The First weekend ...

September 03, 2011 Think-LongLane Apartments

Quite an interesting Saturday, I must say. Had gotten up with the plan of packing things up from the hotel and moving to the apartment before noon, but the irony was that the hotel wanted me to check out by noon and the apartment did not allow check-in before 3pm. Hence, my colleague and I decided to pack things up, take the taxi and move to apartment. Keep the luggage there and walk down to see places and have lunch until the rooms are ready for check-in. As soon as I started packing, I realised how many things I have with me and how much of it is kept all around the hotel room from the bathroom to the cupboard to fridge, everywhere. Somehow, collected all of them and packed them all decently. Suddenly, someone opened my door, and it was a middle aged woman with her house-keeping attire on. She was shocked to see me inside the room, as she had assumed that no one is there at about 10:00am local time which was the case for over last few days as I used to leave for work. She immediately apologised and started moving out when I stopped her and made her feel comfortable by saying it was all fine. She must be in her mid 40s and was extremely courteous. I spoke for a few minutes to her about where she is from and other general things. It is sometimes surprising to know what people do in life to serve their home and family. She told me that she is from “Latvia” and she was here to earn for her family, and has 2 children including a 15 year old daughter. God, it is such a tough thing to do in life, to leave your children and stay miles away from them just to keep them happy and fulfil all their basic needs. On the other hand, what was more captivating was the way she spoke. I sometimes wonder if there are actually such people who speak so softly and sweetly in general with loads and loads of courtesy in every word that comes out of their mouth. I wish to learn this etiquette and would love to see everyone doing that always.

Done with all the packing and got ready, it was time to say good bye to the hotel and move to the new apartment which was about a mile away from the current location or from my office precisely, which means that I will have to leave about half an hour before to reach office by 9am sharp. The receptionist called for the taxi, settled our bills and before we left, we clicked a few snaps with the front desk execs. They were courteous enough to get the snaps clicked and I also promised to send those snaps to them over email which I am yet to do. I am never on time I guess whether it is writing emails, blogging, or doing anything else and that makes me feel that people like me may never be appreciated in a country where people like to be extremely punctual in everything that they do.

Another thing worth noting about this city or the country is the cost of living. It is supposed to be one of the costliest places in the world and it indeed is by far the costliest. Water, which forms 75% of our planet, is also extremely costly here, but there is nothing that can really be done about it. People in general prefer to walk, take a bike (bicycle) or prefer a tube train or local bus instead of taking a taxi or private car to any place or to work. But that is also something good about this place, which makes everyone respect the value of hard earned money. I paid a bomb to travel less than one mile in the taxi from the hotel to the apartment and then I decided not to take taxi until the life and death kind of scenario comes in. As expected, we (my colleague and I) had to store our luggage at the apartment reception and go out walking around the unexplored areas of the city.

Ever since I came to this city, it feels as if you can keep on walking all around the city and it will never finish...So was the case with us as well. We kept on walking looking for couple of important things. One of them being buying a phone and the other was finding out desi (Indian) food joints. I was lucky to have found a Bangladeshi guy working at one of the local supermarkets in London who gave a fair idea that, at a certain distance from the store, there is an area which has a lot of Asian, especially Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi stuff. It sometimes helps to know local languages and I am saying this because I started conversing with this Bangladeshi fellow in Bengali and he looked visibly happy that there was someone who was speaking to him in his local dialect and I guess that made him help me with directions and places. Otherwise, in a city like London, I don’t think anyone would care. I thanked him and walked down the street as directed by him and finally reached a junction which was cordoned off by London Police. My colleague and I immediately held our steps back and re-thought on our idea of going towards that area. I managed to go speak to one of the officer amongst the thousands standing there regarding the issue, to which he said, it’s just because of some protest, which will last a couple of hours and there is nothing to worry. That’s when the story started unfolding; when I came to know that it was some anti-Islamic protest, hence the situation was as grim as it looked like. There were London police helicopters patrolling in the air, roughly about 1000 ft from the ground level, about a 1000 police vans around the area from all directions, more than 10000 policemen and policewomen dressed in black, looking dapper, all in sync, extremely well trained and organised. Wow, it was like some motion picture running live in front of my eyes. I wish, if we had such wonderful and dedicated officers all around the world, it would make life so much more peaceful. Law and order is what is the backbone of any country and its progress and it was clearly visible why London and entire UK is so well maintained and peaceful. People wouldn’t mind paying taxes and charges to a government which respects the hard earned money of each individual in the country. Many of the Asian countries really need to learn from them.

Anyway, we further walked down to reach a locality which was partly commercial partly residential and I am glad to announce that we found lot of Indian stuff including lot of Indian sub-continent people and shops for basically all that I would have wanted at that time. I quickly got all that I needed and we had a nice Indian lunch. We quickly moved out of the restaurant and started moving out of the locality as the Police bandobast was getting tighter and stricter and it would have been difficult for us to move out later as the protests, just about got started. We started walking towards home and were surprised to see that every possible lane in the area was closed and covered by officers who formed a big chain, as they held each others’ hands. We kept asking subsequently kept moving towards the lane which could have taken us home, but the police security was just not ready to get over at any place, anywhere. I can certainly bet on the number to be over 10000 at that stage. Finally, we found some exit point and reached near the London Bridge which was also well guarded by the same batch. We stood there to see the progress of things and how wonderfully they were managing things all around the place, all of them standing on their foot, prepared to take on any situation. The force included Policemen, Policewomen, Dogs, humungous horses (I have never seen horses that are size of an elephant...huh!) and people from all over the city stood over the sidelines/pavements to witness all that was happening.

Since the situation never looked like coming to an end, we decided to move on the London Bridge and see the beauty of another marvel/architecture. I saw the bridge opening up and closing as it let the ship pass through it. It was such an experience, I must say. Extremely beautiful to look at and enjoy. We kept clicking snaps of almost each and every moment of surprise that kept springing up throughout the day, which was quite eventful. Finally, after miles of walking and millions of wonderful moments during the day we marched towards our apartment. Reached the apartment, settled with the luggage and started planning for Sunday. Oxford happens to be the plan, and that is where we go on Sunday. Much more to share, each day and every minute..more in the next post...until then, it’s sayonara!