Terrible. Just terrible.
It’s not because of the over the top prices for the transport, namely the Underground and buses No, it’s not because the WiFi is not free at Heathrow Airport and because of that I was unable to contact anyone. It wasn’t even the flight being late by an hour and it wasn’t even the crying baby on the A380-800 airplane via Malaysia Airlines for the 16 hour duration to London. All of that didn’t bother me as much as the following:
Today was terrible as my suitcase broke. That might not seem serious, but when your luggage weighs 30kgs, it becomes a serious problem. The airport loaders must have broken my bag as the wheels axles were bent, and in the end the thing broke and I was left dead in the water lugging around 30kgs of my worldly items. Here you can see the extent of the damage:
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Extent of the damage done on the suitcase.
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The extent of the damage done on the wheel.
I took the London Underground from Heathrow to Bromley By Bow (To the District Line), where my sister works. I surprised her as I couldn’t get a hold of her, as the phone box machines were eating my money like it was nothing. I put 60p in, my only small change, and I lost that money in the instance that the 02 voice-mail service saying my sister had not picked up the phone. I then went to get change, and put a £1.00 coin in.
To my surprise, phone boxes here don’t accept £1.00 coins and even though they don’t, they’ll take the money anyway and even when you pull down on the phone lever it won’t refund you or give you your money back. That made me sick and I promised myself I’d never use phone boxes here again. Sure, it’s radical, but I simply had enough of wasting money, – especially if the money spent is not actually being used. Sure, the 60p was my mistake because I let the phone call continue onto the 02 voice mail service. (Though I hanged up as soon as I could) However, the phone box taking the £1.00 that’s not even being used is almost criminal and I would say is stealing. That’s why I took a radical approach to never use phone boxes in London again. I’ve also taken other steps such as looking into buying a bike to cycle and hopefully not have to use the transport system here.
Either way, I’m a little fed up today and I hope that things will look a little better throughout the week. But my goodness, my luck today is really on a low. I’ve had such a terrible experience just going back to London.
The only consolation is that I’m now typing this in a café that doesn’t have a WiFi connection. Although the “not having WiFi” is an issue, I’m finally relaxing and getting the things that have happened to me today, behind me.
Here’s what I’ve eaten at this café:
Dubbed the “New York Bagel” at a small-time cafe I went to!
Tea with salmon baguette or dubbed by the cafe as the “New York Bagel”. The cafe I went to looked pretty cool and it is actually a listed building that was once a mill. The bagel that I ordered was delicious, but it cost me £4.60 altogether. I would be able to go to a nice restaurant for that price in Taiwan. Moving on, apparently the café that I’m in is based in a historical building and I guess the profits from the café pay for the upkeep of the place.
Here’s a picture of it:
A cafe situated in a grade 1 listed building called the “House Mill”.
Looks very British.
