London Calling

Flight AC868


Getting to the airport at 6:30am for a 9:00am flight.



An airport food menu


Airport food.


The sun is coming up.



Josie in the airport.


The deicing truck


Melting the ice on the wing with green goo.


More green goo.

Flight AC868, my flight to London, was delayed due to cold weather. What was supposed to be a 9am lift off turned to 10:30am. The extra hour and a half was spent taxiing in a queue to be sprayed with some orange liquid. The orange ice defrosting fluid was followed up by a bright neon green goop, probably put on to keep the ice off. The colouring in the fluids were new this year as last year the goo sprayed onto the plane was colourless (click here). I figured the change was so the guy spraying could tell where he had been.

I hadn't slept the night before due getting home late from Speedorama and having a late dinner. Afraid I wouldn't wake up in time to catch my flight I stayed up the night continuing to pack my gear and clothing. I was aiming to be at the airport by 6:00am to 6:30am, three hours before departure or the recommended time the airline gave when purchasing the ticket. Three hours is almost half the time in the actual airplane! I figured I'd try to be early because I was carting a bunch of stuff.

It's funny how with a week of packing I still forgot stuff. I realized I forgot my lens blower while in the taxi going to the airport. I could see the blower in my mind sitting on the table next to the tray I had labelled "Stuff for London". I had taken it out of the tray to clean the camera before packing it away. Crud.


An airplane takes off... we're next.


Me in a window seat.


My view.


Runway lights.


the first batch of airplane food.

The flight provided a breakfast. Pancakes or waffles. While I had already eaten in the airport at one of the slowest food places I've ever been served at, I ordered the waffles (see photo). Originally I told the stewardess that I didn't want anything to eat but they convinced me on making a selection due to the flight being a "long flight".

The plane was an older model and didn't have the fancy tiny monitors in front of each passenger. Instead there was a projection monitor in front of the cabin that was obscured by the odd passenger sitting in front of me. The plane was relatively empty. Maybe a person for every three seats.

I watched one and a hlaf movies. The first being "The Game Plan" and the second being "A Beautiful Mind". The speakers were pretty lousy and took too much concentration to make out the dialog so before long I drifted off to sleep. The flight was pretty uneventful. I'd wake up every so often to look out the window or eat more plane food.


Interesting cloud formation some where over Quebec.


The second airplane meal.


London lights

The first hurdle I encountered was getting to the hotel. Because the plane was delayed an hour and a half leaving Toronto, we arrived about an hour and a half late in London. It was 10:20pm London time. I was worried that getting to the hotel I booked wouldn't have anyone there. The last time I took a trip to London the person at the front counter was just locking up as I arrived. It was about 11pm during the last trip.

We arrived at the hotel by 11:30. Despite the web site saying they were open until midnight no one was there. It was locked up. I have to give kudos to the Taxi driver for his persistence in trying to get a hold of someone. At first after I knocked and pressed the buzzer, he knocked louder and pressed the buzzer longer. Then he tried calling the hotel using his cell phone. We were standing on the stairs of the hotel entrance for about ten minutes while he knocked on the door, the window, and back on the door. No one came.

As luck would have it Andrew (the designer who was already in London) knew of the sister hotel located closer to the BFC tent, on Cromwell road. We went there and luckily they had someone at the front desk. I managed to book a room despite the web site saying they were full up. Whew.


Andrew at Kings


After the hotel drama we went to Kings kabob house for food. I had a lamb burger and fish curry. The curry was pretty spicy and I'll probably regret eating it tomorrow.

On the news Camden town was on fire. It's an area I wanted to revisit as I had bought my jacket there.



Euro Coke


My lamb burger


Our first place to eat in London


Me on the second floor of a double decker bus.


Josie and Andrew

By 3:30am (london time) I was asleep, in a bed, at the Cromwell Hotel.





My deluxe room.


Shower and washroom


washroom.

Last event in the Automotive Building.

Speedorama 2008 at the Automotive building

Tonight marked the first night of the last event to ever take place at the automotive building here in Toronto. As I'm not really into the small Hondas converted into large speaker systems or entertainment behemoths with glowing underbellies, I love going to Speedorama as some of the cars featured are 70s muscle cars with a nice paint job. There's also enough space around them to shoot without people or ropes used for fencing off areas getting into your shot. I find this is the case when going to the performance car show. All the cars are packed together.

While writing this I wonder if car shows in the States are any better. Conventions tend to be much larger in the US compared to Canada. I would still like to attend one at some point in the future.



Of course the other reason for going to car shows other than to see the cars is to ogle the women. Just like beer, cars and women seem to go hand in hand.


The winners of the swimsuit competition


John Duncan of Swimsuit Canada

Snow Day and a Stinky Apartment

Pumpkin tests the coldness of the stair.

With all the snow on the ground I went out to shovel the walk (yet again) and once finished spent some time taking photos of the cat. The cat, Pumpkin, seems to be my main source of photographic opportunities these days. I really must get out more. Being a bit lethargic probably due to lack of sunlight I limited my travels today to the nearby grocery store. I needed to pick up some potatoes for a chicken curry dish I was going to make for dinner.


Pumpkin waiting for me to go back inside.


"I'm not looking at you."


The snow in front of the house.


Meanwhile on the Danforth.


Iced over branches

While the final chicken dish wasn't spicy enough to burn the roof of your mouth off, the whole apartment took on the smell of the curry powder I used. This was apparent from walking out and walking back into the apartment. Whoosh. I wonder if there's a device one can buy to neutralize smells?

When I say neutralize I'm not talking about filling the room with another, more stinky, bunch of particles. I'm talking about a device like a stink vacuum. Something that takes the stinky particles out of the air or emits particles that attach themselves to stinky particles to make them non-stinky.


Making curry potatoes and having a bit a fun with my camera.


Cat in the box.

More Snow

Pumpkin surveys outside

Another day of snow, another day of the cat looking outside first before stepping into the cold wetness that is our winter. It seems my main task these days is shovelling snow off of our walkway only for mother nature replace it all over a few hours.

I must be lifting the snow wrong as my back starts to hurt within 20 minutes. More research required here. Maybe if I bend from the knees more? Smaller amounts of snow lifted at once? Better shovel? An image of a shovel being pulled by huskies comes to mind. An image of a robot shovelling snow comes to mind. An image of bribing some kid to shovel the snow for 25 cents comes to mind. I don't think kids are that cheap anymore. Probably have to bribe them with 5 or 10 dollars these days. Heck, I wouldn't shovel snow for a stranger for 10 dollars.

I noticed the neighbour pouring blue crap onto the snow as a substitute for salt. Looks like antifreeze. Way to go. Thanks for putting that into my water table. I wonder if it's poisonous to cats and other animals? Not that using salt is any better. It corrodes metal, wreaks havoc on your shoes.

I decided to do a bit of web research to see how much harm salt does do and if there were any other more environmentally friendly ways to get rid of snow. I found this interesting article.


Andrew from across the street says "Hello" while I shovel the walk.


Another day of snow.


Andrew shovelling his walk.

Lunch with Laer

Laer, on a rare outing outside the apartment.

My friend Laer is a typical male Cancer (horoscope wise). What that means, according to some books, is he's a homebody, enjoys staying at home and usually takes a lot of effort for other people to get him to go out. When the crab actually gets outside to see the sun it's a time to rejoice as it's usually such a rare occasion.

I was happy to hear that Laer wanted to join me for lunch. We ended up going to a burger place located downstairs from where he lives. So okay it's not travelling far but at least he's getting outside the apartment. The burger combo was a pretty good choice and value for the money.

After lunch we did a quick visit to the Silver Snail, a comic book and toy store that's been around since I used to take recorder lessons when I was a kid. I remember it being a closet on Queen street. It's moved locations twice since then but still remains in roughly the same area.


Laer and Gabe at the Silver Snail.

We bumped into Gabe, an A.D. I haven't seen since the days of Earth Final Conflict. He too was perusing the merchandise. Comics have gone up quite a bit since I last collected them. The last cover price I remember was $1.25. Now there's some that are $8.00. How do kids entertain themselves these days?




The AGO undergoing construction.

Bowl me over

"So that's what a five pin set up looks like up close."

I got to wire up a bunch of monitors for a movie or TV shoot today. It was a preliminary visit to the location that the production company (who will remain nameless) was going to shoot in coming up in the next few weeks. The location was a bowling alley located in Hamilton.

The stuff to hook up? All the monitors to the bowling alley. 12 lanes or 24 monitors in total. The big overhead monitor and the little monitor where you sit. The idea was that we would take the video feeds out of the computers and plug them into our video equipment then from there back into the monitors as mentioned. This would allow us to change the color temperature of the displays and allow us to put whatever graphic on the screens while at the same time keeping the computers online should they want interactive bowling stats.


Looking across the bowling lanes.


Looking toward the end of the lane to see if anyone was bowling.

It's interesting to note that the computers were Amiga 500s. Yep, those computers that Commodore stopped production back in 1993. It was like a trip down memory lane (bowling lane?).


Bowling lanes controlled by Amiga 500s and some software called DynaScore.

The bowling alley is made for little people or people that like to crawl around. For a large person such as myself (and I don't consider myself that large) getting around the bowling equipment was an exercise using yoga type positioning. While there's nothing that makes up the machinery that can crush you there's always the fear that someone will bowl down the lane you're working on a bean you with a ball the size of a grapefruit. I wanted to take care that I didn't damage anything. This includes tracking mud on the polished wood lanes. Walking around in socks only meant your feet were exposed to those rolling grapefruits should they come your way. It made me a bit paranoid.


The pins are on ropes and pulleys.

It's interesting to note that the pins on a five pin bowling alley are attached to ropes and a pulley system. I've always assumed that the pins were free to fly around wherever. Not so. The ball return is the other interesting thing as it returns the balls for two lanes and is really the only machinery that can hurt you. Provided you stick your arm next to it while it's running. There's a chain that can do some serious damage if it's moving.

At one point James had dropped a screw just behind the chain. My arm was skinny enough to reach for it. The machine was off so I went to pick it up. Had the machine been turned on I would have torn a considerable amount of skin out of my arm. Not good.


The Hamilton bowling building from the outside.

The day went without a hitch and after my stint in Hamilton I met up with Hugh to see a free preview of "Fool's Gold", a movie with Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. The movie was okay, plus we each received a free key chain in the shape of a small surf board made of foam. After that it was to Xelua's for food.


A "bowl" of rice.

Star Sushi

Amanda and Darryl.

Met up with Amanda and Darryl today at the Star Sushi restaurant. They have an all you can eat buffet for only $11. While not the largest selection of food, one dish that stood out (for me anyways) was the spicy crab sushi pizza.

For those that haven't had a pizza at a sushi restaurant it's essentially a flattened patty of rice that's deep fried (for the crust) then sprinkled with a topping, in this case sliced crab meat and some kind of spicy mayonnaise.