I was up on Friday morning and rode out to Gare du Nord to catch an early Eurostar train to London. The trip from Paris to London is about two hours total which, for someone that grew up with the vast distances of Ontario, is mind-boggling. It’s a comfortable, easy ride and really the more civilized way to go. Sure, it’s more expensive than flying and takes twice as long in transit, but the overall experience is quicker since both train stations are located centrally, so you don’t need to go through the extra hassle of going out to the boonies to get to an airport, and you don’t have to deal with all that airport bullshit. The entire check-in process, including passport control and security, took less than five minutes.

My first order of business in London was to make my way to the Pixel-Lab’s Playful event. It was two tube stops from the station, but I decided to stretch my legs and walk it, without a map, and with the faintest of directions. It had been almost exactly a year since I’ve last been in London, when I spent three months there, but it easily could have been two weeks. Everything was instantly recognizable and navigable and despite the unfamiliar destination I managed to find my way without getting lost. Screw Google Maps, Human Brain™ is the real impressive application.

I arrived at Playful during the first break and stayed for all subsequent presentations. It was hit or miss. Some people were clearly not too comfortable in front of a crowd, others were just reading out their script, and others were engaging and entertaining. Russell Davies‘, James Bridle’s, and Rex Box’s, somewhat clunky but amusing overhead projector and transparencies powered, presentations were the standouts.

Russel Davies presents

During the lunch break, after a bit of Twitter-tag, I met up with Alex aka. rotational in what would be a precursor to many internet people first meetings. As they say on that side of the Channel, he was a good chap. We talked about the conference, writing for games, the magazine gaming business, and the internet like all true nerds would.

After the conference I headed towards my London City hotel, again by foot. The streets of London are far more stressful than the streets here in Paris. It was the evening rush-hour, already dark, and the hustle and bustle of the place felt very North American to me. I could feel my blood pressure rising just by being surrounded by it. Maybe I’m projecting, as I’m living a very casual, laissez-faire life over here.

I eventually found my hotel, just around the corner from the Eurogamer expo, and to my pleasant surprise I found that I had been upgraded to a deluxe suite. It was wonderful. A room more than five times larger than my current apartment. A large screen TV, two desks, a sofa, a speaker above the toilet so you could listen to the TV while you took a shit, and a cavernous shower larger than the entirety of my current washroom. I knew I wouldn’t want to leave.

So I didn’t and I skipped the Eurogamer Expo for that day while I relaxed and, later in the evening, headed out to The Crosse Keys pub nearby for the Indie Arcade Show & Yell arcade where I would meet up with more internet people, mostly consisting of those weird and crazy people of the Idle Thumbs forums including one of the organizers of the event, David aka. Nachimir. It could have been a disaster of an event — the plasma screen in the venue, specifically chosen because it had a plasma screen, didn’t work, putting a kibosh on any potential showing — but David’s tireless efforts to salvage it with a crowd of drunken indie devs and a megaphone turned it into a fun, if a bit disorganized, yelling match.

Joe Danger shown at the Indie Show & Yell, held up as some sort of monument to indiedom.

After a wonderful sleep and breakfast in the hotel I met up with Aubrey and we headed for the Eurogamer Expo and, not surprisingly, straight for the Indie Arcade. This tiny room with a bunch of PCs had more creativity and heart than the rest of the expo. There I played Joe Danger, easily one of the best games of the show, and chatted with the nice Hello Games people. Terry Cavanagh and Alex May, other swell chaps with whom I’d play 4 player Super Mario Bros co-op later in the day, were there to show VVVVVV and Euphloria, respectively. There was Time Fcuk and Squid Yes! Not So Octopus! and Super Yum Yum and Shooting Starcade. Leaving this little room and entering the vast spaces where the “mainstream” games were held was shocking in its contrast.

Indie Arcade

The problem with shows like this, where a lot of different games are placed within view of each other, is that they reveal just how same-y most of them actually are. No where was this more evident than in the 18+ basement where God of War 3 sat next to Dante’s Inferno. As I watched Aubrey fight some enemies by aimlessly swinging around a weapon in a dark area as some giant stone colossus menaced in the background, I looked behind me to see, in a completely different game, someone fight a bunch of enemies by swinging around a weapon in a dark area as some giant stone colossus was pissed off in the background. Then I played Bayonetta and I fought a bunch… stone colossus. It was all very depressing.

There was a Street Fighter IV machine — actually, a Playstation 3 inside a Taito arcade cabinet (?) — that was drawing crowds and, in the basement, a the Wii fighter Capcom vs Tatsunoko. Some dude was hogging the game, taking on all comers. I grabbed the second player Wii arcade stick (didn’t know there were any) and picked my characters and then that dude proceeded to unleash multiple ten billion point of damage, literally, combos on me before I could even figure out how to do anything. I managed to get about two punches in the match and quickly left in disgust. This one moron did more to dissuade me from ever looking at this game than anything in the actual game itself. Way to go!

Street Fighter IV: moment of defeat.

Heavy Rain was in the basement, which was too good for it. It should have been under the basement, dismantled, buried in concrete to be forgotten for a thousand years.

The game of the show, as far as I’m concerned, was the one that didn’t involve shooting, stabbing, or racing: New Super Mario Bros. Wii. If you were to judge all games at the expo by the amount of laughter and camaraderie from its players, as opposed to the typical, solitary dead stares most had, Super Mario Bros was the clear winner (Left 4 Dead 2 was second.) The simultaneous four-player co-op was a fun, competitive and cooperative, tour de joy. Much like the indie stuff, it stood out amongst the crowd as a sole beacon of colour. I just wish they didn’t use two Toads for players three and four.

3D videogames: making you look like even more of a nerd.

Afterwards, there was another pub session. The joys (and hats) of Hook Champ were often cited.

Sunday afternoon was lazy and rainy, spent mostly on a sofa with Street Fighter IV, Geometry Wars 2, and Channel4’s Peep Show. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the Lady of Shalott while I was in London, but I was tired and this was the most suitable end to the weekend before the evening train ride home.

Unfortunately, the entire trip made me miss my game consoles even more. Once a gamer…

• Excuse the journaly nature of this entry.
• Heavy Rain really was complete shit. I’ll probably elaborate on this later.
• I stayed at the Apex London, which I recommend for obvious reasons. But I’d probably still recommend it if I wasn’t upgraded to a larger suite since the staff there was friendly and helpful.

Also known as: “The more photogenic half.” (Part One here.)

Big pictures follow:

Read the rest of this entry…

or More Complaints About the Weather

After my complaint, Friday seemed promising. It was mostly cloudy, but that just means that it was also partly sunny. This isn’t much but it’s better than nothing. I’ll take what I can. I ventured down into central London in the morning and as I entered the Tube I noticed a sign: “due to a fire, all Eurostar service is cancelled.” What. The. Fuck? My anxiety shot up; I have a Eurostar train to catch on Monday morning.

My first instinct was to find an internet cafe to see if I can get a sense for what’s going on. There’s no shortage of them in Willesden, but finding one in central London was a task and a half. After wandering side-streets for a while I walked up to the third floor of a place next to a restaurant in Chinatown. I think I was the only white guy they’ve had in that shop all week. I logged on and went straight for the Eurostar site (and Twitter second) and read the announcements. Friday cancelled. Saturday possibly cancelled too. Should be good after that.

Of course, “good” is relative. I imagine the backlog of stranded passengers will push the system to its limit after it goes back into service. I expect delays. Thank fuck I booked this well in advance because I might be truly screwed otherwise. Still, this was more stress than I cared for. I headed out of the city towards the quiet, wooded confines of Hampstead Heath.

This was nice. Beautiful houses on little, narrow streets. 2 Willow Road. A nice, quiet pond with all sorts of birds. I sat down on a bench listening to bird calls and breathing in the air. The sun even came out. I walked through the woods and up a hill to a point where I had a good view of the city of London. Took out my camera and took some pictures and that’s about when it started to rain. First a little spittle then, as if the weather was spiting me, downpour. A serious fucking downpour, with hail, that overwhelmed my umbrella. Sure, my head remained dry but my pants were soaked, my shoes were soaked right through to my socks, my bag was soaked and its contents, a book^[1], a London atlas, a camera, were wet. Thankfully, my camera is weather-proof.

I took shelter under a bus stop with some other unfortunate sods. I was on the way to Kenwood House to see some art, but I was soaked and in need of a change and no longer in the mood so I caught the next bus to Finchley Road and took the train home from there. And when I arrived home, the sun came out. Fuck you too, England. I leave Monday. Hopefully.

1. It’s OK, it’s only a Rick Moody book.

Getting Civilization

Without an Underground weekly pass, and despite the perpetually miserable weather, I headed out for a walk. I didn’t take my camera bag or excessive baggage, just my iPod, jacket (I’m still not over how much I’ve needed a jacket in the summer) and an umbrella (essential gear over here.) I headed down to Shoot-Up Hill — no junkies present — and straight down Kilburn High Road until it became Maida Vale. This route went from Brent to Camden to Westminster and was completely boring. There was a game shop there but the guy behind the counter never heard of Civilization Revolutions for the DS so I ignored it completely. Other than that, nothing. Constant shawarma joints, bars, 99p stores and other high-brow shops with names like “Classy Chicks.” I imagine the clientelle is anything but.

A little while later I found myself on Abbey Road. I wasn’t expecting anyone there at the zebra crossing on account of the cold and the rain, but, sure enough, there were a couple of people crossing the street, one with his shoes off, while someone was taking pictures. A group of young, white 20-somethings. Further down the street was Lord’s, “The Home of Cricket,” and there was a small gaggle of tourists there too, taking pictures in front of the gate. Three older Indian gentlemen. Here we have two minor tourist spots, right near each other, with two completely distinct cultural resonances. Only in London.

I headed into Regent’s Park and crossed the breadth of it, fighting the momentary burst in rain and wind, towards Camden Town. There were a couple of game shops on the High Street here, I remembered, and I figured I should turn this aimless walk into a quest: find Civilization Revolutions. There’s more motivation to keep going in that, which was essential since my feet were killing me. Anyway, those two shops, Game and Gamestation (game stores need more original names,) had nothing. I continued.

Tottenham Court Road (lager lager lager lager.) There was a camera shop here so I stopped to take a look since they stocked Pentax gear. It has been a long, long time since I’ve experienced this level of condescension from retail service. They let me take a look at some lenses, take photos outside and they generally knew their stuff, but christ was the fat guy behind the counter a total ass. “Do you have a card?”

“No. We’re the shop at the end of the street.”

Uh, thanks. Meanwhile, another employee was telling another customer: “first off, you have to realize where you are. We aren’t on the internet. Don’t have a website. We don’t sell mobile phones. We sell photo equipment and only photo equipment. Got that?”

There was this superior sense of “what are you doing here?” coming from the staff. There was a pervasive level of discomfort that made me want to bail out of the place yet, I stayed, genuinely curious about all the lenses they were showing me. Expensive lenses, ones I shouldn’t be buying at this income-free time, tempted me; the Tamron Macro, specifically, was calling out to me. I resisted. I felt like giving in at this time would be admitting defeat to these smug sellers. I might get it later though. On my time, not theirs.

The assistant, who was introduced from behind the counter as a “professional photographer” as if that’s supposed to fill me with reverence, was a nice guy though. We talked a bit. Polish guy from Krakow. Was about to be sent to Iraq as a photographer for the army before he learned that the guy he was replacing had both his knees shot off by a sniper. He left Poland instead. Seems like the better decision to me.

I continued southbound and turned onto Oxford Street where I played a game of “people slalom.” It is a very frustrating game when you are trying to move at twice the pace of everyone else around you. I managed to work my way through the crowds, only rudely bumping a handful of people, to HMV. I browsed through the “World Cinema” section taking notes on what to pick up later, mostly DVDs not available in region one. Then I headed to the games section, grabbed Civilization Revolutions, got in line, bought it, and then got the hell out of there and into Bond Street Station. I took the train home. My walk, my quest, was over.

Playing Civilization

The DS was turned on for the first time in London. I took out the cart of “Advance Wars: Days of Ruin” and inserted “Civilization Revolutions” and proceeded to play an entire game, on the easiest difficulty, in one sitting. Granted, the portable version is more condensed and speedier but it remains a testament to how true to its roots this tiny version of Civilization is. It engrossed me completely.

A little later I started a second game on a higher difficulty: one of the scenarios where everyone starts with all tech researched and there are a lot of barbarians. I started as the Greeks and was ready to play a peaceful game, focused on culture and money. The constant stream of barbarians was annoying and it went counter to this, but their wooden clubs were no match for my modern infantries. One such group of soldiers became the envy of the continent when they won over 25 battles, gaining all sorts of perks and benefits. I was peaceful but no one would dare take on my highly skilled soldiers.

Or so I thought. Right before I was to put the DS down and go to bed, the Japanese, without provocation, declared war on me. Then the Romans. Then the Egyptians. Well, fuck. All my cultural development was put on hold and my cities all, except for my one island state, focused on building tanks and infantry. I set up a defensive barrier around my borders with Japan (most of my nation was safely protected by the sea and the battleships I had stationed there) and hoped this whole war thing would blow over.

The Japanese, and Roman, incursions didn’t stop and while my cities remained safe I was losing troops. I had to end this once and for all. A couple of infantry armies were amassed, with some tank and bomber support, and they all headed for Kyoto. One by one they attacked and, to my dismay, one by one they fell. The Japanese had strong defenses and a general in support. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Destroying Civilizations

I took a different approach. I rebuilt my armies and instead of sending them to attack Kyoto, I positioned them all along its borders: a blockade. My thinking was that I’d kill their production capabilities, slowing them down, while I continued amassing a larger and larger force outside of its walls. I’d take the city by sheer force of numbers. To further speed this up, Athens built the Military Industrial Complex which let me build military units in half the time. Some of my cities were now generating a tank a turn.

Yet, when I tried to capture the city I could never succeed. Drastic measures were required. My island city, free of the hostilities, started to build the Manhattan Project. I had a vast reserve of gold so I hurried the production. I had no time to waste and was ready for the nuclear age. But when I tried to build ICBMs I discovered that I could not. I don’t know why. Maybe there’s no uranium around? I was disappointed. All that for nothing? Oh. Wait. I was awarded one ICBM. It was all or nothing. With an unexpected, little 3D animation the missile flew into orbit and landed in Kyoto. The explosion animation was anti-climactic but the result was drastic: Kyoto was leveled. My armies captured its smoldering ruins during the next turn.

Kyoto then became my staging point for my armies’ invasions of Rome and Egypt. By now my forces were unstoppable. Dozens of tank armies, all hardened veterans with all sorts of stat bonuses, rolling city to city, supported by vast fleets of battleships. Rome fell. Cleopatra was defeated. The world was mostly mine, save for the northern regions where the French dwelled. They too had declared war on me, much later than the others, but did nothing but sink one of my cruisers. Having now seen the full force of my armies, Napoleon was asking for peace. I wasn’t overly antagonistic towards the French: I gave him ten turns.

It was enough time for me to move all my armies in the south towards the Greek-French border. Turn by turn they amassed. I had spent all this time and resource constructing this giant war machine and it was now beyond my control. Centuries of fighting had left my cultural institutions desolate. There were only soldiers now. Soldiers that needed something to do. The ten turns ended, I rejected Napoleon’s offers for peace, and stormed into Paris. The world was mine.

2am.

“The fuck?” Where did the evening go? I went to sleep content that everything that made Civilization so great, including the ability to time travel hours into the future, was present in this tiny, portable DS version. It’s the best thirty pounds (!) that I have spent here.

On Friday I had a reason to head out: I made my deposit on a Paris apartment and I could now concretely book my fare to Paris. I took the train down to Finchley Road where I transfered onto the Metropolitan towards St. Pancras. I entered the Eurostar ticket booth and realized upon reaching the counter that I was in the business section. I felt out of place — nothing screams business like a black t-shirt with Batman with the cast of “Law & Order” on it — but realized it’d look even dumber walking straight back out, so I headed to the counter. Rather than shooing me away to another section the lady behind the counter was quite nice and accommodating and took my lowly “coach” order. My first impressions of EuroStar are positive. I leave London on the 15th.

Afterwards I headed out to Euston Road and wandered southbound along various side streets towards Sir John Sloane’s Museum. I knew it was down there somewhere and that I’d find it without any hassle. A few minutes in I sat down in a square and pulled out the London atlas I bought a few weeks ago. I was near the British Museum and Sloane’s Museum was a little south east of it. I headed down and took a shortcut through the museum. Free admission is a wonderful thing. I took some more pictures of the Great Courtyard because a dozen or so was not enough to account for its awesomeness.

Sir John Sloane’s Museum was odd. An architect and collector’s old home, consisting of three converted Georgian houses. It has a courtyard with a massive column in it, numerous skylights and yellow windows and mirrors, some nice paintings, and a vast collection of classical artifacts and casts with an Egyptian sarcophagus sitting right smack in the middle of it all. It’s bizarre. A lot can be said about the modern cookie-cutter Ikea aesthetic but I’d prefer that to stumbling over things that people were buried in thousands of years ago when I wake up in the middle of night and go for a glass of water.

I wandered along some more side streets through the legal heart of London, past all sorts of law students and pre-drunk lawyers. It was unpleasant. Then came Fleet Street and I took that to St. Paul’s and then down to the Millennium foot bridge and I returned to the TATE Modern. I was there on my very first full day in London and wanted a new perspective from which to see some of my favourite artists again: Max Ernst’s “The Entire City” landscapes (one of which has been my PSP wallpaper for well over a year), Malevich’s “Dynamic Suprematism,” Joan Miro, Klee, Kandinsky, de Chirico. etc.

As I was heading out I noticed posters for the two temporary exhibits, Cy Twombly and “Street and Studio” photography, and realized they were closing in one day (to clear out for Bacon and Rothko exhibits later in September.) “Fuck it,” I said as I went to the cashier. I’ll part with my money. I have nothing else to do. It was ten pounds per exhibit or fourteen for both. I paid for both and would later regret paying four pounds for Cy Twombly’s stupid doodles. The photography exhibit was fantastic though with lots of great stuff. It’s perhaps a testament to my growing interest in the artform.

I followed the Thames to the Southbank and came upon what I believe was, based on the number of bicycle bound police officers, the starting point for August’s Critical Mass. For the second time here I randomly strolled into that mess. I went to the BFI to check what was playing and noticed Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” was screening in thirty minutes. I crossed off another favourite, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” off my to-see-on-the-big-screen list at this same venue two weeks ago, and had to do the same for “Badlands.” I bought an expensive ticket.

Before I knew it, a simple trek to the station to buy some train tickets turned into a ten hour adventure around the city. And I think about this kind of day and how I started the year. Up to April 2008 I was without a passport, never having left the continent in my adult years and never having solo-travelled for longer than a week. Four months later, I’m booking train fare to Paris while hopping around galleries and museums in London, waiting on my second, European, passport to be processed. It really was that sudden. I’m not sure what to think of it all quite yet but I do dread the November return. The winter is going to be frigid.

Idleness has set in. I haven’t ventured into central London for a few days now. It was a long weekend, but that has little meaning when you’re not working. There was the Notting Hill Carnival but I forgot about it until it was over. There were the Olympic festivities and the outdoor parties celebrating the hand-off for the London 2012 games, but I didn’t bother. There wasn’t any reason to go down there. The weather was constantly dreary. My weekly pass on the Oyster card had expired and I wasn’t feeling the urge to spend another twenty-four pounds on it. It was best to stay indoors, stay local, do a little bit of running and not a whole lot else. It was nice.

That’s not to say that I did nothing but sit and twiddle my thumbs. I breezed through a book — “The Bug” — faster than I have done since my school days. I enjoyed it a lot. It’s geek fiction in the sense that it’s about a very geeky subject — a bug in a database front-end at a software company in the early 80s — but it isn’t technical. It’s just a good book that takes place in a setting that you don’t see good books take place in. The compulsiveness and break-down of the main character fascinated me, even if it was rather bleak. It made me want to do some coding of my own, so I did. So far: no life-destroying bugs have been discovered.

I played a lot of Space Invaders Extreme on the PSP. I wrote a review for it (more on that later) where I glossed over the game’s difficulty, but it has to be said: that game’s hard. It has a branching structure to its stages and I beat it on the easier route, but the harder ones are kicking my ass now. I almost have it. There are some nuances with some of the waves of invaders on these difficulties that require a more strategic approach. Firing haphazardly at them, at these levels, will get you killed quick. I was lukewarm on the game at first but seeing these subtle higher-level designs in action, deeper in the game, has really endeared it to me. Mini-review: recommended!

It has made me yearn for Galaga Legions.

I have written a lot more. My journal, not counting my hand-scrawled one (and “scrawled” is right as my handwriting is horrible,) is approaching 20,000 words. It’s excessive. I’ve been using MacJournal 5 (5.1 just came out) and I like it, despite the few issues I have with the way it formats and exports text, and some other organizational issues. This was the first piece of OSX software I paid for. Lightroom 2 was the second. (it’s worth saying: everything else on the MacBook is legit, just free, though I remain unsure what to do with Adobe Flash CS3. My paid-for PC serial doesn’t work on OSX so I’ve had an unused trial version sitting here. I haven’t needed it yet but when/if I do, I don’t know what to do. Why pay for something twice? If you see a kvetch like this on Dear Adobe, it’s probably mine.)

Perhaps a lot can be said about productivity and lack of internet access.

I’ve started running. It’s about time. I bought running shoes a little less than two months ago, the first such shoes that I’ve owned since, oh, early high school^[1], and I just now started using them for their intended purpose. It’s been a touch tough but I’ve been persevering through it. I’m not quite going by the “couch to 5k” routine but I am doing something similar in so far that I’m mostly fast walking with occasional jogs sprinkled in between. The idea being that you slowly build up your stamina for jogging, going a tad longer each day, until you can sustain it for longer distances. So far, I’m still in the more walking than running phase.

It’s only been a week but I already feel some improvement and benefit, enough to be motivated to continue and enough to start to develop the base foundations for a habit. That routine building, more than being able to full on run 5k, is the main goal. So far it consists of a walk down to Gladstone Park and, once I see that there are few people around (I’m not yet past the self-concious phase,) I start with a brief jog and slowly make my way around the park, cursing at the Dollis Hill ascent while listening to my iPod Shuffle. Oh, and before I start I make sure that I acquire the proper orbital satellite signal.

See, being a geek I am not content with simple lo-fi running, I need to bring technology into the mix. I have a Garmin Forerunner 250 that I bought, a presumptuous purchase, before coming here. Now that I am running it has proven its worth. After it establishes a GPS lock, a sometimes painfully slow process, it provides me a multitude of information: how long I’ve been running, how far, what my current and average pace/speed is, how many (approximate) calories I burned, a map of the route I took and all sorts of other information I haven’t dug into yet. It is great, especially for an infojunkie. The better part is that when I connect it via USB to my MacBook it syncs up with Garmin’s software which provides all sorts of charts and graphs about my running history. In essence, it turns running into one elaborate videogame.

This relates to what Clive Thompson recently wrote in Wired, about Weight Watchers’ program as an RPG, and it’s something that I truly believe in. Anyone that has me on their leaderboards for “Geometry Wars” or “Pac-Man: Championship Edition” knows that I am a competitive must-have-the-high-score type of person. The Garmin Freerunner lets me bring that competition into the difficult and tiring world of exercise. It gives me something to strive for — getting a better average pace or top speed — every time I put my running shoes on. It’s like Lumines’ timed mode, but with more sweat.

It’s very useful because the only other competitive option for me in this regard is signing up for a 5k or 10k race and I’m in no shape to do that. I’m unwilling to go to multiplayer unless I know I can compete, and that’s what this single player mode prepares me for.

Is it obvious that I’m missing my videogames?

1. Which, quite conceivably, were Pumps.

What I saw from the Civilization Revolutions demo, I liked. Firaxis managed to simplify the entire world building experience for a console without losing the features that made Civilization what it was. The demo sucked me in as much as any full game on the PC ever did. I was sold but, unfortunately, knowing I was leaving the XBox 360 behind I knew I couldn’t get it.

There was, however, the scaled-back-but-still-Civ DS version. This was perfect. All the Civilization building that I wanted in portable form, without any of the time-sink guilt that you’d get on a computer^[1]. I checked the release date: July 8th. Fuck. I was leaving on the 7th. Fine, I thought, I’d just buy it in London once I get there. I knew it’d be more expensive, because everything is more expensive here, but at least I’ll have it.

A few weeks later I found myself in a Game store on Camden High Street. I asked the dude there if he had Civilization Revolutions for the DS. No. I went down the street to another shop and asked the dude there. Also no. Then I realized, and later confirmed, that it hasn’t been released in Europe yet and that it won’t be released until the very end of August, nearly two months later. Frustration set in.

Now I know how you European gamers feel.

1. Computers are for work and internet. Consoles (and portables) don’t carry this burden and are guilt-free.

I’ve been keeping a map of (most) walking treks through the city of London and where I’ve been eating and drinking (not often.) It’s all from memory, so it’s not all accurate, but it gives a good sense for how and where I’ve been spending my time here. Yes, I have walked a lot.

By comparison, here’s a map showing all the places I ate at (and drank at) and took take-out food from in Toronto, from January up to the time I left. The interesting thing about this map is how local it is.

Note the scale in comparison to the London map. Something could be said about a one’s habits in a city they’ve long called home. You get into a groove and don’t really venture out too far. Being in a new country, I haven’t found all those home comforts yet so I go around seeking them. Either that or there really is shit all to see in Toronto.

One of the foolish things that I did before heading off to the UK was to not bring a coat. With my bags packed and ready to go to the airport, I grabbed it and wondered “should I take this?” It was a 32C day, I had enough to carry as it was, I was going to be in the UK in the middle of the summer and I had plenty of time to buy one before I did need one in the fall. I put it back.

The British weather didn’t seem to agree. The first few days here were cool, wet, windy and downright miserable. I walked around the city in the one long sleeved shirt that I brought, through the frigid drizzle and highs in the low teens, on the verge of pneumonia. Finding a jacket became a more prominent item on my London todo list.

On Saturday, I found myself in Harrods. Its coats, however, were not the compelling reason for being there; I was there for Laduree. The day before I had a discussion about macaroons and how I should have some. A quick search led to Laduree and its London locations. The place seemed suitably fancy. If I was going to try macaroons it was best to start with quality. When I found myself in Kensington last Saturday afternoon, I knew I had to go to Harrods to try them. Being there, I could check out their menswear department too. Unfortunately for me it was the last day of a large sale and the place was packed and the stock was dwindled.

The few found jackets that I liked didn’t exist in my size (fat ass) or were attached to a nice sticker that said, as if it was nothing, “£1300“. Such jackets were just a tad outside of the “impulse buy” range. Or any range, for that matter. Then I saw a pair of “sport” jackets. Nothing fancy, affordable, thin, light and they provided the proper wind and rain protection that I wanted. More importantly, it fit.

I slipped it on and zipped it up and went to the mirror. It was alright. I zipped it up to the top to see if my fat neck would fit — it did — and then played around with the bottom zipper a bit. I was confused why it would need two zippers and surmised that it was there in case you ever felt the need to air out your belly button. I moved it half way up until the jacket looked like a cloak. I was satisfied by its zippiness. Then, as I started to unzip from the top, I hit a roadblock. The zipper got stuck just below the neck. I tried yanking it harder, but it wasn’t going.

Having seen me fiddling in front of the mirror, one of the uniformed employees, a long haired blonde, asked me if I needed any help. After a moment of hesitation I admitted my shame: I couldn’t get the zipper off. She said it was alright and tried to help as if I was a little child. “Oh, it’s really stuck,” she said with a more serious tone. “I’m going to get some help.” As if my embarrassment needed more witnesses.

Soon I was being yanked on by a guy with greased back hair. He too had no luck. “Hold on, I’m going to get someone senior.”

At this point I’ve had the jacket on for a few minutes and, being the middle of the summer, I was starting to sweat a little. It was funny at first but now I wanted the damned thing off. An older, grey haired gentleman was directed my way. The bottom zipper was stuck in the fabric but knowing that didn’t make the process any easier. Twice I tried to slip the jacket off over my head, but it wouldn’t fit over my fat noggin. The zipper was too high up and too restrictive. If we could lower it a tad I’d be free, but the zipper was having none of it.

As he was playing around with the zipper I began to quip about how embarrassing this is, how this isn’t a good first impression to a potential buyer, how it feels like I’m in a straight-jacket and what David Blaine’s next act should be. Though I doubt even he could work his way out of this trap.

Fifteen minutes later (it felt like an eternity, but it was probably considerably less time than that), with the jacket slung over my head, the manager managed to yank the fabric out. I smoothly slid the zipper to the bottom, opening the jacket wide open, and took it right off. Relief. I placed it back on the rack, thanked the man, grabbed my bag and headed straight out of the men’s department. It didn’t matter if they had the perfect jacket for me hiding on the racks somewhere, I was done.

Moments later I bought macaroons at Laduree. The caramel salted butter one made the entire ordeal worthwhile.

On Friday, I went to a big screen cinema inside of a shopping centre–a decidedly untourist-like thing to do–to see “The Dark Knight.” It was a warm day in London so I welcomed the air conditioning in the empty theatre thirty minutes before the screening. Silly me, expecting major crowds for a record setting movie one day after its release. However, before it started I was in convulsions brought on by the onset of hypothermia. That venue was downright cold.

There were various notices about making recordings and copyright infringement with dire warnings for those that would dare do these things, as though they were on even ground with murderers. I thought about how clueless the major movie studios are. Their own ineptitude encourages that behaviour. The Dark Knight was released in London on the 24th, which was a Thursday, an odd day for a release, a good week after its big money making North American premier. And I wonder why the delay? What possible reason could there be for it? It’s not as if they had to translate the film from English to English, so I’m at a loss to think of a reason for it apart from parading the actors around town for it (a pointless diversion for such a majorly marketed film). Hell, even Indonesia got the movie before the UK.

In that week, on the Internet, there were all sorts of geek orgasms proclaiming the greatness of the film, hundreds of reviews and news stories and thousands of “spoiler warnings” across the weblog and forum universe. Yet, in an English speaking country, no one could see it. Not legally, at least. It’s as though the studios don’t even want our money.

And that’s the thing. When I was in Aldgate earlier in the week one of the things I so clearly noticed was some Chinese guy peddling bootleg DVDs. “The Dark Knight” was the most prominent of them all. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted but I assumed it would have been Region 2 (which wouldn’t have worked on my MacBook; as I said, the studios do it to themselves) and I wasn’t sure about the quality of the recording. It’s hard to tell sometimes. I opted to see it on the big screen and pay the full, overpriced, admission cost for it.

After twenty minutes of adverts, I regretted the decision. That was then followed by another ten minutes of trailers, none of which were for movies that I’d want to see. That right there is the difference. The bootleggers? They’re admirable because they’re in it for the money. They charge what the market allows (not a whole lot) and get the product into the hands of the consumers as soon as they can with as few hurdles as possible. That seems like smart business to me. The movie studios and theatres? Fuck if I know what they’re doing, aside from making the whole idea of “watching a movie” a shivering test of patience that costs eight pounds. And after that, they complain about piracy? Next time I’ll stick with the bootleggers. It seems more honest.

As with most days here, this afternoon I headed for the Tube with the intention of going for a long, wandering trek around London. I wasn’t sure where I’d go; I figured I’d decide on the train. I walked down the road past the station to a little bakery around the corner and grabbed a croissant and stuffed it into my camera bag. The blue eyed blonde Polish girl wasn’t working today. I crossed back to the station, pulled out my Oyster card and set it against the sensor. The light went red, the gate didn’t open and “SEEK ASSISTANCE” lit up on the display.

Twenty four pounds (and twenty pence) later I had a renewed weekly travel pass. It’s essential to have this in London if you are aimlessly traveling because you can hop-on, hop-off anywhere without ever having to worry about the fares and how much money you have left on your card or in your pocket. Still, for my simple TTC inspired ways the price is a major sticker shock. Then again, the London Tube is refreshingly free of TTC Union assjacks and it’s worth paying more for that privilege.

On the Jubilee Line, somewhere near Baker Street, I decided that I would get off at London Bridge and venture eastward along the Thames. The farthest I had been along in this direction was the Design Museum a block east of Tower Bridge, where the throngs of tourists start to thin. Many people are quick to point out that galleries and museums in London have free admission but if you want to see anything remotely contemporary or non-institutional–and you’ve already been to the TATE Modern–then you have to pay. This is true for the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Hayward Gallery and the Embankment Gallery (in the Somerset House) and, of course, the Design Museum.

I’m unsure if this is true for the Whitechapel Gallery. I ventured out into urine-smelling Aldgate last weekend to see it only to discover that it’s undergoing renovations and won’t be fully open until 2009. The auditorium was open, showing a film shot in an abattoir, and there were a few scattered locations showing stuff around the neighbourhood but after going to one space on Bell Lane and seeing nothing but a cardboard box, I skipped most of them. Granted, it was a very large cardboard box and the lady there tried to tell me about the artist’s motivations and inspirations for the work but, still, it was a cardboard box. That trip was a complete bust.

The area east of the Design Museum, along the Thames Path, is quite nice and suitably quiet. After you pass the last tourist and the last riverside restaurant and pub you enter a meandering path of riverside walks and silent side streets that takes you through miles of wharf lands. Amongst many others, there’s the Chambers Wharf, the Hope Wharf, the Ivory Wharf, the Canada Wharf, the Lavender Wharf and so on. Some of them sit there, decaying. Most have been converted into residential spaces, studios, pubs or an mixture of all the above. On the other side of the narrow streets upon which they sit are row houses, apartments, manors and all sorts of quiet residences. The traffic here was non existent, the pedestrians few and, refreshingly, no tourists to be seen except yours truly. To experience a city you have to go through these kinds of areas.

After a while I sat down on a bench overlooking the Docklands, the steel and glass skyscraper new city development, across the river. I ate the croissant I bought earlier while I watched planes fly by towards one of the many London airports. The Docklands is the most un-London-like part of the city. It’s overly planned, commercial, full of chain restaurants and retailers and it all has little character because of it. It mostly reminds me of North American cities and makes me homesick, to a small degree, for the small town charms of Toronto.

Several side streets and pathways later I found myself near Surrey Docks and the Greenland Lock, where I was crossing the road as a blue car approached from my left. “Excuse me.” A grey haired woman was sticking her head out of the car’s window as it rolled to a stop in front of me. She spoke with that old English woman accent.

“Excuse me, do you know where I can find the Wibbly Wobbly?”

In a self-conscious-of-my-Canadian-accent manner, I replied that “I have no idea.” She smiled, said “alright” and drove off.

I finished crossing the street and was shortly riverside again. In the corner there, next to the lock, a shirtless fat man was fishing. I continued down the path and, once I was at a point where he was no longer visible, I sat down on a piece of marble street furniture. I stayed there for fifteen minutes, dumbfounded, wondering what the hell the “Wibbly Wobbly” could be. I am, truly, in Britain.

On Thursday it was cold and rainy in London so, for the first time since my arrival, I took a day “off”. I was not wandering the streets nor riding the underground nor hitting a gallery nor adding to the blisters on my left foot. Instead, I stayed indoors reading, listening to British radio–it’s very British–and manually added the artworks to all the albums in my iTunes library. This is a tedious process. I’m up to artists starting with the letters “Bu”.

The reason for such busywork was, more or less, to beautify my iPod Touch. I’ve been using it extensively, on the Underground, in sunlit squares and in bed, and I was growing tired of the grey music note on white graphic that accompanies any and every song without album art assigned to it. It seemed like such a waste of prime screen real estate.

Never did I think that I would devote such labour to this tiny device. I never intended to own it, I was perfectly content with my tiny iPod Shuffle, but jumped on the chance to get one when I discovered that it came “free” with the MacBook Pro. Like any offer too good to be true there was a catch. I still paid for it but could redeem the price with a mail-in rebate. This was acceptable, I thought. Unfortunately, in the move before the bigger move to the UK, I misplaced the iPod box and its required UPC so I could not claim it. The Touch was no longer free.

When word that the firmware update to 2.0, to coincide with the release of the new iPhone, would cost $10 I scoffed. Can you imagine if Microsoft charged $10 for their updates to the XBox 360 dashboard? There’d be riots. Yet here was Apple charging for this most basic of features. It was charging for the privilege to be able to buy from the new App Store. The nerve.

But I’m considering it. I have grown to appreciate this device a great deal over the last week and a half. It goes with me everywhere. Apart from the music that it contains, which is good, all the other features have proven useful. I take notes. I have used the address book to make a phone call. I check my email and post to Twitter, whenever I can find open wifi in London (not so easy), and use Google Maps to find my way through some of the labyrinths in this city. It’s not like Toronto, a city strictly laid out in a grid like manner, where it’s impossible to get lost. Roads go off in all directions here and in my wanderings, on one day, by dumb luck I crossed through the same intersection three times (it was a SEVEN WAY intersection). I didn’t need the Maps then because I was just aimlessly wandering, but they have proven useful in other situations.

Knowing what’s in the App Store I think $10 is a small price to pay for the extra convenience therein. Besides, the app store has one more category of applications useful for the boring minutes spent on the Underground: games. That is the most compelling because, no matter how many thousands of kilometers away from home I find myself, I can’t escape my nerdy passions for digital interactive entertainment. It’s a passion that I was going to work on during this trip, trying to build an idea I’ve had for a while, but so far it’s all been for nought. I’ve been too busy being a flaneur on the streets of London.

After spending my entire 28 years of existence in places where the traffic moves forward on the right side of the road it would take me a while to get used to it flowing from the wrong end. Not as a driver but, simply, as a pedestrian crossing the road. I’ve managed to avoid any collisions but, on a number of occasions, I have been startled by a car coming at me from a direction I did not expect: my right. Fear is a great learning aid.

I imagine that this is a known problem in a tourist heavy city like London. What else would be the motivation for painting, on intersection asphalt, signage telling pedestrian crossers which way to look? All around on the streets are painted notices advising people to “LOOK LEFT” and “LOOK RIGHT.” No doubt many a foreigner walked onto the street looking the correct way only to be struck down by a double-decker bus coming coming from the other direction. I have not been so unfortunate as I have adjusted my jaywalking habits accordingly.

The streets I understand now but the pedestrian pavement continues to dumbfound. If the cars drive on the left which way, as a courtesy, are pedestrians meant to walk on the sidewalk? Casual observation shows that, as anywhere else, people tend to stick to the right hand side. But not everyone. I wonder about those contrarians: are they walking their own path, regardless of common decency and courtesy, or are they the few stragglers doing it right amongst a sea of wrong-headed tourists? I was uncertain until I started going into the London Underground where, along the deep escalator descents, signs were posted alerting those that choose to stand to stand on the right.

My questions had been answered. Pedestrians stick to the right except when passing. This must be, no matter what automobiles do, a universal rule. I was satisfied.

The very next day in some connecting station somewhere on the Northern Line, in the busy tunnels going from one platform to another, there were signs posted asking pedestrians to stick to the left. To add to that, some stations had their descending escalators on the left and others had them on the right. Once again I was confused so, now, I do what makes most sense: I walk in the middle. Let everyone else sort it out.