heya fellas.. am up n about, afta hibernation.
just came to know that UK is now on British Summer Time (GMT+1) and NOT GMT - GMT does NOT switch! So academically speaking, at the Royal Observatory, time stands still, while it does "Spring-forward" and "Fall-back" all around !! 
Hehe wot crazzzy world !! Here are more crazy things - GMT is also known as Zulu Time in military/aviation terminology, and in that JST- japan std.. is known as India Time !! 
I'll go nuts.. lets talk abt sensible things 
..
moved into a house owned by a punjabi family, who obliged us by giving us 3 of their bikes.
So now cycling to office in an MTB w/ gr. takes 15m. Weather is.. well.. very english now.. fickle, shortchanging, but manageable. sun n drizzles come n go.
Had gone to chk out the prices of laptops and cycles. Good laptops r around £900, while gear bikes start at £80 :( but got 1 for free anyway. Generally, it's expectedly quite expensive than say US cos o taxation, petrol etc- tis around £0.89/L, ie~$6.4/USgallon. Guess tis ~$2 in US now..?
was stayin across the Thames from the town, for 3 wks. There's quite some bird-activity around in the morning, tho haven't seen much variety.
Sometimes when walkin across the bridge, cud see a pro-looking rowing team of4 ladies practising on a narrow rowing boat. Inspired by this, I hit upon the idea of goin rowing today afternoon, and found a place 20m by train where we can hire small light rowing boats for 3-4£s/hr. But after reaching there, had to wait for the Thames tide n faster flow to come down, so ended up just strolling down the riverside.
First weekend, was plannin to go to Windsor, just 20m by bus from here. Heard the castle is quite impressive compared to Buckingham. But Camilla Parker spoiled my plans :). Being Prince Charles' wedding day, all the world's media and tons of royalists heading there, I decided to trash the idea.
Last sunday, ventured into central london, as London Marathon was on...
my boss here was running. (aftr that he's off for a wk :)
I's feeling nostalgic abt the Quarter-Marathon experience in Seoul, and thought I cud've given it a try here, hd I arrivd a few months earlier as per previous plans. Entries were closed some months back. Most were running for charity funds.
(I dont remember seeing any asians doing the run, other than probably some real athletes/pro's shown on tv.) There's separate race for even the disabled, on wheelchair.
Moving around, missed an interesting shot of this double-decker spiced up with a curry ad sayin "No nasty additives in our curries".. almost ended up chasing it but disappeared in traffic.
plan to catch up with some cyclin axn. wanna try some o these if possible...
Got a good gym nearby and raring to go footballing with some guys from this office, who go once a wk, and has been askin me to join.
Though i've just scratched coating on the surface, London looks pretty interesting, from the very afternoon I landed.. When I entered the guest house (where I'd stay for initial 3wks till I got a house on rent to move in with frnds), an ol'-but-xuberant Brit couple's house where they stay downstairs, the lady was coming in with her visiting grandchild, very cute looking 4yr old, (who made me want to reach for my camera for a portrait shot, but the yet-to-thaw alien feeling held me back), the kid was introduced to me as 'Maya'.. I wasn't sure the first time, whether I heard it right. She later went on, sayin her daughter-in-law is of Indian origin, who came to UK from the Caribbean.
But have also seen some minor irritant/provocative behaviour of racist white youths on the streets, tho rare aberration in this part.
The other day I's reading more abt London bridging the racial divide in NatGeo/JuneY2k. (Got good traveller's map of Britain n Ireland + London with that magazine)
from the article...
“In America you always have to choose: I’m black, or I’m not black,” he said. “When I go to New York to visit my sisters, I can, if I so choose, never speak to someone who is not black. Here that is not possible. There are so many different Londons that jostle side by side, and so many different kinds of people who live here, and we have a whole set of manners and ways of looking at people who are different from us that allow us to live right next door to them. To be cool about it.”
It is this convivial mixing of the races, not just its diversity, that is so special about London. “There is a great amount of intermarrying here,” says Sunand Prasad, an architect of Indian origin whose family emigrated to London 30 years ago. “The races used to be quite distinct, but rather than the edges becoming ever more sharply defined, as they are in France or the States, they are really beginning to blur.”
b4 signin off.... here's another.. one of those Brit-Am chutney
lemme move on guys,
adios..
