So I haven’t really gotten to keep this (my London Blog) as up-to-date as I’d like. I guess I was having too much fun while I was there and trying to catch up with life now that I’m home. I haven’t filled in a lot of the blanks or explained a lot of things. But I think I have most of the photos I’d like to post up (not all of them, I just ran out of disk space on my server, had to delete the Boston photos to find room).
Other stuff:
Here’s the last set of photos. This makes four…
Today’s the first day I’ve felt way more than Half-Human since I’ve been back from vacation. Hopefully I can get a few things done this weekend: mail some CDs (sorry, BurnIt folks, they’re done I just need to print everything out), post my last few London photos, make my donation to to blog-a-thon, e-mail some people, play some BurnIt CDs (just got a bunch so at least I know everyone else was behind too), propane for the grill (I just threw out steaks that have been sitting in the fridge for the last week), go to the bank and I’m sure a few other things. As I’m writing this I can see I’m still a little fuzzy in the brain, I’ve just corrected a lot of synonyms (I do that when I’m not feeling well and/or on medications) in this post.
So while I was in London I had a chance to have lunch with Nick of ‘only so much writing in the air’. He had lots of insight on London/American differences which I always find interesting. It was great to chat with someone who worked in the area and in similar IT areas. He’s a very ‘open source’ person and we chatted about that that a bit and one thing that sticks (and while it may be more obvious there than here) is ‘it’s easy to use open-source software when the industry standard doesn’t support languages you need’ (such as Welsh). I suppose I wouldn’t have a hard time convincing my school district to switch to open source if MS didn’t let us type in the language we needed. It was a lot more interesting lunch than I make it out to be here but it’s not like I took notes or anything. :)
This is the cool Epson taxi.
Here are some more PHOTOS, mostly of the major landmarks along the Thames. The tower bridge, the Eye of London (super slow ferris wheel), Big Ben/Westminster Abbey, me Blading. London Bridge (the flat one), bungee trampolining and a few other sites around town.
A lot of people asked me about ATM fees when I used my money card in London. The only fee I had for using the card was $-1.00. My bank doesn’t charge me any fees (I think) so it it was just the fee from the other end (although if that’s true I don’t know why only a dollar and not a pound). My experience with ATMs anywhere world wide (England, Costa Rica and Prague) has always been that the ATM has been perfect for a good exchange rate.
Charge cards are good everywhere and as far as I can tell have no extra fees and the banks calculate the exchange rate. Be sure to use one at Garfunkel’s because they use a cool remote gizmo to scan it at your table and print your receipt right there.
Be sure to get a good phone card (AT&T) from Sam’s club or somewhere so you can save $$$ on your calls back home. Be sure to look up on-line what the International numbers are to dial first to call back home. Read the instructions on the card, you can generally hit *** after making one call so you don’t need to dial all the digits again. If you have a 200 minute card you get about 30-60 minutes when calling back to the US (they calculate and tell you how much you have left at the start of each call) and you can add minutes with your charge card at the same really good rate (which is generally > 4 cents at home and 25-35 cents to call home). Use it from a pay phone NOT your room, they’ll really nail you from the hotels overseas. (Use change to call locally when you are overseas, otherwise it seems like you’re actually calling from the US to overseas when you use the card.)
The hired help here is pretty useless many times. The biggest problem is they don’t know how to say "I don’t know" and just make up an answer so if it’s an important question be sure to get (at least) two confirming answers. For example:
1) When you see a train arriving (on the wrong track) and you ask the guy at the ticket counter where it’s going and he tells you there is no train. Don’t argue with him for more than 88 seconds that there really is a train, just go down and check for yourself. That 2 seconds might be what you need so you don’t have to wait another 30 minutes for the next train (trust me).
2) When you ask the waitress what the "Scampi and Chips" is and she says it’s chips with scampi don’t bother asking any more. But if you feel the need and all she clarifies with is that chips are (french) fries (which anyone who’s been in London more than 15 minutes knows, i.e. fish and chips) with scampi. So you feel the need to clarify more and she tells you scampi is beef don’t think it’s a chips=fries thing, think it’s a she’s clueless thing. (I saw this one happen)
FYI – prawns=shrimp and tiger prawns=jumbo shrimp. When you order water (unless you want bottled) order tap water, it’s yummy and free. They don’t keep anything cold so be sure to get ice.
Also the less busy a store/restaurant is and the more staff they have, the lower the quality of service. :)
I’m not saying we didn’t have fun, I’m just saying it wasn’t had to find bad service.
Raya was awsome! (Pronounced Ria) She worked at the same place as #2. She answered all of our questions we asked about food, the restaurant, the register surveillance system (which she never noticed before), acting school and told us that M is for music.
Posted in food + drink
Tagged customer service, England, help, hiring, London, people
So everyone thinks they know what the tube layout looks like. 
Everyone has seen the map with all the colored lines to help them get around. Remember that’s just a representation to help you get around (did you ever see the West Wing episode with the ‘map makers for an equal society’), it’s all in how you represent it. I’ll attach a tube map and and more visual representation next to it. They are large maps but they are interesting to see the difference.
Linking to our site, linking to posts or tweeting about this site counts as support too!
