Oh yeah, I forgot to mention; Duran Duran BLEW! All of the hits, and all of the crap from their new album, plus an incredibly insulting word-play game out of Mr. LeBond.

I was stuck next to some idiotic 30-something brits who were escaping their children for the evening to see the show, and everytime the guy would smash into me, he'd apologize, which was twice as annoying.

Wembley arena isn't that great, it looks like a hockey stadium, they serve stadium style food too (crap food, and two types of unknown beer. Draft, and not Draft.) Annoying!

[didn't do much today, either. did what I came out here to do, connected up the whole vpn mess in the london office, and realized too late that ESP and AH were being blocked by regus' firewall, so that fucked me for about 6 hours until we realized it and I bitched out regus. agggghh. what a waste. 11 hours at work]

London is all about queues.

Queues for the taxi, the busses, the Underground.

A brit in the throws of one too many glasses of wine said that "Londoners know how to queue better than anyone else.", and I agree with her,.

I have one day left here and I can't decide what to do; I considered taking the eurostar to paris, but you need at least a one-day advance purchase for the winter rate, otherwise it's £330! ouch. So much for that.

There's always the millenium dome (www.dome2000.co.uk), there's only 12 days left until they turn it into a business park, or a pile of rubble, or something. It's in greenwich, and that sounds like a great place to go, go see the point where GMT starts and stand in the eastern and western hemispheres at the same time. How touristy.

Whatever happens, I need to stop in Camden market one more time to pick things up for the evagirl.

I’m so incredibly tired, again. I think it’s jet-lag combined with the whole day-night inversion that is the result of my San Francisco to London travels. I spent much of the day going through covent garden, which explores some interesting dualities: the main part of Covent Garden is Covent Market, which is a bit like Boston’s Fanueil Hall on steroids. Filled with street performers and small vendors (and like fanueil hall, many chain stores, called “multiples” here in the UK) a few contact jugglers, an amazingly tight funk band, and some guy who was dressed up like one of the Queen’s guards with a wind-up screw in his back.

Wind-up screw queen guard man would go over to the Amazingly-Tight-Funk-Band after each of their songs and ask them to stop playing so he could do is performance, much to the dismay of the crowd. This earned him many ‘boos’, ‘no fucking ways’, and ‘sod offs’ from the crowd at large. What a terribly brilliant strategy for making money on the street – annoy those who would pay you.

After that, A quick stop at Whittard’s to buy various teas, and then to a small vegetarian resturant off of Neal’s street for food. At Whittard’s, some bald idiot commented on the purple hair (“Are you buying mango tea to keep your hair that way?”), and then apologized with, “I’m jealous, you see, I have none and yours is purple.” I believe at this point his daugter called him a rude git, and she walked off.

I managed to drop a hundred or so pounds at Cyberdog, even though half of the clothing there wasn’t in my size (many online orders will be placed when I return.) I also found a few good things for presents as Cyberdog never ceases to amazing me with the amount of blinky rave shit they sell. We’ll see if the people like it when they get it.

I promptly left there and discovered a graphic design/photo book store, and found (amazingly!) a signed copy of Vaughn Oliver’s new v23 book, SIGNED. There is a god, (and he costs 33 pounds.)

Westminster station is an modernistic array of glass, steel, cement, and ill-placed support beams. I have a certain thing for glass and steel, and when seeing the station, had to get a picture; Unfortunately, in the lower part of my shot was this large rugby-player-esque bloke. Said bloke decided to yell at me, and generally make me feel like I was about to have my small black and purple ass squashed by him because I’d stolen his soul. What a moron. He even caught up with me to remind me , “Hey mate, don’t do that again.” Whatever. At least he didn’t kick my ass.

Back in the hotel now, and about to go to Duran Duran, and I don’t even feel like going.

Greetings from London!

It's 0455GMT and there's just no way I can sleep. I
went to bed around 2145GMT last night and I woke up around 0300. Blah! I'm
going to be so jet lagged when I get back. The worst part is is that I'm
incredibly hungry because the brain is expecting breakfast right now, but
the country is not about to provide it. At least they're providing 24 hour time, and the scale in the bathroom says I weigh 9.9 Stones, whatever the hell a Stone is. (well, okay, 65kg)

I came here to do a network install for mimecom, as we're getting the London office online and there's noone who can do the international VPN but me, so here I am. Free trip.

Wonderfully enough, Erin's here too. I didn't think I'd find her but a last minute email showed that she was close by (Tottingham Court)

I'm sort of waiting for the resturant to open downstairs, to discover what
they call an 'english breakfast', even though it's being held in the
adjacent resturant, _Zander_, which resembles a modern San Francisco .com
yuppie (think: brushed aluminum, pastels, and lots of exposed blonde
hardwood) resturant, and not anything the Queen would have dined at.

The word that comes to mind while winding through London, both on the tube
and navigating the city is "Labrythine". Everything is massively huge, and
the tube at some stations goes down 5-6 levels of stairs. There's a
universe down there, and somehow it works. It's just so huge. Even Soho dwarfs anything San Francisco has to offer in terms of nightlife.

I went there last night, had dinner at this great indonesian place, with
Erin and her friend chris. They produced some of the best
peanut tofu (Nargang something) I've ever had, and I could certainly use
another plate of that right now.

Unfortunately she's leaving to go to Amsterdamn on Sunday (she flies out of there, not Heathrow) so back she goes. I'm seriously considering getting a TGV ticket and going to Paris from Tuesday until Thursday, but I don't think it's such a good idea. I really don't feel I have the time to see paris (I'd have to show up, look at it, and leave, and that'd ruin it for me.) I think I'll come back here with Eva, and then see Paris.

I'm racking up something like 36,000 united miles for the next couple of trips I'm taking, possibly enough to make me Premier Exec, but I doubt it. In any event I'll have enough to get us to austrailia and back, or to some interesting worldwide location. Woo hoo! Travel!

Oh god, what a night. Got bored, and Chandra decided to come over. Of course, she ends up dragging me off to Bondage-A-go-go, which I think is the worst club in San Francisco, but it's become suprisingly better over the last few weeks. Fernando was there, and the usual gang of idiots bounced around the club.

I also ran into Teliza, whom I can never remember her name, it's just too strange or something. My recollection started with me introducing myself to her and saying hi, and then realizing that she was at my house and I had cooked for her the day prior to seeing her at the club. How wierd.

Things did manage (As they always do) to get wierder. Most of us lingered around the club (until oh, 3:30am) or so, at which point six of us piled into a car to go to the Mason Cafe, and e went to my house. 90% of the way to the cafe, we get pulled over by SFPD because there's six of us in the car, instead of the nominal 5, and Fernando informs us that he's "not going to make it". We didn't understand this until we saw the other three policemen coming up, and we were asked to get out of the car. Fernando got arrested, apparently for an incredibly old warrant (something about possession of a switchblade, not going to court, and the words "no bail" were repeated to us.) I take it he's in some awful part of the SF county jail right now, and there's not much I can do about it.

At least I had the foresight to hide the unmentionables when we got out of the car. Oddly enough, the police officer even asked us to "take your belongings, and the narcotics so I don't find them" when he told us to go away.

The car got towed, and I took a cab back home. Crazy night. I hope he's ok. I really do. I wouldn't want to be in his position right now.

Decided that after seeing far too many hits in my history window for this that I'd open one and see what the deal was.