and it was the biggest ripoff
I've experienced in Britain since I was duped out of $5 by the taxi
driver.  There is nothing to report about the exhibition.  The most
interesting thing was an ant farm, but after watching an ant carry a
dead ant halfway across the tank (I was trying to find out where the
nest was), and then retracing his steps, only to dump the dead ant in
the middle of nowhere, it sort of lost it's pizazz.

We then went to St James Park, which had beautiful flowers growing there.
We got out, wandering aimlessly looking for a Tube station.  We finally
decided to catch a bus, and once on the bus found that the tube was just
a couple of minutes walk away (Green Park).  But Xiayi was determined to
stick to her plan of catching the bus all the way to Knightsbridge.  But
that came up in just another few minutes too!  We went home, withdrew
some money (maximum they let us have was $300, not the $400 we tried to
get).  We also found that Xiayi's expense claim had come through, the
extra money was not my pay.

1998-04-06:
Xiayi rang to let me know that her contract had been extended by 6 months.
I set about reapplying for a contract, this time with the revised resume
that doesn't say "3 months or bust".  I also rang up CSC to let them know
that I wasn't coming back to work on the agreed date.

1998-04-08:
Xiayi rang to say we had to move house since this one was too expensive.
The great real estate search begins!  And today my temp agent rang me
up, I've got some work next week in the same hospital, different
department.  Not only that, but the work is filing, not labelling!  This
is going to be my big break!

1998-04-09:
Xiayi rang to say that both my pay and her pay were in.  If I've calculated
correctly, it means that I earnt $71.50 (from $73.75 gross).  We are now
officially filthy rich.

1998-04-10:
The moment of truth arrived, and I slept through it!  Unfortunately our
ridiculous alarm requires you to both set the alarm, and then enable it,
instead of the more usual - a change automatically enables it, you have
to explicitly disable it if you're a whacko who changes the alarm time
when you don't want to actually wake up the next day at that time!  I
missed the last step and thus we only got up at 5:30am instead of 4:30am,
or something like that.  We eventually arrived at the car hire place at
something like 8am.

The road was very slow (ie stopped) in some places, even on the motorway.
But at least the road was open and we weren't in a cut-off town, like
some places (Oxfordshire?) which were experiencing flooding.  And then
we got to Birmingham!  And for the first time in my life, I saw falling
snow.  The atmosphere was electric, and we spontaneously erupted into
a chorus of "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas".  I know Rolf Harris
tried, but it's still despicable that us Southern Hemispherans have to
put up with our entire Christmas culture being centred around totally
hemispheric, patriarchial, stereotypical, fascist attitudes of the
stinking Northern Hemispherans.  It is possible that being my first
snow, I was unfairly biased towards it, but in my opinion, the White
Christmas in Birmingham was the best for the whole trip.  Basically
the trunks of the trees had snow on them, just like the gods intended.

The weather inside the car was another interesting point.  I couldn't
remember whether you're meant to make the inside of the car hot, or cold,
in order to avoid getting a foggy windscreen.  I thought it was cold,
that was what made sense.  If everything is at the same temperature,
there's no mist.  So I had set the dials to "frozen chicken".  Xiayi
eventually complained about this, and I told her the reason and that if
she could find something in the manual about demisting, we could do that
instead.  She did look it up, and as far as she could tell, it needed
to be full-blast hot.  So we tried that, and it worked.  It had the side
effect of being so hot it was burning our faces, making even Xiayi red,
something she reckons doesn't normally happen to her (personally I
wouldn't trust anything that a died-in-the-wool red commie under the bed
(or in a car) might have to say on the topic).  After a couple more hours
of being burnt at the stake, whilst being stopped in traffic, I looked at
the manual myself and determined that yes, it does say it needs to be on
full blast, but it doesn't say it needs to be hot!  So I changed it to
a more moderate temperature, and stopped mopping the sweat from my brow
whilst looking longingly at the snow outside.

On the way, I had planned to pop in to Windemere, all part of my do-or-die
plan.  As we neared the place, we saw a turnoff to the "Southern Lakes",
but it didn't explicitly mention Windemere so we didn't know whether that
was the right turnoff.  As we went by and looked up the signs on the
exit, Windemere was there, and gone forever.  I asked Xiayi to look up
to see if there was a back way into Windemere, but she said there wasn't.
Some time on we came to another exit, with a town mentioned.  I asked
her to look up that town name, and she found it - it's on the way to
Windemere!  So off we went, through this obscure town which was all
lovely sandstone buildings, and arrived at the famous lake.  Yes, it was
a nice big lake, but it was soon to pale into pathetic insignificance,
assuming I actually really did arrive at the lake and wasn't looking at
a burst drainpipe waiting on a plumber to arrive "any time now".

The hotels only keep the bookings open till 6pm unless you ring up in
advance, so halfway through the trip I rang them up and told them I
would be late, my guess 8pm.  In reality I had no idea if I'd even make
it, I'd planned a hectic schedule without actually knowing whether it
would turn out to be yet another one of my hair-brained schemes.  But I
didn't tell them that!  And believe it or not, we really did arrive in
Glasgow at around 6:30pm.  But then I struck the next problem - since I
hadn't put much hope in actually making it (even on the day the radio
was telling us to stay indoors unless we REALLY NEEDED to travel), I
hadn't actually given much thought to what to do once I got there!  I
had hoped it might be fairly obvious, but no such luck.  I eventually
followed some street signs, and ended up going past some beautiful
hotel which Xiayi thought might have been the mythical Balmoral Hotel
(but of course it wasn't, the book was right, it was in Edinburgh),
but then changed her mind.  Eventually we wound up in some backwater
road where we had a pow-wow.

In my previous travels I was normally a passenger and someone else (ie 
my mum) magically knew where to go, but it would appear that the magic 
navigational skills are not hereditary.  Xiayi told me a long tale about
what happened when she went travelling with other people.  Basically she
sat in the back of the car with a vacant look, and the car magically
arrived at the destination.  This strategy also had failed us.  Then
she finally remembered that what some people do is ring up the hotel in
advance and ask for directions.  So we had to find a phone.  We left
our hidey-hole and ended up seeing some signs to the "Tourist
Information Centre", so followed them.  Then we found a phone.  I
illegally parked whilst keeping the engine running, and Xiayi went and
phoned them up.  Unfortunately Xiayi's Scottish isn't what it used to
be (or ever was).  She came back with instructions "I think we need
to turn right".  Yeah, right.  Right from the position of where the
car was, the phone was facing, where Xiayi was facing when she was
in the phone box, or where the hotel is?  But in the meantime I had
seen the Tourist Information Centre and suggested she go and ask them,
so off she went.  Turned out that although we could have been anywhere
in the entire Glasgow, we were actually just a couple of blocks away!

So off we went, down a one-way street, then back up it (the correct
way), and eventually got to the place where I was able to illegally
park again, before being on my way to an overnight car park for $6
which was not mentioned before!  It's a good job we're officially
rich!  This was Good Friday, and I'd been listening all day to the
Northern Ireland deal, which I thought ranked up there with the fall
of Communism, Tianamen Square etc.  So I watched TV to see what was
happening, waiting for it to finish so that I could ring up one of my
long-lost relos in Glasgow, where I could hopefully listen to some
Scottish accents without resorting to violence.  Eventually I had to
turn the TV off, it was non-stop Northern Ireland.  I popped downstairs
to get a gander at their street directory.  They didn't have one!
Unbelievable.  He reckoned people normally want directions to food
places, not long-lost relos.  I decided to ring anyway, and get
directions from her.  She wasn't there (at about 8pm), so it wasn't
to be.  I hadn't rung in advance because I wasn't sure we'd actually
have time, and I figured if it was meant to be, it would be.

1998-04-11:
We awoke at 6am to get to breakfast by 7am.  Xiayi wanted me to have a
shower first, so that I could "work it out".  I was pretty confident
that I could work out how to use a bloody shower!  After all, I had
figured out already the problem with the toilet - the spring on the
stupid handle must have been bust, all you needed to do was manually
move it back to "charge", use a combination of prayer and mindless
violence, and voila, just like a 3rd world country.  But my confidence 
was soon to be shattered.  The management had obviously decided to give
me a run for my money, and disassembled the shower into 3 bits.  The
goal was to reassemble the 3 bits, put it back on the wall, then plug
the shower nozzle into it, all before freezing to death (the heaters
hadn't been working properly all night, so much so that we had to put
our jackets on the bed (they didn't supply blankets), and wake up every
hour or so to pick them up off the floor).  I suppose another goal was
to not waste any time whilst doing this, ie continue having a hand-held
shower whilst doing the reassembly with the other hand, and with your
3rd hand actually apply soap, whilst all the time keeping the water in
the shower (with only a half-distance shower screen), as opposed to all
over the bathroom floor (where management will think that you're a
stinking Southern Hemispheran who's used to showering in the rain and
never actually seen a bathroom before).  

It didn't quite work.  I did get the 3 parts together, did stick them 
on the wall, but when I plugged the shower head in, it was directed 
more at the roof than anything else.  The ceilings were high enough
to support this orientation (maybe the ceiling was built around the
tourist-operated shower?) and I was able to put the half-distance
shower screen down the back of the bath instead of the front, keeping
at least 50% of the water off the bathroom floor, but unfortunately
the landing spot for the water was too high for me to even wash my
hair - even standing on my toes - with shoes on - on the recently
relocated lounge chair!  No other orientation seemed to help.  I was
able to clean the bathroom walls (all of them simultaneously), but
not myself.  I eventually decided to concede to the management and
just handhold the shower whilst swearing that with the gods as my
witness, I will never be outsmarted by a shower again.

But the excitement didn't end there!  We hadn't even had breakfast
yet!  First of all I decided to have some cereal that looked like it
was some genetic mutation of muesli.  Unfortunately there was 2 ladels
provided, of different shape, for about 3 different cereals and 1
grapefruit bowl.  I chose the smaller ladel and designated it as
the muesli ladel.  Which was fine.  Until I went to get a second bowl,
and wondered why the ladel was wet.  Obviously the other tourists can't
tell the difference between a muesli ladel and a grapefruit ladel.
They were obviously uncivilised stinking Northern Hemispheran tourists.

Then the waitress came over and asked us to order.  I was about to
order more ladels but eventually decided to stick with menu items.
I didn't choose the porridge because I didn't think it was anything
special.  Xiayi ordered it though, claiming it was a traditional
Scottish dish, and that only uncouth foreigners would fail to order
that (I had a bit of hers to see if it really was magical, but it was
just normal porridge).  We also ordered some eggs etc.  And then the
Scottish waitress (with a beautiful Scottish accent), asked Xiayi,
"Seventeen Toes?".  I could see Xiayi's mind hard at work.  Seventeen
toes?  I mean, she's got 10 already.  Even if she were to grow another
foot, that would only mean 15.  I suppose 2 of them could be spares
in case she had a bright idea to cut her toenails with a scythe (cf
Blackadder II).  But no, the whole idea was completely ridiculous.
It's all covered by National Health anyway.  "Seventeen?".  I felt
a rush of Scottish blood in my veins, and suddenly deciphered the
sentence, and converted it into a well-known dialect of English.
"Some tea and toast?".  After all that effort, Xiayi decided she ought
to at least get the tea.

So off we went on the next 400 miles of our journey.  Up to Fort
William first.  This Glasgow to Fort William trip was to be the most
spectactular part of our journey.  It wasn't even in our tourist guide
as something to see, it was just a journey that needed to be done in
order to get to the supposedly-brilliant Fort William - Mallaig trip.
Soon after we left Glasgow there was a sign "watch out for 
right-turning traffic ahead".  I decided that was as good as a hint
as any to turn right, and we were able to go on a road taking us
around a completely spectacular lake, with snow-covered mountains
around it.  Loch Lomond I think it was.

Soon after we came to the highlands.  My mother had told me that the
so-called Highlands were in fact just pathetic little hills.  How
someone in Australia can make such a statement is beyond belief.  In
Australia we generally class a bird landing on a cow's back as a
breathtakingly beautiful mountain!  First of all the highlands take
you up onto some plateau, where it has the feeling of being in another
world.  Sort of like being on top of a volcano or something.  Instead
of seeing mountains with snow-caps, you're basically at the level of
the snow-caps.  There was even a ski resort up there.  I didn't really 
notice us coming down off the highlands, but we ended up in Fort William, 
and we were able to see Ben Nevis peeping out from behind another mountain.  
But we were short on time so decided to skip having a close look at that, 
and head straight for Mallaig.

Well, I'm going to have to complain to the people who wrote our tourist
book, or at the very least ask them which bit is the spectactualor bit.
It might have been the trees, it might have been the ocean views, or it
might have been the mountains, but whatever it was, it wasn't particularly
impressive.  What was funny was that they had single-file roads, where
you have to pull over into little parking spots to allow the oncoming
traffic to get through.  A hell of a lot of courtesy involved, you end
up waving at the entire stream of oncomes!  Which may have been OK for
us at the time, but you'd end up feeling like Diana, dead Princess of
Wales, if you were doing this during tourist season.  I can imagine
that you'd be so sick of waving at people that you end up just giving
them the ups.  Hey, maybe that's why George Bush did it when he was
visiting Australia?  Maybe the lack of dual carriageway on some roads
(as opposed to 5-carriageways each way you get in USA) pissed him off?

At the end of Mallaig there was this huge bridge, which would have
taken us to Skye.  We didn't go, since it wasn't part of the plan.  I
later regretted this a little as an Inverness fish-and-chips worker
reckoned Skye, looking out to lots of small islands, was the best
scenery in Scotland.  Anyway, my Gaelic isn't what it used to be, so
we just returned to Fort William.  We decided to go around Ben Nevis,
actually through "Glen Nevis" too, although I wasn't sure what a
"Glen" was (I later assumed it was just trees, but many months later
a Scotsman told me it was actually a valley).  We found some turnoff
that supposedly gave us mountain views so popped up there.  It actually
led to a ski resort, halfway up the mountain.  There were lifts to get
you up there, but I couldn't figure out how much they cost (there was
a price for something called G-only, where G was "gargoyle" or
"gangrene" or something, but I couldn't be sure that that word meant
just the bottom bit), and the queue was too long anyway, so we just
left.

Then on to Kyle of Localsh, and across to Inverness.  Yes, the trip
from Kyle of Localsh to Inverness was nice, but not anything that I
hadn't seen going from Glasgow to Fort William.  Just before we got
to Inverness it started snowing and we popped into a carpark, and
spontaneously started dancing in the snow.  It so happened that we
appeared to be in some "falls" area, and we followed some other
people down to some rapids, which were really pretty with the falling
snow, and we crossed a hanging bridge.

I had rung up the place in Inverness in advance, and the tourist 
information centre in Glasgow had given us a map which included 
Inverness city, so we were able to bumble our way to the place.  
Then Xiayi made her first big mistake for the day - she had a shower 
before me.  It was an electronic shower, and the water was alternating 
between being really cold to scaldingly hot.  You might think you know 
how to solve that problem, you just quickly have a shower when it's 
halfway between hot and cold.  However, that period of time was a grand 
total of maybe 2 seconds, with a 15-second delay until it comes round 
again.  After Xiayi's 10 second shower (or more accurately, scalding), 
I took a closer look.  There were 2 adjustments.  The first was a 
selection, of either "cold", "1" or "2".  Xiayi had chosen "2", because 
she's that kind of girl.  The next adjustment was a "hot/cold" variable 
knob, which she had adjusted to "hot", although she had attempted to 
madly adjust it up and down during the 20-second cycle, before we had 
ascertained that the cycle was happening independently.  To make matters 
worse, the pressure didn't seem to have an adjustment.  When it was hot 
the pressure was low, when it was cold it was high.

I realised that with this shower I could go through all the alternatives 
scientifically, since there was only the two knobs.  Setting the first
knob to "Cold" did indeed make it cold, no matter what you did with the
second knob.  Setting the first knob to "1" allowed you to then turn the
second knob until you reached a reasonable temperature.  That was all
that was needed, I decided to stop tempting fate and simply have a shower
at that stage.  Xiayi asked me what the "2" setting did then, and I told
her it made it go alternatively extremely cold and extremely hot, I'm
surprised she hadn't noticed.  I have a theory that with the "2" setting 
and a hot temperature for the second knob, the electronics were detecting a
dangerously high temperature, cutting out, and then the thermostat cut in
again and it went back up, causing the cycle.  I reckon that if we set the
second knob to "cold" we could set the first knob to "2" and it would
have worked.  Basically Xiayi's heat greed got the better of her.

After these bizarre experiences I recalled something from the tourist
book saying that you should always check the shower when you go to a
room to find out how to operate it, since you'll be the only one who
uses it (except presumably for people who like to disassemble them, or
those who like being scalded in cycles).  Anyway, that night we went to
get fish and chips, and I just did the one order since from Australian
experience they give you more than you can possibly eat, but here they
just give you enough for 1, so Xiayi got Burger King instead, eating in
the restaurant in the warm whilst I watched jealously outside.  Well I
would have watched jealously outside except I was facing the other way
and busying trying to eavesdrop on Scottish accents, after my attempt
to engage the fish & chip shops guy in a long conversation failed.  I
heard one of the fish & chip shop guys tell the other 2 about the
Northern Ireland peace accord.  It appeared that the other 2 didn't even
know what had happened.  I got the impression that the Scots are quite
distant, like they're living in remote Australia, with only sheep to
keep them company, and don't know anything about the world outside of
sheep farming.

1998-04-12:
Breakfast started at 8, we got there at 8, but there were still people
eating there already, that's dishonest.  The old guy took our orders,
and then took them again when he found a pen and paper.  I finally met
the waiter from Fawlty Towers!  I mean, on the rash assumption that
this wasn't his first day on the job, hasn't he figured out by now that
he can't keep orders in his head?  Especially not 4 different ones?
I realised I wouldn't be able to eat porridge after my spoon disappeared
with my cereal bowl, so ordered one of them too.  It was snowing outside
so I went out while I was waiting for the eggs etc.  Snow, snow,
glorious snow!

Although the original plan was to arrive in Edinburgh at about 2pm, this
being a short trip, I came up with an alternative plan that involved
whizzing back to Fort William and up again and going to Balmoral Castle,
through the Cairngorms.  Xiayi didn't like that, and wanted to go to
Edinburgh Castle, which she'd never heard of before anyway.  I tried
pressuring the hotel guy into saying that the Cairngorms were better
than Edinburgh Castle but he wouldn't take sides.  I had originally
planned the trip based on doing 55mph average speed, not realising that
that was because I was doing 70mph on the motorways during the Wales
trip, whilst here I was on roads that had a 60mph speed limit.  But I
was still doing OK anyway, and thought I could get away with this
boldness.  The plan was to see how we went, and if we ran out of time,
go to Edinburgh Castle the next day, skipping Sherwood Forest perhaps.

We got outside to find that our car was covered in snow, and had to find 
the rear windscreen wiper to get it off!  After we were on our way I went 
back to the hotel to return the key!  Luckily we hadn't gone very far 
before I realised how uncomfortable it was sitting down with hotel keys 
in my back pocket.  We popped in to the Official Loch Ness Monster
exhibition where we found that the main reason that Nessy had not been
found was because it was so big that you could put the entire population
of the world into it, 10 times over!  So it makes perfect sense that all
the photographing equipment in the world wouldn't snatch Nessy, you need
to rely on eyewitnesses seeing it cross the road etc.  We actually went
down to the lake ourselves, and amazingly managed to snap a photo of what
looks like Nessy's neck arising from behind a boulder.  Some of the more
cynical may think it looks like me with my arm behind a rock, but they're
just the typical disbelievers, unable to confront their own fears.

Whizzed past Ben Nevis from a different angle, then up to the Cairngorms.
Xiayi missed the turnoff so we decided not to bother, but then we came
across another road, and the trip was on again.  Somewhere along the
way we pulled over and I had a chance to make a snowman.  To get some
indication of the size of it, you have to understand that the two major
obstacles I had were the wind and birds who presumably thought that the
snowman was made out of Rosetta, not snow (ref "The Young Ones").

The weather was very intense, and finally the bough broke.  A sign told 
us that the road we wanted to travel on was closed, and only the ski 
fields were open.  It was some time in the afternoon that this was 
happening, and we just sat on the road wondering what to do.  Some other 
people came by and tore past us, and there were others in the distance.  
It was fairly obvious that that sign was just a trick to keep out nosey 
tourists, so we followed everyone else up.  Unfortunately the road really 
was closed, and we had to turn around and go back.  I then went and had 
a look at the map at the intersection of the closed road.  I determined 
that we had actually taken the wrong road anyway, the signposts were 
wrong.  So we headed back along the road instead of turning off.  
Unfortunately we ended up getting into a position where we had a choice 
of turning left and going 10 miles to a small town, or go back the way 
we had come for 9 miles and get to the same small town.  We took the 10 
mile option and we ended up going to the same small town that we had 
arrived in before!!!

We eventually ended up at a tourist information place and they told us
that the road we wanted was indeed the one that was closed, and the way
that we had gone was indeed a full-circle.  The only alternative was to
go around the road in a huge semicircle.  I figured we could still do it,
so we did.  It took a long time, but we got to the magnificent Balmoral
Castle gates.  They really were beautiful.  You have to see them closed
to get the full effect, which only happens on a Sunday, so we were quite
lucky.  Even got to see the river that Xiayi reckons some movie was made
about.  This was actually located in the middle of the Cairngorms, all we
had to do was make one final hop across.  Unfortunately that hop meant
going back up the mountains, where the snow storms were still going
strong, and the roads had turned to ice.  

I was following behind another car, both of us going very slowly, when 
for no apparent reason (probably because he braked when he saw an 
oncoming car) he went into a spin and ended up on the wrong side of the 
road (ie into the mountain) facing the wrong way.  I braked too, to avoid 
whatever he was doing, and suddenly I was in a skid too.  Unfortunately 
my spin took me the other way, ie towards the mountain edge, which didn't 
have any barrier, despite being right at the top of the mountain!  I 
attempted to steer the car back up the hill, but I don't know if that had 
any effect.  Whatever, at the end I was still on the mountain, facing the 
open sky, still alive.  It is usual in this situation to say that I saw
my whole life flash in front of me.  But unfortunately all I saw was
snow.  Freud would probably say that this was a repressed dream which all
Australians hold, of never having seen a white Christmas, and that is why
we always see snow when we are about to die.  I personally reckon it was
just because that's what happened to be visible through my windscreen at
the time, but amateur psychology never was my strong point.

I then got out of the car to ask the other driver how to drive in snow.
Before I could ask, he asked me what to do.  I could tell he had some
sort of European accent, and asked him where he was from.  He was from
Denmark.  So I asked him if he had snow in Denmark, but he reckoned it
didn't snow like it did in Scotland and the roads are flat too.  I
suggested we should ask the oncoming truck that he stopped for, since
truck drivers are pretty smart.  On the way to the truck some other
car had decided to overtake the truck and keep going, so we stopped
him and asked what we should do, perhaps wait for the storm to clear?
He said it wouldn't make any difference, and it would be dark in an
hour's time too (it was about 7:30pm).  He suggested we don't touch
the brakes at all, and just travel in first gear, letting the engine
do the braking.

The Danes decided to go back where they came from (not sure why they
thought that road was safer, which worried me for quite some time!),
and I helped them on their way.  Someone else helped me on my way,
and I travelled down the hill in first gear with zero acceleration.
I was able to turn the corner too, and they had barriers there so
it was getting safer.  But I still continued travelling at a snail's
pace for quite some time, and eventually we safely got out of the
snowy roads.  

We arrived in Edinburgh some time between 8 and 9pm, but then we had 
our next problem.  Even after finding the street that has at least
5 different names (as we were told), we couldn't find the number.
And when we did see the occasional number, we didn't know what street
it belonged to, since the name changed so rapidly.  It probably took
us 30-45 minutes from arriving in the street to actually parking at
the hotel.  An American ran the place.  She reckoned the shower wasn't
complicated.

The next day we went to Edinburgh Castle, after asking someone in the
bus which of the 15 contenders was the castle.  She pointed to the one
on the hill so we got out of the bus and walked up.  The castle looked
pretty impregnable, built on a hill (volcano actually I think).  I
queued up behind a woman who appeared to be unsuccessfully negotiating 
the cashing in of all her McDonald's vouchers for tickets.  We then
lined up behind her again as she dished out headsets to all her friends
and relatives in multiple languages.  We then went and followed some
guide.  It was all very nice and all what a castle is meant to
be.  It even had the sandstone that is used for coronations, which used
to be kept in Westminster Abbey until recently.  Then we returned to
our car and headed to the sea-side, which was our route to London via
Sherwood Forest.  It was getting pretty late as we neared Sherwood
Forest, with no obvious way of how to get there, and traffic crawling,
so we decided to get onto the motorway.  Xiayi missed the motorway
exit, but I caught it.  Unfortunately I got confused at the roundabout
and ended up going back onto the road I'd just left.  There was no
choice now but to go to Sherwood Forest.  After getting lost a couple
of times, we ended up there and got to see the "Major Oak", which Robin
Hood used to meet his men under, despite the fact that they don't even
know if he was real, nor do they know how old the tree is.

The M4 proved to be slow too, and we eventually bumbled our way back to
the car hire company.  I complained about the car's ABS not working like
the manual said it had, and they said that that model didn't have ABS.
So I complained about the manual being the wrong one for the car then.
The car was actually a bigger one than we had ordered.  Just like last
time, they tried to convince me I needed to pay a bit extra for a bigger
car, and when I wouldn't cave in gave me one anyway (presumably they
don't like their little cars being driven by a maniac over Scotland).
The car was actually near-new, only 595 miles on the clock.  2141 when
we returned it, a massive 1546 miles (about 2500km), ie about 3 single
trips from Sydney to Brisbane (I think it's 800km between the two, or
it might be 1000km - actually I think it's 1200 or 1400km - let's fact
it, I don't know, do I?).  It cost something like $160 in fuel (car hire 
was $119.20), although we didn't keep records of that.  Heathrow airport
tube was a nightmare, chock-a-block.  We eventually got home at around
11pm, with no chance to rest.

1998-04-13:
My first day on the job at filing.  They gave me what looked like a
pathetic little bundle of forms to put into folders.  One of my
coworkers suggested I sort them before putting them in.  The boss
suggested that ones that had a bulldog clip around them might already
be sorted.  Turned out that the bulldog clip meant nothing more than
it had a bulldog clip on it.  I started sorting them and filing them,
and then my computer science training kicked in and I realised that
this was simply a sorting exercise and that I should be aiming to
do an O(N) distribution sort rather than the O(N**2) type sort that
I was currently doing.  I then realised that there were a number of
factors involved, because it was first of all a sorting, then a
merging.  It needed proper analysis.  Another observation I made that
day that is quaint about working in Britain is that they have normal 
house toilets instead of office-block toilets!

1998-04-14:
Unfortunately the train that I need to catch, "District Line" actually
branches into two directions, "Ealing Broadway" and "Richmond".  They
normally tell you that on the "First Train" sign, but today it was
blank.  I caught the train anyway, and ended up in Gunnesbury.  I then
caught a train back to where I'd come from, and as I did, I saw the
train going the other way just pulling in.  I rushed down and up and
caught the train in the nick of time, but once again, no sign to say
if it was the right one.  I took my chances anyway, but had visions
of going to Gunnesbury for the rest of the day.  Fortunately it was
the right one.

The filing has still not been mathematically analysed, so I just play
it by ear still.  I realise also that it needs proper timings done,
as I need to know how long it takes to put a form in the same folder
as opposed to having to change folders.  I still did not have the
will to do this formally.  I went to lunch today, had a stir fry with
one of my colleagues.  It snowed today, even had to use an umbrella
with snow falling on my umbrella on my way home!

1998-04-15:
Filing came closer to finishing, the small amount of paper is actually
a large job.  This office is really quite mad.  They've had a string
of temps doing the secretarial job.  Not only did they have one temp
taking the place of another temp, but they actually got themselves into
the bizarre situation where they had a temp secretary replacing another
temp secretary temporarily whilst she went on holiday.  Ye gads!  And
the permanents' lives seem to be based around the various temps they've
had in, complaining mainly about their filing ability.  It's basically 
just like Fawlty Towers except with temps replacing customers.

Another stir fry today.  On the way home I saw a black bird (crow?) that 
didn't look too well.  After it seemed to pass out I decided it was safe 
to handle and tried to put it back in the tree, but it was obvious it was 
going to fall off.  So I tried putting it out of sight so that it would 
still be safe when it woke up.

1998-04-16:
The crow was still there today, so it is presumably having an extended
rest.  Today is the big interview day at British Airways.  I had decided
to leave at 2pm to give me plenty of time to get there, but that got
delayed till 2:30pm because I wanted to finish off some filing.  I needed
to catch 3 trains to get there.  The last one foiled me.  I could have
sworn the "First Train" on the Picadilly Line said "Heathrow", but it
took me elsewhere.  A few mad rushings about and I finally ended up in
Heathrow.  Crossed a spooky bridge over the freeway and finally got to
the security place.  Unfortunately when I called the guy he didn't answer
the phone, so I didn't know what to do.  But I had instructions to get
me to a particular building and did that.  He still didn't answer the
phone and I decided to eat my lunch (skittles - some lollies).  When I
had finished them I then attracted someone's attention to get into the
building I was waiting at.  It turned out that the instructions I had
been given were wrong anyway, and this was the wrong building.  Someone
showed me the way and eventually I was there for an interview.

They seemed happy with most of the stuff, and then gave me a test on
3 things - C, JCL and DB2.  Unfortunately the questionairre they gave
me was hopeless, several things had incorrect answers.  And the people
interviewing me didn't actually know C themselves, so they couldn't
understand why the answers were wrong.  There was only one of the
questions which I answered half-wrong, with a minor mistake, they knew
I had got the main gist right.  The JCL was mainly OK, I just didn't 
know some IMS thing.  The DB2 stuff I basically got completely wrong,
I didn't know how to specifically use the DB2 menus, I had not needed
to use them for that purpose (e.g. finding indexes for a table) when
I was using DB2.  And the only thing that wasn't DB2-related was to
do with an extension (ie non-standard SQL) of what data type is used
to store FIXED DECIMAL(13,2).  I said I would use a "char" field
because there's no C data type for packed decimal unless you use an
extension, and that I would read into char and then convert to an
integer.  The answer they wanted was "double", which I said was a
dangerous thing to be using for what was probably a monetary value,
since floating point is not exact.  I don't know one way or the other
what the outcome will be.

1998-04-20:
After a weekend of recuperation where the most exciting thing that
happened was eating "Frosted Flakes" instead of "Corn Flakes" for
breakfast, I returned to the hospital to do some complicated task
(it was complicated when it was explained to me last week anyway).
It wasn't complicated when I came to do it though, it involved taking
a memo, a catalogue and putting them in an envelope and then sticking
a label on it.  There was only one palet to do though.  I was expecting
to be given a desk to work at, but it appeared that the palet in the
store room sufficed as a desk, with standing room only.  I wasn't sure
how long I could stand standing in the one spot so went mad trying to
finish it before I collapsed.  Of course, my desktop got smaller and
smaller as I went through it.  Rather than attempting to bend over and
work off the floor without falling over, I kept the desktop at the same
height and just made the space decrease.  This meant getting boxes from
the back and sneaking them around etc.  I was told the job was "the
short straw" which reminded me of Neil's comment "I still think it was
pretty uncool of the other guys not showing me their straws".  It's
amazing how the Young Ones reflects true life as much as Douglas Adams's
42 does.  Anyway, I ran out of memos with just 22 catalogues left, and
when I got more memos I ran out of catalogues with 50 stickers left.
Apparently this was a world first.  I didn't collapse as many expected,
and did a bit more filing before someone commandeered my desk and I
decided that was the last straw, so left.

Rowan came in that night to collect the laptop that Bronwyn left behind,
and while she was here we asked her how to rent out a unit.

1998-04-21:
Our whirlwind trip started.  Unfortunately the calculations I did meant
that we were practically broke (or rather, about to become broke) in
Australian dollars so we couldn't do anything about Xiayi's childhood
dream of owning a palmtop that could link to the desktop.  Regardless,
as usual everything was way over the top pricewise.  I also went into
a little telephone booth to call my agent about the contract job I had
been interviewed for.  No word back yet.  So on to the 20 hour flight.  
This was uneventful except for the usual video stuffups.  If I haven't 
already mentioned it, these people really are brain-dead.  First of all 
there is a pause and then the tape resumes.  Then a few seconds later the 
brain-dead pilot pipes in to tell us that the plane is faster than swimming,
even though swimming was theoretically cheaper assuming you could eat fish
on the way.  Then on again.  What can I say besides "Thank the gods for 
autopilot"?  On the Bangkok to Sydney route there was a change of crew and 
this pilot did his announcement at the beginning (before playing the tape) 
and then said he wouldn't interrupt again.  I reckon he should run for PM - 
I'd vote for him.

1998-04-22:
We arrived at 8pm, got through customs etc quickly, and then discovered
that the trainee in London had failed to put "priority" stickers on our
bags.  Dear oh dear.  Since we turned up so early, our luggage was right
near the end.  The taxi queue on the rainy day took us about 20 minutes
to get through, stuck behind 4 smokers.  When we got home we found that
we didn't need to go over to my parents-in-law place to get the mail
because they had turned up that day and brought the letters plus bought
some food for us.  It was really appreciated.  I then tested out a video
that I bought over here, to confirm that the Britain book was definitely
rubbish when they made a nonsensical comment that Britain uses VHS which
is incompatible with PAL.  Yeah, right.  VHS is incompatible with Beta,
and PAL is incompatible with NTSC, but I've never heard of VHS not being
used in USA.

1998-04-23:
First thing in the morning the removalists came to evaluate the job.
He didn't seem to have a problem with doing that.  The lights in 
the study were flickering again, and last night the lights in the bedroom 
had gone off totally due to the stupid wiring done by the equally stupid 
builder all those years ago, so I decided to bite the bullet and just get 
an electrician in.  He came, he saw, he conquered.  The real estate agent 
came in too (one that had given us a free valuation some months earlier) 
and reckoned our place was worth $350-$400/week unfurnished or $450-$500 
furnished.  This was about $100 more than we thought it would rent for
(and after 2 months of not being rented, we ended up being right and
poor). Indeed, someone else in the building is renting a 2-bedroom unit 
in our blocks for $280/week unfurnished, although it is nothing compared 
to ours.

We had all sorts of odds and ends listed that we needed to do while we
were over here, and had actually listed them all down whilst we were
still in the UK, so we moved at a frantic pace.  Our tax returns had
come in, a couple of rights issues had passed us by, and Xiayi went
to see a doctor about her months-old sore throat.  She got some
inhaler.

Overnight I got a call from the agent, saying that I had the contract
with BA, subject to rate negotiation.  That was the end of it for 
tonight, despite the fact that I told her to ring me whatever the time.
They also wanted me to fax them some ID, which wasn't very convenient.

1998-04-24:
I fixed the computer today (it was previously open, with the CD sticking
out of it).  I took my 3 surviving fish to the fish shop.  One neon
tetra, one black widow and one khuli loach.  I had contracted tonsolitis 
yet again.  Augmentin was prescribed this time, which is what I think I 
will ask for in future (other choices are penicillin, abbocillin and 
amoxycillin).  Getting in quick sure helped.  Whilst waiting at the
doctor's I read the classifieds looking at cars and found a place that
bought old cars.  I rang them up but they weren't interested in my car,
said you couldn't give them away.

We also went to the place where we bought the notebook computer, so that 
I could get my $50 deposit back for a PCMCIA card that they never delivered.
The packers arrived and quickly demolished the house, quite impressive.
But just before the packers arrived, we went out and the front door handle
came off in my hand!  Bloody hell!!!  Very very luckily I was able to
reinsert it to open the door.  So we went out, and when we came back I
went and got an old door handle from downstairs which I had kept for a
rainy day.  It wasn't quite the right sort, but when I tried to take it
off again, I couldn't figure out how to do it!  So I called the real
estate agent and arranged for a locksmith to come out and change it.
He managed to disassemble the one I put there without needing to
hacksaw it off, and it was all fixed in about 15 minutes, for a cost of
$90.

I arranged for various accounts to be cancelled, and got mail redirected.  
I met a guy (Allan) from work in the post office and asked him if he 
wanted a car or potplants but he wasn't interested in the car and would 
get back to me about the potplants.  Just before the shops closed that 
night I bought a couple of trousers that didn't require ironing.  Saturday 
was a public holiday (Anzac Day) so everything had to be done immediately.

That night Xiayi rang up some places to see if we could get the carpet
cleaned tomorrow, and eventually settled on some guy for $80 instead
of our family carpet cleaner (we don't have a family doctor but we do
have a family carpet cleaner) because he no longer cleaned carpets,
which was a damn shame because he was bloody brilliant.

My agent rang tonight and the contract had been sorted.  I also told 
them the ID shouldn't be a problem, as we were going to Xiayi's work 
tomorrow for work-related reasons.

1998-04-25:
I made out a list of all the quirks of using the house and the equipment.
Xiayi put the curtains in for cleaning.  We moved all the potplants from
the balcony to our carpark.  Then we went to Xiayi's work, but on the
way I asked her if she remembered to take her books, and she hadn't.
Luckily we hadn't quite gone to the turnoff to the freeway.  We were
running a bit late for the 9am meeting.  But we eventually got going
again, and at exactly the same spot (just before the freeway), I
"suddenly remembered" I needed to take my passport in.  The look on
Xiayi's face was worth bottling - total dismay, frustration, anger,
despair all rolled into one.  Then I laughed and continued onto the
freeway, since I'd organized that well in advance.  She wasn't
impressed!

Although we were about 10 minutes late to the meeting, we were still
there before the other 2.  I amused myself by dreaming up all sorts
of things I could do with a phone and 2 hours to spare.  I faxed off
the ID as planned, then I rang Citibank to get our recently-acquired
credit cards to be auto-paid.  Then I got our wine society membership
cancelled on the pretext of going overseas.  I rang up my family
wrecker to see if he would buy my car, but he wasn't buying anything
for 2-3 weeks.

Things were getting reasonably desperate car-wise now, and I was even
wondering about the possibility of leaving the car on the road and
paying whatever the fine was.  Then I thought of asking the Indians
that Xiayi was meeting with if they wanted it.  One of them was here
for a year but didn't have a valid licence yet.  The other was here
for 1 month and did have a licence.  There was an obvious combination
that could work here, so we gave them a lift home and asked them to
ring us about it.

I went out again (walked) to drop in the keys that we copied yesterday
in Chatswood to the real estate agent.  On the way to withdraw some
money, I walked past the dry cleaners, and noticed what looked like
our curtains.  A bit of discussion later and I walked out with them
all done (they weren't expected until Monday!).

The carpet cleaner came and went, not doing a very good job.  We went
to Xiayi's cousin's place today.  They are minding all the pot plants
for us, and incredibly we managed to fit all of the potplants into the
car.  Even found room for Xiayi in amongst the plants.  When we got
there I suddenly found that they had a really long driveway.  Like REALLY 
LONG.  Ideal for storing a car on for a year.  She agreed to let us store 
the car there as the fallback plan, and I was going to get a drip tray 
(for the oil leak) and some stumps of some description, so that the car 
didn't need to be manually started every week.  Xie Yi was there and 
explained some of the finer points of why you needed to move the car to 
protect the tyres.  We also took Xiayi's mum out for driving lessons,
and on the way I saw a garage that might have a drip tray, but she was
unable to return to that road because the only reason she went past it
was because she was lost.  I attempted to give the car to Anne's son
Kevin as an early birthday present, but he didn't fall for it.

1998-04-26:
Got a call from the short-term Indian, he wanted the car, so we
arranged to meet him at midday, and I synched my watch to his.  Then an 
hour later Allan's daughter (Fiona) rang up wanting the car!  But it was 
too late!  However, the Indian option had only had one half of it 
operational, so I rang the other half to see how keen she was, but she 
wasn't keen at all, leaving the option open for Fiona.  Fiona came over 
and was happy with the car and is thus lined up to take over the car in 
a month's time.  We have a complex system of internet addresses set up 
so that most of Sydney is involved in looking after my car while I'm away.

We spent most of today cleaning and ringing family.  We went to a Thai
restaurant tonight and spent up big, on the premise that this would be
our last restaurant meal for 6-12 months (Xiayi's new contract).  In
Britain it will be back to raw food.

1998-04-27:
Mainly cleaning today.  Xiayi's parents came over again today (they
were over yesterday), since Xiayi forgot to give them some important
(sentimental) painting.  I also needed to buy batteries for the clock,
and decided that while I was doing that I would jot down some prices
of the more important things in life like baked beans.  The place was
looking really nice when we left it, so we took lots of photos of it,
then headed out to the airport.  We left a bit later than usual, but
it was still fine, we got there 1.5 hours before departure.  Well,
except for the fact that when I synched my watch previously, I actually
took it back 5 minutes.  My watch is normally fast.  As such, we weren't
particularly early like normal, so we didn't get window seats.  Not only
that, but someone was actually sitting in one of our seats, because we'd
boarded late as well, as we chased up palmtop computers again (where
there was a much cheaper range of options than was available in Britain!).

The problem was eventually solved in our favour, the couple thought they
could sit together despite the fact that their boarding pass put them
on different rows.  However, that didn't really concern us, except that
it meant I missed out on peanuts.  The real killer was Bangkok, where
the person sitting next to us was replaced.  At first it was just a
normal woman approaching and then I noticed what was attached to her.
Let's just say it was appropriate that they were showing "Alien 4" on
the inflight movies, this was just like those horrible monsters that pop
out of your stomach.  Except they call them "babies" on these planets.  I
was literally dumstruck.  I realised the expression "jaw dropped" is
literally true.  You try to think of something to say but there's nothing
you can do, it's like you've just been told you're never going to amount
to anything more than a laundromat boy.  She even said "bad news".  She
was right.  I since tried to come up with a solution to this problem, as
there's probably a genuine reason why she's catching the plane, it's
likely to be a requirement of her husband's employment, not just some
mad desire to tour Europe with a baby.  What can you do?  Can't live
with them, not allowed to make glue out of them.  She then said she would
put the kid on the chair (I thought that was a strange thing to say) and
I was about to say something along the lines of "don't worry, I'll make
sure he doesn't vandalise the chair" when Xiayi popped up and asked if
she would like her to hold it, which the woman gratefully accepted.  I
then swapped seats with Xiayi.

The baby woke me up 3 times during the trip.  This was at least partly
responsible for me attempting 3 times to watch one of the movies.  I was
so tired that I couldn't last the full 2:34 and when I woke up it would
be at a different point in the tape.  I was about to blame a near-miss
of one of the meals on the baby, but that was just due to tiredness and
attempting to go to sleep before the baby started crying.  Oh, so it
was the baby's fault after all.  The steward was completely hopeless.
I asked for an orange juice and 5 minutes later I had to press the
button to remind him!  Then he failed to hand out the immigration cards
to me.  I think part of the problem is that we were sitting in the
middle, in a block of 3 seats, which doesn't divide into 2 properly,
and is all-round confusing anyway (for someone with the IQ of a steward,
anyway).

This flight we saw the first situation ever of a pilot interrupting the
movie to report on something that wasn't pure egomaniacal ego-boosting.
He said that there was a Swiss airline to the left of the plane which
looked really good and there was the shadow of OUR plane's vapour trail
on another cloud.  It was good looking.  A genuine emergency-style
interruption.

1998-04-28:
Fairly uneventful arrival, caught tube back home.  Went to Sainsbury's
to get some prices, and made the shocking discovery that a lot of stuff
is significantly cheaper over here (rawish foods).  Unable to find a
modem cable though, everyone was sold out.  Here are some price
comparisons:

680g bread 1.85                19p|49.4c/800g        23%
san corn flakes 500g 2.99      47p|1.22/500g         41%
HB cola 2L 1.19                22p|57c               48%
TV week 2.40                   49p|1.27              53%
HB baked beans 420g 55c        13p|33.8/420g         61%
chicken drumsticks 3.29/kg     2.44|6.34/2.5kg       77%
Pert 2 in 1 375ml 5.56         1.39|3.61/300ml       81%
chicken breast $10/kg          8.45|22/2.5kg         88%
HB 2L milk 2.27                89p|$2.31/2.27L       90%
HB water 1.5L 75c              35p|91/2L             91%
2L coca cola 2.37              99p|2.57             108%
strepsils 3.94                 1.95|5.07            129%
Skittles 200g 1.89             10p|26/20g           138%
Herron 24 tablets 1.91         1.39|3.61            189%

Another shocking thing is that homebrand cola is cheaper than water
over here!  It doesn't taste as good as real coke though.  From
memory the Herron (Panadol equivalent) was on special, which would
account for some of the difference.  I'll have a closer look for that
at a chemist, otherwise I might write to Herron to find out why they
don't export to Britain.  I suppose the absurd difference in the
price of bread may be because of the supposed generosity of American
taxpayers in subsidising wheat exports.

I also went into one of those neat booths that take passport photos.
Unfortunately I had to adjust my seat down in order to get lined up,
but there was no indication of how exactly to do that.  I ended up
having to arch my back and stick my feet outside the cubicle in order
to get it taken.  Not sure what the people outside thought of that,
but a dog started howling anyway.  I sweated away the 3-4 minutes it
took to develop.  Passport photos are a bit of a stuffup really.  I
had excess ones in Australia, but didn't think to take them with us
when we went to Britain in January.  Then when we were home again I
forgot yet again.  I might just submit a standing order for passport
photos if this keeps up.


1998-04-28-1999-07-02:
I stopped writing the diary for the remainder of the time I was in
Britain (as above), since I was working fulltime.  During that time
we continued to do things, but not at such a hectic pace.  We also
went to other countries, starting with Tyrol, Austria, for a
traditional childhood white Christmas, which didn't turn out to be 
so, partly because it wasn't snowing on the day, but also partly
because Charlie Brown wasn't there, perhaps the US is where
traditional Christmas's come from.  I'm pretty sure they don't come
from London, partly because it doesn't usually snow there, partly
because Christmas joy had to be forced on them from the continent.
I suppose being an atheist doesn't help much either.

Later on I bought my first GPS receiver, and we started doing
weekendish trips to Europe (all of which have been documented).
Also my wife's family came over and started touring London with
the GPS, collecting lots of waypoints.  We also went and visited
Battle (a town where the Battle of Hastings really took place),
and Lewes Castle (LEWESC).  Also went to Brighton, the seaside
resort, which was completely pathetic beach-wise.  They do have
a huge arcade complex on the Brighton Pier (BTNPER) and we also
went to the Brighton Pavilion (BTNPAV).  On the day before they 
were due to return to Australia, at which point I would have 
emailed the waypoints etc, our house was burgled, and they took 
the computer and GPS cable.

Rather than just give up the data as lost, I thought that next
time I was in the city, I would whiz around and collect waypoints,
so that the burglers didn't get everything.  My relos managed to
visit an incredible number of places that it ended up taking me 
two trips, and they can be seen below.  Where the location has 
appeared in my story already I have inserted the newly acquired 
waypoint.  Otherwise, where the 16 character description is 
self-explanatory I have not added anything.  Otherwise, read on!

My wife did her exams (external from Australia) at the 
Commonwealth Uni (COMUNI).  On the way to Greenwich if you take
the ferry you get out at the Cutty Sark (CTYSRK), an old ship.
You can also go via the train (GRNWTR).  The Old Royal
Observatory (OROYLO) is on the meridian line, but you will find
it is not exactly 0 degrees because WGS-84 is used instead of
the British Ordinance Survey coordinate system.  The person from
Brighton who got the Southernmost English Meredian point (STHMDN)
didn't realise this and was determined to get the number to 0 by
moving off a bit.  He also got the Ditchling Beacon (DBECON) which
I haven't seen myself.

The Family Records Centre (FAMREC) is of interest to anyone with
English ancestors who wants to do geneaology - this is THE place
to be, which has THE records.  The closest underground is Angel
(UANGEL).  Whilst working in BA I marked down a huge level crossing 
(HTWGAT) where they wheel the Concorde across every day.  Apparently 
it's the biggest in the world or similar (in Australia they'd say it 
was the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere, safe in the knowledge 
that there's only 3 countries actually IN the Southern Hemisphere).

We went outside Kensington Palace (KNSPAL) because our relos chose
that place to go, Marble Arch (MARBLE) because we went to the
famous (although I hadn't heard of it, the relos had) "Speaker's
Corner" (SPKRCR), where I got a photo of me genuinely trying to
pursuade people to buy a GPS receiver.  There wasn't anyone around
though, and there was no podium because they only bring that out on
Sunday.

On the way to Australia House (OZCOMM) to vote we passed something
professing to be the University of London (UNILON), although we
saw another such place near the British Museum (UNILN2) also
professing to be the same thing.  They're probably a chain of
universities in the same way that Sainsbury's is a chain of
supermarkets.

One place that we didn't go was Windsor Castle.  That's because we
could go at any time, we knew the train we needed to catch, and it
was about 2 minutes walk from where we lived.  By the time we did
get around to doing it, the only day that was free Sophie was
getting married there so it was likely closed.  Great planning Xiayi!

And then there was our experience as we left the country.  We had
taken some of our stuff to be independently shipped by Qantas Cargo 
(QCARGO) and walked part of the way back, past some big BA World
Cargo centre or something (BAWCAR), and got the location of the
Hilton where we were about to stay before we left.  Also before we
left I wanted to buy some Dr Marten's shoes and also revisit the
Family Records centre with some new requests.  Dr Marten's had only
one of the ones I wanted left, so I had to find my way to Shelly's
(SHELLY).  Of course no-one in London had ever heard of the place,
assuming they spoke English at all, so it took some effort before
I found it.  All this was in pouring rain too (29 June 1999).  So
laden with luggage, I had a final onslaught to the Family Records
centre.

I'd been to the Family Records Centre before, but it took a hell of
a lot of finding.  The street it was in, Myddleton, didn't appear to
be in the A-Z index, but I found it on the page of the area anyway.
The trouble is there's about 3 streets of that name there, and it
took me half an hour just to get to the first one, as I took a
couple of wrong turns before I finally found a street sign that
matched my book.  But find it I did, and after searching up and down
the whole street, I decided it wasn't there.  We then left that
Myddleton Street, down another Myddleton Street (or Place or 
whatever), and then wandered around asking people if they knew where
it was, which of course they didn't, they were all from Skonthorpe
(where Kickerboots are made!), never been here in my life, I just
hang around areas where there's 3 streets called Myddleton, it's a
whacky hobby of mine.  But I lucked upon a sign pointing the way,
but there was no Family Records centre to be found that way.  I
asked in a shop whether this was it, and they said no, it was a
long way down that way.  We got there in the end, not long before
closing time, so it was a real rush getting the forms filled in.
Life would be a lot simpler if people knew their GPS locations!

Unfortunately this time I was running late with the Dr Marten's 
cockup, and then tragedy struck - the underground station I needed,
Angel, was shut!  I got off at the next station, which seemed miles
away, and whipped out my GPS, as I had previously taken a fix.  It
was about 1km away.  I figured I could do it in time.  In the
pouring rain, with my GPS and compass and laden with luggage, I
made the journey to within the 100 metres accuracy of the GPS.  And
didn't recognize a thing.  The school that was nearby had been
vapourised by passing aliens, and those blue signs that pointed the
way had all been replaced with other blue signs which said
completely useless things.  So close but yet so far!  After asking 
a myriad of people who ended up being tourists who just arrived from
the US yesterday or similar whacky excuses (and accents), I finally
got the place.  It was right nearby, but the direction I came in
this time made the street look like some back alley.  I'll have to
get more organized with DGPS to get the 5 metre etc accuracies I
need to navigate London.  Once again it was mortal panic as I 
filled in the forms before closing time.  This time I marked the 
forms with my relationship to the people as descendant instead of 
ancestor.  I caught a random bus going in roughly the right
direction, and got off when it was in proximity of Shelley's, which
wasn't far from Covent Gardens, on the Picadilly Line.

On the night we moved to the Hilton, we checked in late as we had
been busy cleaning the house.  And the Hilton had managed to
translate a non-smoking double-bed into smoking twin-share.  They
refused to relent on the smoking room, claiming they were full.
If they're so full of non-smoking rooms, why didn't they convert
the smoking ones?  As it was we were told to try the smoking one,
and if we didn't like it, we could try another smoking room.
Great!  The place stunk, so I asked for an alternative, and this
time they offered the disabled room.  I asked if there was anything
wrong with it, and they said it didn't have a bath.  Since I only
have a shower anyway, I couldn't see a problem, so accepted.

The next morning I found out what was wrong with not having a bath.
Despite being the Hilton, in the normal rooms, the shower is 
actually in the bath, they haven't got a separate shower!  Bit too
technical that.  But in the disabled rooms, the lack of the bath
has translated into flooding the entire floor whenever you have a
shower.  It's completely bizarre, there's only a slight metal
rung to "stop" the water from the shower going onto the bathroom 
floor.  If we assume for the moment that disabled people can only
cope with a small metal rung, I don't want to think too hard about
the technicalities of that, couldn't they at least have a decent
shower curtain that went all the way to the ground.  As it was, it
was about 20 cm above the ground, and OUTSIDE the metal rung, so
any water that it managed to trap at all, landed outside.  And
then, after flooding the bathroom floor, there isn't even a separate
drain to take the overflow!!!  So having a shower means flooding
the floor, and it makes it look like you're an uncouth person who
can't even shower properly!

So the next morning I asked if I could change rooms when I came
back that night (late again, we work late), but they couldn't do
that either.  I wasn't allowed to move into an uncleaned room
left by someone who had vacated earlier, but nor could I move at
night because they were full up and would be moving someone else
into the disabled room anyway.  If I repacked all my stuff they
would move my suitcases when I was out, but they couldn't move it
unless I repacked.  That was easier said than  done, but I went 
back to scope the task.  It wasn't feasible, Xiayi was already at
work and I didn't know which of her clothes couldn't be cut into
small pieces so that they could fit in the small holes I found in
the suitcase.  So we had one more flood in the morning, then
that night the cleaners asked if we wanted anything, and I
explained I was sorry about the flooding, but it's a technical
design fault, can I have some more towels.  That allowed us to
have another shower that night the plane left, use the towels to
soak up the water, and still be able to have a shower the next
morning if we failed to board the plane, which was touch and go.
As it turns out we did manage to board the plane and were soon
on our way to Singapore.  But we completely forgot to use up our 
British coins, so we've still got stacks of British currency.
There's only one good thing I can say about the Hilton - it's
bloody close to Heathrow Terminal 4 - you can walk it.

And that's about it.  I must say that it was a great experience to
visit Britain.  The people are on the whole friendly, and its a
country where they actually do things instead of watching others
do it (e.g. Kosovo).  Disadvantages are the poor road infrastructure,
its almost upsetting seeing them struggling with a city "designed"
too long ago and they're stuck with it, it's all historic.  They
also seem to have failed to adopt some "world's best practices",
especially the fact that they put the washing machine in the kitchen,
so that whenever you take the clothes out they fall on the dirty
kitchen floor, instead of having a separate laundry.  And it's not
just due to lack of space.  We were living in a 2 storey house with
3 toilets - but no laundry.  It ain't rocket science guys!  The
experience has made me appreciate things more back in Australia,
where I now look on with relief at things that have become half
price.  Being back in the 3rd world has its advantages!  Oh, and
the poms aren't the whingers, it's the Australians who are.  Pick
up a copy of the Southern Cross one Wednesday and it's cover to
cover whinging bloody Aussies.


W  ALBHAL N51 30.1101 W000 10.6299 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Albert Hall    
W  ALBMEM N51 30.1777 W000 10.7007 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Albert Memorial
W  BAKERS N51 31.3622 W000 09.4258 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Baker St (SH!)
W  BAWCAR N51 27.5529 W000 27.6067 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 BA World Cargo?
W  BIGBEN N51 30.0017 W000 07.4473 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Big Ben      
W  BRLARC N51 30.4606 W000 08.4396 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Burlington Arcad
W  BRMUSM N51 31.1369 W000 07.5149 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 British Museum
W  BTNPAV N50 49.3498 W000 08.2169 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Brighton Pavilon
W  BTNPER N50 49.1673 W000 08.1419 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Brighton Pier
W  BUKPAL N51 30.1018 W000 08.4879 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Buckingham Palac
W  CHNTWN N51 30.7053 W000 07.7953 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 China Town     
W  COMUNI N51 31.4980 W000 07.8149 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Commonwealth Uni
W  COVENT N51 30.7094 W000 07.4135 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Covent Gardens
W  CTYSRK N51 29.0058 W000 00.5465 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Cutty Sark     
W  DBECON N50 54.0242 W000 06.2889 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Ditchling Beacon
W  DRMRTN N51 30.6515 W000 07.3669 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Dr Martens Boots
W  FAMREC N51 31.6071 W000 06.3855 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Family Records
W  GRNWTR N51 28.7004 W000 00.7818 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Greenwich Train
W  HARLTN N51 29.2501 W000 26.1145 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Harlington
W  HARROD N51 30.0248 W000 09.7696 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Harrods
W  HEATH4 N51 27.5162 W000 26.8455 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Heathrow Term 4
W  HEATRW N51 28.2584 W000 27.1886 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Heathrow Airport
W  HESTON N51 29.0522 W000 22.2747 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Heston
W  HILTON N51 27.5182 W000 26.5584 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Hilton near T4
W  HTWGAT N51 28.5095 W000 25.6678 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Big Level X-ing
W  KNSPAL N51 30.3708 W000 11.1867 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Kensington Palac
W  LCSTST N51 30.7188 W000 07.7206 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Leceistr St Tube
W  LEWESC N50 52.3312 E000 00.5111 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Lewes Castle
W  LWTLOO N51 30.1365 W000 06.8297 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 London Waterloo
W  MADTUS N51 31.3931 W000 09.2871 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Madame Tusauds
W  MARBLE N51 30.7770 W000 09.5021 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Marble Arch
W  NATGAL N51 30.4851 W000 07.8059 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 National Gallery
W  OROYLO N51 28.6788 W000 00.0966 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Old Royal Obsvty
W  OXFDCS N51 30.9245 W000 08.4992 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Oxford Circus
W  OZCOMM N51 30.7619 W000 06.9426 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Australia House
W  PICDLY N51 30.5981 W000 08.0927 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Piccadilly Circs
W  QCARGO N51 27.7277 W000 28.1976 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Qantas Cargo
W  RITZ   N51 30.3847 W000 08.5230 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Ritz Hotel
W  SHELLY N51 30.8240 W000 07.5053 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Shelly's (shoes)
W  SPKRCR N51 30.7352 W000 09.5633 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Speaker's Corner
W  STHMDN N50 47.3587 E000 00.0000 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Southern Merdian
W  STPAUL N51 30.8173 W000 05.9973 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 St Paul's Cathdl
W  TRAFLG N51 30.5041 W000 07.7232 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Trafalgar Square
W  TWRBRG N51 30.3502 W000 04.5010 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Tower Bridge
W  TWRHIL N51 30.6126 W000 04.5492 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Tower Hill Tube
W  TWRLON N51 30.4877 W000 04.6545 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Tower of London
W  UANGEL N51 31.9760 W000 06.3169 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Angel Undergrnd
W  UNILN2 N51 31.2930 W000 07.6327 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Uni of London 2
W  UNILON N51 30.6901 W000 07.0453 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Uni of London
W  USPAUL N51 30.8569 W000 05.8296 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Underground StPl
W  WESTMN N51 30.0223 W000 07.6337 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Westminster Abby
W  WLNGTN N51 30.2398 W000 09.0454 Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 1989 Wellington Statu