Day 75, 76 & 77 Part 1

Today's my Birthday. The 77th day I have been in London. I love the number 7 so that's a cool fact that it's my Birthday :-)

I have been very slow to blog so I'll try to make this one count.

Monday was the August Bank Holiday. We were off from work and I decided not to try to fight the crowds at the Nottinghill Carnival (Billed as Europe's Biggest Street Party) and instead head back to somewhere I knew with my friend Sowmya -- Brighton. Unlike the last time I went to Brighton this time I the weather was perfect for the beach. We left from London Bridge Station at half past one and were on our way to "London-by-the-Sea" as it is often called. The train was buzzing with folks heading down to this seaside getaway. When we arrived we decided to start our trip with a walk down "The Lanes". These are just building with very narrow alleyways in between the shops. It's quite a charming little spot and this time I took a few pictures of the area so that I could give you a better impression.

After ducking into a few shops we wandered over to the Royal Pavilion. The weather was really lovely and I got a few really nice photos of the palace. After that it was down to the shore.

When we got to the beach we went down and had a seat on the beach and got some sunshine and watched the crowds. There were lots of folks on the beach and in that frigid water as well. After hanging out by the shore for a bit we walked up to the boardwalk or pier (not sure what to call the area we were in) and we were drawn to a band playing Beatles tunes. I took a couple of snapshots of them too. The music was really quite good -- Hard to believe they were just Buskers and not the house band. I was particularly drawn to this one guy who played an electric violin. He was incredible. I should have taken a video of it.

After the band ended their set we thought it best to make our way back to Brighton Station so that I would be back in time to check in for my online classes. We stopped for dinner at an Asian Buffet called Wokamania. It was pretty good. They had a fusion of Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Singaporean (is that right?) and Indian food on the buffet and it was quite nice, albeit a bit pricey at 12.90 per plate not including the drink.

The train ride home was packed. The train had 9 cars and we had to walk through 8 of them before we were able to find a seat, but we did and it was a nice smooth train ride home.

When I got home I noticed that it was a bit unusual on my street. The building was a bit dark and there were men working on the sidewalk. When I got to my flat I realized that the electricity had gone out. I decided not to come upstairs since it was dark and instead go to the lobby where the lights were on. I am glad I was paying attention because on the way there I noticed that there were people in the computer lab downstairs and it dawned on me that they would not be able to get out of the room since we have electronic doors down there. I walked down the hall to check on them and they were very glad to see me. I alerted the receptionist and she came down with me and told the folks how to disengage the locks on the door. Since the phones were down in the building and it was pretty much empty there's no telling how long they would have been down there before someone had come and let them out. (Probably about 2 hours).

Tuesday (today) I had to work. I spent the early part of the day very happy because the management were finally able to fix the showers in my flat. I moved into a new flat last Friday and the showers have been pretty much junk so I had been going downstairs to take a shower in the kitchen. What a pain that was. But now we have working showers!! Woo Hoo. After a refreshing shower I went to work. Tonight was pretty unremarkable aside from working on a student's laptop who had basically crashed her system and needed to have the OS and drivers reinstalled and her data backed up. My boss did the data backup but I piece-mealed all her drivers and such back on (all recovery disks were back in California where she was from).

After work I hung out and chit-chatted outside of the building the security guard. We were out there for about 45 minutes when a former student came by. He introduced himself as Aiden and was talking about his time here and how he loves the city so much that he just had to come back after he graduated. I totally can see why...it's great!! Well as it turns out, he just got finished filming part of the new Batman movie and he has a small speaking part in it. He actually worked with Heath Ledger and is a credited actor in it. How cool is that? Of course most actors have more than one job and his other job was a nightclub bouncer so he hung around for about 30 minutes telling antidotes about drunk and disorderly customers. Sometime during this conversation 2 motorcycles with 2 riders each came flying by us. As it turned out just a few doors down they kicked in the front of the computer store and grabbed some stuff and dashed out. It all happened very quickly but it was sort of funny how it happened right there in our plain view. It certainly gave the first few hours of my birthday some excitement.

Anyways, it's now 3:16 am and I need to get some rest as tomorrow I have plans to go out and see some theater and have dinner with friends. Hope to have more exciting stuff to chat about later today or tomorrow.

That's it for now. Hope you enjoy the pictures!