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Kalius
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Kriegsgewitter
Aug 2002
time: 16:28
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Not many of you will know that I've been dragged along with my family for a 2 week "holiday" in the UK. We're here to see my grandmother, who is slowly passing away, and I'm typing this from my Uncle's PC (who is a computer building nutcase, must remember to scrounge a few megs of RAM and WinXP off him while I'm here). So, I'm giving you entertainment in your cosy homes by spilling out my adventures thus far.
Saturday Morning: Took off from Auckland Inti at around noon on an Airbus. Cramped. Couple of good movies, food was crap, and I stared at a picture of an airplane on that "AirRoute" thing which tells you where you're going. It didn't appear to be moving. We soon arrived at Hong Kong.
Hong Kong: I've seen morgues which are more lively than this place. SARS has really done it's business. 3/4 of the airport is closed, 5 people murder eachother fighting for the priviledge of ordering your can of coke to the chinese girl are the counter. Soldier shoves a temperature thingy in my ear. Wears a mask which only works for 20 minutes, after which time the water vapour makes it more dangerous than breathing in the air. Soon we took off for Heathrow.
Plane: We grabbed an empty row of seats in addition to our prebooked ones. We achieved the near-impossible feat of sleeping in Cattle-Truck Economy class. Took the scenic route from Hong Kong to Heathrow: Over the Himilayas, Siberia, Urals, Finland, sweden, Copenhegen, Amsterdam, London. Happy to get here. Off the plane and in Terminal 3 car park in 30 minutes. Our luck it was 5am local time and BAA didn't have anything to keep themselves from doing the arduous job of dumping our bags onto a conveyor belt. 18 months ago we decided to come back from Malta on September 1st 2001, at 6pm. Big mistake. England vs. Germany, no bags for 3 hours. Pattern?
Went to Worthing and has lunch with my uncle. Went 10m down the A34 to Littlehampton, where my grandmother lives. Base Camp. Stayed awake until around 9pm. Fell asleep. Fun.
Next day: Met the extended family, bladibla. I swear if I want to see bloated animals play with their meat with their hands, I'll go to the tigers enclave at London zoo. Had my cousins scared to death that I would cough on them. Fell asleep around 9am again.
Monday: Went to Portsmouth. Saw the D-Day museum, and the Aquarium. All good stuff. After this we went to Hastings. Bracing wind, and it was nice to see the convoy of caravans starting it's anual convoy to Butlin's again this year on skinny little unicycle wheels. I drove our VW Golf today. Managed to get it to go 100 down the m-way. Heavy. Wrenched the arms from my shoulders.
Tuesday: Went to Chessington via Crawley and some village near there. Dad couldn't resist peeking into one or two garden centres there. Chessington was fun. Some mentally retarded day out it appears, but this didn't detract from the 5 minute waiting queues. Went on Rattlesnake, Vampire, Rameses Revenge, Samurai (very cool), Rodeo, Mystic East, and Runaway Train (the last of which was about as fun as having piles.) Had Chicken Burrito for lunch. Crap. This computer is new, and hasn't been updated to British keyboard settings, so the price was GBP7.50. Daylight robbery. Thats NZ$22.50. Went home after buying a cornetto off a shady looking eastern european.
Wednesday: Went to my birthplace, and home for 15 years, Reading. Met my brother (an estate agent). Hates the job, but recently sold a 3-bedroom terraced house in the slums of Reading for GDP400,000 (around US$600K). I'm amazed people can survive on prices here. 80p for a litre of petrol?  It's 30p in NZ, and we don't have any fancy oil companies like BP (Blair Petroleum) or Shell. Ate fish and chips, drove home.
Today: Did nothing. Sister was sick, watched TV.
That's my diary thus far. I may not get on until I get back to NZ (Late July).
Random thoughts for Brits to answer:
Why can't you mark tests in red pens, or have egg & spoon races anymore?
How can you afford to buy at these prices?!?
Why did England suck so much last night against Sloppakia?
Jonny Wilkinson sucks.
Why isn't there a pay & display sign on the M25?
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Kalius
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Kriegsgewitter
Aug 2002
time: 16:28
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Quite frankly I did bugger all since my last report.
Sunday: Watched Cricket with my two uncles playing. Got sunburnt of all things .
Tuesday: I did nothing. Dad went to Reading for the night. He was woken at 2am (in supposedly the quietest street in Reading), by barking dogs and police sirens. 3am he hears more sirens. 4am, breakdown truck tows 4 cars away. Didn't get to sleep.
Then I did nothing at all for the next few days. Until we left.
Friday: Watched England annihalate Pakistan. Thoroughly pleasing. I like that Twenty20 thing too. Much better than tests. Mad frantic rush as our taxi arrives. Say goodbyes, bladibla, realise I forgot to ask my uncle for WinXP. I'll get him to post it. Drive to heathrow, entertain myself with a Top Gear magazine.
Plane: Leave Heathrow (£5 for a ONE slice of pizza in what is obviously the "Overstayers' Deportation Overflow Section" of the airport. Take off. Uneventful. Manage to sleep a few hours. Land in Hong Kong 12 hours later. Go through immigration. Ear temperature control person gets the thing stuck in my ear again. Get out of Immigration, usual array of people staring at you, getting heart attacks hoping their loved ones haven't fallen off the plane, missed it, or in Hong Kong, shot.
Go to a Holiday Inn on a bus. Capacity: 65. People on it: 4. Go into the hotel, have Rib Eye steak for dinner. Best piece of meat I've ever had. Sauce was delicious. Sets you back HK$70 (HK$11.5 to £1. I'll let you work it out). 
Walk around. Buildings look like:
a) nuked
b)Props from Chernobyl and/or Fifth Element
c) C19 era buildings occupied by Japan in WWII.
This carries on until we leave. Take off on an Airbus (GROAN!!!) and land at AKL in 10hrs. Watched Indo-British comedy "Goodness Gracious Me". Haven't laughed so hard in ages.
Left the airport and that was that. I have a couple of photos I'll post here if I stay awake for a while.
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MikeH
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Ming on rakastajani
May 1999
time: 05:28
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quote:
Originally posted by Frozzy
Wednesday: Went to my birthplace, and home for 15 years, Reading. Met my brother (an estate agent). Hates the job, but recently sold a 3-bedroom terraced house in the slums of Reading for GDP400,000 (around US$600K). I'm amazed people can survive on prices here. 80p for a litre of petrol? It's 30p in NZ, and we don't have any fancy oil companies like BP (Blair Petroleum) or Shell. Ate fish and chips, drove home. |
I was in NZ last year and everything was incredibly cheap, it was great to feel so rich.  Looking at some of the job adverts there though it's like a NZ$ to £ conversion. For the kind of job I'm doing I'd earn about the same number of $NZ as I currently earn £, which means that my spending power is roughly the same as it would be if I had the same job in say Auckland. *shrug* That's why so many kiwis come over, stay with 30 people in a 3 bed house, work in bars for a couple of years and go home relatively rich.
I can't understand why you didn't go anywhere good when you were here.
New Zealand is great though, place I'd most like to live if I moved from the UK.
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The Viceroy
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tu mumbai se, mai Bombay se
Nov 2000
time: 05:28
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Im moving to Reading soon, and I find it impossible to believe that anybody could sell a house for 400k there unless it was well in the countyside .. The going price for a 3 bed terraced house is 180k. 400k would buy you a 4bed detached !! (look it up http://www.yourmove.co.uk)
I am 100% in agreement with your thoughts about life here though, I was going to emmigrate myself to Canada, but events dictated it wasn't to be. Instead, im goint to spend some time building up business in India, and move there..
Petrol prices are terrible yes .. you'd think it was some kind of insentive to use public transport, but then.. you notice the public transport is so pathetic, paying 80p a litre seems a reasonable alternative.
I think you put your finger on one of my largest criticisms of the UK, we live to live .. routine itself is life here, day in, day out, the same thing ..
Ive already bought a property in Bombay, so hopefully, once ive enough income their to live (and you only need 8k a year to do that), I will go contractor, 6months in the UK, 6 months in India .. and life, at the very least, will be more interesting.
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13-06-2003 02:27
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