London: Six tips for staying sane, saving money, staying in touch - Los Angeles Times
It’s going to be an incredibly busy summer for London, starting with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee June 2-5, followed by World Pride Week in June, the Olympics in July and August and the Paralympics in August and September.
I just returned from four days in London -- so action-packed that I spent part of one day in Greenwich and then went to Paris for dinner and was back in London by midnight. (You can read about this and other suggestions for a different view of London in the Sunday Travel section or online.) Here are the strategies and lessons I learned on this trip, my third to the city. You will know some. You may scoff at others. Or you may have some of your own. If you do, send them to me at travel@latimes.com or share in the comments section below. Herewith, ideas on what travelers should know:
--Two words: Oyster card. That’s the card you need to buy the minute you get off the Heathrow Express that will allow you to use the London subway, trains and buses to get almost anywhere in the city. You buy the card, load it with some pounds and then you have only to plop the card on the ubiquitous round circle on every mode of transport to gain access. Also, you can get some discounts for having an Oyster, sort of like a AAA card but for urban transport.
--The subways are pretty intuitive, but the buses are not. The answer to that: The London Transport Planner. It is explicit about what bus, what stop and where. Pay attention when it says Stop Q or whatever. Otherwise you will, as I did, end up going the wrong way. (A stop may have your bus number but it won’t be going the way you want it.) The detailed instructions make the buses manageable.
--Two more words: chip and PIN. U.S. credit cards sometimes will not work abroad even in cosmopolitan-caters-to-tourist London (vending machines -- which is where I bought my Oyster card -- can be tricky) and having a chip and PIN card, which is the international equivalent of a U.S. credit card but with different security system, will come in handy. (The chip transmits data, and you verify your identity by using a personal identification number.) U.S. MasterCard and Visa are hoping to have this by 2013. Till then, some other options are available -- Chase British Airways, JP Morgan Select, among others. Other companies are testing them. I used a preloaded chip and PIN card, and it got me out of a couple of jams. Mine came from TravelEx, which gave me two in case I lost one. Pretty slick system.
--Phone home but be careful. This gives me such a headache, what with swapping SIM cards and all. Here’s what I did: I left the smartphones at home and bought an inexpensive Samsung phone for about $30. I topped it off with about $8 (5 pounds) of airtime and bought an international phone card for 3 pounds (about $5). This worked fine, but I burned through my time pretty quickly. By the end of my four days, I couldn’t make a call without retopping my phone with some time, but I could send text messages. I decided to stick with text messaging.
--Here’s why: I always travel with a netbook, my small laptop that I bought years ago for less than $300 and which has taken a huge amount of abuse (like dropping it on concrete, which shattered the screen but was easy to replace). Without a smartphone, I needed my mini-laptop (see transport planner above), which also allowed me to edit pictures in my free time.
My best purchase was a Huawei USB wireless stick with a SIM card. This allowed me to connect wirelessly to the Internet. With my Skype account and earphones with a microphone, I could call home when I wanted, which I did every day. My total phone bill using Skype was about $2.
Having the Internet allowed me to buy advance purchase tickets to some attractions (saving time and money), although I then had to find a place to print them out, which is another story. (Think thumb drive/USB stick.) You won’t find the proliferation of Internet cafes you once did (doesn’t everyone have a home computer or a smartphone?), so here’s what helped me out: Mail Boxes Etc. (Thanks to the kind folks at the MBE at 95 Wilton Road.)
--Wear two pairs of socks. Sean O’Neill, an ex-pat living in London, gave me this bit of wisdom: “London is like a track and field event every day.” He’s right. You’ll do a lot of walking, and your feet will need the protection. If your shoes won’t accommodate two pairs, well, then, reconsider your choice of footwear. The streets are uneven in many places; there’s construction everywhere and if you want to walk in stilettos, it’s your funeral. (I also packed Band-Aids and used all of them.)
London is as fashionable as any place in the world, but honestly, people aren’t going to be looking at your feet. On the other hand, I did confess to some London friends who had invited me to dinner that I had done the typically American thing of wearing only running shoes. We ended up dining in. The first thing the hostesses did was offer to let me take off my shoes. I don’t know if that’s because she didn’t want to see those shoes or if she felt sorry for my tender little Angeleno feet, but whatever it was, it was a godsend.
--Buy London A-Z. It’s a book full of maps. You may have a lovely map from a guidebook, but this is very detailed and if you’re trying to find a very specific address, this will help immensely. It’s about $11, it’s spiral-bound and you can usually get it at newsstands or shops that sell phone cards, which are pretty much everywhere. (You can find it on Amazon.com too, but it’s actually less — less! — in London.) And when you do ask for it, ask for it as "London A to Zed." That’s how the Brits pronounce Z. And it’s just one of the many differences that charmed the socks off me.
Vauxhall Mallards and Great Witchingham seek progress in ECB National Club Championship - EDP 24
Friday, May 25, 2012
4:36 PM
The two remaining Norfolk sides in the National Club Championship are set for a showdown this weekend.
Vauxhall Mallards will face Great Witchingham on Sunday in the group semi-final of the Kingfisher Beer Cup after both teams recorded comfortable wins in their second round ties last weekend.
Mallards registered an eight-wicket win at reigning East Anglian Premier League champions Cambridge Granta.
Skipper Paul Bradshaw removed both Granta openers with only 20 runs on the board, before Stuart Lipshaw’s five-wicket burst saw the hosts fold to 130 all out in the 40th over. The off-spinner claimed five for 23.
Carl Amos and David Turner put on 70 for the first Mallards wicket and Amos went on to steer the visitors to victory in the 40th over with an unbeaten 72 from 104 balls.
Witchingham thrashed Boston by 205 runs as Sam Arthurton, pictured, hammered a century.
Arthurton made 133, while James Hale (48no) and Carl Rogers (41) also contributed in a total of 279 for four from their 45 overs.
Boston were then skittled out for just 74, with Jonathan Spelman claiming four for 32 and two wickets apiece for James Spelman and Tom Collishaw.
Sunday’s match at Great Witchingham starts at 1pm.
London 2012 Olympics: Saudi Arabia Refuse to Lift Ban on Female Athletes - ibtimes.co.uk
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Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei are the only countries that have never fielded women on their Olympic teams. While Qatar and Brunei have announced plans to take female athletes to London, the Saudis have yet to do so.
According to Rogge, discussions with the Saudis are continuing.
He ruled out the possibility of Saudi woman competing in London under the Olympic flag, rather than as members of the Saudi team.
The IOC has come under pressure from human rights groups for not imposing sanctions against Saudi Arabia for not sending female athletes.
Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Witson said: "Saudi Arabia is the last holdout denying women and girls the ability to take part in sports.
"The clock is running out for Saudi women to join the games and for the international community to insist that the Saudi government allow women to participate."
Although Saudi Arabia may not have women who meet Olympic qualifying standards, the IOC is prepared to offer them special conditions or look for other solutions.
As recently as the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, 26 national teams did not include women.
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London 2012: Phillips Idowu faces monumental task - coach - BBC News
Olympic silver medallist Phillips Idowu is facing a "monumental battle" to win gold in the triple jump at the London Games, says his coach Aston Moore.
Idowu's main rivals, Frenchman Teddy Tamgho and American Christian Taylor, have better personal bests.
American Will Claye, 20, will also pose a threat to the 33-year-old Londoner.
"I believe it will be a monumental battle of will and talent. You hope that Phillips comes out on top," Jamaican-born Moore told BBC Sport.
"The fourth place could be a jump that would normally have won the competition, but you could finish fourth this year.
"[But] it's an Olympic medal, it's never going to be easy or everyone would be doing it."
At the Beijing Games, Idowu's best jump was 17.62m, but he was beaten into second by 17.67m from Portugal's Nelson Evora, who has been ruled out of the London Games by a stress fracture.
Since then new faces have emerged in the form of 21-year-old world champion Taylor, who beat Idowu in Daegu in August, world championship bronze medallist Claye and 22-year-old Tamgho, whose personal best of 17.98m is third on the all-time list.
"The two American guys are very dangerous," Moore continued. "Sometimes you can have good athletes but you know you've pretty much got their measure. [Yet] these guys are good winners.
"I'm almost forgetting the young French guy Teddy Tamgho, who we haven't heard from yet this year but he's been jumping 17.90s for the last two seasons."
Idowu, who came out on top against his rivals in his opening competition of the season at the Diamond League meeting in Shanghai last weekend, was devastated after coming second in Beijing and Moore says the 2009 world champion's target has not changed.
"The gold - that's what he's preparing for, that's what he's ready for and he will be disappointed with anything other than gold.
"He wanted to win the last one but he came second by 5cm. He wants to put that right on home soil.
"He's a Londoner, a Hackney boy. I think he's going to love it."
UK Athletics' national triple jump coach Moore, himself a former triple jumper for Great Britain, started working with Idowu a few months before the Beijing Olympics and admits he has seen a change in the athlete ahead of London.
"I wouldn't say that pressure is getting to him but certainly with a lot of the athletes, as it's a home Olympics, people are much more focused, and I've noticed that from him," said Moore.
"He's much more focused on what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. My job is to make sure it doesn't become over the top and he starts looking at every last detail. I think together we can manage that quite well.
"Those five years are his most successful so that makes our relationship reasonably tight because I am the person that has helped him through his best period as an athlete."
Moore guided Commonwealth gold medallist Ashia Hansen to a world record and has worked with UK Athletics since 2000, but he admits he will feel the nerves when Idowu lines up for his first jump at the Olympic Stadium in London.
"I'm usually most nervous in the first round, because this is the one. This is the one that sets the scene for everything.
"I want the jump to send a particular message out to every other competitor. So I'm most nervous about that one because I want him to nail it, and then get better from there. Normally my blood pressure and heart rate and everything jump on that one.
"Then, it's work as usual."
London picked as test bed for Skynet-like Intel tech - The Register
London will be a guinea pig for future smart city technology after Intel pledged to spend a slice of £25m ($40m) on a new lab in the capital. The chipmaker will also plough millions into research centres dotted around Blighty.
Intel will set up the unwieldily monikered Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities in the capital in partnership with Imperial College and University College London, it announced yesterday at an event at 10 Downing Street.
The company will spend the £25m over the next five years on all five of its Collaborative Research Institutes, but wouldn't give the breakdown of exactly how much London would be getting. ICL and UCL will also chip in some dosh, but again no figures were bandied about.
At the same event, Chipzilla said it will open a string of research centres around the UK, investing around £45m in an Intel Labs Europe UK R&D network: this will employ 350 researchers in labs including the one in London and others in Brighton, Swindon and Aylesbury to start with, and five more to be decided on by the end of the year.
"It is investments like this that will help us put the UK on the path we need to take to create new jobs, new growth and new prosperity in every corner of our country," Chancellor George Osborne said at the launch.
"We are determined to make the UK the best place to do business in the world and a great place for technology companies to invest and build new business. It is encouraging to see major tech partners like Intel investing in this country as a result of the policies that the Government has put in place," he self-congratulated.
Intel will use the London lab to suss out smart city technology and it will also team up with Shoreditch's Tech City entrepreneurs to use their "social media expertise" to "identify and analyse emerging trends with cities".
"Using London as a testbed, researchers will explore technologies to make cities more aware by harnessing real-time user and city infrastructure data," the company said in a statement, describing similar Skynet-like smart city research elsewhere.
"For example, a sensor network could be used to monitor traffic flows and predict the effects of extreme weather conditions on water supplies, resulting in the delivery of near real-time information to citizens through citywide displays and mobile applications."
Rattner: City under pre-planned stress
Intel CTO Justin Rattner also said that the London Olympic games would give the firm a great opportunity to look at a city under pressure and figure out where the weak points are.
"London is, as everyone knows, the host city to the 2012 summer Olympic Games, and we plan to use the event to understand the experiences of a city under pre-planned stress. What systems worked or didn’t work and why? How were the daily lives of the citizens, workers, and businesses of London affected?" he wondered out loud.
As well as giving Intel the opportunity to see it mess up, London is also a good choice for the research institute as the fifth largest city in the world.
"It has the largest GDP in Europe, and with over 300 languages and 200 ethnic communities, its diversity is a microcosm of the planet itself, offering an exciting test bed to create and define sustainable cities," Rattner enthused. ®
London 2012: Jessica Ennis Labelled 'Fat' By UK Athletics Official, Says Coach - huffingtonpost.co.uk
Jessica Ennis was labelled "fat" by a senior official at UK Athletics, according to her coach Toni Minichiello.
A "high-ranking person" at the governing body said the 26-year-old poster goal of the London 2012 Olympics is "fat and she's got too much weight", according to Minichiello.
The 45-year-old has coached the heptathlete since she was 11, and poured scorn on the criticism, clarifying Ennis' weight hadn't fluctuated.
"The things you can't deal with are what we've dubbed 'silver bullets'," the 45-year-old told The Guardian. "And other people. You can't deal with the expectations and pressures that are on other people, like the BOA's [British Olympic Association] team management."
Born in Sheffield, like Ellis, Minichiello suggested the distractions in the build-up to the Games stemmed from "people in fairly high positions, who should know better".
Commercial activities have been ramped up with just over two months to go until the Olympics begin, and Minichiello bemoaned the "advice" he has personally received, claiming it is easy to get "distracted by" the "background noise".
The former civil servant however conceded Ennis' image has elevated as London 2012 looms, but stressed she remained humble.
"The difference is that she's now a 'personality'. If she walks into the dining room, people will go 'Ooh, that's Jessica Ennis from athletics.'
"Equally, she'd turn round and go 'Wow, that's David Beckham on the Great Britain football team.' So there's lots of distractions."
UK Athletics have declined to comment.
Business Car Manager News: Astra Confirmed for UK and Jobs Safeguarded for a Decade - YAHOO!
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