Just a Few Tickets

I had a 2 day trip up to Blackpool on Thursday & Friday last week going exclusively by train.

Left home at 5.30am on Thursday and got picked at 10.30am at Poulton - so with changes & waiting times, about the same as if I had driven. I did have the luxury of a first class ride on Virgin trains. In first class you get tea & coffee for free plus free use of the wireless internet and they have power points so you can plug in the laptop. So this 2 hours from London to Preston was much better than driving - I could actually get some work done.

Virgin have a funny pricing policy - when I booked my tickets, the first class ticket was only £4 more than standard, and for the return trip, first class was cheaper than standard - go figure!

All up in the 2 days of train trips I had a total of 12 train tickets (not to mention the Oyster card trips on the Underground) and 1 Oyster card receipt.

All up a good trip - but tiring.

Pyjama-Wearing Crackdown in the UK

I thought only the Shanghainese wear Pyjamas in public. But that's not the case, it's apparently quite a universal scene!

A welsh woman was kicked out Tesco supermarket because she was wearing her PJs. Here is what she has to say: "“I’ve got lovely pairs of pyjamas, with bears and penguins on them. I’ve worn my best ones today, just so I look tidy,”

Tesco should give her credit for wearing her very best PJs shopping in their supermarket :)

With the upcoming 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, PJs are also being one of the crackdown targets by the government. Just like crackdown on spitting in Beijing before the Olympics, I"m sure PJs will come back sooner than their disappearance.

Here is the link to the article on TimesOnLine about the PJs crackdown: the article

Best Political Cartoon Ever

He speaks the truth.......

iPlayer - Free TV Viewing in UK

As previously mentioned, the UK still clings to the wastefully outdated TV License regime. So what is a law abiding citizen to do when they want to watch something on telly - like Doctor Who - but they don't have a license (or a telly for that matter)?

Simple - head on over to the BBC iPlayer. This has a majority of the TV shows and movies available to watch after the live broadcast that you can watch on demand for up to 7 days after the original broadcast.

So why can you watch that without a license? well, in the TV Licensing law it says that you must have a license to watch TV programmes `as they are being shown' - in other words - Live to air.

To get around the licensing rules, you just watch it a bit later on iPlayer, which is more convenient anyway because you watch it when you want to - and you don't need a TV License - the BBC say so on their iPlayer site.

Channel 4 (not BBC 4) even have a version as well called 4oD (4 on Demand).

The picture quality is really good as is the sound when streaming - if you have a slow or patchy internet connection, you can even download the TV shows and watch them later in the new iPlayer Desktop whether you are connected to the net or not.

So bugger the telly and the license - watch iPlayer for free!

Posted via email from The World of Brad and Ying

The Great UK Freeze Begins to Thaw

I woke up this morning about 6am to the sound of some rain on the windows, "that", I thought to myself "is the end of the snow".

Sure enough once the sun was up enough to shed some light, you could clearly see that the tyre grooves in the compacted snow & ice were showing the road surface.

At lunch time Ying & I had a walk up the street and stepping on what had been deep, firm, dry snow was now soft and very wet slush. Everywhere you walk your feet slip as chunks of semi solid ice give way under foot. Ying saw a young lad of about 6 go for a tumble.

Without gum boots (wellies as they are known here) your feet are wet very soon.

With the temperatures expected to get as high as 6 degrees tomorrow and the following 2 days, we shall soon have no snow left, but plenty of water flowing into the Thames water system.

At least life will get back to normal and the fair weather flyers from Gatwick can get back to normal.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from The World of Brad and Ying

We Got Stood Up

At 5am this morning we woke up to some 3cm fresh snow - bad sign! Having fully booked and packed, we left for the airport regardless.

We managed to arrive at the Gatwick south terminal at 7:15am. The security check was the smoothest journey ever as there was surprisingly no queue! Our flight was due 9am to Athens, so all was good at that point.

As soon as arriving on the other side of custom, we found ourselves join the other thousands of passengers whose flights have been delayed due to the "disruption" of the weather condition. We sat down and soon heard some flights already got cancelled. But ours was still delayed according to the big board. We were happy to wait for a while as long as we could still go.

We turned on the laptop to do some work whilst waiting for updates. 3 hours later, the news arrived - all the Easyjet flights scheduled before 11:30am were cancelled! So that was it, no holiday for us after all.

We heard Gatwick airport was to remain close until 4pm. Thousands of passengers travel plan was ruined, we were not alone. Easyjet offered its passengers either transfer to another available flight free of charge or a full refund. We took the latter choice, but it took us a while to confirm that our return leg will also be subject to refund. Hurray! Though we have no idea when the refund will reach us.

Next we went on to cancel car park booking and Athens hotel booking. We didn't expect to get any refund from either of them according to their terms and conditions. But good luck must be with us, after we explaining what happened, the hotel decided to charge us nothing (Hotel Cecil - will certainly stay with them next time) and the car park only charged us one day rate! God bless them for being nice and understanding!

I celebrated this "failed" holiday by clearing the snow in the front of the house with a heavy shovel!

Book a Seat for Your Wedding Cake

Looking to see if our flight to Athens was going to be cancelled due to the snow or not, we looked up the Easyjet Flight Check Status and very surprised to see that people who were looking to see if their flight was cancelled were also searching for seats for their wedding cakes!?

Posted via email from The World of Brad and Ying

Will England's Inability to Deal With Snow Damage Tourism?

The impact of the snow & ice in the UK over the past will have a pretty big cost in terms of lost productivity, but judging from some websites and stories I've seen recently, the impact will also be on tourism as the world looks at the incompetence of authorities here in dealing with a week of ice & snow.

We are pretty much as far north as any other country (except Iceland & Greenland), so you would pretty much expect that snow happens. The government, local government and the private sector have all shown themselves ill-prepared and complacent. It seems odd to be so unprepared as it was this time last year that the same thing happened.  

Winter happens every year - maybe the government should plan for it before there are too many more people with stories like this one.

Posted via email from The World of Brad and Ying

Guildford to Godalming Walk Along River Wey

Late September last year we did a walk from Guildford to Godalming along the towpath of the river Wey. It's a very popular walk, which goes on for 5 miles one way.

The river Wey goes through the town centre of Guildford. This is the starting point of the walk.

Some open space is just 5 meters down the river where we used to work in summer when we first arrived as there was very good mobile phone signal. We thought that was the best office we've ever had.

Quite often the river is busy with activities.

This is one of those signs along the towpath in case you get lost.

We went through a few locks, watching how people open and close locks to let water in and out so that the boats can go past.

Lunch break:

The river keeps meandering quietly, a railway bridge ahead near the town Shalford.

Narrow canal boats parking on the river.

Near Godalming, we deserve a break:

After 3 hours walk, we arrived at Godalming. We were planning to catch the train back to Guildford, but train service was cancelled that day, we caught a bus instead.

Cool Igloo and Snow Man