My first 3 days in London

Hi,

I thought I’ll share with you the adventures I had during my first three days in London. The following is a mail I sent during those days (28-30 Aug 2003).

hiiii

sorry for the delay in writing this mail.  The last three days were a roller coaster ride for me.

thursday 9:45am  -  the flight from tvm to abudhabi was late by one hour.  i almost lost my passport while boarding the flight :)

a beautiful girl was supposed to sit next to me, but her brother decided to sit there :(

was really scared during the takeoff :)

reached abudhabi just in time for the connecting flight. this flight was much more comfortable, with an LCD screen in front of the seats and lots of movies.

5:25pm - reached london (around midnight India)

the moment i landed at london, the entire underground railway system of london (known as tubes) got disrupted.  and it remained like that till the next

day.  first time in five years that something like this has happened here. anyway, i was stranded at the airport.  luckily, my brother in law came to pick me up, and we managed to reach home after six and a half hours of roaming all over london in various buses with nearly 50 kg luggage.  and guess what, i was even fortunate enough to urinate on the roadsides of london (after the longest hour in my life), at midnight, and almost got caught by the police.

reached home at 12:45 midnight.

My first impression of london -  if one small power failure can stop the entire rail system of london, trivandrum etra bhedham !!!

friday -  i explored the neighbourhoods - i am staying at eastham, E6 1AT; a pakistani majority area. went to a pakistani mosque, and even prayed for the Kashmiri jehadi :-)

1:30 pm - got locked out of the house by mistake, with the keys inside. had to wait outside for four hours till the house owner came with duplicates.  in the

meantime, got a ladder from next door and tried to climb in through the window upstairs,  but couldn’t reach properly, had to take some risk, hadnt registered at any hospital, and no health insurance, so finally decided against it and got down.   

4:00pm -  walked for two - three streets with a  crowbar from some friends place, only to know later that its a crime to walk around with a weapon like that.

tried to find a telephone booth to call everyone but most booths here are automatic and require either coins or credit cards, both of which i dint have.  so

ended up not contacting anyone for two days.

saturday - went for sightseeing - The natural history museum (too good), science museum, imperial college, kensington gardens, and hyde park.  this particular

park is in the heart of the city and too damn huge (around 300 to 400 acres ) i walked all around it (was inspired by the birds, u could say:-)  )  by the time

i came out of it, i couldnt move,  so sat on a wall outside the science museum (where a lot of others were sitting), for nearly half an hour. was planning to go

the london bridge, and the parliament but dropped that plan and decided to go home. got an underground tube, slept in it, woke up two stops after my station, and had to travel back again.

now back home again.  its 8:00 pm and still quite bright outside.  the sun is about to set i think.

those were my adventures in just three days, looking forward for more.

winter officially started yesterday, so people have started wearing clothes :(

the time here was greenwich meantime GMT, but is now British Standard Time(BST) for winter. difference from Indian Standard Time (IST) is four and a half hours. 

planning to go to greenwich, westminster(parliament and the bridges), trafalgar square etc, tomorrow. got a travel pass for two days, with which i can travel all over london in any train or bus.  have to use it to the maximum.

evrythings expensive here; fone calls, sms, internet etc. one sms will cost me around 15 Rs !

cant think of anything more now

so see ya later

ba byeeeeeeeee

yours

jish

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