Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

The post is back-dated to the date of the trip; actually written on June 7, from photos, notes, and recollections.

My time in London fast running out, I visited some places in London today that I couldn’t afford to miss: Tower of London and the Westminster Abbey.

I started out at the Tower of London around 10 a.m., hoping to catch the first yeoman warder tour. Well, I got there a little late, taking some pictures around the Tower Hill.


So, I took the second tour of the day at 10:30 a.m. The yeoman warder (who I hear are mostly retired army people) took us through the outer gates, describing all the things that went on in the towers that often served as prisons for political prisoners.

We went past the ruins of a medieval wall

and the white tower, hearing descriptions of the unfortunate princes Edward and Richard, and into the chapel (St. Peter-ad-vincula, I think), where, we were told, regular services were still held. The yeoman warder told some amusing stories about “American” tourists (who, supposedly, asked one of the yeoman warders how to get to a “Tower of London” with a large clock), and that was the guided tour.

It wasn’t quite what I expected (I don’t know why, but I had expected a more … thorough tour of the Tower of London), but for an introduction to the tower, it was good. I took my time to tour the Fusiliers’ Museum,

the Royal Armouries,

and the Jewel House (for some reason, I have no photos; I’m guessing photos weren’t allowed in the Jewel House). I had lunch (fish ‘n chips) in one of the cafeterias in the tower. My favorite part of the tower was the wall walk, which, frankly, told more about the history of the tower than the yeoman warder guided tour or elsewhere in the tower. And I loved the view inside,

and outside.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time for the walk along the southern wall, so I had to be satisfied with a few parting photos instead (I should’ve listened more seriously to the advice that I should plan for at least 4 hours to spend in the tower; I had only 2 hours or so, after accounting for the yeoman warder guided tour and the lunch).

The reason I was in a hurry was because I wanted to make it to the last verger-guided tour of Westminster Abbey, starting at 2:30 p.m. Unfortunately, when I arrived at the abbey, I found that they canceled the last verger-guided tour (so the last one was at 2:00 p.m., a few minutes before I arrived at the abbey), and, in any case, I was running so close to the time that I was in the end doubtful whether I would’ve made the 2:30 p.m. tour anyway (I forgot to account for the time waiting in line).

However, I don’t think I missed much. The one thing verger-guided tour included was the tour of Edward the Confessor’s shrine (only the group with the verger guide are allowed into the shrine), but, well, I was able to take a peek at the verger-guided group that must’ve left at 2:00 p.m. (the tour taking about 90 minutes and me making into the abbey by about 2:45 p.m.), and it didn’t seem like I was missing much. The various shrines and tombs were interesting enough to look at, although unfortunately photographs weren’t allowed in most of the abbey. I didn’t see any “no photographs” signs in the cloisters, though, so I took some pictures there.


(Oh, BTW, yes, that picture of the tile with P.A.M. Dirac’s name; I wasn’t supposed to take its picture, and in fact, as I was surreptitiously taking its picture, I got caught; ‘felt like such a naughty boy.)

One thing that struck me about the abbey—in fact, the whole London—was the continuity of British history. The coronation crown dates from more than 300 years ago; the coronation chair dates from 13th century (and both are still in use—when there is a coronation). The abbey was originally built in the 11th century, and they still hold daily evensong, Sunday services, royal weddings, etc.

Well, after the tour, I participated in the evensong (I got to sit next to the choir, as I was one of the first few in the line), and then I headed home for, I think, a well-deserved rest.

The post is back-dated to the date of the trip; actually written on June 6, from photos, notes, and recollections.

On Sunday, I joined Elliott and Fiona for the Sunday Roast, and went on the Intelligence Trail. I almost became a sole tourist on the tour, as I got a call in the early morning that other people who were supposed to be in the group canceled. Thankfully, Elliott joined me for the walk—which might have made me the sole tourist on the tour anyway.

Anyways. The walk took us from the Royal Marines Memorial (the rendezvous point), through the St. James Park (where there was a bridge where the agents and their handlers supposedly met), and ended at the Jolly St. Ermin’s Hotel, where supposedly members of parliament could get drunk, thanks to easy access back to the parliament through the underground tunnel (allowing them to make it to votes in, I think, 7 minutes). There were many stops along the way, but I realized now that I hadn’t taken any photos (‘would’ve been a little awkward, with only two of us in the tour).

Well, here’s the illustration of the path, as a poor substitute for actual photos at the stops (the trail was mostly for the interesting story, including one about the Cambridge Five, Anthony Blunt, etc.—it seemed like the tale was rather heavy on British intelligence failures, but I suppose the very definition of success is that the public remains ignorant of them).

Actual GPS trace from which this was illustrated is on my account at OSM; the trace illustrated with the help of mobilemap.petschge.de.

After the walk, we went back to the Hyde Park, so that I could enjoy the lakes that I glimpsed at on the Old Kensington walk. Unfortunately, the weather was a little too chilly (kinda like summer in San Francisco), so I didn’t stay at the park too long. On the way back were some monuments erected commemorating the queen’s golden jubilee, like this one (which I thought illustrated the reach of the British empire, and, well, fit in well with the modern fad of diversity).

The post is back-dated to the date of the trip; actually written on June 4, from photos, notes, and recollections.

I took a half-day today, as my uncomfortable shoe was taking its toll. I thought additional rest might do some good … although it didn’t seem to have worked out. In any case, I only planned for an afternoon walk with London Walks, the Old Kensington Walk, and I was going to visit the London Eye. I went for a lunch at a KFC near Notting Hill Gate (I’ve been making a point of visiting a McDonald’s ever since I started traveling overseas; I think I’ve only added KFC to the list since my Bangalore trip), and then I walked to the High Street Kensington station where the walk started; this turned out to be a good choice, because, due to the tube constructions (which included complete closure of the Circle Line and partial closure of 4 other lines, I think), no trains were stopping at High Street Kensington station at all; the station was open only for the shops that were located inside the station.

And, on the way, I snapped a photo of this beautiful neighborhood.

The tour started by a walk through Kensington Church Walk, which was a wonderful transition from the busy downtown into a quiet, old neighborhood. We stopped by briefly at St. Mary Abbots, where the tour guide drew our attention to a set of figures that reminded me of a statue that was supposed to be in the Temple Gardens (I didn’t actually see them up close, due to the park being closed).

Along the way, we saw more evidences of window tax (as we did in the Old Westminster walk),

and we took a tour through the Hyde Park (where I didn’t realize we weren’t supposed to take photos), walking by the Kensington Palace,

and the Albert Memorial.

And the tour continued through picturesque towns (which I frankly liked better than the royal monuments).


Some of the stops had quite a history (and I finally understood what “mews” in street names meant),

and others were obviously more recent.

After the tour, I met up with Elliott back in the Hyde Park (apparently the tour I just had gone through was quite different than what he had gone through), and I headed for the London Eye on my own, after an unsuccessful attempt at getting him to come along.

As for the London Eye, well, I think they do overcharge a bit (esp. compared to what you get at the Tower of London for roughly the same admission price), but I would’ve regretted missing the view if I hadn’t gone on it, as these photos ought to amply demonstrate.

The place did have a theme-park/tourist-attraction kind of feel to it, which I didn’t dislike. One particular street performer was very entertaining (the pictures below don’t really do justice; you kinda have to see him put the volunteer in the right position, limb by limb).

After the London Eye, I came home, rather tired (as always). Elliott and I went out for dinner (as always); the food was great (as always), and it was nice not having to worry about making it to the evening walk (like on Friday).

The post is back-dated to the date of the trip; actually written on May 31, from photos, notes, and recollections.

I started the day by finishing the walk I didn’t get to finish yesterday because I was in a hurry to make the Old Westminster walk. I started near the Greyfriars church, mainly because I wanted to see the London Stock Exchange. London Stock Exchange turned out to be a bit of a disappointment (I didn’t see anything that indicated anything was different, other than a plaque saying “London Stock Exchange Group”), but Greyfriars church was … beautiful.

The walk, which wound through the Paternoster square,

and the downtown near St. Paul’s Cathedral (come to think of it, that’s one place I didn’t really get to visit).

I loved how the old church buildings blended in with the relatively modern downtown.

I wrapped up my walk (which included a quick visit to the square outside Dr. Johnson’s house, BTW),

early enough for a visit to the Borough Market with Fiona and her friend (she was entertaining a friend from Cambridge and offered me a chance to tag along, which I accepted). The Borough Market was a delightful place (of which I have no photo, by the way; I just realized that while preparing for this post), with lots of food, various meat pies (oh, and that reminds me; I have to try the portobello mushroom with sausage, arranged like hamburger patty with buns, at one point). And I got to try Pimm’s.

Anyways. I was going to try the London Dungeon, but Elliott dissuaded me from that (on the other hand, I decided against Tower of London, too, mainly because I wanted to rest before the evening Jack the Ripper walk).

I returned to the Tower Hill Tube station for the Jack the Ripper walk. I was running a little late (after a dinner at a nice vegetarian Indian place … where although the food was great service felt slow on account of my being late), but thankfully, Donald, the London Walks guide was still at the Tower Hill station speaking to the crowd. I think there were about 100 people or so; it was definitely larger than any other London Walks groups I’ve joined so far.

The walk was essentially a tour of East End, highlighting spots of grisly murders of “Jack the Ripper” (named so because he opened up his victims, from vagina through abdomen; Donald was sure to mention that a few times). Maybe because it was the theme of this tour—grisly murders, long before the advent of CCTV cameras—but when I saw one of those ubiquitous CCTVs, my first instinct was a feeling of relief. I’m not proud to say that.

One of the murders involved prostitutes looking for customers near what was then known as “prostitutes’ church”,

Donald had a story about how prostitutes circled the church, because they couldn’t solicit for customers at a single spot, lest the authorities catch them. And the along the tour, we stopped at Mitre Square where there was a small memorial to one of the victims.

BTW, there were a few CCTV cameras there that just seemed to be pointed in the wrong direction; I never figured out why.

Anyways. The tour ended somewhere near the Liverpool station. It wasn’t too far, but by then, I was getting tired (the shoe I brought on the trip, which I did mainly because it could be mistaken for a dress shoe while technically being a tennis shoe, unlike my white tennis shoe, wasn’t all that comfortable on long walks), I have to say I barely made it to the station and to Elliott’s place.

It was a very informative tour, nonetheless.

The post is back-dated to the date of the trip; actually written on May 31, from photos, notes, and recollections.

Rivers are my favorite part of old cities—they almost always have them (by necessity of course, both for transportation and agriculture in the ancient times); I don’t see them as much in California (where there aren’t many big rivers and the cities were built after railroads anyway). So, I went on a morning river cruise along Thames; from the Tower of London to Westminster seemed like a good choice (I’m saving the route from Tower of London to Greenwich for another day).

After getting off at the Tower Hill station, I got some good look at Tower of London from outside, as well as the Tower Bridge while I waited for the next available boat.

I had a good view from the pier where I waited for the boat. The cruise companies operated a couple different boats,


I went on the boat that looked more like the latter one, which was good, since it was easier to get a good view (and pictures) from the upper deck.

As we went up the Thames to Westminster, the crew pointed out various sights and shared a few amusing stories.


Despite its current corporate uses, it wasn’t too hard to tell that this building used to be a fish market because of the decorations (a close-up below).

We passed under several bridges; the first was the London Bridge, the oldest bridge across Thames. The current bridge, I’m told, is at nearly the same location where the Roman bridge used to be (the old London Bridge is supposedly in Arizona now).

And there was the Millennium Bridge, where several pedestrians (it’s a pedestrian bridge) waved at us.

We were reminded how the Thames is a tidal river, and how that was useful for ancient transportation, for moving people and goods up and down the river (and, well, how it contributed to the Great Stink).

The crew had an amusing rhyme that went as: “If the lion’s head is ducked, London is … flooded”.

I got my first view of the London Eye and the Westminster Palace from the boat (best place to get first view of these wonderful sights).


Actually, until I saw the London Eye, I, well, didn’t know where it was; it looked very familiar from a movie, though.

I got off the boat at Westminster Pier, and started my self-guided tour (following a book I got at the Sherlock Holmes Museum gift store), which was supposed to be a walk along the Thames river banks. I got distracted briefly by protesters who happened to be marching by the Parliament to the park nearby,

but I got back to my trip soon enough and looked at various memorials and statues. One thing I didn’t expect to see was a statue of Oliver Cromwell by the Parliament,

but according to Shaughan, the London Walks guide I was talking to later, apparently he’s considered an early champion of the Parliament (I suppose they don’t care too much that at one point, the Lord Protector dissolved the Parliament).

The memorials were some sight, and, at least to me, showed the reach and power of the British Empire, from the Cleopatra’s Needle to a gift from Belgium.


And the memorials reminding us of Britain’s sacrifice—and valiance in the face of difficulty—during the World Wars.



The tour took me through Somerset House and Temple Gardens (Temple Gardens was unfortunately closed so I couldn’t look at the statue of the girl with inscription “I was thirsty and ye gave me drink”). The walk was supposed to take me to St. Paul’s Cathedral, but I was running short on time, so I had to cut the tour short and take the Underground at Mansion House, to come back to Westminster Station for the London Walks tour, Old Westminster, in the afternoon.

We started the tour just across the street from Westminster Palace, where Shaughan (who does wonderful impressions by the way) pointed out various architectural features and history (oh, and here the “VR” inscription was explained; once I was told what that meant, I could figure out the “ER” inscription I was seeing at various places).

Then we walked onto Victoria Tower Gardens (where I saw protesters head to last time I was here … but they were gone by the time I came back with London Walks tour), where we had a good view of sight across the Thames, and the Westminster Palace.

We then went through a tour of the Smith Square, which Shaughan compared to Georgetown,

and the tour ended at the Downing Street.

After the tour, I visited the Churchill War Room, taking advantage of the group rate through London Walks, and after that, I took a walk through the St. James Park and Green Park for the afternoon tea with Elliott, his sister and her friend (the tea and finger sandwiches were great!).

I was quite tired by the day’s end (a quick nap in St. James Park helped), but I think I’m getting over the jet lag.

The post is back-dated to the date of the trip; actually written on May 25, from photos, notes, and recollections.

As I hadn’t been able to prepare as thoroughly for my London trip as I’d have liked to (um, I was busy), Elliott suggested this trip from London Walks. The trip was lovely.

I did get up early enough for the tour (I had to be at a train station about 30 minutes away at 9 a.m.), thankfully, and joined the tour group. After a pleasant one-hour train ride to Oxford, we got on the charter bus, and drove to Cotwolds. While we were getting there (I think about 30 minutes’ ride), the tour guide, Richard, explained the history of the region, starting with its name (I think it means something like “sheep pen”), and striking changes the region has gone through, from center of a cottage industry to town of weekend homes, as modes of transportation—and the world—changed. It made me think of various cities and regions in America (i.e. the Rust Belt), and what changes may be in store for those places.

The walking tour started in Minster Lovell.

We had a nice stroll through the town, along the public right of the way next to the field (where we were told stories about “kissing gates”), and to the Minster Lovell Hall, where we heard the tragic story of a bride’s wedding day.

Oh, and here, I also saw my first thatched roof.

Then we had the lunch break at the nearest (I think) town with shops, Burford.

One of the first things we saw in Oxford University was the Divinity School, where we were told stories about how they had all these stained glasses instead of books.

Seeing the clear glass, someone asked about what happened to the stained glass. Apparently it was a payback from Oliver Cromwell (more on him on later posts). He broke every single one of them, as a payback for the university’s support of the king.

Well, we went through a tour of a few colleges, including the All Souls College, allegedly the best kind of college according to our guide Richard.

We sat in a dining commons of a college (I forget the exact name … it might have been Magdalen College—whichever it was, it wasn’t the one with the dining commons where Harry Potter movies were shot; apparently since then that college has too many visitors). We heard anecdotes of Chelsea Clinton and her time as exchange student here, we took a break for about, I think, 45 minutes.

I took that time to return to a tower we saw earlier in the tour.

And, the view was wonderful up there (if, well, a bit uncomfortable; I really couldn’t imagine what’d happen if one person was going up the stairwell while another person was coming down).

Anyways. I made it barely back to the group in time (I got a lost a little, if you can imagine that with me having my handheld GPS with me all the time), and, well, the train ride back was uneventful.

This took the whole day, and I think I didn’t really have the energy for anything else (esp. considering the time difference I was adjusting to).

I am finally back from my trip, and as things got really busy towards the end of my stay at RRI, I haven’t been able to talk more about articles I’ve read that made an impression on me. Some of them are really outdated by now (about a month old) so I can’t really talk about them individually, but I guess if you combine enough of them together, it could make for a blog post. So, here’s the dump of all the articles (all from WSJ, as that’s the newspaper I get on my Kindle) I wanted to comment on in the last month:

• The More, The Better: this is why I feel optimistic about America in the long run. This is a mighty country, based on a mighty continent. And we are still growing, unlike the old countries in Europe or some in Asia.
• “They recommend that doctors ask themselves honestly about their intent in conducting the search and whether the outcome might compromise the trust and relationship between the doctor and patient. Doctors, they say, should consider asking the patient for consent.”: I don’t know. If they have to ask, they probably shouldn’t. Or, at least on an individual basis, it would be a creepy question to ask: “May I google you from time to time?” Such question is better placed on a form with all those waivers, like one of those privacy opt-out things. On another note, doctors googling their patients is especially creepy—while the information they find is supposedly public, because doctors have privileged information about their patients, they may be able to piece together the whole, probably private, picture better than random strangers could.
• Basically an Optimist—Still: “Today nobody believes that, except maybe in North Korea. You go to China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, even Western Europe. Most of the economists under 50 have a free-market orientation. Now, there are differences of emphasis and opinion among them. But they’re oriented toward the markets.” A new hope? Liberal-socialism is becoming, year by year and decade by decade more intellectually bankrupt. While the tide is still against us, we may be able to reverse it—in our lifetime.
• Vallejo’s Painful Lessons in Municipal Bankruptcy: Well. Here’s a city I should remember never to move into, regardless of how attractive some rentals seem.
• Harvesting Lunar Soil For Energy Bonanza: “What’s so special about lunar soil? It contains helium-3, a non radioactive isotope that fuels clean nuclear fusion.” Sounds like science fiction. In particular, this science fiction.
• Business Bids to Shape Health Changes: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is planning a broad effort to blunt the health overhaul by trying to shape its regulatory language and spending heavily to unseat vulnerable Democrats who voted for it.” ‘Wish they started the fight earlier. Instead, Obamacare is marked with special deals for big businesses, such as Big Pharma, at the cost of everyone else.
• Militia Chief’s Mistrust Festered, Friends Say: “While he rarely attended church, he studied the Bible nightly, memorizing long passages, said Ms. Harsh, his ex-fiance.” A slight problem: For Christians, belonging in a community of believers is not merely recommended; it’s required. So by any measurable standard, this militia leader was not a Christian.
• The ObamaCare Writedowns—II: “In other words, CEOs who must abide by U.S. accounting laws under pain of SEC sanction, and who warned about such writedowns for months, are merely trying to ruin President Obama’s moment of glory. Sure.” Aye. On the other hand, investors would be wise to discount these writedowns as they do with most one-time charges in trying to predict future earnings.
• The Superstar Effect: Interesting. Would the same effect exist in a cooperative situation as well? i.e. Mr. Best will be carrying most of the load; why should we work hard?
• Corruption You Can Count On: (I also can’t find it online) “But to the discomfort of development economists and anti-corruption crusaders, some of the great economic success stories of the past half-century have taken place in the most corrupt economies on earth. In Transparency’s first corruption ranking in 1995, the two countries that ranked as the most corrupt were Indonesia and China. Yet these ratings came amid decades-long economic booms.” Not too surprising. As long as bribes are consistent, are they really different from rush processing fees you pay at various places in U.S.?
• Fire and Fumes Can’t Drive Indians From Hellish Village: “But many of the government’s more ambitious plans to help its most vulnerable citizens are failing because they are poorly conceived and executed. Even as the government has poured billions of dollars into an initiative to employ unskilled rural workers, the program has been plagued with charges of corruption and mismanagement.” Well. There’s always the saying; rising tides raise all boats. Perhaps those billions would be better spent cutting taxes and encouraging growth (and in some aspects, Bangalore seemed to have more vibrant free market than the Bay Area).
• More Americans Sever U.S. Ties as IRS Gets Tougher: “According to public records, just over 500 people world-wide renounced U.S. citizenship or permanent residency in the fourth quarter of 2009, the most recent period for which data are available. That is more people than have cut ties with the U.S. during all of 2007, and more than double the total expatriations in 2008.” Appalling but I guess encouraging: even if 2,000 people did give up U.S. citizenship annually, that’s much fewer than the number of people getting naturalized annually (although it must hurt that most people giving up U.S. citizenship must be far richer than average immigrants).
• Mr. Dimon Goes to Washington: ‘The incessant broad-based vilification of the banking industry isn’t fair and it is damaging,” Mr. Dimon said. “Punishing whole industries, whether you were reckless or not, just isn’t the way to do things.”‘ ‘Would’ve been more convincing for him to say that it wasn’t government’s business to mess with the market, either in bailing out or punishing. Instead, Mr. Dimon comes off as if he’s saying government help is welcome but its welcome has worn out when it wants to exact payments.
• In the Search for a Hot Job Title, Enter the Ninja: “In finance, ninja has a more dubious meaning—it’s an acronym for a kind of loan in which a bank hasn’t verified an applicant’s income, job, or assets. After the housing bubble, many of these sorts of loans ended up in default, with their borrowers disappearing like ninjas.” Oh, interesting. Perhaps CS ninjas will end up the same way.
• Not All Differences in Earnings Are Created Equal: “But do women really earn that much less than men? It depends on how you interpret the numbers.” Numbers always lie. When you work with statistics, you can always massage the numbers to make them give you the result you want.
• Taliban Capitalize on Afghan Logging Ban: “Deforestation, in turn, leads to soil erosion, flooding, and air pollution—which is why the Afghan government, with the support of international environmental groups, imposed the 2006 prohibition.” Yet another misguided leftist project—imposing our standards on another nation.

Well. This covers the articles I had clipped up ’til April 15th, when I got stuck at Frankfurt. I’ll look over what I missed and post another article dump, if necessary.

Here’s one depressing email from United Airlines (private email address redacted):

From: United <ema...@info.united.com>
Reply-To: United Replies <rep...@info.united.com>
To: xxx...@BKPARK.COM
Subject: European travel notification
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:23:03 0600

To ensure receipt of our emails, please add
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Dear Mr. Byung Kyu Park,

Several European countries have closed their airspace due to
unsafe flying conditions resulting from a volcanic ash plume
that is covering significant portions of northern Europe.

Thousands of flights to and from major European airports
have been canceled, and Eurocontrol, the European air
traffic agency, has said that travel disruptions and delays
will continue well into Saturday as the massive ash cloud
moves slowly south and east. We know that unexpected flight
cancellations are difficult. However, our highest priority
is your safety and that of our crews.

 . If your flight has been canceled, we will rebook you on
   the next United flight with available seats. Check your
   flight status.

http://www.ua2go.com/flifo/FlightInput.do

 . Even if your flight has not yet been canceled, your
   travel may be covered by a travel waiver, and you may be
   able to change your plans without incurring a service
   charge.

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6867,53414,00.html

 . If your travel plans are impacted by this situation and
   you decide to cancel your trip, you may be eligible for
   a refund of any unused portion of your ticket.

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,52940,00.html

In order to provide additional assistance to our customers
who are currently in Europe, we have extended the hours of
our European reservations centers.

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,1360,50394,00.html

Please know that we are working hard to reaccommodate all of
our customers whose travel has been impacted and to resume
flying our full schedule as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

United Airlines

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What’s depressing about it? The date: it’s dated April 16th, but the volcano erupted on the 14th and the problem with air travel started early 15th. I only wish United had this attitude on the 15th—that may have lead the CS rep to agree to modify my ticket like I wanted to initially and let me travel to London by train (when the bulk of the air traffic had not yet been diverted to train).

Things still would be rough, since my main luggage would not be with me, but I wouldn’t be as depressed as I am now, stuck in the least favorite continent (Europe), in the least favorite country (Germany), in the least favorite city (Frankfurt), and in the least favorite airport (FRA) in the whole universe (I reserve judgment on Martians).

Given that this is presumably a once-in-a-lifetime incident I am not sure how well the lesson would apply, the lesson is learned: in the event of natural disaster, don’t assume things will get better, and let the customer service reps know I will hold them personally responsible for not obeying my wishes (or at least not escalating it to higher level where they know their proper place)—which, in most cases, prove prudent and correct in the long run—in the event things do get worse.

So, thanks to an act of God, my London trip this year is cancelled. This is very disappointing to me, as this would have been my first trip to England with a high chance of adding a second European country to my “good countries” list (Germany, by the way, will never make that list; at least until there is a world war in which Germany fights on our side. Actually, make that 3, first 2 necessary just to cancel out the WWI and WWII). Anyways. Here is the record of all the things that have gone wrong, and a couple things that, if I had done differently, might have changed things for the better.

So the very first thing I did wrong was being slow in reacting to the news. I was lucky enough to be one of the first to hear that our flight got cancelled (and since the flight was cancelled after they had passed through about 20 to 30 people into the waiting area for boarding, I believe my flight was one of the very first to get canceled, the people in 8:30 a.m. flight being the very lucky ones who were the last to depart for LHR). I guess the news was just too incredible to me—I spent the next 10 minutes or so playing Hedgewars, before I got it through my thick head that I probably should talk to the airline people to see what I should do. I think these were the crucial minutes which cost about an hour or two in waiting time later at the Lufthansa Customer Service center one floor up.

After that hour or two of waiting (that I could have avoided, if I had the sense to take advantage of my good fortune in hearing about the plane cancellation so early), I talked to the Lufthansa people, and they were, for the most part, reasonable, if very slow: They put me on the 12:20 flight to LHR and gave me a voucher for a hotel stay and a meal up to 20 EUR. My personal objection, of course, was that they were making me stay in Frankfurt, my least favorite city in the world (it ranks behind St. Petersburg, a Russian city). Also, this would have been half a day of sight-seeing and trips in London missed, as well as my hostel reservation check in. So, I wanted to make an alternate arrangement to get me to London faster, and since this will involve modifications to the ticket and this is a United ticket, not Lufthansa, they told me to go talk to the United people.

And that’s where I made my second mistake. After eventually being directed to the United ticket counter, I tried to explain my intent carefully (the situation didn’t need explanations; whole airports were getting shut down): I could try to arrange for my own transportation to London (probably by train). I just wanted to make sure two things: (1) cancelling the FRA-LHR segment will not cancel the remainder of my trip ; (2) I’ll not get charged for the modification (given the situation), and in fact, that I should get reimbursed somehow for the segment not used (esp. since I will have to pay for the train ticket). Well. The customer service representative claimed that she absolutely could not modify the ticket. What she claimed was that cancelling this segment will get the remainder of the trip automatically cancelled by the computer system, and that she has no way to override that. This is where I made my second mistake: I believed her—as I found out the next day, when the newfound flexibility was useless, it was entirely possible to rework the whole ticket, not only to cancel just the FRA-LHR segment, but also to modify LHR-ORD-SFO segment, at no additional charge to me. I should have believed my own sense of reasonableness and pushed her harder, and perhaps demanded to talk to her supervisor. Escalate.

Anyways. That’s all the mistakes I made; the rest were, well, in God’s hands. I got to the hotel by their shuttle in the late afternoon. My ill-will towards Lufthansa softened a bit at finding that this was a 5-star hotel (and the room was definitely the best I’ve been in so far, including the stay at Doubletree in Oak Ridge, which was fancier than I was comfortable with in the first place). Here are some pictures of the room and the area:

The front view of the Kempinski Hotel Gravenbruch.
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And some of the facilities that are available at the hotel … which is I guess fairly standard at most hotels bearing the name “resort”.
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What was really nice was my room.
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And the view from the room.
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And the view of the room.
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And the restaurant was pretty good—although much of that may have to do with the 20 EUR voucher; one would expect a great service at a place where you pay nearly 40 EUR for a dinner; it just felt good because I was paying less than half of what I’d pay.

So, although I might have held a grudge against Lufthansa over all the waits and rather useless customer service (about half the people I had to talk to over this whole fiasco weren’t helpful), as I do against Delta, I don’t.

Everything I did the day after was as good as it could have been done—but man plans, God accomplishes; I wasn’t to make this visit to London. I woke up at 5:45 a.m.; went down for breakfast at 6 a.m.; took the shuttle to airport at 6:45 a.m. (I guess I could’ve taken the 6:00 a.m. shuttle, so in hindsight, maybe that was the third mistake, but I’d have to weigh that against missing the complementary breakfast which was the best hotel breakfast I’ve had … that I didn’t have to pay for). The first thing I saw was a huge line at the Lufthansa counters. Imagine the polar opposite of this, 6 hours later:
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Well. In any case, checking my ticket at one of the kiosks showed that my flight was cancelled anyway. So, not wanting to wait in such long lines (which, I guess, took about 3 to 5 hours to clear up, so if I had queued up, they’d probably have put me on another flight tomorrow 2 hours later or so, and maybe another night of free hotel stay, but without a perfect hindsight that everything I tried to do to get to London today would fail, that wasn’t a reasonable course of action), I headed over to the relatively short United ticket counter. And surprise, surprise, the customer service rep who was at the counter could modify my ticket. She cancelled the FRA-LHR segment, giving me a ticket for my record, and advising me to contact United after the trip to get them to reimburse me for my train ticket. Then, after filling out a form for the checked in luggage (BTW, I had wanted to carry this luggage on the plane; I only checked it in because of Lufthansa’s stupid rule about 8kg weight limit on carry-on and this has caused me more headaches than I’d care for) to be delivered to the London address where I hoped to be staying, I went to the travel center to book my train. The line was long (it was so long that it went around a staircase all the way around so that the end of the line was at the start of the line), but after 3 hours of waiting (i.e. about 11:30 p.m.), I got to the counter to book the ticket. After relatively curt exchange and long wait (this seems to be my typical German customer service experience (e.g. Lufthansa and whoever operates trains); rude and lacking in explanations, although United reps so far have been mostly nice—but they are Germans too, right? So what’s the difference?) the lady told me that there were absolutely no tickets to London until Monday. Because of that experience with United rep where I was told, to put it nicely, an untruth, I pushed her a little farther for clarification: Isn’t there anything with standing room only? What if I take a detour through another city? No. No.

And that’s when all my hopes vanished and I got to writing this post mortem. I have given up on the London trip this time around. I am glad enough to have booked for a direct flight to U.S., waitlisted for an early flight tomorrow (doubtful that I can make it) and confirmed reservation for a direct flight to SFO on Monday. If I can get out of this miserable city tomorrow morning, by God, I will. If not, as a friend suggested, I’ll take a train ride to escape this accursed city and the country (maybe Luxembourg, or even France) until I can return on Monday for the retreat to my beloved country.

After some false starts and mishaps, I finally got an organized tour of Bangalore last Sunday. I hope to go on a Mysore tour next weekend. Here are some pictures from the tour.

One of the “false starts” was that the full-day tour I was originally booked for got cancelled because of some local election last Sunday. So, I booked myself on the afternoon half-day tour instead (that actually turned out to be better, because when I looked at the stops for the full-day tour, the half-day tour actually looked better; the full-day tour was filled with museums and planetariums, i.e. places that have little to do with Bangalore). So I had to kill some time from 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and I stumbled upon this statue of Queen Victoria.
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The first stop was this museum (and thankfully, the only museum in the list of stops):
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Frankly, the outside of the museum looks better than anything else inside. Inside, you could find things like lathes and micrometers (huh, I didn’t know these common items at my lab in Berkeley were museum-worthy). There was one interesting exhibit though:
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To figure out where the water is coming from, it’s important to note that here the water appears to drop straight down in a cylinder of constant diameter. But the physics of laminar flow of incompressible fluid under gravitational pull (in particular, the fluid velocity increases under gravitational pull, but the flow rate (area times fluid velocity) must stay constant) dictates the diameter must become narrower as water falls downward. I think they could’ve made this exhibit more tricky by fashioning the transparent pipe into the shape water would naturally have, and picking the right material with the index of refraction similar to water so that the underwater portion of the pipe won’t be so transparent. Then it is only through process of elimination that one can arrive at where the water must be coming from.

And we stopped by at Tippu’s summer palace,
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which was fairly unimpressive, except perhaps this monument:
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I really liked our next stop, Lalbagh Botanical Garden though.
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It was a beautiful garden with beautiful paths
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and lake.
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As we had only one short hour there, not nearly enough time to look at everything I want to see in the garden,
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not to mention map some unmapped sections of the footpaths, I plan on coming back later, perhaps next Saturday.

The tour ended at some Hindu temples, including the Bull Temple.
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I felt a lot of ambivalence at these places, you know, first and second commandment and all that (especially at the Bull Temple, where I had a guide who encouraged me to touch the bull “for good luck” and where I also got a little red dot on my forehead, for whatever that meant). Well. I just remembered what Paul said about meat sacrificed to Greek idols: these Hindu idols also do not exist, and these gestures which could be interpreted as worship do not matter—if I do not mistake them for worship.