London 2018

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Kuala Lumpur to London 07/August/2018

11 am – One hour into our flight, Australia all around; sky, land, air, Australian clouds drifting by, sure they are foreign, ruffled refurbished refugee clouds. This sky again – millions of years in the making, I have seen it before, multiple times. Machine learning sky, reformatting to my projections; first saw this space 1980. I went to an astrological conference in Sydney flying through Yankee sky: Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles, Auckland, no longer Yankee space; then Australia, bloody Australia…thirty-8 years later leaving again. Lost the times I have been in these skies, leaving; between 25 – 30 times. Probably many more. I even wrote two books; Leaving Australia 1 (Leaving Australia 'Again': Before the After) and 2 (Leaving Australia, 'Again’: Book 2 ‘After’), published them on Amazon- sold one a few years ago; girl from my past took issue with my description of her and our early 1970s foray into youth and the streets of New Orleans. Another complained about us in Baltimore at the end of the 1970s I changed their names, everyone else in my books are now dead except for one son and an ex-wife I have had no contact with for fifteen-years so I no longer get notifications from people and my depiction of them.
I got off task here... so good to be in flight again. Three months in Australia is quickly over. Our India three months was fantastic, and we are already planning the next exploration of the sub-continent, but that trip is three months behind us. Now a three months European run: UK, The Netherlands for three weeks Berlin a month and Northern Spain a month. It has been a year since this area. We did Denmark for six weeks and the Baltic last year at this time. I turned 70 in St. Petersburg, Russia with the evening out-to-sea; a metaphor for my life. This week I will be 71, half in London and half in The Netherlands.
[caption id="attachment_22412" align="aligncenter" width="750"] Malaysian Airline Kuala Lumpur to London[/caption]Australia was a good stay; family, creative stuff, mowed the lawn, tried to declutter the shed; decades of boxes of memories. I did throw away a few papers. When we get back I will attempt another declutter. We'll be planning for 2019 and the USA for three months and Pakistan-India later in the year. And there will be the lawn to mow, family to attend to so the decluttering may have to wait until 2020, though I won't mention that to Narda, she has brought up ‘the shed' for several years. She even escorted me to a ‘declutter’ class (twice) when we were in upstate New York around 2003 or 4. I found them quite interesting and dragged a container of stuff to China for our three-years there, added more and now it is all in our shed. Not just my stuff but my dead family’s stuff: father, brother, son, mother as well as some dead-friends’ things. A shed filled with dead people’s belongings- but they give me comfort. And yes, Narda has past stuff there too.
So here we are, in the clouds again. Getting away from our stuff. Narda is a master packer. We each have one bag less than twenty-Kilos and a seven kilogram carry on bag. Half my weight is computer, phones (Android and iPhone; need options), hard drives, camera, lenses, tripod.... Narda is looking forward to the time I can travel with just a phone (or two) using it for video, photos, computer and my endless hours using Adobe. I am still tethered to my computer for editing/creative madness and I like my Nikon and 300mm lens. Phones are not quite there. And books. Narda changed to Kindle fifteen or so years ago. My last old thing, I would rather read a book. Narda reads books too but still all those cheap e-books... for example, I have 8 e-books I have published, all very cheap, they don't sell. I was almost finished with my thick and too heavy to bring Henry James’ ‘New York Stories’, all written in the 1880 - 1890 era.  I have been reading literature from last century the past couple of years. Though for this trip I moved forward and brought a book on the poetry of the 1950s. Eye rolling from the passenger next to me I brought along on this trip.
Our first stop is Kuala Lumpur, we are on Malaysia Airlines. Instead of trying the whole thing, Australia to Europe in one go, we are breaking this up into two trips. I turn 71 in a few days so we're taking it slower. And this is my start; just wrote this on my phone while listening to music from the 1950s and 1960s. On some level I suppose I am progressing.
Finally, something to write about. We had a typical ordinary flight. With Malaysia airlines picking seats it is an add-on, as most airlines are now. However, booking 72 hours before the flight brings up the seat chart. We chose the front row with a window and isle on the two-seat side row plan. We realized our error within minutes but were unable to change. We were told to change we'd provoke a fee, but if we waited until 48 hours before departure we could change seats. Our obvious error was we were next to the front row of crazed babies and their wailing. With 48 hours to go the plane looked empty. No one is leaving Adelaide. Really, why would they? (CNN reports that Adelaide is the number ten most livable city in the world for 2018). Low and behold when we got to loading up time there was not a spare seat. Wow a brain-drain on Adelaide, everyone is bailing. TIP 1, choose seats 72 hours early. Sure enough there was a baby screaming the whole eight hours in the front row. With my noise cancelling headset filtering the best music of the 1950s and 1960s I was fine a few rows back but Narda seemed spooked.
Narda, the wise, has us overnight in Kuala Lumpur, central, they spell it Sentral. The last time we were in KL we took a taxi into downtown, well actually to the India area and stayed several days. It took so long, we were stuck in traffic all the way. This time, older, somewhat wiser, we took the KLIA Ekspres train to Sentral; 28 minutes, air conditioned, worth the 200 ringgets ($50 USD for two, round trip). TIP 2 take the bloody KL express airport to Sentral.
The downside with an overnight is the immigration line. In KL it is always bad – quite chaotic, taking more than an hour to get through. After eight-hours sitting it is too long to stand, going back it will be after a thirteen-hour flight.
TIP 3 We almost stuffed up this one; we could have had our luggage go on tomorrow's flight and not be incumbent on it following us everywhere, but we didn't. If the continued flight is within twenty-four hours they will take care of it. We got to Sentral and saw that with our KL Express return we could give our luggage to the airline and they would take it to the airport and have it arrive with us tomorrow. I believe it is only with Malaysian planes. So we got rid of our crap for awhile. It was just a ten-minute stroll to our room and the first thing we saw was an ad for a massage; 50 local thingies ($12 USD) for an hour so we grabbed a bite to eat and rocked up for our hour of rubbing by the seeing-impaired folks. Narda was happy with her hour, even proclaiming it was the best massage she ever had. Me, good grief, writing this on our flight KL to London a day later I am still sore. OK so he couldn't see me but when I said ouch several times he should have gotten the clue I was not whistling Dixie. We used to get massages often in China and they would be either too hard or great.
TIP next Get the right person for your massage.
We upgraded a bit, taking Economy Plus which gave much more leg room. TIP, upgrade to Business - you can plug your computer in for more entertainment/creativity.
Twelve hour flight to London; five hours to go, I have used up my computer battery doing my Photoshop-textual wonders (https://plus.google.com/collection/E_6JaB), finally found something to view on the airline movie channels, ‘Jailhouse Rock’, 1957, Elvis first film. So different than what's on offer now. I followed that with 1955 James Dean ‘Rebel Without a Cause’. Life is good. I am UpToDate. Another Tip: don't rely on a battery hungry 15-inch-plus16 GB RAM computer, doing several Adobe programs, to be satisfying for long.
We arrived in London, a bit worse for wear at 4 pm, immigration was much quicker than KL. We bought an Oyster Card – putting 25£ on each, which turned out to be enough for three days of travel around London. The underground took us close to an hour to get to Narda’s family members where we were to stay for the next couple of nights. They have a spectacular view over the Thames, near the new US Embassy and a short walk to Parliament, Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, some note worthy bridges the London Eye; all of which we saw in a couple of days.
[caption id="attachment_22416" align="aligncenter" width="750"] changing of the guard, view from our balcony, Big Ben having a face-lift, the London Eye[/caption]As usual, in any city we go to, we took random bus rides and walked heaps. We need to travel just to get off our butts and grab some exercise. Buses are only 1.50£ (less than a couple of USD bucks). Our big day out was a rainy day so sitting looking out the window from upstairs in a big red bus is a great way to see London from a non-tourist view. When we got hungry we got off, went to a pub, The Joiner’s Arms, Camberwell. A most friendly girl served us well, and yes this is a tip-free space. For my birthday, 10^th of August, we took a random bus on a most perfect weather day and got off when we were hungry in burb called Clapham and again had a great pub meal.
We ate at pubs – always the best places. Having been on a low-carb diet for the past four-months or since India, I enjoyed the rising of my blood sugars with the local foods; the plan is to get back to serious carbs-counting mode when in The Netherlands where we will have our own kitchen and to continue throughout our three-months in Europe. We booked the Eurostar for our three-hour journey to Rotterdam. The Netherlands will be the next write-up – next week or next month. Cheers. In the meantime my daily scribbles are at https://neuage.org/2018 and my photo-digital-textual thingies are up in several places such as twitter (https://twitter.com/neuage)  and google-plus above.
[caption id="attachment_22414" align="aligncenter" width="750"] Random big-Red bus rides - hanging in front on the top level[/caption]TIP, read my (our) blogs - and yes, I will post Narda's writing and observations and photos in the future too. This one was my exhaling.