London

What better place to spend the Fourth of July than London. . .I spent three nights there over the revolutionary weekend, meeting up with ex-pat friends of various nationalities and picking up mother so that she could enjoy bit of a European vacation. Due to stereotypical London weather, we did some stereotypical tourist stuff, catching all the sites as it were - from Harrods to Westminster to the Tower of London to Greenich.

London

I spent the end of last week in London attending the Adaptation 2008 conference. I stuck around over the weekend to hang out with the Strachan family. Dropped in on St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern (and it's signature crack). We also took in a play at the National Theatre - entitled The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, it was a something equivalent to theatrical waterboarding. For amusing reviews, check out this or this.

On the long flights to and from, I managed to catch-up on my movie watching, cruising through the followng:

Beowulf
Elizabeth: The Global Age
Superbad
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Brave One
The Assassination of Jesse James
3:10 to Yuma
Invasion
Blues Brothers
The Jammed
In the Valley of Elah
Michael Clayton

Oh, and just for the heck of it, check out this list of songs about London - impressive.

It's a Small World After All

The world just got that much smaller. How small? Small enough that the traditionally marathon-esque journey from London to Sydney can now be undertaken by bus. Granted, it's a 12 week bus ride, but that's still a heck of a lot faster than the time needed by the first fleet to make the same journey by boat (eight months). So if you're in the market for a novel way to get to Australia (or to London), check out OZ-Bus.

An itinerary is provided here for the Australia-London leg, although the website does note: "Due to the unpredictability of political and environmental conditions, the route can be subject to change."