What is Decided Upon is Desolations

I spent much of Saturday at the British Museum. The tube was extremely crowded due to closures on the Jubilee and Victoria lines, so it was much less fun than normal. Arriving at the Museum, I met up with the tour group and we went on our first Bible-centric tour, entitled “Choose For Yourselves”. The tour dealt with the various pervasive influences the Israelites had to deal with in trying to maintain a good standing before God. It was a very good tour and I can probably re-create it upon request when I get back, since I took pictures. The guide, I forget his name, was very good and gave us little earpieces to wear so as not to disturb those around us. It is a museum, after all. One thing that annoys me about museums is the glass. Whenever you try to take a picture of something, you get that big flash reflection marring your picture. If I turn off the flash, I get blur from my pre-Parkinson’s. Very annoying, but I think when I’m in London again on Monday I’ll get some more pictures there and hit up the gift shop. If anyone wants a Rosetta Stone paperweight or a t-shirt or something, please let me know.

The second tour was one I had been hoping to get, “This is History Written in Advance”. The guide, a quick-witted guy named Justin Moss, spoke as loudly as possible to draw attention to his awesome material and went over all the stuff in Daniel chapters 6 and 7 dealing with the Greek and Roman empires. He highlighted the fact that the book of Daniel was written 200 years before any of the subjects of the prophecies were even born, and how the prophecies were coming to pass right down to the first century. I’m sure he could have gone further, but the scope of the tour ended with the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem. Really cool stuff, even better if you’ve seen I, Claudius because you can recall how crazy John Hurt's Caligula was.

After that I got some dinner, had a few pints, and turned in early at about 9:00. I’m not sure my body has fully acclimated to the time change yet, and I’ve been walking everywhere, so I was pretty tired.

Yes I realize it's Saturday night in London, what do you expect me to do, go clubbing? Seriously? Do you even know me? Clubbing?

The Story So Far

So just before I left, my man Randy said that two of our friends wanted to go to the UK, so I brought them along.They preferred to stay in my bag for the trip, but they're pretty jet lagged right now so no real photo ops yet.

I'm pretty jet lagged myself, but here are a few observations from the trip so far:

- It was super warm yesterday, but it's in maybe the 40s here right now. It was sunny when I arrived, but now the sky has that hazy grey that only seems to happen when it's about to snow. It is hilarious, there are lots of people dressed reasonably, but therre are also a lot of people wearing eskimo parkas and furry hats and whatnot.

- I was worried about finding my hotel from the Underground, since the only directions I had said to get off at Gloucester Station. So I figured I'd end up figuring it out...sure enough, it was right outside the station. I can see it from my window!Pretty neat!

- The flight was uneventful. The most notable experience was probably the luggage carousel. WILL I GET MY LUGGAGE BACK??? The answer was Yes, but the baggage handlers do like to keep you in suspense.

- As we were boarding at JFK, I met an American Japanese couple who were very friendly and appreciated my Joy Division shirt. The guy was saying that he wore his similar (but better, his wife added) shirt to a Killers show (who covered Joy Division's "Shadowplay" to great radio success) but no one commented on it. Kids today don't know their history.

- Airplane food is pretty consistently terrible. But the flight did have an audio station featuring the best of New Order, so that was nice. I must have gotten maybe 3 hours sleep on the flight, but not what one would consider quality sleep.

- London's Underground reminds me of a cross between Boston and Toronto. It's about as clean as Toronto (so far), and a lot of it is overground like the T in Boston. There was a busker who played a violin jig version of the James Bond Theme, but at the time all I had was 20s in pounds and some dollar bills that he probably didn't want. Maybe I'll see him once I break these 20s.

Anyway, I'm going to take a nap and then see if I can find a hall around here to go to.