Literary Update:
I finished Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything on Sunday. I really liked it. It was work, but quite enjoyable. Then on Monday I started W.E.B. Griffin's Retreat, Hell! It took me three days to get through all 500 pages. Hardcover. Now, I ask you, is that a poor value for the money? A book you can finish in just 3 days? A few more great books like that and I'll be broke, busking for change in front of Waterstone's.


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I'm not sure how the dentists make a living here. And that's not a crack about the state of British dentistry (pot calling the kettle black, and all that). I thought I felt a small cavity, so I stopped at the dentist in St. Albans. They made an appointment for the next day, and gave me the NHS forms to complete. So I show up on Friday, and the dentist takes a quick survey calling out the numberof the tooth and the work. I think there was one that was 100% intact. He was quite impressed with Walter's work. And the volume of it. He was about 35, but knew everything there, so I was pleased with his knowledge (both new and old technology). Anyway, he took a look, didn't think it was a cavity, but took a set of bitewings just to be sure. Said it's just a little chip, which is why it was sensitive, but no longer. So he said I'm fine, have a nice day.

I stopped at the desk on the way out - it's pay first here, too, then file for a refund. Let's see: Initial consult, 2 x-rays, that's £12.30. I'm sorry? £12.30. Uh... okay! So I paid, and it's probably not even worth the time and postage to fill out either the NHS form or my own CIGNA dental forms. He spent at least 15 minutes on me, so that's £50 an hour, before expenses. Like I said, how do theses guys make a living?

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The big news in the Sun was the people who were stuck in the Tube on Tuesday for 45 minutes. Well, actually, I think the Sun had something about Tony Blair covering up aliens living at Hampton Court Palace, but the Evening Standard had a headline about it (and the pictures next to the Aliens article showed they closely resembled semi-nude buxom English tarts). But I digress. These people had it good. I suffered the Thameslink the last two days.

I got on the train home yesterday, which should have gotten me to London Bridge by 5:30. This was great, because I wanted to get to Oxford at 6 for a free Rufus Wainwright performance at the big HMV store. So we're tooling along on the express line, when we slow and then stop. After about 5 minutes the driver gets on the intercom and (faintly) tells us that the engineers are working up ahead and that it will be a couple minutes. Ten minutes later he says the same thing, except generously explaining it's a problem with "points." I still don't know what that means.

So we wait. And wait. And wait some more. After about 25 minutes the cranky old lady sitting on the other side of the train starts asking what the driver said, because she could barely hear him. When told, she then started getting really cranky. I turned up my iPod and kept reading, but I think she said a few things you don't normally associate with old British ladies. As we're waiting, at least 5 other Thameslink trains go past us on the local line. I'm still at a loss why some brain surgeon couldn't figure out that if we backed up the half mile or so to the last station we could switch over to the other track. And the trains are 10 minutes apart, so it wouldn't be a big problem, just switch back to the express line at the next station. Like the trains that kept passing us were doing.

After 45 minutes we finally got going again. We got to Kings Cross, and I'm waiting for the train to get going again, and it strikes me that we're so far behind that they'll keep bumping us back at every stop, so I should get off and take the Tube to London Bridge. So I grab my rucksack, hop up, walk to the door and watch them close before I can get off. Oh well, what's another 5 or 10 minutes? We stop at Farringdon, then City Thameslink, then Blackfriars, and - wait, they're telling us they're skipping London Bridge. So I have to get off here.

Now, Blackfriars is a very nice bridge. And it's a nice way to get to the (old) financial district from the South. But don't try to get a Tube or a Bus. There's two tube lines that go about 30 miles before the cross any other lines, and I think the nearest bus stop is the other side of the Thames. If they'd told us at City, there's about a half dozen Tube lines you can catch, and if they told us back at Kings Cross there's probably another 78 or so. But this isn't City or Kings Cross. I just say the heck with it, head to the Millenium Bridge, and walk home.

I still really like crossing the Millenium Bridge. It's a great looking bridge, it's got spectacular views in both directions, and it just feels so metropolitan. I do still like it. Just not as much in wingtips as I do in Reeboks. But the wingtips do make the deck ring with every step.

And the hits just keep on coming. Today I get to the station just in time to hear that the 1615 is running 5 minutes late. But that's okay, because I want the 1619, which is the express and gets to Kings Cross 10 minutes sooner. Even though it doesn't get to London Bridge, I can take the Tube (see yesterday). And it's only 2 minutes late (gotta wait for the early train to clear). So the 1615 comes and goes at 1620 and then they update the board. The 1619 is running 15 minutes late. Great, so now I can sit around and get to Kings Cross at the same time - later, probably - as the train I just let go. 10 minutes later, they say it'll be twenty minutes late. It finally shows up at about 1640, but its now the 1635 that's running 5 minutes late (huh?). Since the 1619 was getting in after the 1635 (same route), they just killed the run.

Okay, fine. It's still only twenty minutes to Kings Cross and I'll grab the Tube there. So I hop off at 1707, and I hear them call the next train on Platform A - the Thameslink to Brighton stopping at Farringdon, City Thameslink, Blackfriars, and London Bridge. I ain't no dummy. I can take the 5 minute walk to the Tube station, or I can stand where I am and hop on this next train. Well, the second train. First the empty 1619 had to pass through the station. A minute later the 1710 to Brighton pulls up and I hop on. We stop at Farringdon, then City Thameslink, then Blackfriars, and we're on our way to London Bridge. But why didn't we take the switch over to the left? Oh well, this means it goes to Elephant and Castle, and I can take the bus from there instead of the bridge. We get to E&C and we don't even slow down. I'm a little perturbed. I have no idea where the train is going, or how long it will take to get there. The furthest South I've ever been is the Tesco down the street.

The first thing I learn is that the tracks on this side of the Thames would make Amtrak cringe. 20-foot sailboats have a smoother ride across the Atlantic. We're bombing along, probably reaching speeds in excess of 30 miles an hour (I saw one sign posting a 5mph limit at one point). I got to see some lovely places. Loughborough Junction had a very nice High street, Herne Hill had a very nice, er, hill. Appropriately, everything after this was downhill. Tulse Hill was not as nice as Herne. Not even their hill. The houses were now not just backed up to the tracks, but in one place where the line split, they wedged two or three houses between the two sets of tracks. The back yards progressed from the classic tidy row house garden to where it was now a rusty beach chair, a patio umbrella on its side, and grass about a metre tall. And then it got crummy.

I always wanted to go to Crystal Palace. It's just such a romantic name. Well, the romance is over. Starting at Crystal Palace, someone is getting very rich sellinig spray paint. The graffiti along the rail lines looks like a New York subway car, circa 1972. You name it, it was painted. Brick walls, bridge abutments, power poles, fences... I swear somebody tagged a dog in a backyard. By the time we got to Norwood they appeared to have run out of paint. Also it became very industrialised, and we passed what looked like the Thameslink rail yard. I think I saw the 1619 finally pulling in. But we still haven't stopped. We rolled through more than 10 separate rail stations. Finally, 45 minutes out of Blackfriars, we get to Croydon, which is a sizable town about 10 miles South of London. Well, East Croydon according to the signs. I hop off the train and start looking for the return to London Bridge.

It's now 1750. The monitor tells me the train to London got in at 1747 and leaves at 1751 on track 1. So I ran to track 1 (I was on 6), hopped on the train, and the doors closed. Too late to change, I decide not to ask if I'm on the right train. Luckily, it was. And we took an entirely different route back to London Bridge, which only lasted about 8 minutes, and had a nice view of Canary Wharf, and a side view of Tower Bridge. I never noticed the "crowns" on top of the towers before. After getting off I stopped at the Thameslink information desk to see if I misread the schedule - even though I know I didn't. The nice young lady asked if I needed any help. I asked her if I was crazy, or did this schedule say the 1710 train stopped at London Bridge. Sure, she said, but they cancelled the stop because of signal problems.

I suggested they might want to tell the folks up at Kings Cross because they called the train for London Bridge. Or at least have the conductors tell people at Blackfriars, as they did yesterday. She replied, "I know what you mean. And I work for the company..." She said it was her third day at the desk, and she's never experienced anything quite like it. I can imagine.

Tomorrow, with a little bit of luck, maybe I'll get to see Brighton.

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Struck by inspiration, John and I went to see Tosca on the giant screen in Covent Garden. That's right, strangled Italian, everybody dies in the end, it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings opera. It was, they do, and she did. It was a live broadcast of the production going on at the Royal Opera House adjacent to the square. The plaza was packed with people, and we couldn't find anywhere to sit (no lawn chairs allowed). So we ended up in the back, almost on Tavistock Street. We had a great view, though the subtitles quickly let us both know we each need a new prescription. My favorite translation was Cesare saying to Tosca, "Thanks to you, death looks better." Uh, you're welcome?

We had a great time. It was a great night out, about 60 degrees, and the outdoor setting allowed us to make snarky comments about the acting, the near misses on the high notes, and the couple next to us in the phone booth pawing each other. Nothing says culture like being in a landmark setting in a world capital with your buddy, scarfing Doritos and downing a couple of kingers of Stella beer. Man, it just doesn't get any better.

Although, as most of you have already seen, last Tuesday wasn't exactly a solitary evening either. I joined 499,999 close friends to watch 8 Formula 1 (Grand Prix) racers fly down the streets of London. Okay, cruise. They said they'd try to keep it down to 70 mph on the trip from Oxford Circus, down Regent Street, through Picadilly Circus (it makes a nice chicane) and on to the Pall Mall. The Westminster Council passed a resolution asking them to keep it under 35, but most think they were kidding. I think the speed camera at Jermyn Street is still trying to take a picture. But I got some. Well I think I did. Those things went by so fast I really won't know until I get the film processed.

But the combination of all of this just overwhelmed the senses. The cars were incredibly fast - at least for Regent Street. The engines screamed at about 18,000 revs - you hear this, you'll know what a banshee will sound like - and then to do it on a street surrounded by 6 to 10 story high buildings? Unbelieveable. Add to this the crowd. People were standing or sitting on anything they could to get a view. Trashcans, telephone booths, lamposts, road signs, construction scaffolding, window ledges, bus shelters. You name it, they climbed it. Except for the fountain of Eros in Picadilly. Only a few of the Metropolitan's finest climbed that, which effectively discouraged others from trying.

And I wasn't exaggerating. The Times of London reported the crowd was more than a half million people. It was all a publicity stunt and some manoeuvring by Bernie Ecclestone, the owner of Formula 1. He's trying to tease London into thinking they might get a GP race like Monte Carlo, but he's really trying to get somebody to put some money into the track at Silverstone, so he doesn't have to spend any of his billions to make improvements. But hey, he can tease all he wants. It was still an amazing day. And I told everyone you said, "hello."

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I made it through the party week unscathed. Wednesday, the day that we made our project p/reviews and then went out was pretty good. John, Christina, Grash, and I went to the "Belgo Centrale" off of Covent Gardens. It's a qausi-Belgian retaurant, which means it has a beer list of about 150 different Belgian beers. The rest of the menu was good, and while there were a number of Belgian dishes (frites, dame blanche, some strange cabbage and raspberry thing), I'm not sure the cuisine was strictly Flemish. Or even Walloon. But the frites were the best I've had here. We got the evening special. I had the half-breast of chicken in a Chili-Barbecue sauce (oriental, not southwest), the frites, and a half pint of Maer beer. All for the time of day we ordered (£5.36)! Such a deal.

Oh yeah, project reviews. Come Wednesday morning the tube strike was in full bloom, so the buses were running about 175% of usual capacity. Sound impressive? The raw numbers are just amazing. They estimate that 7 million people took the buses into London that morning. The only problem I had - which is a recurring one when transit is disrupted for one reason or another - is that the 172 bus, which runs past Aldwych to St. Paul's - stops at Waterloo Station and the driver calls out, "End of line!"

One thing you have to know about Waterloo is that it's a big busy large HUGE transit hub. There are at least 3 or 4 national rail lines that run through it, commuter lines, 3 tube lines, at least 20 different bus lines, and even the Eurostar (Chunnel train). On a normal morning when you pass through you see lines of 50 or so people queued up for the individual buses, snaking their way back under the tracks. People stand patiently reading their papers, listening to their MP3 players or chatting with their commuting "buddy." This is why the Brits love (live?) to queue. It's a survival skill. And they send their children to Waterloo to learn how to do it.

Today, the queues are at least 150 or 200 people deep. Based on wholly unscientific analysis that's somewhere between 7 and 15 buses to make it to the front of the queue. On a normal day. So there are about 40 people on this 172 looking about trying to figure out what just happened when he calls "End of line" again. So we start filing off the bus, realising what we had in store to get another. Being the dutiful OR dweeb, I was calculating wait- versus walk-time. It's just under a mile to school, so I was pretty sure I'd be walking. But just as we get off, another 172 pulls up right behind. About 20 of us had the same idea. The line for the 172 stop filed away from us, so we just formed our own "special" queue - exercising presumptive rights - and filed right off the first 172 onto the second! It was mighty cozy, but we got to school in about ten minutes time (usually about 4 minutes from Waterloo).

Even with the strike almost eveyone made it in within 20 minutes of the scheduled start of 9. One of the last was the instructor (James Gibb), who figured it was faster to walk the mile-and-a-half from his train station than try to get a bus or even take a cab. No great shakes with the projects, though I found I was in the minority as far as having actually started work. One poor soul had his project cancelled last week, and needs a new one. On the other hand, a number of the Decision Science majors (OR-lite™) who had their meeting in the afternoon, hadn't even been assigned a project, never mind started one. The best/worst named study has to be a teenage pregnancy project. The wise-cracks were minimal, but still took a few minutes to get through. And the unfortunate comment of the day was from someone doing a project for Proctor & Gamble who described Pantene as an up-market brand, while Head & Shoulders was a more "lower middle-class" image. At this point Gibb felt it important to point out that he used Head & Shoulders. This theme resurfaced a few more times, especially in a discussion of a project about evaluating new sites for Selfridge's department stores.

My part was pretty uneventful. Only one question about how much quantitative analysis I expected. Instead of saying, "Not much, thank goodness," I outlined a couple basic procedures I expected to use. The only part that didn't work well was that my "internal" (i.e. LSE) adviser, whom I'd only been assigned a few days earlier, had to miss the meeting because of a death in her family, and I don't expect to meet until sometime next week. But Gibb thought I should be able to be self-directed to a better degree than most (silly boy), and that if I needed any help he'd be available. He did review my project "Terms of Reference" and applauded me for using the plural form data, but spanked me for using infer instead of imply and splitting an infinitve. The split infinitive is based on arcane Latin rules (infinitives are a single word in Latin, so they can't be split) that have no basis in modern English. But since he was right about infer I wisely chose not to challenge his criticisim. Or is that, I chose wisely not to challenge his criticism? Or I chose not to challenge his criticism wisely? Or only a wise-ass would challenge his criticism?

Back to important stuff: partying. On Friday I went (back) to Covent Gardens for a send off for Oliver, with whom I bonded in the Laundry at GDS. Even though he's German, he's lived in the US for at least 10 years. So why he wanted to go to TGI Friday's I'm still puzzling over. Last night in London before heading to the States? Let's go to an American bar!! Whatever. So long as there's beer... Well, there was beer. But it was only bottled. And only American (I don't care - Corona is an American beer). So I had to settle for Sam Adams. At £3.25 a bottle. That's $5.75 for a 12 ounce bottle of beer! I nursed that thing like a tick on a supermodel (let's see: two beers or an entire dinner at the Belgo...?). The group was small but quite eclectic. There was our German/American friend, a woman from Chicago via Kenya (whose mother loves Hartford), a couple people from China, a Cuban (named Hansel?), another or two from China, a woman from Seattle, and a guy from Peru, who has very striking native/Incan features. You could just envision him plucking someone's heart out. No wait, that's Aztec. And a Colombian was supposed to come, but didn't show. A veritable alcohol-soaked UN. Or is that already implied?

From there I walked to Fleet Street to join my flatmate Laurent for his bon voyage at 11. One minor problem. The place he chose didn't have a late licence, so it closed at 11. So that literally ended before it ever started. For some strange reason, I decided it was such a lovely night that I walked home. And I was stone-cold sober (and at 6 bucks a beer you'd be sober, too). It was actually quite cool. Here we are on the 1st of July (well it was when I got home), and I'm wearing long sleeves for the first time (except to go to work) since February.

Despite what you may have heard in an essay from some quasi-literary twit on NPR this weekend, we are not having another heat wave. Today was the first day since the start of Summer that it has been sunnier than cloudy, that it didn't rain, and that it broke 70 degrees for more than an hour. Some strange woman just wanted to hear herself read a story on the radio, so she talked as though last summer's heat had already returned to England. While I agreed with her basic hypothesis that these people need to realise that air conditioning is not symbolic of a weak constitution, I don't think it's accurate to describe Londoners suffering through sweltering Tube rides and baking in the streets when it's rained almost every day and you need to close the window at night lest you suffer exposure (low to mid 40's). Not exactly Mumbai in July.

And today I took a trip to the X-Ray department at the Watford Hospital. I'll be spending a few days there this week, and perhaps next, trying to document what they do, how they do it, and what the "normal" patient's experience is. Then I'll enjoy rolling around in piles of data to try and classify all the work they do and where it's coming from. From these I'll try to build a model of demand for elective procedures, and see if a series of smaller Community Treatment Centres can reduce the waiting queue for MRIs from nine months down to one. As Einstein said, "Only a life lived for others is a life worth while."

Though a distinction wouldn't exactly suck, either

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