London, what a magical city.
It’s almost indescribable, but there is a buzz to this place which I’ve not really experienced elsewhere.
Monday evening I woke up at 3:30am to Skype my family back in Dubai. Quite unexpectedly, when I came down to the ground floor wifi at this ungodly hour, there were a dozen glamorous people partying in the hotel bar near reception. And the party-goers were not stopping any time soon.
We first arrived Sunday afternoon by train, then caught a couple different tubes in the underground to get close to our Hotel Russell accommodation. Actually, calling it an underground is a bit of an understatement. More like middle earth. Where we got off at Russell Square, there was a 175 stair climb back to the surface. It was no surprise everyone took the lift.
My free time around the conference was limited. I was able to maximize this though, through going for a morning run. Running through a large unfamiliar city I focus almost extreme levels of attention taking mental notes of my surroundings. It worked, I didn’t get lost. I was so happy to run along the Thames and see the Millennium Dome, Big Ben, Old Parliament House. In fact everywhere you look there’s historical things of interest. My boss, and tour guide, was describing a building as being “not that old”, it was built in 1901 – 110 years ago.
After my run I had time to check out a local newspaper. Well two local papers actually. The Times so I could read the local news, and The Sun so I could see some boobs. To be honest I felt like a bit of a prude seeing journalism mixed with nudity. Having said that, I probably couldn’t write on here the name of some of the adult magazines which the news stand stocked on the shelf above.
To be honest I was a bit disappointed by the quality of journalism overall. On the TV news the first story was about impending political elections, followed by an interview by a hopeful participant of the X-factor.
The news coverage of football went beyond impressive. I now believe people when they say that the UK sees football like religion, only more important.
Once again I was spoilt by fantastic weather, OR people lie about the UK raining 90% of the time and it’s bloody awful the rest of the time. The chirpy weather girl shared that it’s been London’s warmest end to September since 1985. Quite likely some Dubai weather went across with me. You’re welcome, my British friends.