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By Posted on Posted in London No Comments

Great. Now the Northern Line is broken. That’s me and about half a million other commuters in London out of luck. The thing with the Tube is that when it works, it’s great. But if anything goes wrong, any little thing at all, the whole system collapses in on itself — huge delays, crowds of angry commuters on the trains and on the platforms. That’s because The Tube is a system at capacity and being run at its limit of efficiency. Thankfully, I have the option of working from home today so I don’t have to get caught up in it, but a lot of people don’t have that luxury. By the way, when the Tube drivers say the trains are unsafe and the management (London Underground) says they are, I’m fairly likely to believe the drivers &mdash the people that actually work the trains and are responsible for the safety of the passengers. LU needs to get its act together.

By Posted on Posted in London, Terrorism No Comments

Well – any illusions I may have had about being “safe” up here in sleepy little East Finchley were shattered today. Yes it’s true. Terrorists are ditching cars right here, in the middle of middle-class British suburbia. In other news, I ventured back into the Tube system today for the first time since Thursday. After the bombings on the 7th, things seemed like they returned to normal fairly quickly, but now everyone really is warily eyeing everyone else. It’s quite un-nerving.

By Posted on Posted in London, Terrorism No Comments

So we got bombed again. When will these people quit it already? I had a pretty surreal walk across London this time trying to get to a Tube stop that works. As I write this, I’m finally in a Tube train travelling north from Mornington Crescent station back to East Finchley. I tried the bus for a while then gave up. Here are a couple shots of the area around Warren Street station where one of the bombs went off. The top one is of someone hopping the barrier at Euston Road (normally an extremely busy street but they weren’t allowing any vehicle traffic within a certain area), just before I hopped it as well. The bottom one is someone approaching the police at one of the many police lines around Warren Street and Euston. I regularly commute through Warren Street so I can only immagine how fun the next few weeks are going to be. I sense some serious home-working coming up. Hey you know what’s even cooler? I just sent away my passport this morning by courier to get it renewed! So I have no ability to leave the country if I need to. Great!

By Posted on Posted in London, Politics, Terrorism No Comments

…that in October of last year I said that George Bush was putting my family at greater risk with this ill-conceived Iraq war. Last week’s bombing in London bears out those concerns. Instead of “making the world safer,” Bush has made the world even more dangerous by stoking the fires of extremism, through the Iraq war, prisoner abuse, etc… etc… But still he goes on with his “war on terror” message (he’s consistent, I’ll give him that). Unbelievable.

By Posted on Posted in London, Terrorism No Comments

I think it’s only just sunk in, after having read the detailed analysis of Thursday’s bombings: I’ve often found myself commuting to work via the Picadilly line — it’s one of my alternate routes. If I hadn’t been out of the country on Thursday, it’s quite possible that I could have been on a train between King’s Cross and Russell Square stations at around 8:50.

By Posted on Posted in London, Travel No Comments

I’ve been transiting through Heathrow regularly for about six years now, and for six years the most consistently high-quality food to be found is at the Seafood Bar café annex to the Caviar House food shop. You wouldn’t expect to find high quality smoked and raw seafood in the middle of an airport departure lounge, but there it is. They’re actually in all the Heathrow terminals and I believe in Stansted and Gatwick as well (all BAA airports?). I particularly recommend the Russian Balik smoked salmon, accompanied by a Balik beer (strong). Fabulous.

By Posted on Posted in London 1 Comment

So yesterday we (the family) went to Highgate — which has a reputation of being a really nice and historical part of London that we’ve been living near but have never been to. Highgate itself was beautiful — village atmosphere with Georgian architecture, etc… but we were a bit disappointed by the proliferation of chain restaurants. In particular, were refused a table at Strada, which is a mediocre pizza chain anyway but we had stopped out of desperation. Getting hungrier and hungrier, we finally tripped across a fantastic pub called The Flask. They had an amazing beer collection* and good food — and they were very friendly, even though the place was crowded beyond belief. So the day was at least partially redeemed. * It’s actually very difficult to find a pub in London that has a good selection of beers. This is because most pubs are chains that are owned by brewers, and because most people (yes, even here) settle for whatever — usually Carling for some inexplicable reason. Locally owned pubs usually offer a better selection, or at least offer some good hand-drawn ales, but they’re few and far between.