MrsHughey.com

Meals, Macs, Mistakes, and Michael Moore

I have too many entries I want to write at once. I think I'll try to keep this one to basically my weekend activities.

On Friday evening, we attended our 2nd black tie dinner at Herford. This one was a guest dinner, which means that each member of Hertford's MCR who signs up to attend may also sign up a guest to attend. This is unique because normally only MCR members are allowed to attend these things. A lot of our fellow members brought guests from their programmes of study who are students at Oxford University's other colleges. Some brought their tutors or friends who aren't students at Oxford. There were about 60 people there in all including Hertford MCR members. Andrew and I attended without guests, mostly because our friends are all Hertford students and we didn't want to pay for a guest who we don't know very well.

Anyway, it was very nice. I wore my basic black dress again but this time looked quite blonde. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera and the MCR's digital camera ran out of batteries just as I was about to start taking pictures. Anyway, the dinner was actually pretty good and, as usual, we retired to the Octagon for drinks and chocolates afterward. We spent much of the evening talking with our friend Emily. After the Octagon we spent a few minutes in the college bar, then headed home for an early morning Saturday.

We got up before 6 on Saturday. I'd packed our bag on Friday before we went to bed, but we still had several things to do before we left Oxford. We headed to the computer lab (where I made the previous entry), printed out our tickets for the convention (the printer had been broken so we couldn't do so earlier), looked up the convention hotel and called to get a room (their online booking system said they were full, but we got a room when we phoned), and then headed toward the bank to get some cash. After that we finally made it to the bus stop to await the Oxford Tube. This is a double-decker bus that goes to and from London about every 15 minutes every day, all day and night.

When the coach got to our stop there were already quite a few people on board (it starts from the main coach station and I think most people pick it up there). We got two tickets (£7.50 each) and found seats on the top level. The bus was very stuffy and it can be a bit rocky on top, but the journey went fine. We got off the bus at Notting Hill and walked to the underground station there. The plan was to go from there to Kings Cross station and change to the Northern line (a different underground line), then take that train to the Angel underground station, which is close to the convention center.

Well, as they say, life is what happens while you're making other plans. We were on the first train when an announcement came on that the train would terminate before we got to our desired station (King's Cross). As you can imagine, it was very crowded and we had simply gotten on a slightly different line than we wanted. No problem, we could simply hop off this train at the next station and hop on another that should take us to King's Cross. Well, not quite. Actually, the line we wanted to take was doing work on the tracks, so we would have to go to the last stop we could, get off the underground, go out on the street, and take a special bus to King's Cross. AARGH!

We were just figuring all this out and about to step off the first underground train when Andrew realized he had left his planner (with, among other things, his ID, the cash we had gotten out for the weekend, and his Palm!) on the coach!

The first thing I did was to try to soothe him. It would be okay. We'd call the Oxford Tube office and let them know he'd left it. My mobile phone didn't get a signal in the underground, though. No problem, we have to go back up on the street to catch the bus.

So we found the bus stop and it was raining and crowded. We huddled under my umbrella and he tried to call the Oxford Tube office, but there was no answer. We figured maybe they were closed on Saturday. We finally got a bus which we were told would take us to King's Cross. Fortunately, there was no additional charge for this because Andrew had been carrying pretty much all our cash in his planner. So the bus was VERY crowded and the traffic was heavy. A lady kept yelling at other passengers about where and how they were standing. A guy with a backpack stood near her and she yelled at him to watch where he was going with that thing (he was nowhere near her). I was smushed up near the back door of the bus where people had to exit (it was that or sit on someone's lap!) and she yelled at me, 'Not a good place to stand, young lady!' As if I had a choice!

Finally, we got to King's Cross where we very happily and frantically retrieved our luggage from the luggage area and got off the bus. King's Cross is a very large station and serves both the underground and regular train lines. We found our way to the underground station and eventually sorted out what line we needed to be on. Meanwhile, Andrew continued to try calling the Oxford Tube office or sort out something he could do to get his stuff back.

We had to wait quite a few minutes, but eventually the train got there to pick us up (we had now been in London for several hours). It brought us to the Angel station where we exited the underground. I used a map on a scarf I got from my mother in law last Christmas to verify the direction we needed to go in, and we walked a few blocks to the hotel. Fortunately we didn't have much trouble finding it.

It was about noon then, but they didn't have a non-smoking room available yet, so we said we'd check in our bag and head to the convention for a few hours until we could get a non-smoking room.

We went into the convention and were wandering around. Andrew was very, very worried about his stuff (rightfully so). I got an idea of something we could do to help. So he called our friend Jon and asked him to do us a big favor. Andrew explained how he left his planner on the coach (to which Jon said, 'Oh, shit!' LOL) and agreed to go to the stop and find out if it had been found or where it might be. With that taken care of, we had done all we could to find it. We knew that most likely it would be turned in, although possibly missing the palm and the cash.

The convention, to be honest, was extremely lame. I was glad it only cost £5 to get in becaue it was barely worth that. There weren't all that many booths (3 floors worth, but the venue had four floors, so one floor was completely unused and there were several more empty spaces). The really bad thing was that there was nothing there that was particularly novel or interesting. Sure, the Apple booth was cool, but we had seen everything they had at our Apple store in Tampa. The other booths were exhibiting the same software and hardware you'd likely see in a MacWarehouse catalogue.

There were printer companies, software companies, and Apple, and that's about it. Dull! There were no quirky t-shirts, souvenires, imac-themed desk accessories, bumper stickers, booths offering to custom paint your mac. In short, there was absolutely nothing there that made us go, 'oooh! I need this' or even 'what a great solution to the problem I didn't know I had!'. It was a big let down. I had thought I'd at least get a carrying case for my ibook, but there was only ONE booth there selling them and they were definitely nothing special.

I've never been to a convention where I didn't find at least a few booths that were really cool. And the few workshops they had were also not interesting; it was the same stuff you get at an Apple store in the US.

So after we spend a few hours there and only bought a couple of things (Andrew bought me The Sims, which is a blast!, and a USB recharger for our mobile phone), we went back to the hotel. By this time I was really hungry, but we didn't have our cash.

The room we were to get wasn't quite ready but the guy at the desk got us another one in a few minutes. We went up to our room, which was small but very comfy and clean. We explored our options for eating (room service or eating out on the credit card) and called for our bag to be sent up. We decided we would grab a bite of late lunch out (cheaper than room service) and then Andrew would go back to the nearest Oxford Tube point and see if they could give him any information on his lost planner. So we had a nice, quick lunch and then I went back to the hotel while he took the mobile phone and headed out for an adventure. I had a headache, so I tried to take a bath but couldn't get the water to heat up enough to make it worth it. So I just took a nap.

A little while later, Andrew called from the bus to say that Jon had spoken to the Oxford Tube people in Oxford. His planner had been turned in and was safely in their office in the safe. He'd have to wait for Monday to get it, but it was there. Whew! So he got off the bus (which was stuck in traffic anyway) and headed back to the hotel, having failed to re-encounter the Oxford Tube.

By the time he got back it was early evening. We'd seen signs that Michael Moore was in town with a sort of stand-up show. Andrew called to find out about it and got us tickets for the 9:00 show. Cool! I used to want to make documentaries professionally, so I really dig Michael Moore, who did the film Roger & Me. Anyway, we took more trains to more stations and walked through some pretty seedy areas of town, but we got to the theatre with about an hour to spare before the show. I was hungry so we popped into a little local Italian place across the street and filled up.

When we were done, we had to wait outside (Michael's first show ran late) but we eventually got in. The venue was small and not very posh, but we could see pretty well from row Q. He talked for about 3 hours about politics and such. Much of it was comedy, other stuff was very serious. Overall it was a good show, although there were parts I disagreed on. A very interesting show, though. After it was over we headed back through the not-so-nice area of town and took the tube back to the hotel.

On Sunday we slept in a little, packed, went for breakfast at Starbucks, and spent much of the rest of the day on various methods of public transportation to get back home. We hadn't missed much in Oxford except bad weather. Once we were unpacked we headed to the Hertford library to play The Sims. It turns out the game is unbelievably addictive and we wound up playing until after 11! We had to force ourselves to stop in order to get the last bus of the night to take us home!

So I realize it's long and rambly, but that was my weekend.

Posted by Erin at November 25, 2002 12:44 PM