Bug Unit

So… we’re in London. It’s cold… it’s expensive… it’s great Our flight was okay. Not the greatest, but okay. We had about 7 hours of turbulence that I pretty much slept through, but Jen was very much disturbed by. Sleeping on the plane is never great, but I managed to get a little bit of shuteye. Virgin is really awesome! They have TV-on-demand on the plane, and a really impressive selection, including Arrested Development, Extras, and a couple other really k-rad TV series. Then a whole line-up of really recent movies… like Taladega Nights… Ricky Bobby… wow.

So once we landed, we made our way through to customs, where Jen and I seperated… her in the EU queue, myself in the “Other – With UK Visa” queue. My queue was like 10x the length of hers. Took about 40 minutes to get to the front, at which point the customs lady questioned me about my intentions once inside the UK, and also my understanding of all the rules. Wasn’t too hectic, but she then proceeded to tell me that x-rays or not, I needed to go queue for Health Control. Finding myself in yet another queue, this time amongst some iiiiiiiiiincredible dutchmen who were also coming across to the UK, I had to wait another 20 odd minutes till I got to the front, showed my x-rays to the doctor, and got cleared for entry into the country. Yay it was over, and I could finally get through to where Jen was, collect our bags (which she had done already), and meet up with our taxi driver.

The taxi driver. Quin had organised us a taxi to meet us at the airport and then take us to his house. It was cheaper than getting the Heathrow Express, and was obviously a lot less effort. Well, we thought it would be. He waited for us for 2.5 hours because of all of the delay through immigration, and kept standing waiting for us with a “Kyle” sign at the arrivals gate. We finally got through to him, and found a pretty disgruntled man who was pretty tired of standing waiting around for “Kyle”, which I completely understand. He took us down to his car, and on the way stopped off to pay for the parking.

This was our first taste of our expensive life to come.

£10 for parking, which I had to pay for… and then moving off down to the car, and driving down to the exit. The taxi driver (who even though I introduced myself to, didn’t tell me his name) then lost the ticket, and parked off on the side and started digging around in his car to find it. He couldn’t. So he ran into the parking office down the road and explained that he had lost his card. The guy across the desk from him pushed out his hand with a ticket in it and asked him if it was his… It was. Freaky. In the, like, 3 minutes it took us to get to the bottom of the parking lot at Heathrow, someone had picked the ticket up, and handed it in, or something like that. Either way, somehow they had our ticket, and everything was now clear to leave.

So we headed off down the road, and about 1.5 hours later we arrived at Quin’s house. We were only supposed to take about 45 minutes, but this guy seemed to be keen on driving around the suburbs for a while. It definitely felt like we were doubling around a lot, and not really taking the most direct route, but anyways. Now at first this sounds like the most brilliant plan for a taxi driver to do, especially with tourists, but we had already agreed on an amount before we drove off, and we had also confirmed that this was the normal price for this journey… so he had no reason to do it. Who knows…

We were so stoked to arrive at Quins place though… after fetching the key hidden inside the braai outside the house, we dumped our stuff inside Quin’s room, and passed out on the bed. We slept for about 2 hours.

After we awoke, we missioned off to town and bought some 7 day travel cards for the underground, and a UK sim card to start sms’ing and getting in to contact with everyone around here. We stopped off at a Subway and got some footlongs… About £5 a piece later, we were full, wallets a little emptier, and feeling pretty cold walking the streets of London.

It’s pretty cold in London. It’s colder than I thought it would be… now before you start saying I told you so, everyone, I am completely happy with the temperature. It’s a little cold at times, but we made a concerted effort today to dress properly, and then it was fine. Thermals vest, shirt, jacket, jeans, thick socks, leather shoes, beanie, and a scarf… It was warm.

Shoo… tired of typing now. I also have my new notebook now, which is absolutely awesome. I started a flickr account now as well, for putting all the photos on. They can be found here. The notebook is puuuuurdy. It’s sleek… and frakking fast. Love the notebook. Love the portability. Anyways, I’ll let Jen write the rest of the news since we arrived. Everything is rad over here, we’re moving from Tam’s house to Brezzler’s (eyes eyes eyes) tomorrow, just for 2 nights, then off to Milton Keynes to visit Tam… the other other Tam.

So keep it real… msn me sometime. Shoowah.