The next step: London

Amazingly, for my third consecutive trip to the airport in two months, I have managed to leave my house exactly on time—now we’re not talking Jeff on time (15-30 minutes late), but actual real on time. You can be impressed. I know I am.

And after a few hassles at SFO (one of my bags was over the overweight bag limit, and I couldn’t stuff anything else in my smaller one not to mention that they screwed up my seat assignment) and a 10-hour flight later, I arrived in London.

I sat next to an interesting gentleman on the flight with whom I shared my copies of the International Herald Tribune (best paper ever!). He was of Iranian origin, and was heading back to Iran later that day, but has lived in California for the last 20 years and even graduated from Berkeley. He was an electrical engineer, and I couldn’t help but ask him what he thought of Ahmedinejad (yeah, any thoughts on how the Iranian president’s name is spelled). It was his opinion that Ahmedinejad represented only a small minority of the Iranian population, and that it had come down to a choice of “which guy do I hate least” in the last election.

I don’t know much about that election, but it reminds me a bit of the 2000 French election wherein Chirac went up against the far-right Jean Marie Le Pen (whose brilliant idea is to give all the immigrant families 1000Euros for making it this far, then sending them back on their way) in the second round of elections because Lionel Jospin’s socialist party didn’t bother to get out the vote in the first round. Jospin could have won handily in the second round, but it came down to, who do we hate less: a corrupt Chirac or the really crazy guy?

Perhaps there was something similar in Iran?

In any case, the flight was mostly uneventful. It was the first long-haul flight I was on that had the full self-selected seat-back entertainment. They had lots of interesting choices and so I rewatched part of an Indian movie that I had seen in Mumbai, Rang de Basanti, but this time with English subtitles. It made soooo much more sense! I then switched between Chinese TV, the Simpsons, and Little Britain while I was awake, and interesting music while I was trying to sleep. Heck, they even had an interactive trivia game. All in all, not a bad deal.

London was under beautiful weather yesterday, and jetlagged or not, I took advantage of it to walk around the city a bit. It is raining now, and is supposed to keep doing so for the rest of the week. Welcome to London, I guess. I even made it to the London School of Economics campus for my first time ever. It’s a very interesting mix of classical architecture and modern sleek buildings with a few 50’s-style, post-war buildings tucked into corners. The people I met there have been very friendly and helpful, but I still don’t feel any closer to finding a place to actually live.

And in a rather absurd development, I can’t get an apartment without a phone to call people from, I can’t get a bank account without a local address, and I can’t get a mobile without a bank account… talk about a convoluted catch 22. Luckily, LSE has land lines available for students looking for housing to use. The cycle has to stop somewhere, right?

Rain or shine, I must now go find a place to live. Wish me luck!