Category Archives: In London

Today I’m going!!!!!!!!!!!!

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We can’t wait to go to London. We bet it’s going to be so fun and cool. We want to go to the British Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Cartoon Museum. On Sunday we are having lunch with our friend, Martin (not a Martian), at a restaurant near Kings Cross Station.

Hanging skeletons in the Natural History Museu...

Hanging skeletons in the Natural History Museum of London. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s 12 hours until our plane leaves. We’re catching a taxi to the airport at about 5pm today to go and check in. Between now and then we have to finish packing. But we don’t have to go to school or work today, so that is good.

In just over 36 hours we will be in London.

The first thing we will do there is catch a red double-decker bus to Hamleys toy store in Regent Street.

Red London Bus

Red London Bus (Photo credit: patrick francis)

Hamleys in Regent Street

Hamleys in Regent Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are really excited!

By Oliver.

6 days to go, tips for on the move

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Louisa woke me very early today so I’ve made good progress on my last big talk. Just one section to rewrite and then I’ll practice Tuesday morning (come and sit in and give me feedback if you are in the vicinity; Tuesday 11 June at 9.30am on Level 3 of the Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University). I’m a little worried that my talk is way too long but hopefully it’s interesting. We’ll see. In the 20 years I have been going to conferences I have seen so many different kinds of Keynote Talks: talks that are light on data but inspire you with a big picture; talks that are all data (lots and lots and lots of data) and not so many grand ideas; talks that are quite impersonal and objective; and talks that reflect the speaker’s journey and passions as much as their work.

What’s the best (kind of) Keynote Talk you’ve seen?

Since I’ve made good progress on the talk and am likely to have it completely drafted for my practice on Tuesday morning, I am happy to think about the packing and planning again. So it was a case of good timing today when I received an email from my friend, Karen G (hi Karen!). She sent me a few tips for London sightseeing: the Yeoman Warder’s Tour in the Tower of London and audio tours for kids in the British Museum. I love audio tours! So much better than finding your own way to the best exhibits and reading little plaques! She also sent me some tips about eating cheaply in London: Boots pharmacy, Budgen’s supermarket and Pret a Manger. I knew about the first and the third but not the second. Great options for fresh sandwiches, cut fruit, healthy snacks and inexpensive drinks.

Finally, Karen warned me that in the last few months there has been a huge increase in the number of iPhones and iPads stolen in London from people using them while out and about on the street and in cafes. I presume by snatch and run or pick pocketing? As you might have read, we gave Oliver a new iPad mini as an early birthday present for this trip. The last thing we want is for it to be stolen or lost. And as I’ve prepared for our trip I’ve tossed up whether to use travel apps (on my iPhone or Oliver’s iPad mini) to navigate or just use an old-fashioned guidebook. I had a well-loved London Eyewitness Travel guide, which one of my brothers never returned after borrowing it for a trip. In the end I decided to buy a copy of the Lonely Planet’s new, anniversary London guidebook (on sale for $20 at Myer last week). Although I am almost entirely digital in my workflow (on my Mac Book and iPad) and reading (with a Kindle), I will still prefer to pop this in our day pack as we wander around and not risk the iPads being stolen or lost.

Our other (mild) defence against theft is to disguise the iPads. I really love iPad DODOCases. They are hand-made in San Francisco by a traditional book binding company and make your iPad look like a hard cover book. Hopefully less attractive to thieves?! Here is a picture of Oliver’s new cover — outside and inside — and my cover. They are really sturdy and beautifully made.

My last “on the move” tip for today is the Cash Passport. Normally when I travel I take a small amount of the local currency and then withdraw money at ATMs at my destination. I’ve run into a couple of problems with this strategy: not being able to find an ATM when I need it or the ATM not spitting out the cash but deducting my balance anyway. My bank also charges a hefty fee for the cash advance and the exchange rate is pretty lousy. This time I am using a multi-currency Travelex Cash Passport. You buy it at a Travelex branch or online before you leave and load it with amounts of the currencies you need. So I have one loaded with pounds and with euros. Unfortunately I can’t load kroners on it. You get two cards (with different pins) in case you lose one or one is stolen. You can check your balance online and reload the card if you need to. Most importantly, the Cash Passport is partnered with MasterCard, so you can use it at any ATM or point of sale that accepts MasterCard. I bought mine on Friday and locked in the exchange rates (which are falling for the Australian dollar).

So we are nearly all set. In these last few days we’ll be picking up dry cleaning, washing clothes we want to take (and wearing all our daggy clothes!), packing, getting together paperwork, backing stuff up on Dropbox, etc etc.

Any last-minute (or not really that last-minute compared to when other people pack) tips for us?

1 week to go, the conference Grand Slam!

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So Oliver and I will be boarding our plane almost exactly a week from now.

I was going to post about conferences: what they are, what happens at them. But I haven’t had time to finish it amidst writing the three talks I’ll be giving at my two conferences. I’ve finished two and I am working on the third talk. It’s the longest talk — the 45 minute keynote — and I want to make a splash with it.

For this talk I am using Prezi instead of Powerpoint. Prezi is a relatively new online presentation platform. Whereas Powerpoint is very linear in the way you present information, Prezi is more visual. It’s hard to explain without seeing it so check out a simple presentation that Oliver wrote in Year 2 (here).

Oliver's Prezi about Anzac Day

Oliver’s Prezi about Anzac Day

Prezi is working well for this keynote talk because I’m hoping to take the audience on a bit of journey from the early days of our collective memory work until now, and the big, new questions that we are grappling with. Prezi lets you map that journey visually. Perhaps I will post the link to my Prezi after I have written and given it.

Meanwhile, I am writing it! The last few days I have tried to focus just on this task, staying up late and getting up early to finish it before we fly. While writing I’ve managed to catch a bit of the French Open. I have lots of happy memories of writing grants until all hours while watching either the Australian Open (which falls during peak ARC grant writing time) or Wimbledon. I am a big tennis fan.

One of my happiest travel days ever was during 6 weeks I spent in London in 2001. I was visiting at University College London and attending the Annual Meeting of the British Psychological Society and then flying to Valencia, Spain for the 3rd International Conference on Memory. On this particular day — a warm, sunny London summer day in June — I got up early and caught a train out to Wimbledon. I joined the queue for a ticket for the outside courts. The queue was 3 hours long but there was lots of entertainment along the way; the English really know how to queue! Once inside I sat right beside one of the outside courts and watched Frenchman Arnaud Clement play. Later I watched some doubles. It was a magical day. Sun. Pimms. Tennis. Gift shop. Too bad that Oliver and I will be a little early in London for the 2013 Championships.

I have often talked about trying for a conference Grand Slam. But it is tricky finding conferences in Melbourne, Paris, London and New York to coincide with the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbeldon and US Open. I’ve already been to Wimbledon, as you’ve heard, and to the Australian Open (a few times). I have a great new collaborator and colleague in New York, Professor Suparna Rajaram, who is just as keen on the tennis as I am. Now to find a French collaborator! Not sure if I could complete the conference Grand Slam in one year but it is always good to have a goal in life!

English: Wimbledon Championships

English: Wimbledon Championships (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

11 days to go, busy, busy, busy …

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11 days until we fly and we are flat-out with preparations. I am busy writing three conference talks (a 5 min one, a 12 min one and a 45 min one) and helping my academic colleagues and students with their talks. There is a large group of us going to the Aarhus and Rotterdam conferences and we are all giving at least two papers each. So we are frantically working out what we want to say, making slides, practising and timing our talks, and getting posters printed. Normally I would keep working on the talks as I am travelling to the conference or even after the conference starts (at night in the hotel), but I want to finish them before I leave so I have as much time as possible free for Oliver. Tomorrow I will post more about academic conferences.

For now, here is a link to a live web cam of Tower Bridge in London. It’s pretty cool. At any time of the day or night you can log on and see what is happening in London and on the Bridge. Here is what it looked like a moment ago: at around 10.30am in Sydney but 1:30am in London.Screen shot 2013-06-04 at 10.25.02 AM

For more live web cams in London try here.

Oliver and I may well be standing on this bridge if you log on to the Tower Bridge webcam in 11 or 12 days time. We will be the ones waving at you!

19 days to go, some favourite books about …

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… journeys, travel, London, England, Denmark, The Netherlands?

Amanda recommends:

1. Snobs by Julian Fellowes. Fellowes is best known as the creator and writer of Downton Abbey but he is also an accomplished novelist. Snobs was his first novel. Set in London and rural England, it tells the story of beautiful Edith Lavery who marries, but not for love, a wealthy English aristocrat. If you like Downton Abbey, you’ll enjoy this.

2. Letters from London by Julian Barnes. Barnes was the London Correspondent to the New Yorker for four years from 1990 to 1994. This book is a collection of his published essays from that period. For instance, in an essay called “Froggy, froggy, froggy” he describes the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994, which forever linked “old enemies” Britain and France (unfortunately we won’t have time to ride the Channel Tunnel on this trip). My favourite essay is the cautionary tale of the fall of Lloyds of London. A wonderful book.

3. The Stages: A Novel by Thom Satterlee. I mentioned this book in a previous post. It tells the story of Daniel Peters, a man with Asperger’s who lives in Copenhagen and works as a translator at the Kierkegaard Research Center. The novel starts with the murder of his boss and former girlfriend and the theft of a newly discovered Kierkegaard manuscript. Daniel is suspected and joints the hunt for the real murderer, although his Asperger’s makes it difficult for him to interpret the behaviour of others and to deal with the twists and turns of the murder mystery. The book paints a loving picture of Copenhagen and the Danish people, as well as a realistic portrait of living a life with Asperger’s.

Oliver recommends:

4. The Hobbit or There and Back Again by Oxford Professor, J.R.R. Tolkien. The quintessential travel story. A life changing journey. Oliver and I have been reading The Hobbit and we recently watched the first instalment of the three-part movie. We don’t expect our journey to be as eventful as Bilbo’s, although Oliver is willing to give Midsummer Night’s Dream a whirl at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre London if he is likely to see elves and dwarves!

5. Gangsta Granny by David Walliams. You might know Walliams as one half of the Little gangsta-grannyBritain team. This book is set in London. It tells the story of Ben who is sent to stay at his Granny’s house. He thinks she is really boring until he finds out that she used to be an international jewel thief and all her life she has plotted to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. Now that Ben is staying, she has the help she needs to do it. Oliver loved this book; it’s the reason we are visiting the Tower of London during our visit.

Do you have some favourite books about journeys and travel? Or favourite books set in or about any of the places we will visit?

 

Where would you go in London?

As you might have read below, our first destination is London. We’ll be based in Paddington.

Where are your favourite places to go? Where have you been in London that an 8 year old boy would love?

Click “leave a reply” to add your suggestions. Thanks!