Some London Highlights

Borough market - This sells quite expensive food, so you might not want to buy, but it's well worth the wander around, as it's got food from all around the world there.

Shepherd's market - This is a nice little area just off Picadilly (look for Shepherd Street on the map), opposite side of the road from Green Park. It's got a lot of good restaurants and bars in a small area.

Carnaby Street (Just off Regent Street, by Libertys) - Used to be good in the 60s then lapsed for a while and is now getting hip once more. It's quite like the Neal Street, Covent Garden area.

Portobello market - supposedly an antiques market, but increasingly Portobello road is going upmarket with boutique shops. Now the main street for the Notting Hill Carnival.

The Thames - At night, a visitor should either take a dinner cruise up from Embankment pier to Greenwich and back, or if they're on a budget walk over Waterloo bridge which give's the best view of London. Apart from the stretch from Westminster to Greenwich, my other favourite part of the Thames is from Hampton Court upwards. Here the river is narrower and much more picturesque.

Hampstead Heath - In my opinion, the best park in London. There's some lovely pubs in Hampstead, the view from Parliament Hill over London's great, and the men and women's open-air swimming pools (or should that be ponds) are great in the summer.

North East Chinese Food & Buddhist Temple

Went for Sunday Lunch at Chinoise restaurant, Barnes.
http://www.toptable.co.uk/details.cfm/qs/rid%7C2993/spos%7C4/
The speciality of this restaurant is North Eastern Chinese food, and as my wife's from Dong Bei, we went along to try some. She had the Stew & dumplings, and I had guobao can with Singapore Fried noodles. The food was quite good, and was apparantly authentic for the region, but I wouldn't make a special effort to go there again, as it's a bit out of the way and was quiet when we went.

On the way back, we went to the Buddhapadipa Temple just off Wimbledon Common. http://www.buddhapadipa.org/pages/event_openhouse2006.html
I didn't know quite what to expect, but I was very surprised by it. It's a fairly large park with an English House at the front of the park, but with what looked like a very authentic Buddha Temple behind it. The park is laid out in a similar way to those that I've seen in Thailand and Southern China, with Buddhist pearls of wisdom enscribed on wooden signs along the walk. I did peek in to the Temple, but there was a real life monk sat staring back at me where I was expecting a golden buddha so I decided not to enter.

Useful transport sites

If you're new to London, the Transport for london site is here:-

www.tfl.gov.uk - it contains maps and a journey planner to get you from A to Z.

If you want to find a specific street and don't want to pay for an A to Z, then check out either:-

www.streetmap.co.uk or http://maps.google.co.uk

What's cool about the google maps site is that you can type in things like "pubs near sw19" and it will show on the map the location of the pubs, and on the left hand side, it will have the details of each of the pubs.

For finding train times, you can use www.nationalrail.co.uk.

There are websites where you can buy train tickets in advance but in general it's easier to buy them at the station. London tube tickets are the most expensive in the world, and for the money you get the worst run service in the world.

Some things are innovative on the tube, like oystercard:-
https://sales.oystercard.com/oyster/lul/guestProductConfig.do?method=display
which allows you to electronically swipe on tubes and buses (sadly not trains yet which limits it's popularity south of the river).
Given that a lot of people now have oystercards, the queues for buying paper cards from the kiosks are much less, so it's a toss up as to which is the better option

Some good things to do coming up

Regent Street is being converted in to a beach in September with some Spanish style entertainment:-

http://www.visitlondon.co.uk/whats_on/regent_street.html

Also before that big event, there are some Spanish evenings on thursday nights at Heddon Street, which is just off Regents Street

http://www.visitlondon.co.uk/whats_on/heddon.html


Tomorrow, there's a Thai festival in Battersea Park, and also what's called a Mela Festival (seems to mean an Indian festival) in Ealing broadway

Royal China

It's by queensway station. I wouldn't say it was that great, to be honest, but as I didn't have to pay for the meal it was much appreciated. They were very efficient, even having an electronic numbering system like at the Post Office. The decor was fine and the food was ok. Just that I felt pretty processed and the staff didn't smile any.

Queensway

I'm off to the Red China restaurant tomorrow lunchtime. My wife managed to hand over her old job to one of her friends so we're being taken out for lunch as a thankyou. I'll blog how it was.
Red China's in Queensway. We were there last week after attending the Portobello Film Festival at the Inn on the Green near Ladbroke Green station. We worked via Portobello Market (Good place to go) to Queensway and went to a Lebanese Cafe. The food was ok. The staff all had badges with the leader of Hizbollah on it.

On that trip, we also walked through Hyde Park. They had "Blue Velvet" screened in the open-air by the southside of the Serpentine, but as we'd had to wait ages to watch "Donnie Darko" at a similar event last year, we didn't hang around.

We saw Diana's memorial by the Serpentine. Sadly, it was all fenced off. Don't know if it was because it was late by then or if it's normally like that.

After walking through Hyde Park, we took a bus from Knightsbridge and got off at Regents Street. Went in a couple of bars in the Carnaby Street area. Alphabet Bar was ok, but looked like it had seen much better days. The leather armchairs had big chunks eaten out of them, and the map of London on the floor was pretty worn away. We ended up in 2 Floors which is opposite the Kingly club, which I believe Prince William's been to recently. When we went downstairs, we saw a blonde in a long formal red evening dress which we thought was unusual as nobody else was so dressed up. Then when we sat up the top, there were lots of arty looking young guys in the street opposite. After a few minutes, I noticed that a Camera was pointed at the bar. The blonde and a companion then took about 15 takes over the next 45 minutes of them walking out of the bar. Don't know what film it was, but I'm sure to be in the background.

Other good blogging sites

The best site on the web currently for posting opinions about life is "Comment is Free" in the Guardian - http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/index.html

This is the only UK mainstream media column which isn't moderated. This should be compared favourably with the BBC's "Have Your Say" column which is a very misleading name for a comments forum which is heavily censored and acts as a mouthpiece for New Labour

http://5thNovember.blogspot.com is another good website edited by the mysterious Guido Fawkes. It's basically full of political tittle tattle rather than in-depth stories, but comes up with some gems about politico's sex lives and corruption

A bit about me

Ok, so I've lived in Wimbledon since May 2002, so I know a little bit about the area by now. I used to live in Ridgway Gardens near Wimbledon Common, but have been living in Milton Road in what the estate agents called the Poets area for the last 2 years.

I'm a member of Wimbledon Round Table. We meet up in a pub every couple of weeks to discuss things that we want to do in the local area. We're also a member of what we call a superclub together with Hammersmith & Richmond round tables.

Things we've done recently have been:-

1. Flippin' burgers for charity at Richmond May Fair
2. Boat trip to Hampton Court & Back
3. Curry in Tooting
4. Drinks at the Groucho club, Fox club, Langleys
5. Organised the International Weekend in June.

3 of us are off to Estonia in September in order to liase with our fellow Tablers and check out the entertainment at a medieval banquet :)

I work as an IT consultant for Camelot for the last couple of years, although I'll be working for Visa Europe from September, after my Kenyan holiday.

I'm married to my wife, Lei, who was born in North East China. She'll be starting work at Ernst & Young the same day I'm starting my new contract.

In my opinion, these are good things to do in Wimbledon area

Best pubs in Wimbledon:-
All Bar One, Wimbledon Hill
Edwards, Hartfield Road
Dog & Fox, Wimbledon Village
Spirit Bar Cafe, Tooting
O'Niells, Wimbledon Broadway
Crooked Billet (near Wimbledon Common)
Jim Thompson's, Wimbledon Broadway
Baobab, Collier's Wood

Other good pub areas in London:-
The Ship, Hammersmith (by the river)
2 Floors, Kingly Street
The Groucho Club, Dean Street
Langley's, near Neil Street
Zebranos, Kingly Street
The Albany, Thames Ditton
O'Niells, Wardour Street
Gordon's Wine bar, Embankment
Half moon, Putney (If you like bands)

Good restaurants:-
Gourmet Burger Kitchen
Nandos (if you like peri-peri sauce and dry chicken)
Mae Ping - Thai, Wimbledon Broadway
Makiyaki - Japanese, Merton Road
Slurp - Chinese, Merton Road
Jo Shmo - upmarket burgers, interesting toilets, Wimbledon village

Wimbledon Odeon, Wimbledon Broadway - It's a multiscreen showing all the blockbusters
New Wimbledon Theatre, Wimbledon Broadway - Good mix of panto, west end shows, comedy
Abbey Mills - Good Free Festival in July, August. Saw Steve from X Factor this year.
Wimbledon Common - Especially good if you've got a bike which doesn't get nicked.

Best sites for things to do in london:-
www.visitlondon.com, www.londontown.com, www.beerintheevening.com
http://maps.google.co.uk

Local MP

We're sadly represented with perhaps the laziest MP in the UK.

I wrote to him in September 2005 about an issue that I had getting Trading Standards to investigate a firm. Over the course of my campaign, I discovered that 64 other people had complained about this firm so figured I had a pretty good case.

Anyway, each time I emailed Mr Stephen Hammond, I'd get an expensive letter back telling me to keep him in the loop, be patient and wait to see what they said etc. At no point did he provide any practical advice, but at no point did he say that he disagreed with what I was trying to achieve.

After 8 months, my campaign finished when both the Parliamentary & Local Government Ombudsmen refused to make Trading Standards do anything, as they said that I hadn't suffered a personal injustice as what I was really complaining about was government policy. When I wrote to Mr Hammond, I got a reply which informed me that he got 1000s of emails a week and could I send him letters in future. He also said that he wouldn't commit to doing anything about the problems that I'd raised with him.

Naturally perturbed with his response after I'd put in months of effort, I asked if I could come and see him at a weekend surgery. His response has been and continues to be that if I want to see him, I should take time off work, as he was busy at weekends.

Any MP further away from London can only see their constituents at weekend. Reasons why MPs have such long holidays is because of the long hours and weekend work they must do when they're in session. It seems that Mr Hammond wants to take the holidays and do the same working week when they are in session as the rest of us.

His last email arrogantly compared himself with a GP and a solicitor, who he pointed out I'd also have to take time off to see. I replied to him saying that I didn't view an MP as the same level as trained professionals. In any case, as he's had bagsful of letters from me about my issue, the only point of the surgery is so that he can stop giving me non-answers to direct questions.

Wimbledon

The idea of this blog will be to talk about things in Wimbledon and the London area