Author: Jag

You’ve got 30 seconds before the lights change. You need to get a message to your mate: tell him/her you’re going to be late. You pull out you’re mobile phone from your pocket. What are you going to do: 1) Send a text message to their mobile number or 2) Check your contacts list to see if they’re online. Damn it! You forgot to fire up your mobile Instant Messenger. Fire it up. Click, click, click; where is it? Java: Extras? Or is it in Collections? Aaargh! Ah, found it! Damn it! You forgot to add your mate as a friend! OK – so type in your mate’s address and invite them as a friend before the lights change. Damn it! It’ll take ages before they accept you as a friend. Damn it! The lights have changed! Too late: you gotta pull off! Damn it! OK: You already had them as a friend? Fine. You already had your mobile Instant Messenger fired up? Lucky you that your battery isn’t dead yet: OK, OK, OK – check to see if they are online: Damn it! He or she is not online? Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Too late! The lights have changed. Gotta go.

You could be in your car at the traffic lights, you could be on the top deck of the bus just before your stop. You could be in between lectures at college. You could be just about to dive underground to catch the tube. We’ve all been there before.

The moral of the story is that mobile Instant Messaging is just plain damned inconvenient when all you wanna do is just send “i m going 2 b l8” to your mate. A text message would have been 1) simpler 2) quicker and 3) would have got the message across even if they weren’t staring at their phone at the time.

So much to all those geeks who think that mobile Instant Messaging is going to kill text messaging.

Went to Southall on Sunday just gone and happened across this mini-bus in a side street. Just had to take a pic. Thought it was an Indian-style at first (which it is I suppose) but later found out that it’s actually Pakistani – and is a common sight on the streets of Lahore as well as cities in much of North West India for sure.

It belongs to a Southall-based catering company. Very strange seeing this in a West London side-street. Made me smile. The blaze of colour and intricate detail. Would make anyone smile wouldn’t it? There’s something really happy (or hippy) about it.

For the next week it’s going to be dark when I leave home in the morning and dark when I get back. When the clocks change next weekend it’ll be light when I leave home (for a few weeks it will anyway) and dark when I get back. It’ll then be dark, dark, dark. Until March next year.

I’ll be looking forward to when the light returns, but in the meantime it’ll be dark wet and cold. A lot of quality thinking time to myself.

There is a very large rotating radar “thing” at London’s Heathrow Airport that can be seen for miles around the vicinity of the airport. As far as I can recall it’s been there forever; I remember gazing in awe at this when I was a child; on trips to the airport to pick up or drop off relatives flying to or from North America or India. And I get that same feeling of wonder every time I see it, even now, as I go about using Heathrow as my local airport for occasional flying trips to this place and that.

I’ve travelled through many international airports all over the world, but there is nothing that looks quite like the Heathrow radar “thingy” anywhere else in the world. I always wonder why? Whatever. There is this really Thunderbirds-esque quality to it: Toy-like. Retro hi-tech. Quirkily British. But reassuringly London.

For Sherry. Five things you can do in my home town. Scratched my head a little; what’s my home town? Is it Kingsbury, London NW9? Or is it London Town? No matter, I’ll do both.

Five things you can do in London NW9:

You can immerse yourself in the life that is our High Street. Start at the Kingsbury tube station end on the right hand side and walk up and pop into all the interesting little shops: grocers, meat shops, pound shops, sari shops, party stuff shops, haircut shops, fast food shops, key cutting shop, Internet shops, pots and pans shops, school uniform shop, Iraqi shop, Sri Lankan shop, Gujurati shop. When you get to the second hand cars shop – cross the road and walk back down the High Street on the other side. When you get back to near the station you can pop into the tiny little run-down arcade that accommodates even tinier little shops – and right at the back you will find a little gem of a place called Udupi Palace where you can sit at a tiny little table in a tiny little room and order yourself the yummiest masala dosa in the West with a cup of tea for under 4 pounds.

You can experience the best view in the whole of London from the very front of the top deck of the Route 79 bus. Take your music player with you, to the southbound bus stop on Honeypot Lane near Kingsbury Circle. When you get your seat, put your music on and watch real London scrolling by. If you don’t have a music player, you could instead try to count how many security cameras you will have been captured on as you make your way through Preston Road, Wembley and Ealing Road. Get off at Alperton tube station.

You can escape to the Far East by popping into the food court at the Oriental City shopping mall. There, you can lunch on a choice of over a thousand different dishes; Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, Singaporean, Indian, Thai, and eat your choice on very ordinary tables and chairs in a big communal area where you can spend the whole day just watching all types of people.

You can get a very good feel for a typical London suburb, where typical Londoners live, and the types of houses they live in, by being driven around the London NW9 neighbourhood on your way to a the local ASDA supermarket. If you take a video camera with you, you could film the view from the rear windscreen, and then sort of time-lapse it afterwards and load it up on YouTube for everyone to see.

You can get Internet for free if you choose to live here. 6 different unsecured Wireless LANs detected from my computer desk in my bedroom.

And In London Town:

You can experience a “white-knuckle” ride on the tube on the Eastbound Piccadilly Line between Acton Town and Hammersmith. Hold Tight! When you get to Hammersmith, you can get off and walk down to the riverside and sit on a bench and just watch the river and people passing by.

You can take a leisurely walk down Piccadilly towards Soho, soaking up all the history, grandeur and glitz that is Central London and end up at the New World Chinese restuarant where you can enjoy fantastic Dim Sum at great price. (Take a Cantonese-speaking friend with you though.)

You can go to a place where the tourists are gauranteed not to go: Woolwich. There you can grab a stodgy donut at the very first McDonalds restaurant to open outside North America before making your way to the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, where you can take an eerie (strange effect on your ears) walk under the river Thames to a place called North Woolwich, which is the most depressing place in London. However, strangely you can catch a train here (North London Line) and end up in Richmond.

You can go to a little sanctuary in the middle of Richmond Park called Isabella Plantation where you can have yourself a very nice picnic.

You can enjoy a breathtaking car journey on London’s best urban highway: the A40 Westbound from Hanger Lane Gyratory all the way to Junction 2 of the M40 – where you can pass through Slough towards Maidenhead and find a little village called Dorney, where you can find a spectacular man-made rowing lake called Dorney Lake. There you can just sit by the water’s edge and meditate.

A young family of four on the top deck of the 79 bus the other day. The conversation started by the not-quite-teenage young boy who had obviously just learned about the Periodic Table of Elements at school. His younger sister, perhaps not quite 8 years old sitting next to him:

Boy to Father: “Dad, What’s your favourite element?”
Father: “Oxygen.”
Boy: “Why?”
Father: “It’s what I need to breathe and stay alive.”
Daughter: “My favourite is Calcium, ‘cos I like Yoghurt”
Boy to Mother: “What’s your favourite Mum?”
Mother: “Diamond. And Gold.”
(Father tuts and raises eyebrows.)
Father to Son: “So what’s your favourite?”
Boy: “Xenon”
Father: “Why?”
Boy: “Because it sounds cool.”

Oh, to be young again.

It’s not very pleasant to come across them when out and about in London. Especially not when you do so in your own neighbourhood:

Some time back Londonist referred to them as “murder boards” – although in my case above it’s not a murder as such. That was when there was talk that the Metropolitan Police were going to scrap them because they caused too much public anxiety. As far as I’m aware there seem to be more of them than ever. Perhaps it is a sign of the times. Perhaps so. Because a little bit of digging around the website of my local London Borough Council (Brent) provides some clue as to the state of behaviour on the streets round here. It does make very disturbing reading:

From Police witness appeals for last week: Woman manages to bite the hand of a hoodie who attacked her. 17 year old gets beat up by 15 hoodies who steal his Nokia 8310 mobile phone.

From the week before: Pizza delivery guy gets gashed in face by hoodies who stole his Nokia 6280 mobile phone. Young Spanish tourist had her rucksack stolen, in it were loads of money, camcorders etc. Italian tourist gets punched after having had a tomato thrown at him and demanding his mobile phone. Teenager on bus gets punched in face by hoodies who stole his Nokia 6230 mobile phone. Bloke gets punched and kicked by gang who stole his Apple iPod and cash. A man caught up in a “large” disturbance in Ealing Road area will lose his arm after enduring serious injuries – numerous weapons, baseball bats, sword, axe, recovered by Police.

More from the week before that, and the week before that.

Shudder.

Today was the first day of of the Autumn term for many primary school children in London. And predictably, the traffic levels on the roads spiked considerably as many parents ushered their kids to school in their cars and MPVs during the rush hour. The last 6 weeks of summer-holiday heaven for car-commuters has come to an end. And although I try to avoid driving to work if I can, today (for specific reasons) I had little choice but to join the school-day traffic on my way to work. So it’s kind of nice when, as you’re sitting there in a traffic jam in the suburbs, to notice that not every parent is unnecessarily clogging up the roads taking their kids to school, and walking them to school instead.

I have to admit there are many people who also have no choice but to drive their kids to school, but since I live practically next door to a bunch of schools myself, I have personally witnessed too many who do so, who really do not need to. (Sigh.)

Bought some cheap red and yellow roses from a local North-West London supermarket last week. They were all scrunched up and mangled. Put them in a vase. Added some water and spilled out the contents of the liquid “food” sachets that came with them into it. Went away for a few days and came back to this:

Normal service will be resumed shortly. I think.

Slow blog month. Thinking of something boring to post about, but there’s too much interesting stuff going on. In the meantime here is a short video of a 3 year old girl saying the days of the week in Japanese, Spanish and French:

(Apols to those who’ve seen this before!)

Occasionally they test the lights at the not-yet-opened Wembley Stadium. It’s always a little exciting when they do – because I have to say that it looks quite beautiful when it’s lit up at night. They don’t keep the lights on for very long though. And a cameraphone is not the best cam to try to get a decent picture when the ambient lighting is low.

Although it’s not so easy to spot – you can see a Route 79 bus on the road in the above pic.

It’s been too hot here in London recently. Too hot to do anything really. Definitely too hot to blog. And the temperature and humidity on the buses and tubes has been intolerable. Just makes you want to fall asleep.

Mumbai group bloggers Ultrabrown have it covered. (Warning some of the images are particularly graphic.) For further help and information re contacting friends go to Mumbai Help. When will this kind of thing ever stop.

I’m sure not many could have escaped not knowing that Friday just gone was exactly a year to the day that many people in Central London experienced some really horrible things. Many would have been affected by what happened then, physically, mentally, emotionally. And many still were afterwards. I certainly was.

One year on I found myself having to be travelling into Central London for work using the tube. Destination High Holborn. As you would expect for a rush hour in the summer, the tubes were packed full of hot, sweaty people making their way to work. It might have been just me, but for a busy rush hour it did seem unusually silent in the trains though.

Is Spanish for “We are blue”. And is also the website for a special-interest community of like-minded professionals with some employee afilliation to the Telefonica group of companies.

This is an example of one of the great things about the current phase of the Internet; there are virtual communities virtually everywhere, catering for virtually anything. Places to share common values, beliefs and experiences.

Every topic or ideology catered for. From bulletin boards for people who love customising their obsolete Tivos, through sites for fans of Buffy The Vampire Slayer to photo-sharing pools for people who have a passion for garden water butts. You name it, there will be a community out there which is interested in it. The Internet makes it possible for people to come together around the most obscure of common interests.

The Internet is a truly remarkable thing.