Standby Mode
26 July 2007 07:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amulMissed my flight, which is pretty fricking annoying, since I left three hours early, and skipped going out last night in order to make sure I made it.
Coffee, Cake and Kink was a brilliant place. I'm sorry I waited until the second day to go. If I'd gone the first day, I would have discovered that they had free internet there, and would have then spent the rest of my trip parked there, drinking coffee and editing photos for Dragon Con. That would have been a lovely way to spend two days in London.
Mind you, I'm not exactly complaining about how I ended up spending that time.
If I get bored enough, and if there's no room on the flight six hours from now, I may draw you a map of everywhere I went. Hell, maybe I'll go back to CCK if I end up having to stay the extra seven hours. The time in transit would at least be active, and I've got my cameras on me. ALL of them...
Snippets of imagery and thought from my time in the UK:
I really want a Union Jack shirt. No idea why.
The number of Indians in this country is freaking me out! They're completely homogenized, too. By the time I got out of the airport, I'd seen half a dozen baggage handlers, three customs agents, a handful of ticketing agents, and truckloads of passengers who were all Indian. The passengers were all dressed differently, too. Not America's streaming masses of women in saris and kurtas. I saw three guys in biker's leathers, and a wide range of suits from expensive to cheap.
As I tried to buy my ticket for the Underground to Paddington Station, my card got stuck in the machine. A helpful employee called a maintenance man, who somehow got into the machine without me ever seeing him approach (I suspect the entrance was on the other side of the wall it was built into). I heard this thick Scottish brogue pouring out a litany of curses and unintelligible sentiments from this small hole in the wall which had once been a the money-gathering part of the ticket machine. There was something funny about his accent, too, but I couldn't place it. As he cursed and made Unhealthy Machine Noises, the other employee, the one who'd called him, a tall blonde English fellow who looked so completely Regular Guy that I kept wanting to ask him to quit with the phony accent, the other guy leans down and reaches into the gap.
"I say, if you can just...yes, I think you can just...here let me try....yes, I've got it. I say, I pulled it out the other side, Vikram. Vikram? I just pulled it out the other end. Yes, it's here in my hand, Vikram."
Man, a Scottish-Indian. That's just about the funniest thing I'd ever heard of.
Bits of slang:
When the airport guy didn't understand that I was staying for a few days: "Oh, right. Just kip up for a nap and get back here."
Directions to a club that was apparently well known as a meat market: "Head down that hall, chuck a right, and it's bang on."
18-point, boldfaced quote pulled from an article in a newspaper sitting next to me on the Underground: "Unlike other rooftop gardens, this one is open to the public. You got a restaurant for your sandwiches, you can come up here, stroll around the garden, enjoy the view -- Bob's your uncle!"
More after this smoke break.
Coffee, Cake and Kink was a brilliant place. I'm sorry I waited until the second day to go. If I'd gone the first day, I would have discovered that they had free internet there, and would have then spent the rest of my trip parked there, drinking coffee and editing photos for Dragon Con. That would have been a lovely way to spend two days in London.
Mind you, I'm not exactly complaining about how I ended up spending that time.
If I get bored enough, and if there's no room on the flight six hours from now, I may draw you a map of everywhere I went. Hell, maybe I'll go back to CCK if I end up having to stay the extra seven hours. The time in transit would at least be active, and I've got my cameras on me. ALL of them...
Snippets of imagery and thought from my time in the UK:
I really want a Union Jack shirt. No idea why.
The number of Indians in this country is freaking me out! They're completely homogenized, too. By the time I got out of the airport, I'd seen half a dozen baggage handlers, three customs agents, a handful of ticketing agents, and truckloads of passengers who were all Indian. The passengers were all dressed differently, too. Not America's streaming masses of women in saris and kurtas. I saw three guys in biker's leathers, and a wide range of suits from expensive to cheap.
As I tried to buy my ticket for the Underground to Paddington Station, my card got stuck in the machine. A helpful employee called a maintenance man, who somehow got into the machine without me ever seeing him approach (I suspect the entrance was on the other side of the wall it was built into). I heard this thick Scottish brogue pouring out a litany of curses and unintelligible sentiments from this small hole in the wall which had once been a the money-gathering part of the ticket machine. There was something funny about his accent, too, but I couldn't place it. As he cursed and made Unhealthy Machine Noises, the other employee, the one who'd called him, a tall blonde English fellow who looked so completely Regular Guy that I kept wanting to ask him to quit with the phony accent, the other guy leans down and reaches into the gap.
"I say, if you can just...yes, I think you can just...here let me try....yes, I've got it. I say, I pulled it out the other side, Vikram. Vikram? I just pulled it out the other end. Yes, it's here in my hand, Vikram."
Man, a Scottish-Indian. That's just about the funniest thing I'd ever heard of.
Bits of slang:
When the airport guy didn't understand that I was staying for a few days: "Oh, right. Just kip up for a nap and get back here."
Directions to a club that was apparently well known as a meat market: "Head down that hall, chuck a right, and it's bang on."
18-point, boldfaced quote pulled from an article in a newspaper sitting next to me on the Underground: "Unlike other rooftop gardens, this one is open to the public. You got a restaurant for your sandwiches, you can come up here, stroll around the garden, enjoy the view -- Bob's your uncle!"
More after this smoke break.