London micro-meet

[Peter Korsten]

Tony Hardie-Bick schreef op 2-9-2014 00:23:

> Have fun for the rest of your trip!

We just returned home. Actually a bit before, but only now I've found 
time to sit down and go through some e-mail.

The rest of the trip was... slightly eventful. :) You may have noticed 
that Yana wasn't walking very well on the way back, and in fact we got a 
taxi home instead of taking the Tube.

The next day, things went a bit sour when going down the stairs in South 
Kensington station. Something "snapped" in her left knee, and she 
somehow made it down the stairs, but she couldn't really walk any 
further. So we got an ambulance. But that took ages, and all the while 
there was a policeman (more accurately, a police community support 
officer) with us.

After about an hour and a half, the ambulance crew arrived. Now, South 
Kensington doesn't have escalators or a lift, because it's a listed 
building. Which caused a bit of a problem, because how were we going to 
get her out of there? So they got a wheelchair down, we took the 
wheelchair into the train until Earl's Court, where they do have a lift.

There was already somebody of Transport for London waiting for us to 
guide us through the gates, and only after the ambulance arrived did the 
policeman leave us. It's seriously impressive how well organised 
everything and everybody is, by the way. Not in the least because of the 
pervasive surveillance, no doubt, but once the ambulance was there, it 
went like clockwork.

Once at the hospital, we got to deal with what everybody using the NHS 
has to deal with: queues. All in all it took until 1:30 BST before we 
were back at the hotel (some eight hours all in all), but at least the 
doctor was tall, dark and very handsome.

I'd like to thank all British members of this list for their 
contribution to the NHS, and I'll have to see how we're going to send 
back or compensate those NHS-labelled crutches we got with us.

Perhaps I should mention how Yana is doing. The problem appeared to be 
in the soft tissue, and it's already somewhat better than before. But 
she's going to see a specialist here (which would have been her brother 
if it weren't for the fact that he lives abroad) and we'll take it from 
there.

The following days, I took Jean-Luc out to several museums, because he 
likes those. First the National Portrait Gallery, where they have a lot 
of paintings of people who had their heads chopped off. The day after 
that we went next door to the National Gallery, where there's an 
inordinate focus on Van Gogh's sunflowers in the museum shop. And 
finally, today we went to the Natural History Museum for an exhibition 
about mammoths. As usual, my son rushed through the exhibition as if he 
were at Silverstone, but at least we got a couple of cute soft toys, not 
to mention yet more fridge magnets. I think we may need to purchase a 
bigger fridge.

Also, today I bought Sound On Sound, for the first time in many years. 
There's Paul Maddox's Modulus 002 mentioned (and Paul gets mentioned, 
too), and I found the magazine inspiring again. Let's see what comes 
out. I have an idea, but I need to investigate Java and CUDA a bit. And 
I need more time...

- Peter