London Ninja

In the middle of my flat hunt, the weather decided to take an interesting turn. In the 6 weeks I’ve been in London, it has rained quite a bit but usually for short stints. So it might come down for 15 minutes but then the sun will come back out. This time, however, the rain seemed to keep coming down for about an hour before the sun came back out. Apparently this city of rain doesn’t actually handle rain very well. None of the drainage is able to handle a torrent of rain and hence the city gets flooded.

We literally sat in the car for like 30 mins and then tried to make an apartment viewing by running in the rain. When we got near the street, we realized we couldn’t get to the apartment building cuz of the flooding. When we called the agent, they said they couldn’t get there either. Later they told us they got like a foot of sewage in their office building. Pee-ew!!! (do they still say that in elementary school?)

Here are some of the pictures I took on the Chiswick High Street.

Cruising down the Chiswick High Street, snapping away like a tourist, which I am.

More shots of Chiswick High Street

Some poor chap crossing the street

It’s pretty astounding that London can’t handle a little bit of rain. It’s like New York not being able to handle the snow, or California not being able to handle the heat. Or the Chinese not being able to handle the rats. WTF.

So after 5 weeks in Notting Hill, the time has come to find a flat. I’ve been using a Flat Finding service to help me find my new digs. Basically, my company has given me 2 months next to Hugh Grant and now I have to find a place that will resemble something seen in Trainspotting.

There are 3 neighborhoods that work for my commute down to Richmond in SouthWest London:
1. Chiswick
2. Putney
3. Clapham

These are all neighborhoods in London with good access to both Richmond and Central London. In San Franciscan terms, Chiswick = Noe Valley (charming..sorta family), Putney = Lower Haight next to Safeway (Some cute shops, not quite a neighborhood feel but good access to stuff. Random Kebab shops here and there), and Clapham = Mission (edgey, cool stores, got some str8 thuglife but not unsafe overall)…oh, and without the Mexicants. (Once Upon a time in Mexico reference)

All in all, I think we’ve decided on Chiswick, with a straight shot on the Picadilly and District lines to get me to where I need to go even if it’s a bit farther out West.

My requirements are:

1. Near transport
2. Be able to get to work without changing trains
3. Near high street shops
4. Near a park
5. Near an eskimo midget

Not too much to ask. Cheers.

What does it really mean to exchange currencies? It’s actually not all that straight forward with changes daily due to world currency exchange fluctuations and different vendors offering different rates.

If you look up the market rates for the exchange for a particular day (July 7, 2007), it yields 2.01520:

Buy and Sell
The Buy and Sell (you always see two prices on those exchange boards with the red LED numbers) basically mean this:

1. They Buy USD= You exchange GBP for USD.
2. They Sell USD= You exchange USD for GBP.

Generally you are going to be buying GBP that they sell. So #2 is what you would be concerned with since you really should be using up all your cash at the pub and not converting GBP back to USD like a wuss.

Capital One Credit Card
On Yahoo for 7/7, my meal at Fortune Gardens was 13.85 GBP. On my credit card statement it shows up as $27.86, which yields an exchange rate of 2.0116. Yes, I had Chinese two nights in a row. The Chinese food in Notting Hill is pretty damn good. And by good I’m not referring to the Panda Express stuff yall thinking about. This is real deal Peking duck.

That’s pretty damn close to market, which is fabulous. Capital One rocks, folks. Get this one for travel.

Banking
For comparison, my HSBC bank does free wire transfers for its premier accounts but skims off the top with 1.9641 Buy and 2.0649 Sell. That’s not good but not that bad. It’s so-so and you get convenience.

High Street money exchange
My local Post Office does sells USD at 2.2043 and buys at 1.9150. So mosdef not good. You simply shouldn’t be using these anymore the same way you shouldn’t still be using Vidal Sassoon to create the effect of the wave on your head to go along with your Members Only jacket. Or maybe retro is cool again….

ATM
For my cash withdrawal at the Barclays, the exchange rate was 2.011, which is pretty much wholesale market rates for currency. This is great if you have a Bank of America account as I had mentioned in my blog about How to get Cash in London.

Checks
Don’t deposit UK Checks into your bank account. You will NOT get the same rates that you get for taking cash out. For my travel reimbursement from my initial trip to London, I received a check in GBP that I deposited into my account and I got an exchange rate of roughly 1.9. ZOMG. FDAT. Avoid GBP checks mixing with your US Bank accounts.

There…now take those GBPs and go buy some bangers and mash.

It was nice while it lasted. The peace. The calm. The lack of a proverbial ball and chain. I finally got a mobile after 5 weeks without one.

I have to admit I miss my Sprint PCS phone in the US. I had the ultimate EVDO plan for cheap and I was able to do anything I wanted whenever I wanted. Picture Mails, Texts, GPS, games, get online with my laptop, check email, check secure work email, etc etc. I was constantly on it, Texting, Pic’ing, etc…whenever I was walkin I was rocking it. Sure it was no iPhone, but I aint that hungry yet.

So my goal was to find the cheapest mobile phone plan possible. I already had the T-Mobile GSM phone from the US that had been unlocked so all I needed was the SIM card. The way to go for a low-cost solution is the Pay-As-You-Go plan, of course. You just drop by the store and pop in a SIM card. That’s it. No contracts, no credit checks. Nada.

Basically you have two options:

1. T-Mobile
SIM cards cost you money, but you can get it for .50 gbp online. This is cool, except it’s nice to go into a store to get it activated…and there are mobile phone stores all over the place. After you get your plan, their best plan offer these rates:

These are actually very good rates for a Pay As You Go plan.
2. Orange

This is what I ended up going with. You get a free SIM card in the store as long as you top up with at least 5gbp. The great thing is that the phone will be active for 6 months even if you don’t top up again. And as long as you get a call within that 6 months, your phone will be good for 1 year on the same 5gbp. That’s great for a emergency phone. Better than anything you can get in the US for the lowest “overall cost”.

The rates are similar but sucks if you call outside of the Orange network:

Of course, as was mentioned in my guide to watching movies in London on the cheap, Orange has their Orange Wednesdays where you get 2 for 1 tickets every Wednesday. That in itself makes it all worth it.

Maybe I’ll still be able to maintain some peace and quiet cuz I don’t have too many people to call in the UK.

Word: Mobile
Definition: commonly a “mobile phone” or “cell phone”. It is a long-range, portable electronic device used for mobile communication.
Usage: Hey baby, can I ring you on your mobile so we can get some fish and chips?

Not much to say here other than to refer to your cell phone as your mobile when you are in the UK. And, while I’m at it, don’t call it Frisco, it’s San Francisco, the city, S.F., or even San Fran. You’ll won’t get flowers in your hair any other way.

Word: Fantasy Football
Definition: A fantasy sports game in which participants (called “owners”), arranged into a league, each draft or acquire via auction a team of real-life American football players and then score points based on those players’ statistical performance on the field.
Usage: I kick all my friends arses in Fantasy Football every year during the football Season. And, the San Diego Chargers suck.

Oops…I guess that’s two sentences. Go ahead and disregard that last sentence since it is more of a bitterness than the sentiment that the Chargers were poorly coached and managed team that had potential to win the SuperBowl but failed to do so due to mismanagement.

So I am a big fan of Football (not the Beckhams) in the US. And as any true fan of the sport, I am also an avid Fantasy Football player. I know my stats and I know all of the 2nd string Tight Ends in the NFL. So when I came to London, I was quite pleased to know that Fantasy Football is actually quite popular here.

Wait a sec….in reviewing the rules, I realized there were no Tight Ends involved at all…no Quarterbacks, no CornerBacks, hell here they are:

Bloody hell. That aint football! That’s soccer!!!! Fantasy Soccer?!?! WTF?

There are two ways to get food in London:

1. Takeaway
2. Eat-In

People do not mix the two in Europe. When you don’t finish you food, you don’t finish your food. It’s as simple as that. I learned this after asking for a “box” a couple of times after not finishing my food. The staff get confused when you ask to take your food to go. I’m not sure what there is to understand here. As a matter of fact, I was with a group of Dutchmen from work at Pizza Express, a chain of..you guessed it….pizza joints. It made complete sense to me: Big pizza + pizza joint = plenty of boxes to allow for taking your food home with you. Nope.

Everybody looked at me like I was crazy. Many jabs were thrown my way like:

“When you going to eat that?”
“Are you going to heat that up in the morning and eat it?”

One of the dudes straight up said “Wow. I’ve never seen that before.”

My reply was, “Dudes, I’m just trying to be carbon-friendly. You savages.”

I had decided that my answer to this would be that I’m an environmentalist, which I’m really not. I enjoy driving my V8 Ford Explorer and throwing all my stacks of paper and cans into a giant sweltering smoking bon fire to practice being able to make a 9-1-1 smoke signal in case I get stranded on a deserted island after a giant electro-magnetic sonic boom brings my plane down and I have to survive on an island full of polar bears, smokey ghostly entities, and a rogue clan that hunts the survivors for their children….but I digress…

I’ve tried to take my food to-go a couple of other times to a look of amazement and bewilderment. Really, it’s a look of WTF…as if I just asked for a serving of buffalo penis to be seared lightly with a lychee brioche. I don’t know if it’s just that everyone in the UK eats all the food they order, food in the UK is bad and therefore patrons don’t want to take it home, or if people here are just against putting food in a box. Regardless, I’m going to continue to take my food to go… I’m carbon friendly after all, you savage.

Here’s a pic show for all da folks back home:

Mind the Gap

Westminister Abbey

Westminister Abbey 2

Wish you were beer