On Public Transit Systems

The last time I did a quick search for the world’s best subway systems in the world, London’s Underground was in the top 3 in all of them and Hong Kong was either on the bottom or non-existent.* I don’t know why but the London tube is consistently voted by online publications and people as one of the world’s best underground railway systems.

Photo courtesy of Broadband Expert

Bollocks!

I’m sorry, but when some of your biggest lines (e.g. Central, Victoria) break down and almost 800 people are stuck in the cabins for hours with no updates in the sweltering heat and then they are forced to walk through pitch black tunnels just to resurface, your subway system is not the best in the world.

Seriously guys. The fucking Olympics are taking place in 2 months and you can’t get your shit together.

I get that you’re the oldest system in the world and you have a lot of intertwining lines and over hundreds and hundreds of track but you are not temperature controlled, the gaps I have to mind are way too big, you do not have partitions between the trains and the platform, you are dirty, you are noisy, you are narrow and crammed, your exits don’t take me where I want to go, and most importantly, you are not reliable. Perhaps you were the best in your heyday but I think it’s time to move over for the new kids.

I love old things. You will not find another girl who is more into vintage dresses, antiques, old books, old architecture, older men, and things that have gone to general disuse than me. But when it comes to public transportation, I’m an ageist.

Systems like the Paris metro, the London tube, and New York subway all have time and wisdom on their sides. They’ve seen it all. But when you’ve got Asian competitors to face, you kind of lag behind. You’re like the retired athlete who we all bow down to and admit are a legend but if you were to get back into the game, we’d probably balk at your foolishness.

Now, I haven’t been on the Tokyo, Seoul or Taipei systems (which I hear are all topnotch) but I will use Hong Kong as a representative of what I assume is the “best,” or should be, the best by today’s standards.

Photo courtesy of Construction Digital

What you get on the Hong Kong MTR:

- clean as a whistle stations and trains (mostly due to a no eating/drinking after the turnstyles policy – this is pretty standard for Asian systems – but also due to lots of rubbish and recycling bins around)
- it is cheap: you will never spend over US$1 to get from the far west to the far east.
- big, spacious stations and escalators at every turn
- frequency: waiting for a train is so overrated
- electronic timetables and the impossibility of tardiness or delays – I don’t know how it’s accomplished but it’s just not allowed
- Wifi capabilities underground – you heard it! You can call, text, surf the internet, watch porn underground and it doesn’t matter whether you have the newest iPhone or a piece of black and white crap that doens’t even have a screen
- dozens of exit options that don’t just take you to 4 different corners of an intersection quadrant
- the entire system is like an underground city: you can literally get around Hong Kong without having to step outside – the MTR goes to shopping malls, office buildings, hotels, etc.
- each station is like a little mini-mall with shops, variety stores, and little pop-up food stalls
- the Octopus is way superior to the Oyster: 1) the Octopus can be scanned through layers and layers of fabric, cards, plastic and other materials – it never needs to be taken out of a purse; 2) the Octopus can be used on 7 different types of transportation: subway, bus, minibus, tram, ferry, funicular in addition to loads of other things: parking meters, vending machines, variety stores, shops
- this last one is more about the people than the system but Asians generally are less uppity about personal space: if it’s busy and there’s people wanting to get on the train, they will generally squeeze into the middle of the cabin and make room as opposed to just “densely” packing in around the doors (even though there is obviously TONS of space)

This is modernity after all.

Now, you might accuse me of confusing new, shinier things as being better quality than the things that have aged over time and have developed some character but we’re not talking about a wine or an armoire here. But I’m not just talking about cosmetics. Isn’t this how we want our public transportation to be? Clean? Convenient? Efficient? Reliable? Safe? Don’t we want to be air-conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter when we have to share a small cabin underground with dozens of other strangers? Don’t we want to get as close to our destination as possible? Don’t we want to not get stuck on a train?

Now, NYC has one thing that the world doesn’t have and that is it’s 24-hour subway system so I give it points for that but it gets negative points for it’s piles and piles of GARBAGE and dirty, dirty platforms as well as it’s very inefficient entryways that don’t connect. So unless you are a pro with cardinal directions and always know your bearings, if you go down the wrong staircase, you will have to exit, cross the street and try your luck with the next one.

Why does age and quantity win? Shouldn’t quality and efficacy determine the “bestness” of transportation?

Clearly I have thought a lot about this. I just have a problem with people who don’t know what the future is when it is currently being used by almost an entire continent of the world. These Asian systems are the futuristic systems that visionaries and nerdy boys in the 19th and 20th century envisioned. These are the public railways that modernity is aiming to construct. Yet old, noisy, late systems are the ones we still applaud.

I will say this: at least it’s not the Toronto subway. If places like London, Paris, and New York are the respected luminaries of a sport and Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore are the wunderkinds of the current game, Toronto is like the little brother who says: I want to be a professional athlete before he goes and runs around in circles in the front yard.

That yellow line is the dumbest subway line I’ve ever seen. You can literally  walk the distance between the two yellows.

I hope to never get stuck in a London tube on the hottest day of the year. £40 compensation and an apology from the Mayor will not cut it for me. I will probably have another rant about it as well.

J

* Edit: I did another quick search and it seems that London is dropping. Despite this, I don’t even know if the oldies should still be one the list. After all, these are current bests, not past bests.

I Spy: 4 Double Deckers

This is the view from my window:

Half of those are night buses and we have single-glazed windows. You can imagine how noisy it is late at night. Luckily for us we don’t mind the noise.

Sightseeing: Tate Modern and Greenwich Park

This week, Craig and I decided that we would start doing things instead of being cooped up in the flat all day. (It’s lovely outside right now and Craig is out for a run at Southwark Park while I’m inside). The hardest part for me is that I like to sleep until 2 in the afternoon. Like the good, practical science boy that he is, Craig is up at 9 in the mornings, job-hunting while I lay spread eagle in our bed.

By the time we’ve had lunch and I’ve checked my morning, er, afternoon mail, it’s already quite late and we can only schedule one major thing for the afternoon. And it has to be free nonetheless.

This week we went to the Tate Modern on Tuesday and Greenwich Park on Wednesday. Both were disappointing but for different reasons.

For such a large behemoth of a building, the collections at the Tate Modern are dismal. There are more paid special exhibitions than there are free rooms. And I don’t have a problem paying to see art; I just don’t believe in over-paying to see artists I don’t particularly like or know (£15 to see Damien Hirst? Yeah right). The permanent collection should be well-curated in its own right; these are the pieces that people are visiting the museum for, not the special collections. Craig and I finished all floors in less than an hour. And we actually read the little art plaques so there really wasn’t very much to see.

I did manage to sneak a little nap in

Hopefully the other museums won’t be as disappointing.

Greenwich Park was disappointing because of the circumstances in which we got there. I’m sure if we went to the Park again and were prepared about it, didn’t get lost in Greenwich, and I didn’t soak myself in Coke at the top of the hill I’d just painstakingly ascended, then I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more. I plopped myself on nice shaded verdant patch while Craig ran and just when I started to get comfortable with my surroundings (I woke up from a nap), we had to leave because he was back and sweating too much to sit down.

A very hazy view of the the City and construction sites (for Olympics Equestrian, I believe?)

The effort-reward ratio wasn’t quite worth it.

Tomorrow we’re going to do Borough Market and Saturday: Portobello Road Market. I hope we will be pleasantly surprised.

J

I Spy: A Defunct Window

I saw this window on New Cross Road the other day and thought it was kind of neat.

A Windows window

There were a few downtrodden buildings on the street but none with such clever window treatments.

Enjoy the sun while it lasts!

J

Sleeping in Paris: Part 1

Craig and I spent an odd holiday in Paris before our move to the UK. Yes there were freshly baked baguettes, sidewalk cafes, and scattered strolls along the Seine involved but it was not what you would call your ideal lover’s retreat in the City of Light.

First of all, we were mostly unconscious whenever it did happen to be light outside. The reason being this: we took a night flight from Toronto to Brussels. So after eating our decent Indian airplane food, we watched some movies and pretty soon, breakfast was served. This meant that we were arriving in Paris in the morning on no sleep.

What do you expect two somnophiles to do?

We slept.

That first day we slept until 4pm and then wandered around the Marais by foot. Since it was a national holiday, nothing was open. We went to bed at 11pm and woke up at 4am.

Thus our schedule became set in stone:

Get up at 4am. Try to see the sunrise (it was overcast the whole time)
Nothing’s open so we bike around Paris on the Velib for a few hours
Around noon, we go back to our apartment for lunch.
Sleep until 6 or 7pm. Wake up, everything’s closed again.
Bike some more.
Eat a late dinner.
Go to bed around midnight.

And repeat. The only time we didn’t do this was on the third night when rather than going to bed at 12 and waking up at 4, I never fell asleep. We were just so exhausted. I can’t believe how much time we spent sleeping in Paris but we just physically could not keep our eyes open and our limbs in working condition.

We had no intentions of being touristy on this trip so it might have been a blessing in disguise that we were off the normal diurnal schedule. This meant no going into shops, no touristy attractions, and not too many cars on the street almost running us over.

There were parts of the trip that were failures of what we had anticipated but what ended up being perfect little moments. Rather than trying to rush a hodgepodge of touristy sights into 4 days, we literally breezed through Paris on bikes and just soaked everything in – being true flaneurs – wandering and observing Parisian life and admiring everything the city has to offer.

Some photos:

Buildings in the Marais

Craig in a small park on the left bank

Sunrise attempt #1: Cloudy at the Sacre Coeur

Sunrise attempt #2: Cloudy at the Bastille

I love Parisian apartments and Juliet balconies

Stay tuned for Part 2: specific things we did, surprising observations about the French, and also the lovely wonder that is the Marais.

J

The Smelly Shower Curtain Haunts Me

I am a rollercoaster these days. One day I feel like I’m calm and collected with my situation and the next I am crying and freaking the fuck out. I guess that’s the life of a new expat. I just thought I was a little more experienced than this. Hubris gets the best of us.

Today was all about making the most of our situation. During the day, both Craig and I did some more job-hunting and then we went to Sainsbury’s to get some stuff that would hopefully alleviate some of the issues in the flat: air freshener for the smell, toilet cleaner for the toilet, and clean kitchen utensils (the ones here are fine but I just feel like everything that came with the house is covered in some invisible film that I’m convinced is dirty – when I cook with their wooden spoons, my food tastes funny). We looked at heaters too but figured it would be cheaper to get them off Amazon.

We really wanted to get a new shower curtain as well because the current one is disgusting. It’s original colour is white and it is definitely a very gross brown and yellow with lots of black moldy spots on it. It looks like curtain wearing a really ugly spotty skirt. The thing I don’t understand is that 4 other people live comfortably with that gross curtain hanging in their bathroom. I don’t even feel like this is ‘my’ place and I know I have to replace it because I cannot live in filth.

Now, this isn’t an actual picture of my shower curtain but it might as well be – ours is just as bad. Photo courtesy of Gerrod

It’s not quite fair that the newbies have to replace the shower curtain but I guess we’re the ones that are bothered by it. But I just don’t get it! Can somebody please explain this to me?! I can’t even shower in this flat because the first time I showered, when I had to move the curtain to step out of the thing, I felt dirtier than I’d been when I entered it.  Why are the other flat mates ok with this?

There are so many things about the UK that remind me of China. Spaces that aren’t living or sleeping spaces get neglected as if they are anathema to the home. The kitchen is where you cook, the bathroom is where you clean yourself, the hallway is just a connector between rooms – the logic is that one does not spend the majority of their time in these spaces, therefore, one does not need to keep these places tidy and remotely sanitary.*

I’ve seen some disgusting bathrooms in China but this one that I have to live with takes the cake.

Tonight we went to a Thai restaurant in New Cross called The Thailand for a late dinner. A good meal for a good price. Before our Sainsbury’s trip earlier, we wandered around New Cross for a bit because supposedly, it’s an up-and-coming area (read: dodgy but slowly becoming trendy). It still has its myriad barbershops and “unique” salons catering to what they call “Afro-Caribbean” hair and the side-by-side ethnic grocers but it’s a tiny bit more gentrified than where I am. There’s some nice pubs, some cafes, and non-Chinese/non-Kebab take-out. A bit more, variety, I suppose.

There’s really not much around around the area. Yesterday, Craig and I hopped on a bus that was supposed to take us to Trafalgar Square but instead, dropped us off in Islington. Another bus ride, two tubes, and almost two hours later (about one hour and a half late for our lunch date with Craig’s old family friends), we made it to Charing Cross.

We’re meeting some friends at Trafalgar Square again tomorrow for lunch so hopefully no wrong buses up north.

J

The Thailand
15 Lewisham Way
SE14 6PP

*This subject is in line to what I was writing for my master’s dissertation. I’m really fascinated by how society tries to hide or flush away the things that they find uncomfortable in life, like bathrooms and scatological-related themes. The problem with heterotopias (places like bathrooms, kitchens, hallways) is that you can’t pretend they don’t exist because they’re actually pretty vital to humanity’s ability to function.

Getting to Know the English Weather

I haven’t even been here for 2 weeks and I’m just dying for a holiday already. I just want to go somewhere that’s not raining, cloudy and cold all the time. Seriously? Why did I pick England? Luckily, I’m planning a trip somewhere warm for the end of the month. We got a cheap flat so we could have the extra money to travel and I’m going to make damn sure that that money’s well spent.

Isn’t it very British to complain about the weather? I do it on an hourly basis now.

J

Heat Wars

Craig and I have moved into our new flat!

It’s a 3 month stint so it’s comforting to know that some of the things that are not so favourable biw (selfish roommate, dirty mildew-smelling bathroom) won’t be around in that time. Hopefully we’ll be employed and living in our own private flat with double-glazed windows and an air-freshened bathroom, regardless of how shoeboxy it is.

So this roommate of ours is really beginning to get under my skin. This is only the second night we’ve been here (we spent the weekend in Croydon getting drunk with Annie and her mates for her 24th birthday) so we don’t quite know how bad the situation is. Plus we’ve never met or crossed paths with the guy so we’re not exactly sure who it is.

To nobody’s surprise, it’s grey and cold in England. Since it’s such a damp climate, once you step outside, the chill clings to your skin like Saran wrap. Our flat has a central heating system and it goes to three rooms in the flat (I don’t know about the other two). I had no intentions of turning it on all the time like I do back in Canada because it’s not economical here so I figured I would just turn it on when it got really cold versus a bit nippy.

Sunday night, I turned it on and immediately afterwards, it was turned off. I waited another half an hour or so and turned it on again, only to have my efforts thwarted again. We don’t know who keeps turning it off but I was getting annoyed. I had to wear my jacket indoors while snuggling under my duvet just to remain comfortable (read: not warm). We waited a few hours and tried it again but after a few minutes of glorious radiator warmth, it was shut down again. Eventually we gave up and just stayed under the covers all night, using my laptop as a general mini-heater.

When I woke up this morning, Craig had informed me that he’d tried turning the heat on twice but was vetoed every time. This was getting a bit unfair.

Here’s the kicker: I understand that he might be hot and trying to save money but he isn’t showing the slightest bit of consideration for us whereas we have given him his non-heated comfortable environment time and again. When he turns the heat on, we go, “Ok, he’s hot. Let’s leave it off for a bit and maybe he’ll return the favour” but no, he doesn’t even want to give us 5 full minutes of warmth. As soon as he senses heat in his room, he’s ready to nip that in the bud. We’ve shivered and suffered so as not to disturb his equilibrium but when it comes to even wanting a full half hour of heat, he can’t do it because it’s all about what he wants.

And then today, a cold started to emerge. I’m sniffly, my throat’s sore, I’m freezing – I decided that it wasn’t fair that he always got what he wanted so Craig and I left a friendly post-it note on the heater asking him to leave it on. It’s been 15 minutes and the radiator is still warm.

Success?

We’ll see. Other than this one major snafu, all is well. I really had a hard time last week adjusting to this new life (man do I miss money) but every day gets slightly better. We went to Ikea on Sunday and got some home furnishings to make our place feel more like home; we went Alexander McQueen scarf hunting today (the flagship, Selfridge’s, Harvey Nichols, and Harrod’s) and I still do not have my scarf; we saw an Avengers matinee (small observation: British cinema audiences are just as rude and inconsiderate as Canadian ones); we had sub-par conveyor belt sushi at Yo! Sushi for dinner; and I am now eating cup noodles while writing on my blog.

Normalcy is slowing creeping back into this extraordinary adventure of ours.

J

Flat-hunting: Part 3

I didn’t skip part 2; it just happened to be imbedded in that long rant I published in the wee hours this morning. You can read Part 1 and Part 2.

Today was a long day. Craig and I saw a total of 8 flats today. We started at 11am and finished at about 11pm. Most of that time was spent on the tube and double deckers. I think Craig and I are pretty sick of the Jubilee and Central lines.

I’m not going to summarize all the flats. What a waste of time that would be. But I will say that today was way more fruitful than yesterday. We started the day off well in Notting Hill (the only flat we saw in the West side) in a fabulous location. The steps to the beautiful flat was right next to a vintage designer’s men shop. I could really see us living there. And once Craig and I passed the Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Hermes loafers in the window of that shop enough, I knew he would trade in his ugly orthopedic shoes for a pair of vintage stunners. It was also one street over form Portobello Road. Unfortunately after the agency fees, the flat became just a tad bit over our budget. We could afford it, I just don’t think we wanted to spend our vacation money on location.

Then we saw a whole bunch of places in between, from Stratford in the east to Willesden in the north west, back down to New Cross Gate in the south. I absolutely LOVED the New Cross Gate flat. The bathroom and kitchen were a bit dingy and we’d have to share both facilities with 4 other people but the building and room were spectacular. And it’s just down the street from our current place.

Then tonight we decided to see one more place. It probably wasn’t the best idea to visit Hackney (where “murder mile” runs) after 10pm. We ended up in an area that could only be reached by a 30 minute bus ride. When we got off, we knew we were in the projects. Literally. In the 1990s, the city of London tore pre-existing high rises to make a 40-acre lot of land consisting of low-rise Local Authority housing, that is, public and social housing. The project: Clapton Park.

These builders were even sadder than the ones we saw yesterday and when we actually entered one of them, it was like walking into deserted prison. Not dodgy; just full on scary.

The flat was surprisingly nice and modern (most likely cosmetic) but we just couldn’t get over all the concrete and the iron gates. But rather than feel discouraged by the experience, we laughed it off and made light of our fear.

We then went on a hunt for McDonald’s but the golden arches were just too elusive for me. I kept seeing people with McD’s bags or McDonald’s rubbish strewn about or giant adverts with giant M’s saying “ONLY 60 SECONDS AWAY.”

I am exhausted. If only I had a McFlurry or some McNuggets to distract me from my muscle pain.

J

Princess and Pauper

This is going to be a long one.

It’s 5 in the morning and the birds have been practicing their vocals for the past hour and a half. Sleep is non-existent since restlessness and extreme stress weigh heavily on me, imprinting its pernicious form on my sound mind, just like the outline of my body has made in the stranger’s mattress on which I lie awake every night.

For that is all that accompanies Craig, a hollow shell of my former self. I feel lost, and confused, and more importantly, responsible for dragging Craig into my wayward dreams of being a contrived carefree spirit. It is because of me that we are in the UK, contemplating washing our savings into the cesspools that are the London ghettoes. It is because of me that we worry about our lack of jobs, and therefore, our lack of money. It is because of me that we are without a “home.”

We are lower-class. Or we will be in 3 months.

I used to be impoverished so I know how it is. But thanks to my mother’s education and her eventual job, we’ve steadily climbed up that socio-economic ladder over the past 20 years. We are now middle class and we are not ashamed of what we have. We still budget like hell but we do all right. Despite the fact that we have a house in a nice part of town, drive a nice car, and buy nice things, I have a lot of the old poor girl in me (you can’t unlearn dumpster diving).

But it’s been a long time since I used to rummage garbage depots and wear hand-me-downs from the people who used to employ my mom for babysitting (just one of her part-time jobs) and I’ve gotten quite accustomed to the finer things in life (you can’t unlearn heated leather seating).

I like creature comforts and now I don’t have them.

Craig doesn’t have them either but he doesn’t complain as much as me (even though I try to do all the complaining in my head). And if the case for our current situation is true, then Craig would have taken an even longer and harder fall than I have. His family is way more WASP-y and well-off than mine. His parents have two luxury vehicles and don’t really have to worry about money. Craig has a PhD and had a well-paying job at a respected (well, maybe before all that Sandusky business) university.

Whereas I had a part-time job at a retail store and a mother who was OK with a freeloader, Craig actually had the tenets of a middle-class life. I lived off my mother’s fruits, Craig grew his own. And in one fell swoop, I dropped a giant bucket of shit over all of it.

The apartments we visited today were just awful. But awful is what we can afford.

The first flat we saw today was actually not too far from our current flat (in London, poor areas are often intermixed in good neighbourhoods so there aren’t any really any delineated “nice areas”). It was right across from the train tracks and adjacent to a garbage dump and to get there, we had to walk past estate housing with bars on the windows of the ground floors. Ghetto.

When we walked into the apartment building, there was a soury detergent smell in the stairs and when we made our way to the third floor, we were greeted by a tall Russian-British women with saggy boobs and bad teeth. She invited us into her clothes-pocalypse and a giant bomb of stale cigarettes and old milk hit Craig and me in the faces. The place was dirty. The cabinets were falling off their hinges in the kitchen. As Craig and I stood there, keeping our arms to ourselves, trying to feign interest in the flat, a fat man sat on the couch in the living room and counted money. Ghetto.

The second flat was in East London, which everyone knows is where all the immigrants, and therefore, hipsters flock to. When we exited the tube station, we walked along a curry-infused street to get a bus to the flat. A short bus ride later, we were at a large industrial-looking apartment building that also happened to be a Somali adult day care centre. Ghetto.

We took a very slow, metallic lift up to the top floor and walked to the end of the open-air hallway towards a short, sweaty Bangladeshi man waving at us. This time the bomb was BO-based and hot as fuck. He showed us to a relatively clean (hot) room with two single beds. There was no living room but there was a shared (hot) bathroom and (hot) kitchen. How many people would be living with us? 2 other couples. (And presumably a baby since Craig spoke to the guy earlier and apparently he had to call Craig back because a baby was crying into the phone). 3 couples under one very small roof? Ghetto.

Seriously? This is what my life is right now? Seeing smelly flats that are inhabited by either drug dealers and their mistresses or families with annoying kids?

I feel deflated. I feel like a balloon that’s been popped and trudded all over upon. This is not the life I pictured for me and Craig. This certainly isn’t the position I wanted to put Craig in.

And I know I sound like a snob but maybe that’s what I am. As Chris Rock said it best, women cannot go back. If you treat them once, you better be prepared to do it for the rest of your life. I myself have been gentrified and I don’t know how I’m going to deal with the next few months of my life. It’ll either go really poorly (homeless, back in Canada, broke) or really well (living in a flat, employed).

I just want to be honest with myself. I can’t pretend to like something that I don’t and I certainly can’t pretend that something is what it isn’t. This might not be what I wanted but at the least, I know Craig and I have had some interesting adventures out of it and I’m sure if this continues for 3 more months, I’ll be one tough cookie. It’s also given me a story to write about so that can’t be a bad thing either.

Photo courtesy of They All Hate Us

But I’ll admit it still sucks.

I need to remind myself that this is an experience. One day when I’m 80 and I’m looking back on my life, wondering where the time went, I won’t be saying: “I did nothing.”

J