So, I have been in England for about 10 days now. The weekend before last was wasted on decompressing. I had arrived on Saturday and had a completely miserable time trying to get to my wretched pitiful excuse of a hotel. The saving grace is the cheap Irish beer and the food. Nottingham has a few decent restaurants and pubs, but the drive there is just annoying, so I stuck to my hotel most evening except when people from work wanted to head out on a team dinner.

Last Friday I got a call from my old friend Rajiv who used to live in Delhi and is now here in the UK doing his MBA at University of Leeds. He invites me over for the weekend. He seems to have lost the charger to his cell phone, so the cheap bastard heads to a friend’s place to charge his phone for a few hours. Consequently, it is almost impossible to get in touch with him. He sends me an email with his address, which I plug into a Mapquest® clone and even though it’s about 60 miles north from me, the directions have 47 steps to them. There was no way I wasn’t going to get lost. I head of at 2pm on Friday towards Leeds with no issues.

My only gripe about driving here is not the side of the road or any other rubbish. It’s the radio stations and the choice of music for this entire country. All I hear are chart topping pop/dance hits on the 500 BBC stations I can find. I ask a colleague why can I not find decent music here. I am told that they don’t listen to country. HEY! WAIT A FRIKKIN MINUTE! Just because I live in the US does not mean I listen to country. I like my rock hard and heavy, from most decades, though the 80’s with their sexual questioning still makes me nervous.

Regardless, I tuned to the least obnoxious (read: someone who wasn’t obsessed with royalty or some silly reality show on the "telly") radio station and started my drive up north on the M1. Now the M1 is an interesting motorway. Nowhere is the speed limited posted. People have told me that I should know that the speed there is 70mph. HOW would I know? That wasn’t on my visa application form, nor did the Captain announce it as we touched down at Manchester airport. So after I had asked around, I figured out how to spot a traffic camera and by this time I was sensitized to the road signs and the painted signs on the road. Yes kids, they paint signs on the road, so you always know if this lane will take you elsewhere. Very helpful indeed! How about posting the speed limit now?

So, I’m driving my turbo charged Vauxhall Astra Sport, listing to very dodgy people on the radio and I see the sign to exit towards Leeds city center. I take the exit and the follow writing on the road and all the signs. If you remember, my directions had some 47 steps to it. I was at step 5 of 47 and the next few turns were going to happen in 4 miles. Well to be absolutely correct, the last mile had 18 steps to it. Valiantly I try to drive and follow my handwritten directions to my friend’s home. I get to the city center and then I try my level best to work through the last 7 steps to the street I needed to be on, all in vain. I circled the 15 blocks about 5 times trying to figure things out, giving up I called my friend who told me that I am almost spitting distance from his place. So I park, illegally of course, and he picks me up. He tells me that everyone has the same trouble once they get to the city center.

I walk in to his place and meet with his friend and we quickly drink a pint of the good stuff. We then walked over to the city center and bought me a phone since the one I had was locked for a different network. The Motorola Razr V3 was ridiculously cheap and I popped my sim card and things were all hunky dory. We got back to his place since I had to be in on a conference call with my team in San Mateo. I got dropped off the call, but I managed to get my status update done and then it was time to head out.

My friend said before we go out, we should have a couple of drinks. I said sure, Tricia can’t reach out and touch me here… We have a couple of beers and we catch up while I tell Loren about our wonder years. Yeah, back in the day we used to be hellraisers. I kid you not, we had people wondering what we would do next. We used to be invited to all parties and keg-stand was our middle name. I held the record for a while, but some young whipper snapper snatched it after a few years. Well, all records must be broken right?

Now my old buddy, my pal, my friend, pulls out this pink bottle of some Irish liqueur. He had chilled it and poured out large shots for all of us. He said, don’t worry, it only has 60% alcohol content and we won’t drive, so it’s all good. Yeah right, last time I trust that skunk. His way of drinking it was to hold the entire shot in your mouth for as long as possible. I used to be a heavy weight a long time back, now I’m more bantam weight with my drinks. My ‘ol buddy is the fly weight right there. So after 2 shots, I him that I’m good and we should head out. So we call a cab and on the way to our destination, we stop his friend’s place and mock them for wanting to stay home and head off. Yeah, what a friends for?

After that we went to some Casino in the center of the city and gambled for a bit. I played poker as always and we won enough to cover expenses for the night. One thing I did notice on the streets of Leeds is how hot all the girls were. Again, don’t get me wrong here. I love Tricia more than one can imagine, but she has told me that I can check out the menu but cannot order. Now that I have my back covered, back to the hot babes. For some reason these girls don’t seem to feel the bitter cold. These were some of the most scantily dresses girls I had seen ever… in the middle of winter. It was about 2°C (~35°F) with very blustering winds. I was cold in a pullover and a thick wool jacket, and I almost never get cold.

Most of these girls were even dressed very provocatively. They we dressed as nurses or French maids or air hostesses, only the smutty version from cheap porno flicks. There are clubs and pubs all over Leeds. I guess I should mention that Leeds is a university town. I guess that explains a lot?

We got back to my friend’s place late and I just crashed. The next morning, I woke up at 6am as usual and decided to get online. I chatted with my dad about the next weekend, when he was supposed to head to London. It was too early/late for Trish to be online. I hung out till my friends were up. Loren them had to go to work, so Rajiv and I headed out to get gas for the car. I guess I should say, “get a few liters of petrol”. We then went to his university. The University of Leeds and walked around for a bit, but the weather was getting worse and some rain was starting to come down, so we jumped back in the car. We headed off in the quest for breakfast. My old buddy decided that beer with breakfast is a good idea. I stuck to eggs with croissants and coffee. What can I say, I’m old fashioned. As the weather went from bad to worse, we headed back to Rajiv’s place and decided to watch a movie till Loren got back. We saw “Thank you for smoking”. This was one of the better written scripts I had seen in a while. Loren still hadn’t shown up, so we dropped the quality a few notches and watched “Click”, which was funny in parts, but the usual fare from the man who made other classics like “Happy Gilmore”. After Loren got back, we gave her some time to rest and get ready.

We got to this place called “Red Chili”, an excellent Chinese restaurant in downtown Leeds. They had a bit of a wait, but they also a very convenient bar/lounge. After a round of beer, we headed downstairs where the dinner was just superb. Now, I’ve been to plenty of Chinese restaurants and this one just outdid all the others. They were priced quite reasonably too. It was about £30 for the lot including dim sum appetizers. We walked around for a bit and eventually headed back to Rajiv’s since Loren was getting tired.

The next day was better, now please understand that this is a completely relative statement. It was cold and blustery, but no rain, so better. Rajiv’s idea of breakfast is hot dogs in a slice of bread. :) Funny, I haven’t done that since university, but heck they are in university, sl all is forgiven. So we head off to York. This was Remembrance Day and there were people everywhere. The drive to York is quite nice and we got there in about half an hour. As we drove in and parked, I could not help but notice how old and preserved the town is. This was one place that wasn’t bombed during WWII. The architecture was stuck in the 1500s and it was great to wander around in.

There was a service to remember those who gave up their present to protect other’s future and the fact that so much was owed by so many to the women and men who defended the country. It was a somber and humbling experience. The Duke and Duchess of York, the Chief Justice, Commandants of the Defense Forces, Chief of the York Police and many war veterans were there including many regiments, squadrons and units of currently serving officers. They laid wreaths of poppies at the base of the memorial and paid respects to the people who lost their lives.

We walked around York, saw the Minster, the Castles, the ramparts and other streets drenched in history. There was a street market and lots of shopping. I’m glad Trish wasn’t there. She would not have cared that the currency was twice the value of the dollar. I bought her some things from a store she likes called Lush. Happy that some gifts have been bought, we walked around some more, soaked in the local atmosphere, had lunch at an exquisite little Italian pizzeria and headed back to the car. We drove back to Leeds, where I dropped my friends off and as I was heading off they gave me gifts for Trish and Eve… NOTHING FOR ME. It’s always like that. They feel sorry for my wife and child and give them consolation gifts, but nothing for me. Super sucky!

The drive to Leeds was uneventful. I got a good nights sleep and went back to work the next day after a good weekend.

Bad English weather, good friends, English history, semi clad “slappers”, excellent beer and good food, what did I miss here?