Author: Jag

Busy week for me. Monday started with the usual 79 bus down towards Wembley – the first leg of my journey to work. Hopped off at the main bus stops on Wembley High Road – looking to hop on to an 83 towards Ealing Broadway. The stops here are right in front of a politically-correct, council-commissioned “spray-can art” style mural depicting the vibe and harmony of multi-ethnic Wembley that has coloured an otherwise ugly facade to a car park right behind it. (Click here or here to see a glimpse of it from previous blog entries.)

Interestingly, the mural has itself not been defaced significantly by “real” graf artists in all the years that I have known it to be there. Although if you look up close, a few illegible “tag” scrawls can be spotted on various parts of it. Whilst “tags” are everywhere you look round my part of London – it’s very rare to see “statements”:

Later. At Ealing Broadway. Having just missed a train I paced up and down the platform whilst waiting for the next one. I couldn’t help but notice a couple of blokes at the far end of the opposite platform. Strange place to be standing waiting for a train – as the carriages never pull up that far down the platform. The camera bag and tripod bits gave it away; I had spotted trainspotters!

I am truly amazed by the this extraordinary interest in trains that some people have. They seem to record the movements and serial numbers of every train that they see – and these days they even take high-resolution, wide angled and telephoto zoomed multi-megapixel digital images of them. Amazed. My trainspotters seemed to get very excited by a freight train coming their way.

A bit later on in the day I was in Munich. And killing time the next morning by loitering outside the hotel whilst I waited for a colleague to finish breakfast before we called for a taxi to go to the office.

I’ve stayed at zillions of “business” chain-hotels all around the world. Hiltons, Holiday Inns, Marriots, Sheratons etc. You name it – I’ve done ’em all. And they’re all the same. And the rituals I undertake when staying at them are so routine, I’ve ceased trying to understand why I do them. And always in roughly the same order: First thing when I get to my room is to familiarise myself with the light switches – like which switches operate which lights. Saves a lot of trouble later on. Then I take a good look at the wardrobe configuration. Locate the spare pillows and blankets – take them out and put them on the bed. The Corby Trouser Press. Take the clothes out of my bag and start hanging them up. (And get irritated by those hangers that have no curved hooks on them – as if anybody would actually steal hangers from hotels!) Then go work out how to switch on the TV – and to use the remote control. Find the BBC World channel – and leave it on there. And finally the bathroom – lay out my toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush and moisturiser. Smile at the cute little towelettes that all hotels seem to have next to the washbasin – you know: they’re about the size of a handkerchief. I’ve never worked out what these are supposed to be used for. I’m always impressed by the way the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner are laid out too. The little round soap wrapped irritatingly wrapped in paper – I always take the paper off at this point. And how there’s a always a tissue-dispenser on the side of the sink. And how the spare toilet roll always seems to have its end tissue folded and tucked into the roll in a triangular flap. I also take the “thick” towel that’s usually hanging on the side panel of the bathtub – and lay it down on the floor. That way – when I get out of bed and stumble into the bathroom for a shower the next morning – I won’t get cold-shock on my feet from the ceramic tiled floor. The piles of heavily-starched white towels. Why is it that you only ever see white towels in hotels? And even the largest ones are never large enough. And finally – I take the “do not disturb” card hanging on the inside of the door – and hang it on the outside – and as I close the door – I peek at the view through the little wide-angled spy-hole into the corridor outside – admiring at how you can almost see right round the corner.

Back in Slough, the massive Tesco that was – is being rebuilt into an even bigger one. And it’s coming up remarkably fast. But the construction work that surrounds it has caused pedestrian chaos – the pavements are all ripped up and there’s dust and dirt everywhere.

Forced to use the walkway underpass into the shopping centre into order to get to the office – I find myself ocassionally walking into the monstrous bus station. Large advertising hoardings grace the side walls of the inside of the bus station – and I was taken by one of them earlier today. It’s a poster advertising the AA. That’s one of the bigger car-breakdown and rescue services that operate here in the UK. They are currently campaigning that they have more patrols than ever before. A picture of a breakdown truck with an army of smiling AA workers on a long trailer. It’s a fascinating poster – because from far away, the AA staff in the picture look very anonymous. It’s only when you get up close to the poster do you get to see all the individual faces. And because these large posters are made up of many rectangular segments pasted onto the hoarding – they aren’t always hung 100% aligned. You don’t notice the misalignments from a distance – but close-up, any errors in the alignment are very noticable indeed. Unfortunately – this particular poster had segment boundaries that cut straight through the faces of the smiling AA staff.

Oystercards have been available in London for the last two years. I think I was one of the early members of the London travelling public to get one – replacing my annual Travelcard with an Oystercard in early 2003. Now Transport for London (the department of the Mayor of London’s office that looks after London’s public transport systems) are really marketing the card very heavily – on the basis that it costs less to provide general ticketing, is more secure against fraud, is more efficient in terms of speed of boarding buses than using cash, gets you through the gates quicker on the tubes and also does clever things like ensuring that you never pay more than you should if you made several separate journies in one day that would otherwise have costed you more if you’d bought paper tickets each time than if you had bought a one-day travelcard. (Hope that last sentence made sense.)

Anyway – the Oystercard is based on RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology – which means that the card itself has a chip and antenna embedded in it – which gets irradiated by a reader when you bring it close up – which causes two-way communications to occur between the card and the reader. Which means that the Oystercard can hold your travel tickets for your season-ticket transport zones – but can also hold “prepaid” units of cash for ad-hoc trips outside the zones permitted by your season-ticket. You don’t have to actually “touch” the card to the reader – it’s a “contactless” technology – but you have to bring it up pretty close – and many people just keep their Oystercard in the characteristic blue Oystercard wallet that comes with the card – which in my case I also use to carry my credit cards, bank debit cards, car breakdown-rescue card, business cards etc. etc. – and you just touch the wallet against the reader – and hey presto – within the a fraction of a second the wonderful data exchange process occurs – and the gates open to let you through on the tube – or the box on the bus bleeps to let the driver know that you’ve got a valid ticket and you just walk right in.

It’s all really great stuff – and I haven’t really had any problems opening the gates on the tubes or getting on the buses. Until recently. I discovered a problem that the designers of the system hadn’t really thought about when conducting their customer use cases: Buses can sometimes get stuck in traffic – and people can sometimes get off the bus to walk instead – and people can sometimes get back on the same bus they got off.

They never thought about this particular use case.

It was a really hot, sticky evening travelling home the other day – and the Route 79 bus I got onto at Alperton was crawling up Ealing Road sooo slowly that I could walk faster than the bus – even if I walked slowly. And given that it was sooo hot and sticky on the bus – I decided to get out and walk – at least there would be some fresher air. I decided that I could walk it up Ealing Road – towards Wembley High Road – following the exact route of the bus – and pick the same bus at the main stop on Wembley High Road. I figured that loads of people would get off the bus there (meaning less congestion on the bus)- and that also happens to be the point at which the traffic congestion gets better – and the bus, therefore, gets faster (meaning that the air on the bus circulates better), and I would lose no additional time getting home.

So that’s what I did.

Only when I tried to get back on the bus at Wembley High Road – the Oystercard reader on the bus bleeped an ALARM message at me and the driver.

ALERT: PASSBACK ATTEMPTED

The driver asked me to touch my card against it again. So I did. ALERT: PASSBACK ATTEMPTED. I stood there wondering what’s going on. He sat there wondering what was going on. He’d never seen that alarm before. In the end he just shrugged his shoulders and let me on anyway.

I spent the rest of my bus journey home contemplating. What did “PASSBACK ATTEMPTED” mean? In the end – I decided that the designers must have figured that if someone tries to use the same Oystercard, on the same bus, within a certain time-period – then it should be handled as a “fraud” alert known as “Passback” – which presumably means that the someone used the Oystercard to get on the bus – and then tried to pass-back their Oystercard to someone else in the bus queue so that an accomplice could get on the bus too. Sounds fair enough to me – but, as in my own case, there are some perfectly innocent and legitimate scenarios that look like “Passback”.

I consider this a design flaw – or else a known issue that was too expensive to resolve – so they decided to live with it – especially as the occurrences of legitimate use would be quite rare. (As in my case of getting off and back on the same bus in the space of 10 minutes or so.)

The irritating thing though is this: the system logic in this particular part of the decision-tree supports a business policy that assumes that you are Guilty Until Proven Innocent. That’s not nice.

Not nice at all.

If you work for London-based real-estate agent called Foxtons – then chances are that you’re given a company car as part of your employee benefits package. Furthermore – such a car is probably a semi-personalised new-style Mini – personalised in the sense that it has your unique employee identification number painted on it – emblazoned amidst the supposedly trendy, flowery, corporate livery that makes up the Foxton’s brand.

Honestly though, I’m not so sure that it’s a “benefit” as such. Being an estate agent (or “sales negotiator” in 21st century parlance) you’re in probably one of the UK’s most hated professions (beaten only by traffic wardens and parking attendants I’m sure) – so having a car that sticks out like like a sore thumb makes you immediately identifiable as an estate agent. No matter how “work hard, play hard” the progressive ethic and uniformity in image that Foxtons tries to make out to be – you’re still just an estate-agent!

Waiting at a bus stop on Ealing Common this evening – I spotted the following distinctive Foxtons Mini. This one is the estate-agent’s answer to life the universe and everything. Personally, I would be embarrassed to drive such a thing.

Apologies to those of you who work for Foxtons – or who are in the real-estate trade. I don’t really mean it. Just parody! :o)

I once wrote about the New World restuarant in Chinatown (Gerrard Place) being my favourite place for Dim Sum – but I’ve found a real gem of restuarant where the Dim Sum is even better. Probably the best in London. It’s a place called China City – an informal family-friendly restuarant upstairs in the Oriental City shopping mall in North West London – which in itself is a spectacle worth visiting – especially for the massive selection of excellent Asian foods available to eat hot and freshly made in the food court (Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indian, Chinese etc.) It makes you feel like you’re in the far-east somewehere – totally unlike being in suburban London.

Today’s selection was: Prawn Dumplings, Prawn & Pork Dumplings, Char Sui Bao, Spring Roll, Vietnamese Spring Rolls, Prawn Cheung Fun, Prawn Cake with Salad Cream – all of which (except for the Cheung Fun, came as 4 pieces each). And all of which was extremely tasty! With green tea and a round of diet cokes for four people – the bill came to £28 in total. So – good value too. Far more convenient that the New World, and being inside the Oriental City complex, China City is a much better all-round experience. Although it was extremely busy (which is a good sign) – we didn’t have to queue for a table. I strongly recommend anyone who lives in London and likes to eat Dim Sum for a traditional Sunday “brunch” to try out China City – it’s excellent. Click here for location – nearest tube is Colindale – which is on the Northern Line.

Walking from my front door to my usual bus stop in my neighbourhood – I have to cross a few little side-roads. The other day I noticed that one of them had been freshly resurfaced and painted.

This made me think. London’s roads are actually quite colourful these days. Whereas the general surface of the roads are greyish-black and the lane markings and give-way (yield) markings are white – there are many other colours used – for example – yellow lines and double-yellow lines for parking restrictions (or double red lines on some arterial routes). Box junctions are yellow-hatched. The cycle lanes are bright green. The part of the road surface where the bus stops are bright red – and the bus lanes themselves are often coloured red (or maroon) too. I think that London’s roads are the most colourful, nicely-patterned and consistently-marked roads in the world!

Having travelled the world over in my lifetime so far – there is one thing that really sticks out about London’s public transport infrastructure – and that is the fact that every possible inch of visual real-estate has potential use as a marketing businness-opportunity. And it is used! Whether you are riding the escalators on the underground, or walking through tunnel passageways – or riding the buses, tubes or taxis – everywhere you look is a blaze of advertising banners and posters – competing in sometimes very innovative ways – for a those precious few human brain-cycles in transit.

So naturally, it is very noticeable when there is a distinct lack of such commercial opportunism:

Had the privilege of meeting the famous Chakra in real life yesterday afternoon. A cup of tea and a natter near the Sushi Bar in Paddington Station. And what a pleasure it was indeed! It’s always very strange meeting people whose persona and image you have already shaped in your own mind. I think it was more of a “shock” for Chakra than it was for me – as at least I had seen a pic of Chakra prior – but he hadn’t seen a proper one of me. Anyway – it turned out that it was my voice that came as more of a shock! This kind of bugs me really – so on tube on the way home after our chat I spoke into my dictation machine (a tiny Sony memory stick based machine of course) in various different tonal inflections and played back my own voice to myself in order to analyse. I never did like the sound of my own voice.

Anyway – one thing about our encounter that I was completely blown away by – was the gift some traditional South Indian snack food – which became a tasty meal for myself and Ms.79 later in the evening. Chakra got this for me from a new South Indian restuarant just opened in Wembley High Road (right in the heart of Route 79 territory!). The restuarant is called Saravana Bhavan – and is one of two London branches of Chennai’s most popular restuarant chain!

Now I will have to learn how to make it!

I haven’t put up a new recipe for quite while. Not because I haven’t been cooking – because I have. Practically every day. It’s just that I haven’t had the time to take pictures and publish. But I made the time tonight. Chicken Biryani – a quick stove-stop method – with asparagus and mushrooms on this occasion. Equally tasty without the chicken for a vegetarian experience – and you can use any combination of vegetables that you have to hand in your fridge. It really is very easy to make. Trust me!

Click here to learn how to make this really tasty dish!

There is a major bus stop in Alperton – which is the penultimate stop on the Southbound vector of the 79 London bus route. It’s on Ealing Road – right outside a mini “strip-mall” style building complex – which amongst several small Indian boutiques and beauty parlours, houses The Clay Oven banqueting suites – a Fitness First health club, a famous Indian jewellers and a famous Indian clothes and fashion store called RCKC London.

The latter is proud of announcing that it’s amazingly-expensive designer sarees and lenghas are sold at “Indian” prices:

I often gaze into the RCKC store when I switch from Route 79 to Route 83 to get to Ealing Broadway in the mornings – and I am amazed at the prices of the clothes modelled by the mannequins in the window display. They are, in my view, significantly and relatively expensive. So – when I saw the banner in the picture above the other day – it really made me wonder.

I’ve had my current mobile phone for nearly a year now. Some of you may remember me writing about getting it last year. Here is a picture of it as it was then. (Actually, I do use lots of different mobile phones for my job – but this one is the one that carries my main phone-book, and therefore is my “work-horse” phone.)

The problem is that everyone appears to have one like this – especially at work – where they appear to have become standard issue – and even in the “street” – everyone seems to have a Nokia 6230. What’s worse is that at work – there are so many people who have them (and especially the ones coloured black) – that it’s not uncommon to accidentally walk away with someone else’s mobile phone after a meeting – or after a casual visit to someone else’s desk – where people have placed their phones on the desk or meeting table. This has caused no end of problems for me – taking someone else’s phone and only knowing about it until it rings and someone thinks you are someone else when you answer an incoming call – or when someone thinks it’s someone else when you make an outgoing call.

Well, I was walking to Marks & Spencer for a sandwich at lunch time the other day in Slough – and I noticed a mobile phone accessories stall in the shopping mall. So I stopped and looked to see if they had any “alternative” snap-on covers for the Nokia 6230 – and indeed they did have. £5 a cover. Or two for £8. So I bought one. I figured that if I could replace the commonly-owned black cover with a different colour – then the chances of anybody mistaking their phone for mine – or me mistaking my phone for someone else’s would be minimised.

The problem is – that now I get funny looks every time someone sees my phone …

I think some people have a problem with it being pink. It doesn’t matter if you’re seen wearing a pink shirt – or pink tie – but carrying a pink phone brings about some funny looks. I guess it’s just not conventional.

Decided to spend the day in Richmond in South West London. I used to work there. It’s a fabulous place in the summer. One of my favourite parts of London. Travelled there and back by bus, tube and train.

Turn up the volume loud and click on the green button below to load a (2.1 Mbyte) Shockwave Flash musical slideshow of some selected pictures from my visit to Richmond today. (Should only take a few moments if you are on a high-ish-speed Internet connection – and will only need to be done once.)

Music is a swanky, jazzy-style number called “Dust” by Recloose (featuring Joe Dukie). Hope you enjoy it!

I forgot to mention that (like most of London’s parks) Battersea Park is really nice.

Yesterday (Monday) was a national holiday in the UK. The occasion for this holiday is “May Day” – to commemorate the start of the month of May – which has for centuries been observed as a symbol of the socialist movement in Europe. Although unlike many contintental European countries – there is very little reference to symbols of socialism in this national holiday in the UK: No “socialist” processions or marches – no overt dressing up in the colour red or the waving of red flags etc.

Instead – most people seemed to take the opportunity to go down to the beach, or the local park, or their own back garden for a barbeque; the May Day “bank” holiday being used to mark the beginning of, hopefully, much warm weather to come.

Anyway – I decided to spend the day at one of London’s many famous parks. Battersea Park in fact. But on the way – driving through the streets of London on the way there – I happened to spot what looked like a sophisticated piece of graffiti on the wall of a house at the North end of Ladbroke Grove – which is a relatively well-known street that connects the Harrow Road in North Kensington to the Notting Hill area in the West End of London.

I just *had* to stop and take a picture:

I’m wondering whether this graffiti is an example of progressive, “covert” art – or what? Whatever. It surely is the subject of much discussion – as there were many passers-by who stopped to look at it in fascination. I simply had to stop to take take the picture in case it would not be there in the future. Kind of like wanting to capture a spontaneous moment of expression. Transient art.

You might want to click on the button below to start the accompanying music loading whilst you are reading this journal-entry. It’s approximately 1.3Mbytes – which shouldn’t take more than a moment or two to load up – and only needs to be done once. Don’t forget to turn up the volume – best heard loud!

In just over a week’s time the UK citizens (or should that be “British Subjects”) will go to the polls to vote for new Members of Parliament. I’ve lived through these momentous events a few times now – and I have always taken a great interest in the news and political shenanigans occuring in the run-up to the big day. Also – I have always voted, and in one case (in 1997) I believe myself to have been the first person in the nation to have voted. (I was first to turn up to the polling station – it was 6.45am and I had to get to work early and I couldn’t afford to be 5 hours late due to being stuck in a mega-traffic jam caused by a hoax IRA bomb on the M25 near Hemel Hempstead as had been experienced a few days prior – so they kindly let me cast my vote before the official 7am opening.)

This time, however, things are a bit different. The whole event is just plain disinteresting. At least last time there was a funny guy in charge of the opposition party (William Hague) who actually seemed to offer some rational oratory in his public speaking. This time we have a guy who stands in front of the podium labelled with the words “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” – a question so irritating and patronising that you end up thinking about the irritability of the question rather than what the guy is speaking about.

No – this time I’m less interested in the elections – and more interested in downloading songs from iTunes – even though I don’t have an Apple or an iPod. Actually, I’m extremely proud of the fact that I don’t have an iPod – as I’d be too ashamed of having so much music storage capacity and not enough music to fill it up – and, instead, would probably end up storing all the Powerpoint Presentations and Microsoft Word docs that I get at work which are too big for the email system at work to cope with. And besides – almost everybody and their pet dog has got an iPod these days – I think it’s positively fashionable to *not* have one.

So – instead of trying to work out who I’m going to vote for next week – I’ve been trying to work out how to transfer the music that I’ve downloaded from iTunes onto my MP3 player. Unfortunately – there’s no straightforward way doing it. The problem is that the iTunes are in protected AAC+ format (which is OK if you own an unfashionable iPod – which I obviously do not) – and there isn’t a readily-available way of convert these to unprotected MP3 – not without spending some more money anyway. So – instead – the workaround is to convert the iTunes to audio-CD format – i.e. to burn them onto a CDROM – and then use (say) Windows Media Player to rip them back onto your hard drive again – as MP3s. A bit tedious (and a waste of a CD if, like me, you don’t really play CDs any more) – but it works – and at least I can play the iTunes on anything that plays MP3s – which apart from dedicated, fashionable MP3 players like my own – also includes most DVD players, Home Theatre boxes and recent CD players too.

So now I am listening to Juggy D on max volume and in full glorious 128kbps stereo on my fashionable MP3 player’s headphones (which are not dazzlingly-brilliant-white like those that come with the unsophisticated iPod owners like to wear) – doing a bhangra-style jig from my front door all the way to the Route 79 bus stop – without having had to buy the whole album – and not caring for one minute about the General Election.

In case you are interested – Juggy D is a second-generation British Indian (Punjabi) – born and brought up in Southall (West London) and started performing at the age of 14 – and now a member of the Rishi Rich Project ( and Two Point Nine) – churning out a unique form of decidedly British Punjabi music very popular with the British youth of all backgrounds and getting a lot of exposure in the Asian nightclub scene and also on radio stations like Club Asia, Kiss 100FM and BBC Radio 1. Hit the play button at the top of this article to hear a popular dance track called “Billo” by Juggy D from his 2004 album.

She has been a musical sensation in Turkey for the last three decades. She is revered by the Turkish people in the same way that the American-originated soul movement reveres Aretha Franklin. She is a singer and composer – and her music is emotionally powerful – some with lyrics in a highly poetic “sufi” style. Many of her fans are moved to tears by some of her songs.

Her live performances are very rare – and she performed for the first time in the UK last night at the fabulous London Coliseum theatre (home of the English National Opera) accompanied by a mini-orchestra of modern and traditional Turkish instruments – and I had the privilege of attending along with some Turkish friends. The performance was spectacular – highly moving – with rapturous applause at the beginning, during and the end of almost every number.

Some more pics at my Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/route79/sets/259128/