(Please note: this was all written last week. Or on the weekend. Or something. Oh, I don't know anymore. Anyway I hadn't been to the East Coast Blogmeet yet.)
Through the miracles of modern blogging, you may or may not see this part two before you see the first or even second parts of part one. You see, I’ve donated part one to Zoe who is rather busy with her not-exactly-top-secret project that may or may not have something to do with writing a literary magnum opus. So over at her place, you’ll see part one (in two parts, part one part one and part one part two) in two parts, said parts of which each may, in part, precede this part two.
At least, that’s my understanding of how it’s going to work.
EDIT: actually, part one part one and part one part two are already posted here, too. It's all very confusing really.
So – having spectacularly failed to update any of you my actual time at The Great Big Genome Centre That Isn’t Terribly Close To Anywhere In Particular™, I find myself on a plane.
Again.
It’s different this time though… one of those spiffy Airbus things with the back-of-seat, on-demand entertainment systems. You know, the kind where you irritate the person in front of you by punching the touchscreen to select your menu choices, flipping through all of the options just in case there might be something slightly better than Music and Lyrics, featuring that same baffled British actor as was in the movie you avoided watching crossing the Atlantic in the opposite direction, three days ago.
As I write this, I’m actually watching some concert video of Coldplay, live in Canada. And I can say this: they’re not as crap as I’d always suspected. So now you know. But the other options are just too dismal to itemize here.
Other things I have learned during this trip:
1) The pied wagtail is a very handsome little black and white bird that runs around on the ground in an endearing manner.
2) There is no free wireless internet in Heathrow airport, despite the prevalence of unsecured wireless networks. You connect, and are immediately presented with one of several screens describing in agonizing detail the various and assorted ways in which one might pay for internet access. Faced with this, the coin-operated terminals in the “overflow seating area” of Terminal 3 look positively democratic.
3) A cab from that Genome Centre to Heathrow is over 100 UK pounds. I have now set a new record, far surpassing the $60 US I spent getting from Phoenix Sky Harbor airport to Scottsdale.
4) Coldplay songs all kind of sound the same.
And I’m now on my way to a certain East Coast Airport where I shall, if all goes well, meet legendary Blogger, Theatre Person, Photographer, and Performer Of Many Choral Works™ Dawn, unless our plans completely fail. Either way, I’ll doubtless tell you all about it some time later, possibly appearing either before, during or after this post, part one of part one, part two of part one, or maybe just not at all if I can’t get the timing right.
It’s very complicated to be me.
Showing posts with label England. Show all posts
Showing posts with label England. Show all posts
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
And here we are again, in transit (cont'd)
Part II. Which you can also read over at Zoe's place. Posted very late as this actually happened last week.
(Where we pick up the story with your author, Ricardipus, on a coach somewhere in Merrie Olde Englande.)
[Author notes: The bus I am currently sitting on juist stopeed [another note: I’m leaving those typos in cos I think they are funny] at some kind of uber-roundabout. I am now terrified.]
[Author notes again: we escaped. I now have no idea where we are. Some place with a College and a Civic Gardens, allegedly in between Heathrow and Cambridge. I suspect Luton. Wherever it is, it has a rather nice canal with verdant undergrowth, pretty trees and some attractive ducks. Not Scaryduck, real feathery ones.]
[Author notes a third time, and I promise it will be the last for now: I am in Hemel Hempstead. Only in England would you find a place with such a stupid name.]
Let me tell you this about Heathrow airport: I hate it. It is perhaps the Worst Place On Earth, unless you believe that achieving a discounted airfare to Uruguay by waiting in line for seventeen hours is a Good Thing. Mrs. Ricardipus and I once spent an inordinate amount of time circling around the place on foot and in various shuttle buses (one notably driven by a Wizened Old Gent, who was rather helpful as I recall), passing time and time again an oil company sign that, because of the curvature of the building it was displayed on, said "HELL". Which pretty much summed up our opinion of the place. Said opinion not improved recently by me having to walk from Terminal 3 to the Central Bus Station, which is conveniently located in Terminal 2. Approximately 63,457 miles from Terminal 3, through a series of ever-dingier and more horrifying underground passageways filled with pleasant illuminated signs cheerfully indicating things like "Central Bus Station, Right This Way!", "Please Be Careful Not To Fall On Your Bottom As You Exit The Mobile Walkway", and "Travel Insurance! Only One Pound Extra! So When Some American Git Sues You For Dropping Your Suitcase On His Toe, You Can Pay Out, No Problem!"** and things like that.***
Anyway, how and hoo, I am on the bus now en route to Cambridge, so that I can collect a horribly expensive taxi to The Big Genome Centre In The Big Back End Of Beyond which is where I will be visiting. Once there, I will have ethernet in the room, and wireless all over the place (so it is promised), so batten down your hatches, dig in to the trenches and be prepared for a blog barrage. It is coming, and I will be behind the (virtual, happy-shiny, not-death-dealing-at-all) cannons.****
** Slightly exaggerated, for effect.
*** OK, I think we now have a new winner in the longest sentence sweepstakes.
**** Discerning readers will notice that this is a lie. I did not blog squat while I was there.
(Where we pick up the story with your author, Ricardipus, on a coach somewhere in Merrie Olde Englande.)
[Author notes: The bus I am currently sitting on juist stopeed [another note: I’m leaving those typos in cos I think they are funny] at some kind of uber-roundabout. I am now terrified.]
[Author notes again: we escaped. I now have no idea where we are. Some place with a College and a Civic Gardens, allegedly in between Heathrow and Cambridge. I suspect Luton. Wherever it is, it has a rather nice canal with verdant undergrowth, pretty trees and some attractive ducks. Not Scaryduck, real feathery ones.]
[Author notes a third time, and I promise it will be the last for now: I am in Hemel Hempstead. Only in England would you find a place with such a stupid name.]
Let me tell you this about Heathrow airport: I hate it. It is perhaps the Worst Place On Earth, unless you believe that achieving a discounted airfare to Uruguay by waiting in line for seventeen hours is a Good Thing. Mrs. Ricardipus and I once spent an inordinate amount of time circling around the place on foot and in various shuttle buses (one notably driven by a Wizened Old Gent, who was rather helpful as I recall), passing time and time again an oil company sign that, because of the curvature of the building it was displayed on, said "HELL". Which pretty much summed up our opinion of the place. Said opinion not improved recently by me having to walk from Terminal 3 to the Central Bus Station, which is conveniently located in Terminal 2. Approximately 63,457 miles from Terminal 3, through a series of ever-dingier and more horrifying underground passageways filled with pleasant illuminated signs cheerfully indicating things like "Central Bus Station, Right This Way!", "Please Be Careful Not To Fall On Your Bottom As You Exit The Mobile Walkway", and "Travel Insurance! Only One Pound Extra! So When Some American Git Sues You For Dropping Your Suitcase On His Toe, You Can Pay Out, No Problem!"** and things like that.***
Anyway, how and hoo, I am on the bus now en route to Cambridge, so that I can collect a horribly expensive taxi to The Big Genome Centre In The Big Back End Of Beyond which is where I will be visiting. Once there, I will have ethernet in the room, and wireless all over the place (so it is promised), so batten down your hatches, dig in to the trenches and be prepared for a blog barrage. It is coming, and I will be behind the (virtual, happy-shiny, not-death-dealing-at-all) cannons.****
** Slightly exaggerated, for effect.
*** OK, I think we now have a new winner in the longest sentence sweepstakes.
**** Discerning readers will notice that this is a lie. I did not blog squat while I was there.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
And here we are again, in transit
You can read this over at Zoe's blog as well, but her waffle-powered Belgian computer has messed up all the coding and the links and all that. So you get it here, too.
Part I
I was on a plane. Again.
Fortunately, I slept through most of both movies (two movies? I guess it’s been a while since I flew trans-Atlantic. Such opulence!). Since the first was Eragon, which, truth be told, was an epic, not terribly well written, but nevertheless eminently readable book turned into a rather dreadful movie with a peculiarly muppet-like dragon, and the second was that Bridget Jones donkey with Colin Firth looking all manly and Rene Zelwegger doing her usual squinty acty thing, all references to a suitably baffled and annoying Hugh Grant incorporated by implication, I can’t say that I’m really upset.* It beats my usual experience of wanting to watch the movie and finding the sound to be completely shot, which, believe me, happens a lot more frequently to me, personally, than you might imagine.
Surprisingly enough, the airplane breakfast was quite tasty, a curiously flavourless fruit plate notwithstanding. Bewilderingly, the salt and pepper paper sachets were accompanied by a second set of plastic containers, these in the shape of miniature hockey pucks. The pepper had a slogan in Canada's Other Official Language™; something about “hockey being everything”. The salt, anachronistically, simply said “Have A Nice Day”. I was surprised by the AirCanadaOmelette, which was quite edible and came with some rather nice potatoes and a dollop of zingy but not-too-hot salsa. Believe me, it far surpassed the now-legendary Particularly Nasty Omelette™ that Mrs. Ricardipus and I had the dubious pleasure of consuming on a British West Indies Airlines flight to Antigua, circa 1991. A picture taken on that vacation is here; there is, thank goodness, no corresponding picture of the omelette in question. Bleeeeurgh is the only appriate [Author’s note – amusing typo left stet] descriptor that I can think of right now.
Bug spray on the plane, ground crabs the size of antelopes, everybody trying to sell you everything constantly, and airplanes that Air Canada saw fit to de-commission and sell to the suckers at BWIA, made up the rest of that vacation. Enough said, I believe, on that topic.
*That, my friends, may just be the longest sentence I’ve ever written.
Part II tomorrow.
Part I
I was on a plane. Again.
Fortunately, I slept through most of both movies (two movies? I guess it’s been a while since I flew trans-Atlantic. Such opulence!). Since the first was Eragon, which, truth be told, was an epic, not terribly well written, but nevertheless eminently readable book turned into a rather dreadful movie with a peculiarly muppet-like dragon, and the second was that Bridget Jones donkey with Colin Firth looking all manly and Rene Zelwegger doing her usual squinty acty thing, all references to a suitably baffled and annoying Hugh Grant incorporated by implication, I can’t say that I’m really upset.* It beats my usual experience of wanting to watch the movie and finding the sound to be completely shot, which, believe me, happens a lot more frequently to me, personally, than you might imagine.
Surprisingly enough, the airplane breakfast was quite tasty, a curiously flavourless fruit plate notwithstanding. Bewilderingly, the salt and pepper paper sachets were accompanied by a second set of plastic containers, these in the shape of miniature hockey pucks. The pepper had a slogan in Canada's Other Official Language™; something about “hockey being everything”. The salt, anachronistically, simply said “Have A Nice Day”. I was surprised by the AirCanadaOmelette, which was quite edible and came with some rather nice potatoes and a dollop of zingy but not-too-hot salsa. Believe me, it far surpassed the now-legendary Particularly Nasty Omelette™ that Mrs. Ricardipus and I had the dubious pleasure of consuming on a British West Indies Airlines flight to Antigua, circa 1991. A picture taken on that vacation is here; there is, thank goodness, no corresponding picture of the omelette in question. Bleeeeurgh is the only appriate [Author’s note – amusing typo left stet] descriptor that I can think of right now.
Bug spray on the plane, ground crabs the size of antelopes, everybody trying to sell you everything constantly, and airplanes that Air Canada saw fit to de-commission and sell to the suckers at BWIA, made up the rest of that vacation. Enough said, I believe, on that topic.
*That, my friends, may just be the longest sentence I’ve ever written.
Part II tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Leavin', on a jet plane
Well, I'm off to the sunny rainy British Isles on a whirlwind tour of Heathrow Airport, some bus route or other, and a large research centre in the Freakin' Middle of Nowhere™.
And you all know what that means...
ONLY FOUR DAYS UNTIL THIS.
I am supposed to be looking for a not-tremendously-tall woman with funky glasses, possibly carrying a beagle and/or wearing a badger, perhaps launching into Handel's Messiah at the top of her lungs, waving a chainsaw and shooting digital camera pix from the hip. In the middle of the night. In an airport I've never been to.
I'm hoping it doesn't all turn out to be a jetlag-induced hallucination.
--
w00ty w00ty w00ty w00t!!!!!!!!!!!!! More than 5,000 visitors! How gratifying.
And you all know what that means...
ONLY FOUR DAYS UNTIL THIS.
I am supposed to be looking for a not-tremendously-tall woman with funky glasses, possibly carrying a beagle and/or wearing a badger, perhaps launching into Handel's Messiah at the top of her lungs, waving a chainsaw and shooting digital camera pix from the hip. In the middle of the night. In an airport I've never been to.
I'm hoping it doesn't all turn out to be a jetlag-induced hallucination.
--
w00ty w00ty w00ty w00t!!!!!!!!!!!!! More than 5,000 visitors! How gratifying.
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