As I write this (it won't be posted till I am home due to the lack of wireless infrastructure in the UK) I am sat on a rather comfortable Virgin Voyager train. I am on my way back from Reading. For once the train was actually on time. In fact it was actually at the train station when we got to the platform a whole 5 minutes early. I am shocked. This is a complete and utter opposite to my journey down to Reading. The train was a good 20 minutes late with no information being passed to the customers. The computerised announcement system did not once apologise in the fake way it does that the train is late. There was no information passed from the computer system apart from on the inconveinently placed screen to the customers. We waited on platform 1 of New Street Station as 4 other trains where put int he place of ours to then eventually 20 minutes late find that our train had been moved to platform 2 - great.
I even actually have a decent amount of space to work at. I even managed to get a table on the way down so I can't really moan about the environment of the train much.
Apart from that I have had a good weekend. On Friday night we relaxed at Alex's and I caught up on some of the work I needed to do. Stupidly I forgot to bring an important file and so was unable to work on my K-correction program (don't ask!)
Saturday morning came - time for me to go into the inhospitible environment that is London. How can I describe London? Well as a Brummie I have grown up in a big city environment and know what it is like. London is a different though. I think the best way to describe it is that it is Birmingham but on acid. It is by far the most uncaring environment you could enter. No one cares (OUCH: damn woman just hit me with her stupidly large bad as she gets on the train at Oxford). Apart from that London isnt that bad. The average time I have had to wait for a tube train was about 2minutes and so was able to get around very quickly. I also find the fact of going deep underground rather interesting.
One major problem is the lack of mobile signal but what do you expect deep undergound - maybe time for a few signal boosters to be added! Oh the protests about the "radiation"! Now that would be quite funny.
On the way down to London me and Alex decided to play with my phone, resulting in:
Back to my train journey. It is going well apart from about five minutes when we were moving at a pace I could walk at we seem to be moving smoothly. Good.
So then, why did I go to London? Well I had to go for a lengthy FAS (Federation of Astronomical Socieities) meeting. As always we made lots of progress and unlike most by staying at Alex's house in Maidenhead it meant that I did not have to get up at a ridicoulous time in the morning.
After the meeting we came back pretty sharpish as but me and Alex (who met up with a mate) could not be arsed with fighting around London any longer.
Another interesting weekend over... time to get back to programming or maybe playing Football Manager 2005! ;-)
Oh the sunset through the clouds at the moment is quite spectacular.
