Today, my auntie and uncle from California and my littlest cousin came to visit. They’ve been visiting various places in Europe and are dropping by for a few days on the way back to America. Tomorrow, we go to legoland, hopefully with some kind of better discount than the web-preorder on, but sadly not quite as good as the one we could have gotten if we’d booked a few more days in advance.

This… is an interesting version of “Straight Out of Compton”.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 7, 2006, 3:37pm

Spent the last few days with my auntie, uncle and minicousin from California. On Friday we went to Legoland, which was cool and Lego-y. Yesterday was spent buying Wedgwood in Harrods and then zooming about on a bus tour of London. I suspect that the tour tape that we were listening to was trying to be funny, which only would work if the bus was full of probably British people who know various British-like in-jokes. So mostly, it was lost on a bus full of non-British tourists. And also, there were bits that were blatantly wrong as Tower Records got replaced by Virgin Megastore and why would you point it out on a bus tour anyway? Then there were bits that went “And on your left is the Tyburn Tree,” *cue everyone but me looking for some kind of a tree on the left* “which wasn’t actually a tree but a gallows and loads of people would be executed there and everyone would come and watch and it was better than Big Brother and very popular on bank holidays.” *cue people (again, except me) looking for a gibbet* “All that’s left of it is a tiny plaque marking the place where thousands of people died. In the middle of the traffic island.” *cue the rest of the passengers realising we went past it some time ago and stifled giggles from me*

A number of times my auntie turned round to ask me where something was and I had to point out that “oh, um. it’s not here anymore. they knocked it down. a few hundred years ago.” and stuff.

Randomly, the only time I seem to go sightseeing in London is when various family members arrive from other countries. Probably because I am the least baffled by the mysterious workings of public transport. Well. I can listen to announcements while applying them to the route we were intending to take at the same time.

Today, several hours were spent at the airport. Then some more hours were spent at Oriental City, where my mum had various chinese medical things done to her because she’s sick of the failure of western medicine to fix her high blood pressure satisfactorily.

During this… I mostly loitered and then had some teh tarik and bought a picture frame for my mum. And some delicious green kueh. I think the green kueh is the best kind.

Tomorrow… I will pack. Well. Try and stuff clothes into my suitcase around the box of tea for my auntie that takes up half of the suitcase. :/ I may resort to removing all the tea bags and shoving them in a more easily squashable bag. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be too much work. I have a tiny suitcase and a list of things other than clothes that I will be bringing.

Originally from her divine shadow on September 10, 2006, 1:29pm

On 11th September 2001, two things happened in New York. One, you’re unfortunately probably very familiar with and have been hearing about related things all day. The other was the announcement of an international day of peace, that would occur annually on 21st September.
The idea behind it was to try and work towards world peace, starting with one day of worldwide peace and ceasefire. Now, even one day of world peace doesn’t seem very likely to occur, but maybe if everyone works towards it a step at a time it could happen one day and then maybe after that continual world peace won’t seem so far away.

I found out about the whole peace day thing from a documentary I happened to catch on tv one night about this one guy’s attempt to get an international day of peace recognised by the UN and his subsequent realisation that just having a day of peace declared wasn’t enough and that people have to actually do something towards bringing about peace in any of its forms, even if it’s just on that day.

“ Documentaries sometimes document incredible things and I think our film did that because the creation of the Day came four days before 9/11. It was a beautiful moment and probably the greatest day of my life. Then to be outside the United Nations on the morning of 11 September and have the cameras running and for the planes to hit the buildings, words can’t really describe it. It was unbelievable. But as I say in the film I think it makes it all the more poignant. This is why we’ve got to come together. We’ve got to stand together as one. As Ahmad Fawzi from the UN says at the end of the film, we can’t sit around in our armchairs and expect peace to come, because it won’t.. “
– Jeremy Gilley, peace one day founder

Peace One Day website
Article from the times.
my lj entry on last year’s Peace Day

cross posted to peaceoneday

Originally from her divine shadow on September 11, 2006, 1:54pm