03/27/03 Thursday

My plane arrived at the Gatwick International Airport in London at around 6am, London time, the next day. It was a 6-hour flight and London time is 5 hours ahead of NY time. Considering that UK is part of the Alliance forces currently fighting in Iraq, I expected a tighter security here, but there are no military men with their drawn weapons, just like what we have in NYC.

From the airport, I took a National Rail train to Epsom, Surrey, just right outside London, to stay with a friend from UP Stat, Pachot Villanueva. She used to work in NYC, until last year when her company transferred her to their UK office. I shared the train with the regular morning commuters on their way to work or school. The train ride took almost two-hours, including the wait-time when I changed trains at Clapham, and it cost a total of £7.

From the Epsom train station, I walked four blocks to Pachot's house. Her flat is on the 2nd floor, which is actually on the 3rd level of the building. The Brits call the 1st level as the Ground floor, the 2nd level as the 1st floor, ...

After taking a shower, I took a BritRail train with Pachot to London-Victoria from the Epsom station. I bought an off-peak one-day unlimited Travelcard for £7. The Victoria station is similar to the Grand Central Station in NYC. From Victoria, we transferred to a London Underground train, also known as the Tube - similar to NYC's subway. Inside the train, we heard the words "Mind the Gap" and "Mind Your Step" several times, which is their way of saying "Watch the Gap" and "Watch Your Step" when getting on and off the trains.

We got off at the Piccadilly Circus station (which is their equivalent to NYC's Times Square), right in West End, London's Theater District, similar to NYC's Broadway. We tried to buy tickets for the "Bombay Dreams", a musical show showing in the West End but not in Broadway, but it was sold out.

From there, we walked to Trafalgar Square to try to buy tickets for another show. We passed by the National Gallery and the London Trocadero along the way, and I was able to buy a Planet Hollywood shotglass, which I collect. We were able to buy tickets for "Our House", based on the song by the punk-rock group Madness. This show just won the "Best New Musical" in the 2003 Olivier Awards and it's not yet played on Broadway.

Along the way, I saw such famous London "landmarks" such as the famous black London cab, which looks like a PT Cruiser and which recently took other colors, the Red Routemaster bus, the BT Phonebox and the Pillarbox, which is their post office mailbox.

From there, we took the Tube again to the Science Museum, to view the "James Bond" special exhibition. The entrance fee is £8.95 but it's well worth it. We were running late on schedule so we decided to skip the Natural History Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum located in the same area.

We took the train to Harrod's in Knightbridge. This is the largest department store in London and it has a small shrine to Diana and Dodi, since it's owned by Dodi's dad. I really didn't get to buy anything except for a box of candies.

Then we took another train to Sloane Square for our dinner meeting. We did some shopping along the way to the restaurant. I brought several Marks & Spencer chocolates and cookies  I didn't get the chance to check out the clothes coz we didn't have much time.

We had dinner at Buena Sera with Yuen and his wife Sharon. I met Yuen when we both attended a training for Andersen Consulting in Chicago in 1997. They went to meet me in NYC in 2000, after he attended another training in Chicago. 

They are Malaysian-Chinese but Yuen was born and bred in London. We took a table in the second-level, which sits right on top of a table in the first-level. There's a small stair right in-front of every table in the ground level, so one can climb up to the second level, just like bunk-beds.

After dinner, we all a Red Routemaster bus to the Sloane Square tube station, took the Tube to Wimbledon, where Yuen and Sharon live, and then Pachot and I transferred to a BritRail train back to Epsom.