Monday:

Had a meeting with the bank through which we trade after which my colleagues and I had a beer in Old Chesire Cheese (that's not me, I didn't have my camera so found someone else’s picture).

Dinner @ Kulu Kulu Sushi in Covent Garden. It’s an ala carte system where a little conveyor transports differently colored plates (where each color represents a different price) carrying a piece or two of sushi, seaweed salad, etc. Somehow it didn't do it for me although the sushi was ok.

Tuesday:

Lunch @ Mexicali (the name on my receipt, the name on the restaurant was something like Beach Burrito) in Soho. Somewhat similar to Freebird’s without the BBQ or hot sauces. If you say you want it spicey they'll throw in a handful of pickled jalapeno slices. On the way to and from the restaurant saw my first ’working girl’ in London.

Dinner @ Won Kei in Soho. Had the Prawns with Chilies. The Hot-n-Sour soup was in fact sour (lots of vinegar).

Wednesday:

Visited Hamleys to pick up some gifts for my children. My colleagues with New York experience said the closest US-centric analogy would be FAO Schwartz. Picked up about 1lb of mixed candy which I’ve never seen before. I suspect this’ll be the gift most appreciated by my little animals.

Visited St. Paul’s Cathedral. I lucked out and showed up as Evening Song began. It was an amazing experience - I couldn’t quite tell how many people where in the choir as I was too far away (the cathedral is big) but I’m guessing fewer than 20 but their sound still filled the Cathedral. The pipe organ hit some notes which were so low they were more felt than heard. I also experienced an emotion similar to what I experienced when I stopped in at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday. I suppose this is a bit of “you can take the boy out of the Church but you can’t take the Church out of the boy”... (yes, I’m aware that the Cathedral is Episcopalian and not Catholic but that has more to do with Henry XIII and less with profound ideologically or cultural worldview differences). That and who knows what energy field has developed in the last thousand plus years...

Then off to dinner @ “The Bank” on Kingsway. More upscale than other places I’ve been (I let my colleagues pick the place). Again had a Prawns with Chilies, starting first with raw oysters and beef tartare (Mmmm, although I prefer horseradish and cocktail sauce with my oysters...)

Went to bed and woke up after 1 hour, couldn’t go back to sleep so decided to stay up until time to leave.

Thursday: Headed back to Austin on an 8:30a flight out of Gatwick.

At the Continental desk at Gatwick we met with folks who asked us the usual security questions (i.e. “Have you been in possession of your bags since you packed them? Has anyone given anything to you?”, etc.) after which we were directed to a short line (we were the only ones in it) instead of a line containing 50+ folks in it - we concluded this was because we had printed our boarding passes the day before. It still took us ~20 minutes to check our bags - two agents were apparently in a meeting and couldn’t be bothered which I think left two other agents to handle remaining customers.

After that we proceeded to security. Unlike Austin, where you pass through security and then are told that you need to put your liquids in a Ziploc bag [1] (which if you don’t have one requires leaving security and buying a bag) at Gatwick there’s something like 7 folks who you have to pass by all yelling that you need to place your liquids in a Ziploc and if you don’t have one they’ll be happy to give you one. That struck my as a nice feature (even if the only one) of Gatwick compared to ABIA.

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[1] I fail to see the security in placing carry on liquids in a Ziploc bag. If I’m a Bad Guy I imagine I could easily remove my Bad Liquids easily enough before doing Something Bad.

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Past these folks you pass through one of 10 desks where your passport is examined after which you then funnel into a single line which eventually fans back out to one of three or so X-ray & metal detector lines. I imagine it’s in this line that our photos were taken and run through face matching software. I forgot to smile for Big Brother but was still allowed through.

The flight to Houston was uneventful - I managed to snag three seats in a row and was able to somewhat stretch out a couple of times for a nap or two. Something was wrong with the middle seat - it was about 2 inches lower than the outside seats which resulted in some rib discomfort but it beat trying to sleep sitting up (which I also did just for variety).

At Houston we rapidly cleared Border Control and then proceeded to claim our bags. While waiting another flight arrived at a neighboring baggage carousel, saw their bags arrive, picked them up and left. We continued to wait.

After a while I talked to someone who seemed to be aware there was a problem (she was carrying a walkie-talkie into which she would occaisionaly inquire “Where are the bags?”) - apparently the bags had been unloaded from the plane but somehow hadn’t managed to find there way to the baggage claim area. I figured that perhaps the baggage crew mistook our bags for fine wine and decided they needed to breathe a bit after de-planing.

Eventually the bags arrived, I proceeded past Customs, rechecked my bags for the flight back to Austin and then hiked and hiked and hiked (and hiked) to the Houston to Austin gate, arriving a few minutes before the plane was scheduled to leave.

I lightly dozed (what I call ’meditative napping’) on the flight to Austin. Not too surprising since not counting my 1h nap Wed night I had been awake for 48 hours...

For some reason the first taxi we tried to catch wouldn’t take both of us even though I’m on the way to P's (ABIA to Ben White, exit South 1st, then from there to downtown). Oh well, he lost out on a nice tip. The guy who ended up taking us for some reason dropped P off first. Maybe he was avoiding traffic.

I have to admire the guy’s chutzpah - when he dropped me off and I asked for a receipt he totaled it to include a nice tip (what I was going to pay him anyway). He probably figured we were traveling on an expense account so it was a safe bet to expect we’d pay the amount he decided was fair.

When I unpacked my suitcase I found a note that the TSA had inspected my bag. My first thought was that maybe this explained the delay in getting our bags in Houston. I then thought that didn’t make any sense - that the bag must have been inspected @ Gatwick. I then realized that since few flight security measures actually make sense (see Ziploc above; machine gun wielding troops patrolling airports to protect us from box-cutter toting passengers, etc.) that it was quite plausible that after allowing our bags to travel over the Atlantic and the Eastern US that TSA concluded that time to check my bag was upon arriving in Houston. Or who knows, maybe the baggage crew really did confuse our bags with fine wine.

Some random things which stuck in my brain:

• Sushi in London is sliced thinner than in Austin.
• There are no Exits in London, however there are “Ways Out”.
• Any dish claiming to have chilies is likely to contain about half a thinly sliced mild jalapeno in a mild sauce.
• St. James’s != St. James.

All in all I'm glad I could make the trip. Having done it once I'm sure that if I make it back I'll be better oriented wrt to using the Tube, where things are in relation to other things, etc. and will be able to see more.

As usual pictures are here.