The Sphere Effect

I have just got home from an absolute horror of a day on the London Underground Transport System. This evening it took me nearly THREE HOURS to get home!!!! NOT HAPPY JAN!!

My trip home:

Taxi from the office to Milton Keynes Central Train Station - 15 mins
Wait at MKCTS as I miss my train by 1 minute due to slow traffic - 10 mins
Train from MKCTS to Euston Station, London - 45 mins
Change to the Victoria Line which stops between Oxford Circus and Green Park due to signal failure at Brixton - wait for 30 mins.
Get to Green Park, decide it will be safter to go with Picadilly Line to Earl’s Court.
Get on the Picadilly Line - Train stops between station due to loss of electrical charge on the tracks - wait for another 30 mins.
Get to Earl’s Court - wait for 5 mins. Wimbledon Train arrives. Get on.
Get off due to announcement that the Wimbledon train has been turned into an Ealing Broadway service. Get onto Wimbledon train on Platform 4. Sit there, wait.
Another Wimbledon train arrives on Platform 3, and then leaves before my Wimbledon train.
Then my train leaves and gets delayed at West Brompton.
Finally get to East Putney and alight with a sigh of relief. Walk 5 minutes home!

So, a typical day in the life of a londonite!! It’s dreadful. There’s a very funny song going around about the London Underground. (It’s a bit rude, so don’t listen if you have sensitive ears - but it’s soooo true)

The London Underground song.

Well I’ve had a bit more time to think about what I want to do now, and although I still need to discuss it with MSF, I think I know what I want to do anyway.

In July, my sister Kellie, and two of my close friends, Mary and Katrina, are going to be coming here to spend ten days with me in Greece.

Then I plan to finish up my current contract with Accenture at the end of August, and Kath and I have decided to travel together around Eastern Europe. This should be awesome!! That will be about three weeks.

Then I will fly to Bangkok and spend five weeks travelling around Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I have never travelled in South East Asia, and I’m longing to start doing a bit more developing country travel.

There is a course I want to do in Melbourne which start on the 4th November, so I may fly straight in to Melbourne for a week, then visit friends in Sydney, and then finally get back home to Perth where I belong for a couple of months. I definately want to be in Perth for December and January.

At the end of December I will ask MSF to start looking for posts for me. I don’t know yet whether I will be going through MSF UK or Australia. I will have to evaluate both options, and it may be that I have to fly back to the UK before I go on my first contract.

Either way it is all very exciting, and it’s so nice to finally be able to make some plans!!