After the mad rush down to Singapore from Kuala Lumpur, I got onto the flight out from Changi to London! The 13 hours long flight was just the beginning, and we were served dinner which was chichken right after take-off. My seat was changed at the very last moment at the boarding gate, so I got an aisle seat on the last row, right next to the emergency exit door, so I could take short strolls without disturbing other.
3 hours after takeoff, we had a terrible turbulence, and the lady next to me who was on her way to Boston, spilled her drink all over herself and me. We were thrashing from side to side. It was very frightening and the whole plane was jerking up and down, causing most of the children in the cabin to start crying. It lasted for some time, but then stopped, then, started again. My heart was already in my mouth by then. But once we were past India, the turbulence gradually stopped.
The next meal served was breakfast, and soon after we touched down at Heathrow Airport and I couldn’t be more relieved knowing that the 13 hours flight is over. Disembarking, it was a rather long walk from the shipside to the immigration. The immigration officer was a Singh who had a very monotonous voice, and he questioned me about my purpose of coming to the United Kingdom and such. Cleared the immigration only to find out that my baggage hasn’t arrived yet. Well, at this stage, after working in the airport for some time, I found myself rather accustomed to these kind of irregularities. Apparently they had forgotten to unload one container of baggage from the aircraft, so I wasn’t alone. However there was a Singaporean lady who obviously wasn’t very happy about it, and began expressing her distaste for the particular airlines.
Finally our baggage arrived and mine was a little wet, plus it had some mud splattered on it. Didn’t really mind. I think working in an airport does really makes you see a different side of thing, because it was raining heavily outside. Collected my baggage and headed out, but my friend who was supposed to meet me wasn’t here yet. Tried calling her but the phone ate up my money, so I decided to try using the internet instead. Put in 50 pence but 2 pounds including some other coins dropped out, so it was a stroke of luck! I hadn’t used it for more than 5 minutes when my friend showed up, so off we went.
First thing was to get myself an oyster card, and it was extremely cute! A special commemorative card for the jubilee. We then took the tube to Old Street to get to the apartment where my friend was staying.
The first thing which amused me was that, the people on the tube often leave their newspaper, and some others would come in and pick it up and continue reading, then bring it down with them or leave it on the train.
Had a light breakfast at my friend’s place, put my backpack there, had a change of clothes before heading out again. Our first stop was the Buckingham Palace for the change of guards.
There were lots of people by then, and it was crowded, filled with people trying to get a look. The music was pretty awesome, and it felt like the band was enjoying themselves, and we even got to take pictures with the friendly police overseeing the place.
We then cut across Hyde Park for a short stroll before our walking tour.
Next up, was the walking tour we had registered for, and the guide brought us to places like No.1, London which belonged to the old prime minister, Buckingham Palace, Westminister Abbey and a few others.
The guide then concluded the tour with a short story of the Gunpowder Plot and Guy Fawks. At this point, it was raining on and off irritatingly. Tipped the guide, then we went off to Chinatown as my friend wanted to buy some groceries.
Before heading back to cook dinner and call it a long day, we stopped by the M&M store just to be immersed in their colours and tried out their colour scanner to see what colour we were (I got light blue).
We had originally intended to buy tickets for a show but most of those which we wanted to watch were sold out for the day, so it was back to the apartment, and cooking dinner for two.
この長い旅で 