Yes it has officially happened ... I have joined the dark side ... I bought my first suit today (/me can see the people used to looking at me in my work clothes ... jeans and t-shirt ... going what the ^&E#@) yes it seems to get any job at this stage I need a suit ... so yes we went shopping today. #sigh#.
Ok ... so we were invited for coffee (see photo for biggest mug they have ... the Grande [and I can just see the glint in my sisters eyes] ... the coin is a 20 pence [the size of a 50c]) but I digress. So we took the DLR to Cutty Sark station (for Maritime Greenwich. And as jou near the Starbucks you get you first glimpse of the Cutty Sark. Now the Cutty Sark is a ship ... more to the point the last remaining extreme 
clipper as well as the last tea clipper. She is now at a dry dock in Greenwich. According to the Greenwich Guide she was launched at 
Dumbarton on the River Clyde, Scotland, in 1869. The name comes from Robert Burns' poem, Tam O'Shanter; Tam meets a group of witches, most of whom are ugly, but for Nannie, who is young and beautiful.The name Cutty Sark derives from where the beautiful witch called 'Nannie', chases Tam while riding his grey mare home one night. She wore only a Cutty 
Sark, which was a short shirt made from Paisley linen. In the poem she reaches out and grabs the horse's tail, which is why her 
image on the ship's figurehead shows her left arm out-stretched.
She had sleek lines and an enormous area of sail that made her the fastest ship in the race via the Cape of Good Hope for the tea trade with China. Unluckily for her owners, the Suez Canal was opened in the same year as her launch, which is not navigable by sailing ships. Her last cargo of tea was carried in 1877.
From 1885 - 1895, she was used in the wool trade with Australia, bringing the new season's clip from Sydney to London, setting new speed records year after year. By 1895, she was again losing money for her owner and was sold to the Portuguese as the Ferreira, although interestingly enough her crews called her Pequina Camisola ('little shirt'). She was worked by her new owners between Oporto, Rio, and Lisbon for over thirty years until 1920, when she was sold again, this time becoming the Maria do Amparo. In 1922 she underwent a refit in the Surrey Docks, London, and was driven to shelter from a storm in Falmouth harbour on her way home. A Captain Wilfred Dowman saw her there, and bought her from the Portuguese owners, returning her to British ownership again.
On Capt. Dowman's death in 1938, his widow presented her to the Thames Nautical Training College at Greenhithe on the Thames, where she was used as a training vessel. After the Second World war she again became surplus and eventually she was towed to Greenwich and placed in a specially constructed dry dock in 1954. After a lot of restoration work she was opened to the public in 1957. Since then more than thirteen million people have visited her.
The interview being at three and me having been told not to be late...I left at one just to give Murphy a chance to interfere...So I take the tube from Canary Wharf to Canada Water then the East London line to Whitechapel...armed with my tube map, A-Z of London, phone and copies of my CV...all went well untill Whitechapel there I had to take the District line to Tower Hill station...
only problem is that the District line runs with the Circle line so here is me on one of the platforms trying to figure out from the map if the train goes this way then will I get to Tower hill...figured out I was on the wrong platform...change platforms and get on the train...check the map...yip right way to Tower Hill...sit down and the train starts moving look at the opposite map and its turned around...now you have to wonder which way am I actually going...have a private panic untill we reach the next station and figure out that I am on the right train.
So I reached Tower Hill ... shot ... freezing cold as you can immagine from the photo's. But the immediate area 
around there is beautiful. The first thing you see is the above sundial with the entire history timeline around the base. The you l
ook up and you see the castle and the Tower of London...you turn right and you see Trinity square, containing the memorials of the Maritime memorials .
day
With something to keep us warm we followed the parade to Trafalgar square - we saw lots of interestingly dressed people... including sweet toddlers with their 
parents... everybody was celebrating St. Patrick's day.
At Trafalgar square there were crowds of people... the water of the fountains green and the proceedings were opened with the release of green, white and orange balloons.
...the next stop was Covent Gardens where Sarah and I decided we had green 
and white but we needed something orange so we decided... to find Nemo... he's orange and white? We hung around 
there for a while then met up with Rudi (Sarah's husband) and Bryan (he is actually Irish) at a bar called O'neill's for 
some drinks. We ended off the evening with some pasta. From left to right is me, Sarah, Rudi and Bryan. Overall an exhausting but absolutely worthwhile day.
Yes...it is a small world after all ... had a real shock last night ... went to Asda to go buy food for the week with Zod. There I met a girl that I met at university... we lived at the same residence. It was one of those where you see the person out of the corner of you eye and then do a double take. It was really weird we lived in the same res for at least 2 years and I think we ran into each other on campus three times. I did not really expect to come to the other side of the world and run into people I knew from res in our local supermarket.
watching out of one of the bedroom windows. Here are some of the photo's. Yes...the white stripes are snow falling. Oh yes and Zod cut his hair.
