Tuesday, May 03, 2011

News

I met the woman who will be my new store manager the other day. She is super nice and has high standards and lots of pet peeves, so I'm really excited about working with her. I still don't have a leaving date, or a flat, but time is running out so I really need to nail down some details.

Yesterday, I met up with Holly and tried out the "Boris Bikes" for the first time. Boris Johnson is the crazy, wild-haired Mayor of London. He's a cycling enthusiast and brought a rent-a-bike scheme to London last summer. It's pretty cool. You pay £1 for 24 hours of access (or you can buy an annual membership for, I think, £50), then every half hour is free. If you just dock your bike every 30 min and take out a new one, you never pay more than the £1 day-fee. The bikes are a bit heavy and only have 3 speeds, but they're a pretty good ride. In the evening, Izzi and Tim fed me roast chicken and baked potato. Yum!

Yesterday's big news was the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden by US Navy Seals. I feel like so much surrounding this news is unknown. They've apparently confirmed it was him by DNA testing, but where did the US get a past sample of bin Laden's DNA? And of course it remains to be seen how people will react to the news, though it doesn't sound like there's been a huge backlash just yet, so that's good. I'm glad Pakistan has so far reacted well to the news.

I had to work on the day of the Royal Wedding, but we all huddled around the laptop behind the tills and gave each other updates throughout the day. During my lunch break, I headed down the road to a place where there was a giant TV screen broadcasting live footage. I was just in time for the balcony kiss, which I have to say, was pretty anticlimactic. But then there was the Royal Air Force flyover, and the planes flew over us in the square about 10 seconds after flying over the palace, so that was pretty exciting. Everyone cheered. I think if I ever get married, I'll have to have a flyover, because it feels like nothing is really official until some fighter jets have flown over your head.

1 comment:

  1. Em & Ben and I watched the royal wedding here in TZ... so fun! I'm glad you got to see the balcony kiss and the flyover!;) BTW, hats are cool. We should start wearing fascinators with crazy feathers in America. Let's start a trend.

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