London: Commuting like a Londoner and where I stayed

The public transportation in London is superb; there is no need to drive. The Tube, trains and buses get you anywhere, on time! Everyday, I'd walk a few minutes to the bus stop, take a bus to the Earlsfield train station (it's a 15 min walk from home to the station if you are rajin), take the train on the Jubilee Line to Waterloo, then take the Tube to London Bridge station.

My trusty Tube map, a need to be carried everywhere as the Tube network is just extensive! Map torn and charn already.

These are the signs of the destination at each station. There are extremely popular and you can see them on T-shirts as well. And there, I saw names that I've only previously seen on the Monopoly board! There was Marylebone, Whitechapel, King Cross St.Pancras and of course, Oxford Street and Bond Street! We didn't go to Mayfair though.

This was in the train out to Canary Wharf. If you enlarge the image, you can see that they have Saliva Recovery Kits to match your spit against the National DNA bank! Don't spit spit!

I thought this was catchy. The coloured names are actually names of the stations.

The transport services are excellent. Tubes run at 2-3 minute intervals. If one of the networks is off, you can still get to your destination as a few lines run to 1 place. The train moves at every 10 minutes and once again, there are a few trains that you can take. Busses come at most every 10 minutes and since there are a few as well, then your wait is actually very short. So, despite taking the Tube, train and bus to work, I take 45 minutes only to reach the office. Here, I take 1 stupid train and it takes me an hour. The interval of the KTM here is the same as the off-peak bus service interval: 30 minutes! My coll was horrified to hear that.

Anyway.. here's where I stayed..

Fart.. fart.. fart.. the ability to fart 5x a day is a requirement to rent or purchase a lot here

The farting lane

Ah, the sign that greets me at the train station.

The Earlsfield train station

Let me post the pictures of the house 1st, then I'll tell you what happened in that house. The only part I don't like about London, the dampener.

The house. It's a town house; 2 houses share the same entrance. Think it's quite charn compared to the other houses on the lane. No gate some more.

My room. Having my own room means I don't have to be tidy. What is not shown here is all the purchases all over the floor on the left =)

The kitchen, where my host hung all her laundry before she left. The colour of that day was red, to match the fridge. And all those hanging are 'little pieces of clothing', urgh.

The view from the lounge..

.. and the lounge.

The bathroom upstairs where I take my shower. The shower is on the right, so very small that I kept knocking my elbow. The bath tub was full of dirt, not that I wanna soak inside there as well.

Toilet on the lower floor where I usually poop hahahaha!

So, this is a townhouse. The 1st door is shared, the 2nd door is ours.
Level 1: Kitchen, my room, lounge and the poop bathroom.
Level 2: Shower bathroom and my host + her bf's room.

So, I was home alone for most of my stay there cos my host went for a holiday in Greece with her bf. I thought it was good and I still think it is too for I'm lazy to make conversation with people yet it wouldn't be very nice to retreat to my room as soon as I come back.

On the 1st night I was alone, I freaked myself out.

I heard sounds.

Not of the ghostly kind but of someone trying to open the door. The jangling of the doorknob. James, my host's bf, told me that the neighbour works in a night club and stays at home during the day. So I thought that at 11.30pm, she couldn't be coming back already.

I tried to ignore it, it might be the house next door or something. But the jangling went on and on and on and on. I grabbed my phone. Now I think that's a pretty bloody stupid idea, was I going to call back to Malaysia if anything happens? Heck, I dun even know how to dial those international codes. Bloody dumb, I should have grabbed a knife instead.If anything happens, no one would know until the next day when I don't turn up at the office.

I stood at the top of the stairs, with my phone in hand like a noob.

Confirm, someone is bloody trying to come in!!

I had enough of waiting. I'm not gonna wait any longer at that bloody top of the stairs waiting for the door to swing open. I went down the spooky stairs and opened the door. You wanna come in? Come la

It was the neighbour. She said I had locked her out and she managed to come in from the back and was fiddling with the lock. I didn't know that the door cannot be opened if the-something is pushed up; I didn't even realise I had pushed it up. I think I must have done so in ensuring that the door was locked, since I was going to be home alone that night.

Gosh, I was scared shit, the part where I stood at the top of the stairs waiting for 'the time'. Houses in UK don't have gates like we do. There's just the lock that comes built in with the door. I dunno how safe is London. There is an impression that Western countries have more crime than we do. Feeling scared shit and lonely, I shot off an email to Tim: "just now i was so scared. i heard some sounds... and then i realised the sounds were coming from the main door outside.. really scared.. then i went down and listened... sounds like got ppl wanna try to open it... i finally decided to open the door" and after that, I decided to call him in the middle of the night from London. It was 6.30am in Malaysia, he would/should be up by then and even if he wasn't, I would wake him up.

If you are going to laugh, let me tell you that throughout my stay there, for another 9 days or so, I keep hearing sounds of ppl walking on the wooden floors. I'm not afraid that it would be ghosts, more paranoid that someone was in the house. To the extent that I check every room when I come home and I stack a chair against the door when I sleep. Silly as it may seem but I don't bother if it can make me sleep at ease. Til Timmy started to think there might be ghosts but of course, he didn't tell me so.

Oh yeah, I took a knife from the kitchen and kept it by my bedside. Better to be silly than sorry.

Possible explanation of what happened: It might be the neighbour walking and the walls are kinda thin, so I hear the creaking. But they are loud and clear, I tell you.

Hated coming home at that time.