London

You know you're living in a totally separate type of London world when you can get to work oblivious to a major terrorist incident.

I walk to work and avoided the total shutdown of the London Underground (the Tube) and a large part of the bus network. When the Tube is out of order, you might as well rule out ANY type of transport in London - the push on effect means everything else gets overwhelmed.

At work, the day wasn't any better. Working for a news organisation would, you'd think, make it easier to keep on top of the facts. It doesn't. It just makes you have greater access to the mis-information, hearsay, and general lack of information that you would get as you sit at home watching BBC News and Sky News.

Credit goes to the BBC for their reporting style. Body count (not a nice term but accurate) only listed when confirmed - therefore at 2 for most of the day despite the "totalled" double-decker bus that must have had major casualties. Also for only reporting it as a terrorist incident once this had been confirmed - London has had a huge number of transport related deaths in recent years from plain bad maintenance - no terrorists required.

Now the accurate details are coming out, we can, well "panic" based on facts rather than "gossip".

It's so sad for those people and their families effected by this - again violence hits the innocent. :(

You appreciate your friends on a day like this. Thank you friends!

Once in a "n" experience

I work in IT.

I work with, and own Apple Macintoshs. I do so because they are much easier to fix when they go wrong, they go wrong less, they're easier to use, they're great hardware and a great operating system as well.

In the old days (5 years ago), Macs used to crash more than Windows - but they rebooted quite happily where Windows PCs got terminal on a regular basis.

These days, the new Mac operating system - OS X (ten) - rarely if ever crashes. In fact, I barely ever turn off my laptop at all (I just close the lid, so it goes to sleep). It crashes about once every 3 months and the Mac doesn't get spyware, adware, or viruses (yet, at least!).

Therefore, when it does crash, it is damnably irritating (putting it politely). I was in a bad mood last. I was tired. No, I wasn't hungry and poor too!! But I had one of those once in 3 month crashes.

Damn it!

Whether goes the weather

London weather is different from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Romantic movies from London always has nice, soft falls of snow - think Bridget Jones Diary and Love, Actually.

In London we've been lucky in the last couple of years to get one or two days of snow in winter. The rest of the United Kingdom, yes, London no.

When I first arrived - the first two years here were different degrees of overcast weather - now we're actually getting proper seasons. We had a couple of years of heatwaves in summer (read: normal hot weather elsewhere) and a bit of snow in winter. Cool (or rather hot then cool!),

London's also known for it's rain - well that's wrong too normally. In the normal course of events, it is never more than drizzle. I didn't need a raincoat until I went to Paris!

Well, these last few weeks, we've had some fun weather. Swelteringly hot weather, followed by thunder storms and torrential rain. Hey, I've got soaked twice but what fun. Yesterday, there was so much thunder and lightening that my view East looked like the East End was being bombed like in World War Two!

Cheap entertainment anyway - especially when 2 minutes after I'd said to my visiting mother, "I don't mind a bit of rain", the heavens opened once again and I got soaked.

Ha, ha.

World Without Borders

It's a small world.

In the space of a day, I meet up with my mother (who's English but lives in NZ) who is visiting London via Dubai; talk to a beautiful American (in America); a cute Australian (in London); another cool Australian (in London); a lovely Montenegrin (where's that? - near London); and a feisty French girl (in London); and a Brunein (not sure about that term - in NZ).

That's just the personal interactions let alone talking to people in shops and whatever.

If they can fix the time zone issue ( I need some sleep), I'll be fine.

Hi world!