India
I’ve mentioned before how many celebrities there are in London compared to Ithaca. But did I also mention how many more heads of state there are in London compared to Ithaca?
Sure, Matt Damon shooting a new Clint Eastwood flick across town is pretty cool, but having the President of India stay in the hotel next to the Ithaca College London Center is even cooler.
Technically, the police have never confirmed nor denied that the figure they’ve protected all week is really her. We know, though, thanks to smart deduction work and general stalking of the hubbub outside our front door.
On our return from break, there seemed to be a lot more of a police presence around the London Center. And by lots more I mean we went from no cops around to an amount in the teens. Suffice it to say, we knew something was up.
An Indian flag was hung above the hotel next to its logo. That was clue #2. which sent off Google searches far and wide to find out what famous Indian was visiting London this week.
The clincher came quickly, when the motorcade arrived. About 15 police on motorbikes, followed by a really nice Bentley with an Indian flag on top, followed by four or five silver tinted window vans, followed by another police car.
Oh yea, and a helicopter.
Stepping out of the car was a woman in traditional Indian dress. Game over. It was the president of India.
To make things even cooler, Prince Charles and Camilla stopped by for a quick hello on Tuesday. So that’s three more famous people than we would have seen in Ithaca.
Now if that damn helicopter would stop making so much noise during class, that’d be great.
Next week on Celebrity Watch: Jim Carrey lights the Christmas lights on the main shopping street of London, which also happens to be a block from my flat. I wonder how much of a police escort he’s going to get.
The Dark Ages
My laptop died.
Not like, battery ran out and I don’t have a charger died. No, it’s more like you press the power button and it doesn’t turn on died. Not that it’s a big deal or anything. Not that I desperately need it to accomplish things like this blog. Nope, it’s just dead.
When telling my boss from my internship she said “Welcome to the Dark Ages”. She laughed. I didn’t think it was funny.
I’ve been in the dark before, you see. Last year, my cell phone broke (I may have put it through the wash… and dryer). I was phone less for a week. Awful, awful days.
Then, the week before I left for London, my phone started dying again (This time not my fault). So in the final days of preparation for a major embarking, I couldn’t say goodbye to anyone.
Suffice it to say, I’m all too used to this Dark Ages thing. I generally end up sleeping more, eating more and watching more TV. Being on a budget makes me think I’ll watch the eating, and only having five channels limits the watching of TV. So I intend to sleep much more. Maybe even read assignments for school or prepare for class.
Wait… the reading I have for class is online? Only can be found on blackboard? Crap.
Welcome to the Dark Ages.
Success
I did it.
No, not get kicked out of England. And no, mom, I didn’t figure out your baking secrets.
I went to every London Underground and DLR station in 3 days. That’s 153 stations. In about 25 hours.
Am I nuts? A little bit. I’m the kind of person who sets a goal for themselves and then tries to obtain that goal, even if I later decide it was a stupid goal. This, fortunately, was not a stupid goal. I had an amazing time the last few days jumping from station to station, meeting new people, helping carry suitcases and strollers up stairs and down stairs. It was all a blast.
The first day, Sunday, I hit 45 stations. I was completely unsure of how to go about the process and the day slowly developed as I learned more about the system and figured out simpler ways to achieve what I was going for.
The second day, Tuesday, I hit 73 stations. The Docklands Light Rail (an overground system in the East End of London) run much more frequently than most, and I was able at times to get to 2 or 3 stations in 8 minutes because the stations were so close together. I also made probably the smartest move of the whole expedition when I worked my way back in towards the city during rush hour times so that the trains were less full of people heading out. I repeated the same trick yesterday and it once again worked like a charm and kept me on a nice flow.
Yesterday, Wednesday, was my final day. I went to 35 stations and for the first time I had someone accompany me for a few of the stops. It was fun to show off all the tricks I learned, as cheesy as that may sound. It was also nice to have some company when waiting for trains on the Hammersmith & City Line, which was by far the slowest in frequency, with a train about once every 10 minutes. Alone it would have been brutal.
Some other station notes:
My favorite in terms of design is Baker Street Station. Given a Sherlock Holmes theme since the fictional character lived down the block, the station has silouettes of Holmes on many of its tiles and also has illustrations depicting key scenes from the novels all around the station.
The hardest station to get to was Kensington (Olympia). Only one train runs to it and it is at the end of the line, which means a train runs to it once every 20 minutes or so.
Big ups to the London Overground, which was not part of this exercise in travel but did help me get from Southwest London to Northwest London with relative haste. I did not end up including the Overground in my conquest because its trains run about once every 20-25 minutes. Getting off at each stop, taking a photo, and then waiting for the next train would have been painfully slow. And since I made the rules of my trek and set the goal, the Overground was quickly edited out of it.
I’m putting together a video slide show of all the stops so once that is together I’ll be sure to post it here.
The moral? Set goals for yourself and achieve them… even if you modify the goals just a little.
CSI
Britain has some good television. I’ve come to thoroughly enjoy shows like The Peep Show and The IT Crowd, and my obsession with X Factor will surely be discussed in a post unto itself down the line. But what I have noticed is that most of the drama shown in the prime time hours here in the UK is from the States.
Take tonight for example. My flatmate and I watched 3 straight hours of CSI on the same channel. First was Miami, then New York and then Vegas topped us off. Honestly, it was rather odd.
The biggest hype for a TV show here? Flash Forward. A close second? True Blood. Both American shows, being shown here with more advertising behind them than a politician in November. It really makes me wonder what we are doing to the amount of diversity in the world’s media.
I was always told about the wonders of British television and their amazing exploits. I mean, these are the people that brought us Planet Earth with David Attenborough and sweet one-off versions of Casanova. My mom always used to rave about EastEnders as well.
And yes, those shows or similar ones are on the air, but they’re getting creamed by the American ones in the ratings. This fall’s BBC drama of Emma by Jane Austen is averaging a million to two million less viewers than a similar adaptation this time last year, whilst the aforementioned True Blood and Flash Forward are making mince meat of the competition. Don’t even get me started about how even 24 is popular here.
So is there no parity anymore? Have we lost our media diversity between the UK and US? It’s hard to say. One thing I do know, though, is that I love being able to see The Simpsons every night at 6. For now that’s all I need.
Tube
It’s break week here in London, which means I don’t have classes again until the 26th. Pretty much everyone has left the country for a week or so, but I can’t afford to, so I’m hanging here in my empty London flat all by my lonesome.
I wanted to plan out something cheap but fairly entertaining to do over this week, and I let that thought jumble around my brain a bit until I came up with a solution: The Tube.
There are about 170 stops on the London Underground in Zones 1 and 2, which are the zones my pass allows me to travel in. I figure I could knock out most of them in 4 or 5 days. The rules:
1. I must exit each station and get photo or video of myself outside of the station.
2. If a stop is on multiple lines, I only have to visit that stop once.
3. I am allowed to repeat stops for necessary changes and transfers.
Simple enough, right?
Well, the plan is to start tomorrow as a jumpstart point. Then from there I’ll continue my quest on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and if need be, Saturday.
It isn’t as easy as it may sound. There is lots of construction going on right now so juggling some stations may become more of a walking matter than a subway one. But as long as I get to the station, it counts.
Do you think I can do it? I’m fairly curious to see how long this will take. I hope you, my three readers, won’t be too disappointed if all doesn’t go to plan. Personally, I’m just looking to have a fun time, meet some new people and to just enjoy the city of London.
Wish me luck!
Hampstead
Last weekend I had the chance to get Sunday brunch with my cousin who lives with his wife in London. They live in an area called Hampstead, which is right on the edge of zones 2 and 3. (That means it’s almost the ‘burbs but not quite). What’s great about the area is that it is a slice of London that I was not accustomed to. Living right off one of the busiest streets in London is a constant circus. Tons of buses, tons of cabs, tons of cars, tons of lost tourist now asking me for directions (hell if I know where they’re going). But in Hampstead, it was quiet and relaxed, yet still part of London.
It can be easy to forget how many different sides there are to a city, and London is no different. On Kite Hill in Hampstead Heath we looked out over a panoramic view of the entire City of London and even some parts closer to Westminster as well. Having that view really put things into perspective. While it may take 40 minutes to get from Point A to Point B in London, it cannot be overstated how amazing it is to have all of it in one place.
Also this weekend I attened a football match with a bunch of students from Ithaca. It was not a Premier League match but a few levels down. The fans were incredible, paying so much attention to the game, not as much to the others around them or the spectacle like Americans tend to do. Their focus was on the pitch, seeing the players play. It was honestly heaven for a sports fan seeing people who cared about the contest and not which celebrities were sitting in the front row (I don’t think there were any anyway).
Another amazing part was the stadium itself, nestled literally in the middle of a neighborhood in South London it holds about 30,000 people. You would never imagine that, however, because you have to walk down neighborhood streets and alleys to get there. It was a true “London experience”.
What exactly is a “London experience”? It’s any event which feels significantly London, like shopping on Oxford Street, renting a paddleboat on the Serpentine in Hyde Park, or seeing a quintessential football match. I’ve been lucky enough to participate in those and many other of these London experiences so far, and Hampstead’s Kite Hill was another I will never forget.
Donations
I’ve realized that I title a lot of posts with exclamation points, so I made sure to avoid that this time.
Yesterday was World Sight Day, which I’m sure you were all aware of. I knew of it, but considering that I work for a sight charity, that isn’t too surprising. In fact, yesterday I helped collect funds at a Tube station in honor of the day. So at 7:45 AM yesterday morning, I positioned myself in front of a section of exits at Piccadilly Circus station, one of the busier stations in London.
At first, I did a lot of talking. “Hey, it’s World Sight Day, would you like to donate?” “Can you help ORBIS save sight worldwide?” Things like that.
The problem was that people were whizzing by me, so fast that it must’ve sounded more like “Hey, it’s Wo-” and “Can you hel-”. It wasn’t doing the trick.
So then I switched to a different method. The simplistic stand and smile, with bucket held out in front. Lo and behold, it worked like a charm! Apparently people are much more willing to donate if you don’t bother them with details! An interesting find, if you ask me. But it seemed to work pretty well.
Over the span of about an hour and forty minutes, I said the words “Thanks” and “Cheers” more than I think I’ve ever said them in my entire life. It probably helped that those were the only words I said as well.
So the moral here is that people don’t care what charity you work for. If they have a big heart, they’ll help fill the bucket.
But is that really a good thing?
Yes, in London you must first get approval to collect donations at stations, which means that the charities there must be pretty legit. But wouldn’t you want to know more about something before you donated to it? A coworker of mine was working at another exit and said very few people asked her what ORBIS was all about. Meanwhile, not one soul asked me! I was shocked.
In an age where people are calling for more and more transparency of corporations and government, I’d like to know where my money goes before I donate it. How much of it goes straight to the problem? How much of it goes to fundraising costs or non-profit payroll? These are important questions.
So let’s think about where we are sending our money. Because if we want transparency, we should be transparent all the way around. This isn’t a knock on ORBIS, who I love, or charities in general since I have worked with a few, it’s a knock on the public who does not want to know more information about where they’re money goes. Heck, if I knew more there’s a good chance I might donate more.
Maybe that’s what people are so afraid of, becoming too invested if they know too much. I don’t know.
Either way, I thought it was interesting. And since I’m the one with the log-in code to this blog, I figured I’d see what you all think.
Should we ask for more transparency from non-profits and charities? And do you donate blindly without finding out where your money goes?
Whoops
Man, whoever writes this blog should be fired. He is terrible at keeping track of posts. Just awful. Just absolutely the worst. The truth is, time is not what it is like in Ithaca. I mean, it is still time; moves at the same pace and all that jazz, but it definitely is used differently here.
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but if you spend a day in not seeing the sights, you feel like a putz. If you spend a day out seeing the sights, you run the risk of falling behind on schoolwork, and therefore feel like a putz. And all the while it’s starting to get colder and rainier, which makes the motivation factor go way way down. In long, this study abroad thing is pretty tiring. (Get it? Instead of ‘in short’? Yea, it was a Monday kind of joke.)
I am lucky enough to have a cousin who lives here in London. In fact, it turns out he works about six blocks from my flat, which is very nice for a quick lunch. This weekend my girlfriend and I got to go visit his section of the city, Hampstead. The Heath is amazingly beautiful, as it borders Zones 2 and 3 of London it provides quite a beautiful panorama of the City of London all the way through Westminster and beyond. From above, the city blends together and the monuments seem much closer than they really are. It also reminds you of how important it is to have a good balance between city and greenery.
With Hyde Park literally across the street, it’d be easy to take the park for granted. But it’s been quite the contrary. With the busy schedule as described above, I have barely been able to take in the fresh air. A city like London can metaphorically suffocate you, keeping you inside the trains and buses and away from the fresh air. Going for a walk in Hampstead Heath refreshed my mind and I think it cleaned up my lungs a little bit too.