2nd Day - London

Landed in London. Hung around at the airport for a while thinking about what to do. Started googling blood donation clinics. Most would close before I got there but there were a few open late. Also, I needed to down a bunch of water and give my body time to process it, so I booked the latest possible donation time. The best option was a place in Brixton, which would prove to be an.... interesting place.

The trains in the underground were very disappointing. Very old, dingy, and extremely loud screeching coming from track. Definately in the hearing loss range. Still they did move quickly and run regulary. The stations were often a rabbit warren of tunnels, albeit reasonably signposted, but it was difficult to in my mind to visualise where the stations were and how they connected together.

The train I took was also headed to..... Cockfosters. Ok.

Brixton. As yes. Feels dodgy, the population is almost entirely non-native, very high police presence, and CCTV everywhere. There was a police van setup on the pavement outside the station, taking up half the walkway with a big nest of cameras and signs proclaiming they were doing facial recognition. I was very alert the whole time while out on the street, though I have been in far scarier places - here at least there were lots of people bustling about, it's worse when the street are lined with idle people just "waiting" and you constantly feel you are being sized up.

Checked into hotel. This was the first of many times where the default way to enter a place is for them to eyeball you before pressing a button to unlock the door. The kettle was also hardwired into the wall to prevent people stealing it. Otherwise the hotel was fine.

Downed a whole bunch of water, chilled out for a bit while my body digested it. Did a bit of my Uni work.

Also checked in Buckie. He was finishing up with his collegues. They were at Cambridge in a great hall having a send off. He sent me a pic, looks very much like Hogwarts!

Blood donation time! Even here there it is buzz-to-enter. And honestly the clinic felt very behind and kinda dingy compared to our donation centres at home. No motorised chairs, blood pressure taken by manual pump and dial, for fewer snacks/drinks, and generally not hyper-clean like Aussie ones are.

Filled out the form, there were some different questions than I got when back home. This is also where I first encounted what would become a reoccuring problem - they asked me for my name, DOB, and address. When I registered for the donation they required a UK address and at time I hadn't booked a hotel, so I could not even give that. So I picked a random address from google maps, that happened to be Sea Life - the London aquarium, that will be where I live. Like a penguin or something.

Their procedure required many times to confirm my details and I am required to give the correct answer. So time after time I would read the address out from my phone and confirm, yes, I live at a public aquarium.

Additionally because I just registered in their system without any prior history, it flagged me as a first time donor. At different stages of the process a new person would come to help me, see I was flagged as a first time donor and treat me with the kid gloves, asking if I was doing ok, how was I feeling, any pain or anxiety, would I like a snack or a drink, make sure to stay in the chair for 10 minutes after the donation and only leave if I was truly feeling ok. Everyone time I'm like, my dude, I probably more experienced with this process than you are - maybe I should if "you" are doing ok.

And yes new person, I do live in a marine park.

Also, back home they will give you a squeezy toy to play with using the arm the needle is in, to aid blood flow. Here they give you nothing and just ask that you make a squeezing motion with your hand??? After a while, when there was an issue with the flow rate, they scratched around and found what looked like a used toilet roll for me to play with. Whatever works I guess.

But all in all the donation went fine. Still miffed that I'm a day or so out with my donation timings but sometime you have to compromise.

On the way back to the hotel I grabbed some KFC, it's pretty much on par with what we have at home.

The rest of the evening was spent in my hotel room feverishly completing my Uni assignment. Some issues with formatting on Ipad that I couldn't resove but there are no marks for style - only that the information is clear. It was also awkward to be writing/calculating things and keep having to flick back to your notes or the text book when using only a single small screen, especially as the memory seemed limited and sometimes would have to reload the data that I just referred to a minute ago. Word is also really shit when using a local save file on an Ipad. Maybe, like Steven Jobs would suggest, the problem is not with the Apple product but that the user is wrong. Maybe I was.Read more