London (Farewell)


Mumbai >> << Berlin
Other Posts in this area:
'Why Not?' (1 miles) London and Zurich, of Thailand, India and several ideas (1 miles) Packing (1 miles) What is Startup Weekend? (1 miles)
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Wednesday - Arriving at Adil's

Nick - Mon 07 January 23.00
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We wanted to get together to have a couple of working days again, and decided to meet up and stay at Adil's for two days till friday. Anthony was to meet his friends from singapore, **** to keep the weekend free of work in case ******* had time to meet up, and **** still had a ***job to manage at the same time. So two days, Wednesday and Thursday it is.

At Adil's, we caught up for a bit before setting up an agenda for our extended meeting, with points we wanted to cover before we finally departed.
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Singapore Reunion

Anthony - Tue 26 February 03.00
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While in London, i took the time to have a little singapore reunion, and meet some of the people i was in Singi with in the worldcup summer of 2006.

Met Gita, Francesco and Natasha again, as well as Zaki and Wai (friend of Gitas), who actually happened to be Zakis ex-schoolmate from Dulwich! What a coincidence!

So we had dinner at Four seasons on Bayswater road, after queueing for like 40 minutes, but it was good. very good food actually.

Zaki came all decorated with a ridiculously funny moustache, re-earning him his old nickname 'Moustacha'. After not having seen him for a longer period of time, it was a pleasant shock to see that something had changed about him. Even though he claims that it is a bet...

Seeing Francesco again was great! I've always enjoyed his company and interesting conversations, not only because he's a diplomat's child and therefore well travelled, but also because he's got interesting points of view on many issues. I still remember and often quote my favourite of his statements, which he made when we were debating the UK and other education systems with Laura (Nottingham) back in PGP, Singapore. Refusing to accept that learning something at school even though she does not need it for her job, Francesco replied to Laura, in a last attempt to bring her to reason: 'It's education. You die less stupid!'. Priceless!

Gita is good as ever, happy clappy with a northern accent. Was great to see her again, and oh my go, she's such a monkey!
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Leaving Dinner

Anthony - Tue 26 February 04.00
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Before actually leaving London, we tried to get together a bunch of friends for dinner and drinks. We met at Carluccios in South Ken for some food, of course everybody including Nikesh and me were hopelessly late, but the food and the round was nice. Omar, Zaki, Pip, Christine, Claire, Becky and her friend, Sid, Marine, Tony and Nikesh and I made it (or did i forget someone)? By Chance, i also bumped into Jeanie, a kind of Childhood friend who i met again (by chance?) in Singapore.

Afterwards we went for drinks in Cactus Blue on the Fulham Road, and i had the chance to see Sherin, Tom and Leon again, which was good. In the end, Tony, Adil, Nick, his sister Becky and her friend, Leon and me ended up going to Chinatown late at night to sing Karaoke! Leon and Tony bargained a good rate for a private room, and so the show went on! Awsome, what a finale!

Despite our amateur singing/noisemaking (Adil!) we had a great time. Having said that, Tony and Leon are like the polar opposite to Adil as far as singing is concerned, and actually semi-professional, i would say, or Karaoke regulars to say the least!

Hopefully i can find some Karaoke (or rather, K-TV) in India!
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Travelling Light1

Anthony - Tue 26 February 04.00
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Just as a side note, nikesh and me travelled light, or planned to.

THat means that i had one backpack and my laptop bag, nik had one trolley and a small rucksack. That's it.

AMazingly, while i had a collection of clothes and a ridiculous number of books (6 i think) with me, and some essentials like travel medicine etc, nick actually managed to pack half his trolley which was light already with electronics. So he actually only had a quarter of his trolley packed with clothes, the rest had a wireless router, his camera and another laptop... he really does deserves the name electronick!
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Sun 07 September - Just- said delete
LOL @ Nick more electronics then cloths, thats a true geek :P
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Missing the plane to india

Anthony - Tue 26 February 04.00
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We nearly did. well, there was no danger at no time, of course, but thanks to numerous misinformation on the london underground, the heathrow airport terminal information, two useless groud staff and confusing monitoring, we were a bit pressed for time.

While we arrived at the airport in time, we wanted to have enough leeway to clear security, and that was running out...

(I might remember the terminal numbers incorrectly:)

So london underground said all internetional flights apart from HK and Canada (or something like that) terminal 3 (i think). One stop before heathrow, we had to get out because the picadilly tube went straight to terminal 4. after a 20minute wait, we finally got into our tube to terminal 3, just to find that the only flight to mumbai there which departed exactly at our departure time was a British Airways flight, not Air India.

Confusion-> two separate planes departing at the same time on the same route? hmmm. maybe it's a codeshare between air india and british airways? asking ground staff about the air india check in desk was completely useless, they sent us to the distant corner of the terminal and we found... nothing, no air india. finally someone was able to tell us that air india was indeed using terminal 4. rushing back on the train to the other terminal, we finally made it to the air india check in desk, in time, of course, and surprisingly, clearing security didn't take more than 10mins.

Of course we kindly asked for an upgrade to first f business class, and were hopeful that the gentleman at the check-in desk only said 'no sorry' but actually meant 'sure, no problems' after seeing 'first class' tags on our handluggage. Unfortunately, he meant what he said.

Either way. Clearing security was weird, since we had to go through the normal Xray and then again through a separate shoe Xray, where everyone had to take their shoes off to be scanned... what a waste of time.

At the airport we had enough time for a Whiskey, but instead of going to O'Neills (or which pub was it) which was crowded and expensive, we went to the Whiskey shop to get some piccolo bottles, and some Whiskey tasting. I've never really had the chance to appreciate Whiskey, and Nick, being from Scotland, could not leave the country without any Whiskey and the prospect of Indian 'whiskey' only. Naturally, it was time well spent, and we had about 4 different Whiskeys, which, i must say, got my head a bit lighter than normal ;-)

Finally we boarded the ancient plane air india was operating, and left the UK, the EU and Europe!
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