Well, I've relocated. I'm near Earls Court in South Kensington ("The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea," if you please.) I'm staying at the Anwar House Hotel. It's an old-time white row house, with about a dozen rooms, and while it's old, it's clean and reasonably priced. I even have a television, though no Internet. It's broadcast telly, not satellite, so if you want to see anything besides football, news, and reruns of "Friends," you're out of luck. The view out my window is the back of the Marriott.

It's a decent neighbourhood, and there's a 24-hour(!) Sainsbury right around the corner. There's a small set of shops around the other corner at the Earls Court Tube station. South Kensington is about 6 blocks away, the museums are about 7 or 8, and Harrod's is about 5 minutes by bus (very convenient to do all my shopping). It takes a while to get over to school with its free Internet, so I'm only online a few hours a day. And I always remember something I wanted to do when I'm on the bus back home. I'm going to check out a different hotel down in Clapham today because this one has a kitchen. Though I do have a fridge at Anwar.

The neighbourhood, as one who's familiar with Kensington might suspect, has a larger than average Arab population, along with many others, including Philippino - based on a couple Philippine restaurants and markets. Might have to check that out. But no matter the native country, the people here (as one who's familiar with Kensington might suspect) have money! I think the only reason the specific blocks I'm in are affordable is because of the Tube station. It's below ground, but open air, so it can be noisy.

I really had to laugh at the bozo (or is that bozough?) who had a sticker saying "No Central Zone charge in K&C." The central zone charge is a £5 "toll" for anyone who drives in central London from about 7 to 7 weekdays. It's really cut down on traffic congestion. But Kensington is packed all day, since it doesn't have the charge (I can walk to Harrod's in 10 minutes, if that's a good illustration). And on top of that, this is on a Range Rover, in a section of town where one house sold for £20 million pounds! (Put that in your currency converter). If this guy is worried about £25 a week, he's obviously living way beyond his means.

Well, I gotta get to Clapham Commons before it gets too dark. It's also cold and rainy today. It's barely broken 60 in the last week or two, but tomorrow might get up to 75 or so. I'll believe it when I see it. And I need to buy more books. I'm down to about 1/3 of my last one. This reading thing is pretty good. I wonder why nobody ever told me about it before...

Since there's not much else besides football and Friends at night - oh, and about 73 different versions of a top 10 or 20 or whatever music countdown, I think I'll try to write the museum travelogues at home tonight.

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Holy Cow!! I just got back from the Thames/Southbank Fest. I went down at about 8:30 for the fireworks that started at 10. I was there last night strolling through. They had a few rides, a lot of music, bunch of food concessions, and a few hundred people selling this year's favorite, plastic jewelry with flashing LEDs. I was happy to see the Mexican food trailer, until I saw that a taco was going for £3.50 or £5.50. For just a taco. Coyote Flaco jacked theirs up to about £1.25 last December. And they're made by real Mexicans. This guy looked like he was from Libya. Oh, holy cow...

I walked down the south bank and headed for the OXO building, since this was the centre of the festival. When I got to Blackfriars I could hear what sounded like a combination drum & bugle corp and caribbean rhythm. Yesterday they had a great middle eastern band playing on a barge in the river, so I decided to take a side trip to see what this was. It was the parade crossing Blackfriars Bridge. I didn't know there was a parade. It was a series of "drumming clubs" with a bunch of puppets/costumes/Chinese dragon-style, uh, whatever they're actually called. The highlights included a giant (well, almost everything was giant) Japanese bird cage, a dragon (this is London) at least 50 feet long - and operated by about a dozen young women in leather(ish) catwoman outfits - and a couple 10 foot tall ants, one of which was the queen. The guy running the egg end of the queen tried to knock me off my perch with it, but I stayed up (all in good fun). The parade was backed up for about five minutes when they had to collapse the top of the bird cage to get it through an underpass. Oh, holy cow...

It ended at 9:55 (nice planning) and I headed down to the OXO building. The posters said the best place to see the show was at Blackfriars Bridge, just east of OXO, and Victoria Embankment, which is the opposite side adjacent to Blackfriars. While this wasn't the recommended locale, I decided to stay put. It was low tide, and a number of people were down on the shore. While the mud on my shoes would officially qualify me as experiencing all of London (at least according to John), this would also put me between two long, tall piers (the Thames drops a good twenty feet between high and low tides), so I didn't want to chance being stuck behind and below them. Unfortunately, I ended up about 20 metres down river from the barge, so there was a good 200 feet between me and the mortars. Holy Cow!

The display was actually quite brief. No more than 10 minutes. But what a 10 minutes. It was the pyrotechnic incarnation of a Keith Moon solo. The mortars were arranged in rings on the barge. They would do full circumference showers, sequential spouts, and any other combination you might think of. The rhythms of the launches and explosions were just as important as the visual. It really was a lot like a 10-minute drum solo. They had some smaller rockets that only went up about 100 feet, but they "danced" back and forth by the mortars they fired them from. And some had the goldest color I have ever seen. It looked like gold leaf just after it's been applied and the lacquer is barely dry. A really deep gold. The two most memorable parts were the one-minute wall of fireworks they built - it was at least 20 stories tall, and solid color - and the last 2 minutes. As the final "movement" they just threw in the kitchen sink. And most of the major appliances to go with it. They were shooting rockets to (at least) 4 different levels. There were fountains coming off the deck, there were spirals about 100 feet up, chrysanthemums that started at about 150 feet, and just good old fashioned blinding white flashes in the middle of the whole thing. Loud blinding white flashes. I gave up trying to keep track when I figured out they were shooting more than 30 rockets a second. Unbelieveable. Holy Cow...

Well, I've been distratced from writing the visits to the tourist sites once again. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

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I'm in the Tesco. It's September 16. They've got a display of "Stocking Stuffer Candy."

You can't make this stuff up, 'cause nobody'd believe you.

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Well, I was all set to try and recreate all the work I lost the other day, but today's adventures will be covered first. I'll have to try and catch up over the next few days. I've done a bit of sightseeing the last days, and today was supposed to be slow. I planned to look at a new place to stay for a few more weeks, and then go into the city to drop off some film, visit the ladies in the office of the OR department, and get some new books.

I walked over to Friendship House hostel, which is run by a non-profit. It's basically the same type of place I'm in now, with self-catered en suite rooms, and at about the same price. But they don't have any current vacancies, and won't know about next week until this Saturday. So I have to keep checking back every day. They also have about 10 other places around the city, so I may be able to go to one of those for a few days, if necessary. But they're not en suite. Quite important.

From there I grabbed a bus to the Strand and dropped off my film at the “Snappy Snaps.” They're just around the corner from school, so I stopped to say hello to Jenny and Brenda. On the way in I ran into Jonathan Rosenhead, whom I thought had retired to Wales. He was my Problem Structuring Methods professor. I remember being surprised earlier this year when Jenny said she was looking for me, and he told her where I was (drinking in the courtyard with the rest of my classmates). I was amazed he knew who I was. But then I realised that there were only 2 of us my age, and I was the big American. So he probably asked who the hell the old guy was in his class the very first day.

I went to stop in at the IT office to ask about my user account, but the fire alarm in St. Clement's Hall made that problematic. As I was walking out, I met the Fire Brigade as they came marching down Houghton Street wondering, "where's the fire?" (cool helmets). I pointed them to the hall. I remembered that the Sir John Soane Museum was down Kingsway, just north of the OR offices, so I decided to drop by. I thought it was his residence converted to a gallery with a collection of paintings. But it was his preserved home, and more a mixed bag of some paintings, including a Hogarth (28/03/04), a number of his drawings (oddly featuring a lot of images of a House of Lords he designed but was never built), and a whole bunch of ancient stonework. He had an affinity for Rome and Venice, as well as Napoleon(?). I liked his house, especially the courtyards and skylit domes. Except that he installed a good deal of pale amber/yellow glass all over the place. Added a rather unhealthy tinge to the skin. And I can’t believe he “glazed-in” the front balcony overlooking Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Well, I picked up my pix (ho-hum), then grabbed some books from Waterstone's on Trafalgar Square. I just started A Year In The Merde about a Brit working in France for a year. I've barely begun the first chapter and I'm laughing so hard I'm in tears. Since I was at Trafalgar I headed down Whitehall to grab the bus from there. But about halfway down the street (at the Horse Guards) the street was blocked. I went to see what was happening, and a rather large Metropolitan Policeman explained it was the “Fox Hunt” demonstrators. Fox hunting is about to be outlawed, and this group is protesting their impending inability to enjoy the thrill of the hunt, and the excitement and sport of releasing a fox into the wild just so a pack of 30 dogs can track it and (literally) rip it to shreds when they catch up to it. Philistines always spoil the fun.

So I get to Westminster, where the ratio of MP to demonstrators has reached almost 1:1, and turn to cross the bridge and catch the bus at County Hall. Oops. There’s a line of MP across the sidewalk in full riot gear (more cool helmets). They tell me I can't cross and have to double back all the way to the horses, and cross through there. And about 20 feet away there’s another line in riot gear saying the same to opposing pedestrian traffic. Why it was closed? I don't have a clue. It wasn't near any entrance to parliament. It wasn't near the demonstration (in the square). And the road was already sealed off by more cops and metal barriers. For the anti-Bush rally of 250,000 people they didn't close it. This was about 1% of that crowd. So for an area 10x20 feet we all have to walk an extra mile. And the really silly part is that the demonstrators are the ones who own the guns, not us!

Well, I've still got to catch you up on St. Albans' Cathedral, the Tower of London, the Victoria & Albert Musuem, the Museum of Natural History, and Hampton Court Palace. And Thursday? The cemetery!

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I just hit Apple-R (reload page) instead of option-R. I lost more than an hour of typing. I'm feeling pretty foul.

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Well, presuming that I passed (enough of) my courses, I'm done. I turned in my project on Wednesday, and my report to the SHA today. I celebrated by having a Filet-O-Fish meal on Oxford Street. Yum! That's either the first or second I've had in all of 2004. But the stinky news is that the wireless computer "Hot Spots" at McDonald's require a subscription fee! Cheap bastards.

I set a new personal record whilst finishing my dissertation: 66 straight hours. My "reflective" section was almost 10 of the 40 pages. Most everyone else seems to have done 3 or 4. But my LSE supervisor (who's the first marker) called it "fantastic!" After I turned in the paper there was a final party at Dr Powell's house in Finsbury. Really nice section of town. The high street looks kind of tired and traffic is very busy, but then you walk up the hill (and I mean up the hill - any other town would have a funicular), to these beautiful 3 and 4 story brick houses. The downstairs has 12 or 14 foot ceilings, and there's even a small indoor pool! It's good to be the King - well, Queen in this case. A couple houses down is the former residence of one of the founders of the LSE.

I left the party just after midnight to get the last Tube home. It got me to Kings Cross but then they said no more trains after that. So I'm in the middle of the northern part of London, and I live just South of the Thames, about 2 miles away. Look to the left of Finsbury - St. Pancras is Kings Cross. At the bottom right is London Bridge. I'm about 1/2 mile south of there. But how to get there is anybody's guess. So I see a night bus that has Oxford Circus on it. I know that's about 10 minutes from Aldwych, where I can catch the N21 which will take me right to my door. This works great if you catch it going in the right direction. If not, you've got more problems.

When I see the sign for Newington Green, I know I have a problem. When I see the sign for Stoke Newington, I know I have a big problem. Stoke Newington is due North of Shoreditch, a little further than St. Pancras. Luckily, it's an old Routemaster so there's a conductor to ask how I get to London Bridge Station. He tells me to hop off at Hackney, and catch the 48. Hackney's an interesting part of town. It even has a 24-hour Sainsbury. However, at 1:15 in the morning, it's more interesting than I really wanted. Nothing wrong with it, but it's just not one of those places you want to go exploring in the wee hours of the morning. The :25 after the hour bus arrived at about 1:45, I hopped on, got to London Bridge about 2:30, and hopped the N21 home by 2:45. As I got off the elevator the batteries in my iPod quit. The perfect end to the perfect day. The perfect 66-hour day.

I was complete toast until Monday, and after sleeping 30 of the previous 48 hours. And getting blown off by Mr. Mayo-naisse on Saturday just added insult to injury. I plan to milk that until graduation (assuming I passed enough courses) - at least. So now I'm feeling all alone. Everyone left in town that I know is about 16 years old (at least it feels that way). But there are one or two friendships that started before exams, which destroyed any continuity, that may take to a little nurturing. And Gonsalo (from the floor) comes back next week, though not to Great Dover. He seems interested in going to Stonehenge, so I'll aim for that next week.

Now I just need to spend a bunch of time looking for places to go. There's a ton of things still left in London, like the butterflies and the bats (those are two separate things) but I'm not limiting myself. Bryson's Notes From A Small Island has a lot of interesting places, but each sounds more remote and desolate than the last. Depending how much time I take, I might do a few cheap airfares to some of the "secondary" destinations like Valencia or Palma. Hey, for £29 round trip why not?

And things back home are going swimmingly. The closing on the condo has been delayed in court for a second time, and I was just burglarised! Thank heavens I have my sanity.

Uh, oh.

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