NORMAL LIFE: Training In London

As I write this blog entry, I’m somewhere over Sweden, heading back ’home’ to my beloved in Suomi (Finland). What an active week it has been – I really did cram it all in.

Interspersed with a pretty useless Product Management course which ran from Monday to Wednesday, I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen for a good five or six years. A giant of a man (in a good sense, as he is quite sporty), Tez is a gentle soul. When I met him, we were both hard-of-hearing, an affliction which clearly united us somewhat for we experienced similar day-to-day issues. Of course, I am still hard-of-hearing although my bionic ear implantation has clearly pushed my abilities above and beyond those I possessed prior to the implantation. We spent two hours in a café, covering every subject under the sun. We were never the best of friends, merely acquaintances, but the minute I meet up with Tez outside London’s Victoria Station, I sensed a familiarity which I felt comfortable with. Not only is he sexy (in a platonic sense, of course), we have a lot in common and I only regret not keeping in touch with him. Shortly after going our separate ways, I received a lovely text message from him along the lines of ‘let’s stay in contact, was great to see you’. I walked back to my hotel in Green Park with a smile on my face; the course may have been going badly, but my life just got richer

On the Tuesday, I met up with friend Nick who I had seen in September (see blog entry here). We always have a great conversation – we bitch, we whinge and we moan and we have the answers to all the world’s problems, don’t we Nick?!! We ended up down the Duke of Wellington, one of Soho’s more down to earth establishments for guys like us. We grabbed a late-night KFC, which seems to be ‘our thing’. After we parted, I headed back to the hotel with the thought of just one more day of that crappy course left!

Come Wednesday, the course ended at 4pm and I spent the evening with my American colleagues. I took them to Porters, a restaurant in London’s Covent Garden owned by the Earl of Bradford. I had visited the restaurant two years ago with Bree when he visited London the first time and he enjoyed experiencing some of the traditional English food on offer. On this occasion, I tucked into Steak, Guinness and Mushroom Pie and Syrup Pudding while my colleague sampled the Spotted Dick, one of the UK’s sumptuous hot puddings doused in lashings of vanilla custard! Yummy!

Thursday was an early start for my two American colleagues and I; at 6.30am, we were on the London Underground, bound for the firm’s UK office in Hertfordshire. Nothing to write home about really except I had my first bit of real exposure when there were some questions relating to my area of responsibility. There I was answering questions in a room of some 30 distant colleagues based in the UK, and it felt great! When I headed back to London, I met up with Red in London’s West End to celebrate our recent Masters Theses submissions. Over a lunch where she was presented with a vegetarian burger as hard as a hammer (honestly, you could hear the burger ‘clunk’ against the plate when using the fork as a hammer!), Red and I caught up with loads of gossip and funny stories. We walked down Recent Street, through Piccadilly and consumed ice creams at Hagen Daaz (it’s rude to pass that place and not go in!) before heading to Covent Garden. After a wonder round Apple Market, the location of the opening scenes from My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, I left Red to meet contacts for a business meeting.

I headed to Oxford Street, to buy much-needed smart trousers for work. I was in Next, and I tried on some long-sized 34-inch waist trousers. While they fit around the waste perfectly, they were understandably far too long. I tried on the regular-size and, again, they were too long. Weird, I thought to myself! I tried on the short-size trousers and they fit like a glove. There I was staring in disbelief at the mirror wondering since when has a six-foot man been short?!!

I met up with Red again after her meeting, this time in a pub near Shaftsbury Avenue in London’s Theatre District. I waded my way through the rush-hour pedestrian traffic, mini floods of rain water lashing at my feet; it had been raining all day, a reminder of those autumn afternoons at school when I would gaze absently-minded out of the windows of the classroom rather than pay attention to the teacher! After a swift drink, we headed our separate ways – I had a date with the TV, determined to fit in some relaxation.

I woke up the next morning and, by 8.30am, was on the tube on my way to Tooting Broadway in South London to attend a one day Advanced Course in Excel. On the way, I read a shocking article in the Daily Mail. Apparently, Jack Straw, Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, had attached controversy by claiming that when Muslim women visit him at his regular surgery’s, he would prefer it if they would remove their veils because he would like to ‘see who he is talking to’, indicating that the refusal to remove them is clearly ‘a visible
statement of separation and difference’, something that contributes nothing to race relations. Interesting, I thought. I had never thought of this before. What is one of the first things you are taught as a child? It is to look at the person who is speaking to you. After all, it’s polite, isn’t it? Would you want to have a conversation with someone if you could only see their eyes, unable to interpret body language emitting from the rest of the individual’s face? Apparently, it’s sparked a major debate in the UK, which is apparently undergoing a period of self-induced unmonitored segregation. Fortunately, some Muslim leaders have spoken up for Jack Straw while some high profile figures have bravely questioned the concept of multiculturalism itself. The bottom line is we must tolerate and respect the rights of others. But at the same time non-native Brits must tolerate and respect ours. Don’t even get me started on the race riots that broke out in Windsor, literally on the Queen’s doorstep, about the building of a mosque (read more here).

When I arrived at the training venue, there were four of us in total; the tutor was a handsome guy from Nigeria who spoke wonderful formal English and therefore resembled what I can only describe as a black toff. The other two trainees consisted of a young girl named Jasmine of Indian descent and a Malaysian woman in her mid-40s. It was a great training session and, over lunchtime, we got to know each other better. Jasmine was a Chartered Accountant while the Malaysian woman (whose named I can’t remember) was working on Outreach projects for drug addicts and alcohol dependant citizens in the London Borough of Westminster. What an interesting mix we were. The days news regarding the Muslim veil had hit everybody with Jasmine claiming that she was a sikh who ate meat and cut her hair, both which apparently go against the sikhist belief. I was so relieved to be in the presence of a British-Indian. I think the media coverage post 9/11 has contributed somewhat to the fragmentation of existing multicultural societies for people on the street quite rightly want to see the face of the person that is speaking to them whereas the media tends to indicate that such suggestions are bang of order. Apparently, Jemima Kahn, who converted to Islam when she married Pakistani cricketer Imran Kahn, reported that nowhere in the Koran does it state that women need to cover their faces so really what is the hold up?

After a very mature lunchtime debate, we returned for the remainder of the Excel course. Come 5pm, the three trainees headed to the underground. On the Underground, Jasmine and I swapped contact info before I got off the Northern Line at Stockwell to take the Victoria Line to Green Park. I met up with the Americans in the hotel bar, before meeting my friend Nick. We grabbed some ready-made delicious food from Marks & Spencer’s, which we ate in my hotel room, together with a nice fruity bottle of New Zealand white wine. Soon after, we were in the Village, one of Soho’s trendy meeting places. As the night wore on, go-go boys graced the bar tops including one criminally handsome tanned guy who kept giving me the looks. We had to leave that bar before I did something I regret, so we headed to Barcode for a quick drink before it closed at 1am.

As we walked back to the hotel, I was amazed at how warm it was. Nick crashed in my room and no sooner had my head hit the bed at 2am was it already 10am and time to wake and get packed. I checked out just after 11am, and we headed into town one last time in search of breakfast. We ended up in Oxford Street’s Pizza Hut before heading to Leicester Square for an ice cream and then a walk around Trafalgar Square; it was this point that I deduced that while London is constantly modernizing, it is the sense of continuity in its world-famous sites that provide much needed peace and tranquility in an ever-changing world. Finally, via The Strand, we ended up in Covent Garden, drinking tea on seats outside a petit little café with a view of Apple Market and its ambling crowd; it was wonderful to sit there in the shade of a surprisingly warm, sunny Autumn day.

The time came for Nick and I to part. We got on the tube at Covent Garden, saying our goodbyes on the platform at Green Park. I gave him a tight hug, headed to the hotel and collected the luggage I had left with Concierge. On the way to the airport on the Piccadilly Line, I dozed. It was a good thing really, because it meant that I had the energy to write this blog entry. The flight has been wonderful, with just 12 people onboard a plane with a capacity of at least 150 seats. Time to shut this laptop down, the seatbelt signs are indicating that it is time to land back in Suomi. Home, I thought to myself.