On New Year's Eve, my last full day, I went to Greenwich with my sister and brother in law.
At the Royal Observatory, I looked through a replica of a 1774 telescope, only to see Pluto in all its glory, in full colour. With ears, tail, ears and all. Someone has a sense of humour, apparently. I also got to try using a quadrant, and there was a corner about the stupid Powder of Sympathy way of finding longitude. When I was done I had a look around the National Maritime Museum.
We had lunch - at 3pm or so - at a place called 'Saigon Buffet' which supposedly served Chinese and Vietnamese food. In fact, there wasn't any Vietnamese food at all, and there was beef and chicken curry too. It was awfully cheap though - £5.50 for a weekday lunch (12pm-6pm), and there were about 40 things to eat, though there is this odd 10% surcharge on Valentines Day and Mothers Day.
Exiting Covent Garden tube station later, on my way to watch My Fair Lady, I heard an announcement - "Customers are advised that there are 193 steps. This is equivalent to 15 storeys". No wonder I got so winded in 2001 when I got sick of waiting and decided to climb all the way to the top!
At the theatre, some people were obviously struck with compulsive photo taking syndrome, for I was asked by *2* couples, one elderly and the other consisting of 2 young women, to take their pictures. And at the end of the wonderful show, the cast came up for their second bow just a little too early.
It was interesting contrasting the musical technology used in HMS Pinafore and My Fair Lady. The late 19th Century show has a static stage, but in the latter the floor keeps moving and props fly down from the ceiling.
The good thing about watching shows in London is that NO mobile phones ring. Not that I've heard. Yeh! However, people like to clap at inappropriate times, so sometimes the dialogue is cut off, or the beginning of a song cannot be heard.
The night of New Year's Eve was pleasantly warm, but there were many Bobbies at Embankment and many young people running around deliriously, many clutching bottles of cheap alcohol (mostly champagne).
I got cheated of 50p at Canary Wharf because the machine swallowed my money and wouldn't vend anything or give it back. Looking at the LCD, I saw that it had already swallowed £23.90 of hapless consumers' change before I'd been conned. To add insult to injury, calling the hotline, I was told - twice - by an automated voice that calls from mobiles were chargeable, so I gave up.
The next day - New Year - the train was full of young people coming from the party at the Millennium Dome. They all were bleary-eyed and were dazed and wasted. I wonder how many did drugs or got lucky the previous night. And in the next carriage there were people dressed as high school basketball players and cheerleaders. Weird.
At Heathrow, I decided to try Dr Pepper again. The first and previous time I'd sampled it was in Hawaii and I recall it being so vile that I threw the rest away. I thought, 'Surely it can't be so bad a second time?', and indeed it wasn't. It reminds me of artificial cherries, among other unspecified things. Does it really contain pepper?
"Its unique flavor comes from the blending of 23 fruits, none of which are prunes." - Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc.
It now behooves me to decide whether F&N "Freaky" Fruitade or Dr Pepper is the worst drink of all time.
The flight back was very crowded, so I couldn't spread my legs as I did on the flight to London. We got ice cream again - instead of the cheap Nestle Crunch type, we got Losely Natural Flavour Ice Cream (the same brand as what I ate during HMS Pinafore). I also got to read the New Straits Times on the flight back - it's rather parochial, covering Malaysian stories of no import (I'm not interested in the ins and outs of the latest Khalwat case), and the selection of World News pathetic. It is also very biased in its writing. The 'Life and Times' section is rather good, though, with a wide range of topics.
Some idiot stole the Men's and Women's cologne in one of the aircraft toilets. Must be a kiasu Singaporean. Lucky no one stole the toilet seat covers. There were no sanitary pads or tampons to steal, though. It's rather stingy of MAS not to provide them, actually.
I got a free upgrade to Business Class on the way back to Singapore. 40 mins, but nice anyway. Must be to reward me for my steadfast loyalty to Ma-laysia Airlines!
There was this crazy woman running around with a one strapped top and a half thigh long skirt one night.
I saw the Kingfisher Book of Evolution going for £14.99 at Greenwich's Maritime Museum. Maybe I could've bought that for my MO :)
I got 3 Cadbury's Creme Eggs. Mmm.
The confectionary machines in the Underground stations are really nice, but they need drink machines too.
There were these ads for a "School Disco", one of the weird concept parties. Basically you have these grown adults going to a disco in school uniforms. Altered ones, rather. In the ad, there's this girl whose white blouse is tied under her breasts, is playing with her tie and is wearing a microskirt. I saw some people going to one of the School Discos on New Year's Eve. The males look disheveled and typically have ties that aren't tied properly, pants that are too short, untucked shirts and weird shoes. The females dress like the girl in the ad, and I saw one with thin knee high socks (this isn't a Japanese School Disco!). Maybe it's a fetish.
Maybe I will make a company selling funky tudungs in the future. The ones they have now are just so plain and boring.
Why do Airline Stewardessed have to wear so much makeup? They look like dolls or, dare I say, harlots.
My jet lag on the way to London was much worse than what I got when I returned. Wrong sequence of events, I say :(
Cheapskate enough to get me to bring toilet paper to London, my sister got me to mail her postcards for her from here. Bah.
My 13 SMSes suddenly became 2 when I returned my father his SIM card :(
Quotes:
[In Canary Wharf station toilet] Surveillance cameras in constant operation (!)
Suicide Bomber Barbie! Ultimate empowerment.