Sheep Guarding Llama – Page 884 – Scott Alan Miller

November 24, 2007: Returning to London

This is our final morning in Belfast. We got up around eight and got the room all packed up and headed to our last UK breakfast. This will be our final opportunity for beans and mushrooms at breakfast.

We finished eating and checked out of the room just in time for Owain to meet up with us and take us on a driving tour of Belfast. He took us down the Falls Road and the Shankill Road which are famous as the major hot spots during The Troubles. We got to see a lot of the famous murals there which was really cool.

We didn’t have a lot of time for sight seeing so everything had to be done very quickly. We got to see a lot of the Belfast neighbourhoods, Belfast Castle and Belfast Cathedral. Today we finally got a chance to take at least a few pictures in Northern Ireland so that we can prove that we were there.

Owain commented on how strange it is that many of the famous sights in town he was seeing for the first time as well. So often we don’t manage to see the things that are local to us but will travel all over the world to see the things that the people who live there don’t bother to see. Dominica, for example, has only entered Manhattan four times since we moved to the area almost two years ago!

We had lunch at a pub near the cathedral and then it was time to get to the airport. We learned from last time and flew today out of Belfast City Airport instead of Belfast International so we were much closer and the airport was smaller. Although both are very small.

This time we had plenty of time before our flight and just waited it out at the airport. The flight back to London was quick and easy. We took the “Hotel Hoppa” to the Comfort Hotel and just crashed for the night. We tried to get online and do some updates but the Internet access at the hotel didn’t work. Which was probably best as it would have been $20 or something crazy for one night of Internet access. That is one thing that is very noticeable about the UK – nothing is ever included in the price. No matter what you want, it is extra. The prices start high and you get nothing for your money.

We watched an hour or two of BBC and got a feel for what people watch at night in London. Londoners must watch incredible amounts of television since no businesses are open, transportation shuts down around midnight and everything is too expensive to take advantage of. That pretty much just leaves television.

November 23, 2007: Working in Belfast

Today, we thought, would be almost a holiday as it is the day after Thanksgiving and almost everyone is out of the office. For the most part this was true. We slept in as we were thoroughly exhausted, got breakfast at the hotel right before they closed the buffet and then did some light relaxing and hanging out at the hotel. Breakfast was great. We are staying at the Holiday Inn Express on University Street. The street has construction going on right now so there is no traffic and the hotel isn’t all that busy. Breakfast was the traditional English / Irish with fried tomatoes, baked beans and sautéed mushrooms. I am really liking the baked beans and mushrooms for breakfast thing. That is something that we don’t do right in the states. I will be adding that to my menu whenever possible. Baked beans really adds something to scrambled eggs.

Before leaving the hotel we decided to make plans for tomorrow. The ferry to Scotland that we were going to take is full and we are not able to go that way. So we decided to just fly back to Heathrow. That will give us more time in Belfast tomorrow to actually do a little sight seeing and to relax a little bit more and it will get us to London hours before we had originally planned which will make things much easier tomorrow. It is too bad that we had to cut Wales, Ireland and Scotland from our agenda but now that we really realize how little sunlight there is it would have been a horrible waste of time to have spent all of that time on trains in the dark. It really would have been pointless. We will just have to come back and see those places another time.

After getting ready to face the day we took a long walk uptown to the city hall on Victoria Street and met my friend Owain on his lunch break from the office and we all walked up to a caffe called Roast where we got sandwiches for lunch. The food was quite good and it gave us a chance to take in downtown Belfast a little bit. It is difficult to compare Belfast to an American city because the way that the city is laid out is so completely different from an American city. The layout is very surprising and much “lower” than American cities tend to be with almost no high rises at all. Much like London, Belfast is a continuous sprawl and not a single city with a central downtown.

After lunch we caught a ride with Owain into the office where I thought there would be no work to do but, after getting a tour of the facilities at Belfast’s famous WhiteStar House I ended up settling in to do real work and was actually in the office for quite a long time working until the floor had emptied out and only the night shift support teams were still around. Dominica was, unfortunately, stuck at the office and quite bored. She actually fell asleep for a little while.

Once I wrapped up at the office we rode with Owain back to his flat where we had tea and he changed into more casual attire. We did some investigating into where the best pub around might be – off the beaten path of course and not at all for the tourists – and decided to hit The Dirty Duck in Holywood near where Owain lives. It is funny that we will now have eaten at two pubs called The Dirty Duck within one week of each other while in the UK. In fact it was both of our Saturday evening dinners that were at the two Dirty Ducks!

It took a little driving around to find as the DD was off of the beaten path to be sure but we were very happy that we took the time to seek it out. The pub itself was cozy and comfortable with two fireplaces going. The main area had a wide open window with a view onto Belfast Lough with the twinkling lights of the city of Belfast on the other side. On the hill behind Belfast you could just make out Belfast Castle.

The menu was great and there were lots of items that we wanted to try but all three of us opted for the fish and chips. They also had a good selection of real English cask ale and I was quite happy to discover Old Peculier. Dinner was great. The food was the best that we have had yet in the United Kingdom. Towards the end of our meal a local band got up and played. They were pretty good but we wished that they were playing traditional Irish country music rather than American rock but I suppose that American rock is a bit more authentic in reality.

Again today we didn’t manage to take any pictures. Being this far north this close to late December there is almost no sunlight at all. Even at noon the sunlight is low in the southern sky and it sets before you even realize that it came up. We hadn’t thought previously about how much the latitude was going to affect us in that way. You don’t really realize just how far north you are until you visually register the significant change in the position of the sun.

November 22, 2007: Northern Ireland

We got up at five in the morning. We had originally worried about getting up at four and rushing to the airport but everyone that I spoke to in London said that because we were just taking a domestic flight from little Gatwick Airport that we only needed to arrive twenty to thirty minutes before the actual flight and that we would be perfectly fine. So we were not very concerned about the time. We assumed that flying inside of the UK was nothing like flying inside of the US.

We took a taxi to the Gatwick Express Train at Victoria Station. The cab driver seemed to think that we did not have enough time for the flight. Not a good sign. We got to Victoria Station and hopped onto the Express that was just about to leave. That zipped us up to Gatwick pretty quickly. We rushed into the airport thinking that we should be fine as we were there more than thirty minutes before our flight – more than the maximum time that had been suggested to us.

We rushed to where Aer Lingus should have been to check us in and there was no Aer Lingus. We got someone who worked at the airport to tell us that forty minutes or more before the flights that the tickets are considered void and that the airlines packed up and left! So apparently no one that we talked to has ever flown inside of the UK before because you need a minimum of an hour and a half to be able to safely get onto a local flight.

We panic booked a direct flight to Belfast with EasyJet. Instead of £40 we ended up having to spend £300! Ouch. That made for an expensive education in flying inside of the UK. This trip has been expensive enough so far. With the final exchange it was $614 for the second flight after having lost the money on the first one. At least we didn’t then have to pay for the train trip from Dublin to Belfast although that would have been minor.

The upside was that we actually arrived in Belfast a little before we had planned on getting there even with the earlier flight. We caught the bus that took forty-five minutes to go from Belfast International to the city itself. The larger airport that we arrived at was quite a bit outside of the city proper but we did get a chance to look at the countryside as we headed into town.

We were pretty tired by the time that we got to the hotel. We checked in and immediately headed over to Chambers next door for a quick lunch. We ate and came back and napped for a while. Today is Thanksgiving so officially it is a holiday for me although I spent about four hours today working as much as usual but just from my BlackBerry.

After our nap we walked downtown which took about twenty minutes and met up with about a dozen people from the office at a famous Belfast landmark pub called The Crown Bar. We had a few drinks and then, once everyone was there, we walked just up the block to the Red Panda and had a nice Chinese dinner. Then after dinner returned to the Crown for a few hours of craic. It was a really good time and Dominica and I both enjoyed ourselves very much.

After the pub my friend who organized the get together gave us a ride to the hotel (my first ever ride in a Renault.) We got back and were straight off to sleep. We were totally exhausted. Very busy day and no pictures today.

November 21, 2007: Last Day in London

Today is Dominica and my last real day in London. I was up nice and early and off to the office early enough so that I arrived and had no one to let me in. It was a little before eight when I got to the office even after having missed three trains on the DLR simply because I wasn’t willing to be as rude and obnoxious as it apparently is required to be to catch a train in this town. In New York people do not shove you out of the way to get onto the train. Partially because in New York they run enough trains to handle the volume. And partially just because the culture does not let you be that aggressive getting onto a train.

Dominica had gotten a buy one day, get one day free tour bus pass yesterday so she decided to take advantage of the free day of touring to continue taking bus tours of London. The sun was out today so she had an opportunity to get more pictures than she got yesterday. She also got a chance to take a walking tour of the Tower of London once she was done with the bus.

It worked out well that I got in so early, though, because I ended up being able to meet up with a friend for morning coffee in the company canteen whom I wouldn’t have had a chance to meet with otherwise. So that worked out well.

By the time that we were done with morning coffee there were people in the office to let me in. For some reason my badge would let me into the building but it wouldn’t let me onto the correct floors so I could get to the office and could see the desks but couldn’t get to them to sit down and actually work.

Today ended up being almost entirely meetings. Very little chance at all to sit down and actually use a workstation. And when I finally did have a chance to do that I kept getting locked out of the workstation that had the tools that I needed so I was effectively useless.

Before leaving the office I did get a chance to get a tour of the trading floor on Canary Wharf which is far nicer than the floor in Tribeca. After my tour one of my developers from the wharf and I went out to another bar on the wharf and got a drink before heading for home. We didn’t get very much time as I had to get back to Tower Gateway and pick up Dominica and get back to the wharf before it was too late to get food.

So I rushed back to the hotel using the Docklands Light Rail, picked up Dominica and we rushed back to Heron Quay via the DLR to meet a friend from the office at Nando’s. We had a really nice dinner and a good time hanging out. Nando’s had some really amazing food. Several people had told me that I really had to eat there so we were glad to have gotten the chance to before we left. And it was open until a relatively decent hour.

After dinner we came back to the hotel and got to sleep as soon as all of the early packing was done. Dominica had managed to pack up almost everything before I had picked her up so we were in pretty good shape. Tomorrow we are off to Northern Ireland. Our original plans were to take a train through Wales and a ferry from Hollyhead to Dublin and then a train from Dublin to Belfast. But Min got a great deal on tickets flying to Dublin and then taking the train up that will save us a lot of time so we decided to do that.

November 20, 2007: On Canary Wharf

I ended up working until one in the morning yesterday. One of the downsides to work from the United Kingdom is that the normal work that I would be doing back home is shifted five hours later than it is here so people sort of expect me to be around at really insane hours. But so much work was backed up that I stayed up late getting things back on track. That made me very tired and made for a late “local” morning today.

I slept in figuring that I would be more useful rested than groggy and then headed into the office in the late morning. I got in and was immediately swept off to a lunch meeting. The rest of my day was spent just going from meeting to meeting. There are so many people that I am here to meet that it is a bizarre schedule. I am doing almost none of my regular work in lieu of tonnes of alternative work. At least things are very interesting.

I worked until after seven. Dominica spent the day taking a bus tour while riding on the top of one of the double decker buses. It was cold and dark and really hard to get pictures but she did her best all bundled up riding on the top of the bus all by herself in the drizzle. She took a lot of pictures and is planning to do more tomorrow.

After work I took the DLR (Docklands Light Rail) from Canary Wharf to Tower Gateway and walked to the Sleep Inn to meet Dominica. Now that I know how to use the DLR it is incredibly simple for me to get from the hotel to the office. It turns out that this is a great location for us to be staying at because it is easy for me to go to work and easy for Dominica to go sight-seeing. It was about eight when I got back. We walked back to the Minories Pub and got some dinner there. Fish and chips, of course. The two great meals of Britain: fish & chips and wellington pastries.

We were hoping to get dessert but the pub closed while we were eating and wouldn’t let us get the rest of our meals. This is one of the most obvious differences that we have been seeing between the UK and America. In the US restaurants normally stay open as long as there is a constant flow of customers. The certainly don’t stop serving food once they let you in the door. You can always safely finish the meal that you have started. In the UK the focus isn’t on the business but on getting home. So they close early, stop in the middle of your meal, never post hours, etc. Very strange to our way of thinking. We assume that if you are a business that you did it intentionally and it isn’t putting you out to attempt to buy something from you. Eating in London is like an imposition on the restaurant.

So our dinner was cut short. We walked back to the Sleep Inn just as their own restaurant stopped serving food. London must be the sleepiest town on the planet. I have never seen anyplace that shuts down so early. This is on par with Newark back home. The city only seems to exist as a place for people to grab lunch. They expect everyone to eat at home for dinner and go to bed after EastEnders.

The little bar at the hotel did have some snack foods prepackaged that they could sell us so we made due with those and some coffee. Then it was up to the hotel room where I did just a little more office work and then off to bed.