Welcome to London

Hello from London.  If you are reading this blog, you hopefully know that I've created this page to document some of the fun and interesting people/places/things I've witnessed during my month long escapade in London and the greater United Kingdom.  This is the first time I've ever attempted to any sort of blog or published writing, so I fully expect this to be boring and full of errors.  I will make a few attempts at humor and post a few photos to keep this interesting, but I make no promises.  I also suck at writing so deal with it.  And with that, here we go...

I'm in day one or two of my trip and so far things are going well as can be.  I say day one or two because I am all sorts of messed up on the time.  I was fully planning on staying awake all day after I landed, but failed miserably and took a nap from 1pm to 6pm.  The day started out well with very few hiccups.  I was pretty much packed when I woke up and there really wasn't too much I had to leave out due to space constraints.  It's extremely hard to pack for a month long trip when you have no clue what sort of weather to expect or what you will be doing.  I brought a shit ton work stuff and I know it's way too much, but I'm a terrible traveler.  Plus, I have a feeling that no matter what I wear I'm going to look like the unstylish American.  I don't really care because I truly am unstylish and American.

Once at the airport, I flew through the check-in lines and security.  My company put me up in business class and apparently that gets you places in SFO.  I got to go in some special line at security that had one person in it while the rest of the goons at the airport glared at me while they waited in their longer line.  After that, I grabbed a quick lunch, called the parents to say goodbye, and basically just sat around for my flight.  Pretty boring so far, but once I was finally on the plane, things started to get fun.

First off, you may be wondering why I titled my blog Six Brandies Deep.  Well, the story goes that once I got on the plane, the fabulous staff at United started feeding me drinks left and right, and since I was basically like a giddy little school girl sitting in business class for the first time, I couldn't say no to anything.  They started me out on some sparkling white wine, which was just ok, but after we took off they came around with more glasses of wine along with good assortment of roasted nuts.  One of the flight attendants (whom I must say had one of the finer mustaches I have ever seen) took a liking to me and made sure to fill me up whenever I was empty, which was quite often.   We had a fine lunch/dinner, which was accompanied of course by more wine.  When the dessert cart rolled around, I noticed that brandy was an option.  Again, since I'm new to the whole business class thing, I asked if booze cost extra, and the mustached man just laughed as I think he was finally understanding that I'm not used to this sort of thing.  He went away for a second and came back with this glass in a glass thing where the inner glass had a full glass of brandy and the outer glass had hot water heating the brandy to a perfectly warm temperature.  Let me tell you that these drinks were AMAZING.  I've never been a huge brandy drinker, but I may be after this trip.  I popped back two of those pretty quickly and at that point I could officially say that I was pretty buzzed.

Everyone around the plane was trying to fall asleep and as much as I wanted to as well, I was not tired at all and was almost in party mode after all the drinks I've had.  I watched a few movies and chatted with the person sitting next to me, Anne, who was traveling with her daughter all through Europe.  She started getting envious of all the deliciousness that I was drinking and joined me in another brandy.  Mustached flight attendant kept an eye on my and every time my glass was empty, he came around with another brandy, even if I didn't ask.  Now that's service.  He eventually stopped with the whole warm glass thing and just started giving them to me straight up.  It's a good thing I was drunk because the movies on the plane were pretty bad.  I watched Unknown, Hall Pass, and Just Go With It.  Hall Pass was funny, but I think it helped that I was drunk.  Unknown was blah, but no amount of alcohol could have saved Just Go With It.  Adam Sandler, you are better than that, or at least you used to be.  Go back to penguins and calling the shit poop.

The flight was wrapping up and I was into what I believe was my sixth brandy (hence the title of the blog).  The flight attendants started cleaning up the cabin, and mustached flight attendant walked by and basically called me out to finish my last glass.  I felt hungover at this point as I had been drinking very little water, but I of course chugged the final glass down as I'm not one to back down from that challenge.  I've come to the realization that mustached man just wanted to see how drunk he could get me, and for that, he will forever have my respect.

The flight landed on time at Heathrow and I again flew through security/customs.  I got to where I was supposed to meet my driver, but he wasn't there.  It's at this point I realized that it is humid as all hell and I was sweating profusely due to the combination of me carrying all my luggage, my newly acquired hangover, and the fact that it's hot as balls.  The driver showed up, but I forgot to get a picture of him holding the sign up with my name on it like I said I would.  We left the airport and hit immediate traffic because we were in the height of morning rush hour.

My first thoughts on London from the drive in was that it looks a lot like Boston.  All of the brick, weird combinations of new and old buildings, and tiny streets made me feel like I was simply on the east coast and not in a different country.  I struck up a conversation with my driver about the Olympics and where all of the construction was for it.  It was at this point he started to get somewhat agitated, as this is apparently a very controversial thing over here.  No one wants the Olympics here because there is no money for it and the people feel like it's a waste.  My driver proceeded to follow-up with some racist jokes related to where they are building the new swimming complex and black people.  I let out an uncomfortable half laugh and decided that maybe it's best to just shut up for a little while.

We finally reached my apartment and the driver went on his merry way.  I meet the flat manager Mike and he showed me my flat and explained how to use everything (yes, I'm calling it a flat as this is the cool thing to do so fuck off; I'm looking at you, Jordan/Choi).  At this point I'm exhausted and everything he told me pretty much goes in one ear and out the other.  He finally left after a few minutes and I'm left to figure out my day.  I ended up spending about an hour at the grocery store because I couldn't find anything and not much is the same as in the US.  I also attempted to get and Oyster card, but the machine wouldn't take my card so I gave up.  I got home, unpacked the food as well as my bags, and proceeded to sleep the best sleep I've had in a long time.

The place I'm staying at is fine.  The kitchen sucks and it will be hard to get any sort of cooking done as it's the size of a closet and there is maybe a spoon and two pans to use.  Thankfully there is the an Indian restaurant at the bottom of the building along with a very popular pub, which blew up around 7pm.  I have a feeling I will be spending a lot of time there.  Good news is that I have an amazing bed and the room is pretty quiet.  There is a TV, but I've already come to the conclusion that British programming blows.  All they have is QVC type stations, BBC news, re-runs of Top Gear (the best thing I've seen so far), and bad shows from the US.  I shouldn't be watching TV so I guess this is a good thing.

So that pretty much brings me to now.  I'm past my hangover and of course drinking again; scotch whisky this time.  I know most of you reading this probably didn't need all of these details, and I promise these will get more brief as the trip moves on as I have a feeling I'll have less and less to talk about.  I'll try to update everyone as I start to do more and more cool stuff.  For now, I'll say goodnight and I miss you all.  Tomorrow is my first day at work so it should be a good one.