London: The Big Not Easy

Okay, I take it back. I spoke too soon. There is no balance - just "not easy"-ness.

My friend Joe commented on my posting "the opposite of easy" by saying that my experience at the bank was nowhere near as difficult as any of our experiences with bureaucracy in Japan. True - that experience wasn't... but last night's ordeal officially makes London more difficult than most anything I've had to deal with in Japan.

In order to make this (very) long story short, suffice it to say that - due to a maintenance worker's strike on the tube - traveling to and from the airport to pick up Rob was more than a little difficult. What should have been approximately one hour each way, with 30-45 minutes of wait time at the airport turned into cramped, hot, sticky masses in the last Piccadilly train to Heathrow, two and a half-hours of waiting at the airport, and a more than 3-hour/1-train/3-bus trip all around London, and eventually - home at 2am. My seven hour travel time yesterday, in fact, took longer than it takes to fly from Toronto to London!

Luckily, Rob held back until we arrived home to drop the bomb --- a man he sat beside on the plane had offered to give us a ride home! AAAAARRRRRGH!

I have to hand it to Rob's dad, Eddie, for giving me a new name for London - "The Big Not Easy."