A day in London

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touched down at Heathrow at about 10.30am... a lil bit ahead of schedule. I reached customs and the queue was huge. It was one of those winding maze queues and it zig zagged in 7 lines and each line was about 100 metres long so there must've been close to 100 people ahead of me. I was expecting to be there for ages, but i was peased to be through in about half an hour.

The next challeng was to be gwetting my luggage. The suitcasse came out pretty quick but my snowboard was nowhere to be seen at the oversized baggage area. After about half an hour i was getting a bit concerned. But it turns out they'd dumped all the priority luggage in the middle of the room rather than it coming on the rtating thingamy!!

So now i'd collected my luggage and had it on a trolley, the next dilemna was "WHERE THE HELL DO I GO FROM HERE!!"

I needed the internet to find my barings, work out the trian system and organise a hostel.

So i found a hostel kind of near Shell's place that was kinda cheap so i booked in there. I had a good start to my tube experiences. 1 Ride = 1 Verbal altercation!! I was trying to get my snowboard through the gate and had to throw it through coz i couldn't fit through carrying it. Anyway this guy shouted and goes "watch it mate!" Turns out the board clipped him so i just said sorry mate and kept going. Then i saw him talking to the train staff and he shouts out "ya know you hit me with your bag" and i just said "yeh and i apologised... what more do u want" and kept walking. Then again he said "you hit me" by this stage i was pretty over carrying all my bags and this guy was giving me the shits so i just yelling back at him " pull ya head in mate, you seem to be walking fine... have an F***in cry". He seemed to quieten down after that. Good start to my life in London. haha

So i get to the hostel and she gives me room 306. I asked if there was anywhere i can just lock up my luggage and she said its cool to use the room. There was no lift and so i had to carry all my luggage up about 8 flights of stairs. Fun times. By the time i got up there from a combination of sleep dep, hunger and carrying all the stuff i felt like i wass gonna pass out. So i went down the street to get some food. As i get to the foyer i see a room marked "luggage storage" so if tyhe idiot at the desk had've told me that i would've have had to drag it upstairs. haha

The place i stayed is called Earl's Court. It's gorgeous... it reminded me a bit of Mary Poppins. everything was old with lots of terrace houses. I got a couple of pics but it dond't really do it justice.

So then that evening i went over to Shell's. She's well... loving it over there. I met her housemate who workes for JP morgan, so hopefully he'll help me look for work when i settle there.

So after a bit of a chin wag i got a cab to the bus station for my trip up to Edi. This was highly eventful. He told me he was from the Ghan... i said "oh yeh i know some people there" and he wasn't too impressed at the fact i knew people in the army. He proceeded to tell me that he's done work for the taliban and he showed me 3 scars from bullet holes in his chest and shoulder. That was kinda scary. Then it got scarier when he told me stories of his friends "successful" suicide bombings taking out up to 25 people and then it got even scarier when he said he has big plans. I really happy when that cab ride was over!!

Once i was on the bus that was the end of my first day in the UK!!

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