Business Travel

"You'll have to wear a suit every day."

I heard that numerous times when I told folks I was moving over to London. Not just from folks whose experience of London was from the movie version of Bridget Jones' Diary. (That Mark Darcy, always sharply dressed in a suit, wasn't he?). Actual English people from England (originally at least) told me that.

"Everyone wears suits. Much more formal than we are over here..."

(The "in the colonies" was implied)

I believed all the hype because my experience of London working was from the movie version of Bridget Jones' Diary. I mean, sure the Hugh Grant character didn't wear a tie, but he worked in media and was a cad...

What I figured I would be wearing

Anyway, that prophecy turned out to be mostly false. Unless you work in banking... actual banking, not just working for a bank even... you probably will be dressing much like folks in North America. "Business casual." Usually I wear a collar shirt and slacks to work. Occasionally I'll throw on a tie or jacket, but never both at once. Sometimes, when I go down to my office in Egham, I even wear jeans. It's craziness.

Turns out even the bankers don't want to wear suits any more, though a lot of the coverage of this in the media tends to concentrate on the fact that they don't want to be identified as bankers, lest a stray G20 or climate camp protester starts pelting them with ecologically and ethically grown eggs. No, bankers are eschewing the pin-stripe suit for "more versatile styles," like "a plain suit, or a linen one, which they can wear outside the office."

When I wear t-shirts and jeans, I used to feel under dressed a lot here in London, but according to fashion expert Nick Foulkes, "multi-million pound hedge fund managers have always been more likely to wear jeans. They see themselves as financial artists rather than workers, so they love to wear creative garb." Therefore, if I get any dirty looks for wearing jeans and a t-shirt, I'll just claim to be a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager, and all will be forgiven.

Anyway, gotta run. I'm off to the opera tonight, and have to start getting ready. Despite casual wear being allowed in the opera house nowadays, I think I should dress up a little. After all, it's opera, so it is a special occasion.

Besides, I am likely to make an ass of myself by falling asleep and snoring, so I figure there's no point in dressing like a slob and doubling my embarrassment and shame.

London has a lot of a train stations. When the trains first started coming into London, the city decided to keep the terminuses at the periphery of the city, not allowing the trains to enter the medieval centre of London and Westminster. Those that governed the city didn’t want the city to become an industrial wasteland of train lines criss-crossing the capital.

A number of companies were set up to bring cargo and passengers into the city, and each company built their own terminal within London. The terminals today circle the city, each station like the shoulder joint of the tentacle of a large 11 to 14 armed monster. Victorian fronted buildings with large train sheds behind them, giant gaping mouths shooting trains from London and off in all directions into the English countryside.

Most famous to those outside London is probably Paddington, mostly because a small Peruvian (and fictional) bear was found there and named after the station. Paddington station was built in 1838 by the Great Western Railway to serve southwest England and Wales. Today, in addition to serving those destinations with trains, it also provides a vital link to Heathrow airport for those flying into and out of London.

The two stations I’ve probably mentioned the most in my blog are King’s Cross and St. Pancras. The stations sit shoulder to shoulder. King’s Cross was built first, in 1852 by the Great Northern Railway serving the north of England and Scotland. St. Pancras was built by 1868 by the Midland Railway after the nearby Euston Station got overcrowded. King’s Cross has been in constant use since that time, but St. Pancras fell into underuse and disrepair, only to be brought back to life and revitalized thanks to the decision to terminate high-speed services from the continent into the station in the 1990s. The Eurostar first started running into St. Pancras in the fall of 2007.

Other key stations in London include the southern facing stations of London Bridge, Blackfriars, Cannon Street and Victoria. Blackfriars, Cannon Street and London Bridge are all in the process of renovations to increase their capacity and make the stations easier to use, including the fact that Blackfriars will be the first station with entrances on both the North and South side of the Thames River.

Looking north and east are Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street, which has become something of an internet phenom recently thanks to the T-mobile add which featured dancers in the lobby.

I’ve used many of these stations when heading out on my trips around the UK or off towards the mainland, though I haven’t yet caught a train out of Cannon Street, Liverpool Street or Marylebone, a northward station not far from Paddington.

Recently, I’ve started working up in Birmingham on a new project. Birmingham is a city in the midlands, the middle of the country of England. Despite being smack dab in the middle of the nation and thus one of the furthest cities from the coast in all of England, Birmingham is home to the National Sea Life Centre.

Trains to Birmingham run from Euston Station. Euston station was the first inter-city train station in London, having opened in July of 1837 as the terminus for the London and Birmingham Railway. The station was fronted by a classical archway which became known as the Euston Arch. The station proved very popular, and in 1840 was expanded to include a giant Great Hall, with 70 foot high ceilings and classical statues representing the cities served by the station.

In the 1960s, the building was deemed inadequate for the future and was demolished to make way for a new Euston station built in the “international modern” style. There was much concern about losing the arch, but it along with the grand hall was torn down. The rubble from the arch wound up being used to fill a hole in the River Lea.

It opened in 1968, and has been loathed since. It is a low, flat and uninspired building. I have always loved train stations and airports explicitly for their sense of grandeur and pomp. Euston is nothing but ugly functional.

Architectural Historian Gavin Stamp wrote that the station is entirely lacking any of “the sense of occasion, of adventure, that the great Victorian termini gave to the traveller,” which sums up my feelings pretty nicely on the station.

Euston may be ugly, but it is a beauty compared to the station at the other end of the line. Birmingham New Street station is appalling. I haven’t seen them all, but it has to be in the running for the ugliest and most unfriendly of all the stations in England.

The current station was built in the 1960s after the old station was damaged during the Second World War. Like Euston, the station is a low concrete slab, this one topped by an ugly shopping mall and a car park. The tracks are dark and dingy. Walking up from platform level, you are confronted with a confusing station, with multiple entrances poorly marked.

The first three times I came to Birmingham, I walked out of the station by the wrong entrance and wound up incredibly lost. I blame this on the fact that the station, named New Street, doesn’t actually front onto New Street. Instead, the front of the station is out onto a street called Queen’s Drive. If you want to get to New Street, you have to exit through the rear of the station, which you need to access from track level. Once you have gone up to the main station level, you can’t get out to New Street. I’ve figured out how to get out of the station properly now, but it should be a lot more intuitive than it is.

Even the back entrance of Birmingham New Street Station doesn’t come out onto New Street, but one street South of New Street.

Imagine if you were in a city and were looking for Fifth Street Station. “Excuse me,” you ask a local, “where is Fifth Street Station?”

They smile and nod. “Oh, that’s easy. It’s on Third Street.”

In case you think that it’s just me who is complaining, it’s not. A 2007 poll of passengers gave the station a 52% customer satisfaction rating, tied for the lowest satisfaction of all stations across Great Britain. The station is also well over capacity, handling more than 1250 trains a day in a station built for 650 trains a day.

As passenger numbers increase and train travel becomes an increasingly important mix of moving people around England (as it used to be before the car took over), stations like Euston and New Street are obvious targets for change.

Announced as part of a £35 billion programme to remake rail in the midlands, Birmingham New Street station is set to be redeveloped into a glass and steel swoop by 2014. Personally, I like the modern glass building. It’s light, airy and looks easy to move about in. (Though of course I am concerned that perhaps people said the same things about Euston and New Street when they were developed in the 1960s). Even if you don’t like the modern architecture, if you’d ever used Birmingham New Street, you’d probably be happy for any change.

Euston is also set to be redeveloped, though the timing on it has been pushed off due to the credit crunch. However, if it goes through, Euston may yet get back her arch as more than just a pub name that remembers the past.

Even if you haven't read my last blog entry on the Superbowl and the walk home in the falling snow afterwards, you are probably aware that England has been getting some snow.

I know that you are probably aware of this because I haven't gotten a number of emails from people who don't read my blog commenting on the snow. So obviously the news in other countries is covering the fact that London and the rest of England has snow. It's been the top story all week here, usually billed as "Breaking News!"

Most of the emails I have gotten from friends in Canada and the USA tended to ask the obvious question for a North American, "London gets a couple inches of snow and the entire city shuts down? What the hell is wrong with you over there?!? Are the Brits really that fragile?"

At work this week also a few of my English co-workers have made comments about the reaction to the snow. "Being from Canada, you probably think we're all daft and over-reacting, don't you?"

The answer is simple. The answer is no...

...but, yes.

The answer is no because if there is one thing you learn living in Canada, it is that winter is all about preparation. In Canada, when I had a car, I used to carry a scrapper, a snow brush and a small shovel in the trunk. The city of Toronto budgets $67 million a year to remove snow, and has a massive array of sanders, salters and plows to take care of it. Most Canadians own parkas, boots, mitts and toques. The reason we do these things is because it snows a lot in Canada.

Here in England, they don't get much snow. The snow that fell on London on Sunday night / Monday morning was more snow than the city had received in 18 years. This weeks winter weather has maxed out the budgets of most cities here in England, and lots of places have run out of sand for the roads. I see people walking around in sub-zero temperatures in light jackets and trainers, shivering. They aren't prepared for the snow because they don't get this much snow, usually.

So, no, I don't judge the Brits too harshly for dealing badly with the snow.

However, I do think they have over-reacted somewhat.

On Monday, for example, there was no getting around in London. The buses were all cancelled, and most of the tube lines weren't running. I understand parts of the transport system not working, but basically shutting the entire thing seems overly extreme. Some reaction was warranted, but they just basically said, "that's it, let's just shut down the city."

And this week a lot of people didn't make it into work, at all. Partially this was because most of the schools were shut all week, so parents were forced to either find child care of stay home. But I know a few single folks that just didn't bother going into work at all. In the places that really got socked in, like the high altitudes or the South-west, I can understand, but even in Sheffield, which didn't get much snow at all, some things shocked me.

Yesterday a number of shops on the high street closed at noon because of the snow. The thing is, that it wasn't snowing. I had been snowing, and Sheffield could a couple inches, but by noon the snow had shopped. Yet the shops still closed up, putting up signs saying that they were shutting due to the snow.

It has been interesting to live here through this week here in the UK as a recently immigrated Canadian. I can understand why folks are reacting to the snow, but it has been a touch humorous to watch some of the over-reactions to the snow. Often as a new arrival in a new country, I have spent a lot of time feeling a bit like a tool, still learning how to act in my new country. For the first time, though, I feel like I know more than the locals.

For this week, at least, England has decided to become a little more like Canada, and make me feel at home.

The train was late. 75 minutes late, to be exact. I should have seen it coming, but I was hopeful. That’s the trouble with being an optimist, the possibility of being disappointed. As they say, a pessimist is never disappointed.

I was heading up to Birmingham for a job interview, and had booked a ticket on Virgin Trains from London Euston station early on Tuesday morning.

On Friday, a plane crash which tragically killed three people also managed to knock out power to the west-coast mainline that runs from London up to Birmingham and on to Scotland. The line was fixed by Sunday morning, but then power was disrupted again on Sunday night. By Monday afternoon, things were running again.

“Trains weren’t running up to Birmingham this morning,” one of my flatmates said to me on Monday evening.

“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “I’m going to check later to see what the situation is, and if things still aren’t running, I’ll make other plans.”

“Like what?”

“Rent a car and drive up,” I replied.

“...or go up tonight,” my flatmate offered.

With alternate plans in mind, I checked the web on Monday around 8. Everything was up again and running fine.

“Perfect,” I thought. “Trains will be running tomorrow. I will stick with my original plan and use my booked tickets.”

In retrospect, it was the wrong plan to choose. Tuesday morning I woke up, checked the internet and was told that my train was on time. There were some problems on the line up to Rugby, but my train didn’t go through Rugby, so no problems.

By the time I arrived at Euston Station, however, things had fallen apart. The time for my train to board came and went with all of the travellers still standing in the main hall. After about 15 minute an announcement came over the loudspeaker.

“Attention please. Due to a fault on the line near Birmingham International station, trains to Birmingham and Manchester are currently suspended. Please remain in the main hall and wait for further information.” At the same time, the departures board changed to note every train delayed, with an indication that delays and cancellations should be expected.

At that point I had another decision to make - ditch the train and find a ride, or stick with the train. I had booked my train to arrive a full 50 minutes in Birmingham before my interview, so I knew that I had some leeway in train delays, but the uncertainty of not having an arrival time was stressful.

After 5 minutes I decided to try and find a car rental place and drive. I was just about to walk out of the train station when an announcement came over the loud speaker. “The 7:43 delayed train to Birmingham is now boarding.”

So I went with the train, leaving Euston 20 minutes behind schedule. Unfortunately, we lost time on the line as we had to wait for a long time outside of the Birmingham International station (the airport in Birmingham) for trains to get around the “rail fault,” whatever that is.

I finally arrived at Birmingham at 10:20, 20 minutes after the start of my interview. Luckily I had my interviewers number and had been able to call him and arrange to arrive late, but it wasn’t exactly the best way to settle oneself for an interview.

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After the interview, I spent the day walking around Birmingham checking out the place and taking some photos. Birmingham was where my grandparents were from, so I was walking on the same streets as my ancestors.

In fact, as I was wondering around I saw a man hobbling towards me that looked a lot like one of my cousins, though about 20 years older and with a goatee. At first I just waved it off as one of those strange coincidences, seeing someone far from home that reminds you of someone from back home. After I passed the man, however, it struck me that he could have looked like my cousin because he shares some of the same genes. That man could have been a relative of mine! Unfortunately he was already past me when I made this realization, and frankly I wasn't sure what I would have said to the man anyway.

What would you have thought if a man came running up to you and in a strange accent said, "excuse me, do you think there is a possibility we are related?"

This is Victoria Square, named after the statue of Queen Victoria erected in 1901.

The Council House sits on one side of the square, with it's large dome and high clock tower rising up from the flat, pedestrian square.

Down the road is St. Phillip's Cathedral, part of the Church of England. As you can see from the photo below, there was snow on the ground. It was about 0 C and there was a light dusting of snow. That was enough, apparently, to impact the trains, as my train back to London was cancelled due to "inclement weather conditions" along with the aforementioned rail issues.

The other big church in Central Birmingham is St. Martin's, which is just outside the main train station and surrounded by modern day shopping complexes on one side and a farmer's market on the other.

This is the Selfridges store in the Bullring complex, right beside St. Martin's. On a sunny day like the Tuesday I was there, it was quite the view to see the sun reflecting off the round bobbles on the outside of the curvy building.

The farmer's market, on the other side of the church is loud, cramped and lively.

The Bullring is a shopping complex at the corner of The High Street and New Street, both which are now pedestrian shopping streets.

It's not all churches and shopping in Birmingham, though. There is some history.

James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, was from Birmingham. He partnered with Matthew Boulton, and they, along with engineer William Murdoch, developed and industrialized steam engine production (thanks in a large part to the tight fitting pistons and boring methods developed by John Wilkinson)

Near this statue is also The Hall of Memory. Birmingham's Hall of Memory was erected in the 1920s to commemorate the 12,320 Birmingham citizens who died in the "Great War."

I must admit that the name "The Hall of Memory" made me think of 1984. It does sound like the name of one of the departments in that book, doesn't it? "Take him to the Hall of Memory, and erase his memories of this event!"

Close to the Hall of Memory is a large arts complex, including the Symphony Hall.

Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the UK from 1937 to 1940 was from Birmingham as well. His father, Joseph was a politician as well, and was mayor of Birmingham from 1873 to 1876. This Memorial is dedicated to his memory, and stands outside the main branch of the Birmingham Library in Chamberlain Square.

Birmingham is also home of The Electric. The cinema is the oldest working cinema in the UK first opening on December 27th 1909. Today it still shows films.

As I said, it was very cold there, and the canal through town was frozen over in some parts, and chock-a-block with ice in other.

I headed back to London that evening, only spending the day in Birmingham. As I said, my train back to London was cancelled, but luckily for me (though unluckily for those who were scheduled to take the service), I was able to catch a ride back on a train that was delayed 45 minutes, and ended up leaving Birmingham a full 3 minutes before my scheduled departure. I did have to stand until Coventry, but at least I got home on a day when the trains weren't really running.

I am now home again in London, watching reruns of Top Gear on Dave (that'll make sense to people from the UK - for the others, I'm watching TV), doing laundry and wondering what happened to the dryer in my flat since I was last here. It now sounds a little like the inside of a jet engine, and that's just what it sounds like one room over. Being in the actual laundry room adds another 100 db of noise as well as the somewhat disconcerting smell of burning rubber.

To get from Phoenix (site of my last blog entry) to London required two flights, and there were the most eventfully uneventful flights I have ever taken. By that, I mean they were both really good flights in that nothing bad happened. In fact, they were all good.

I'll cover more on the second flight later, but the first flight from Phoenix to Toronto I used an upgrade coupon to get myself upgraded to business class. As an Elite flyer on Air Canada, I can use a coupon to upgrade from economy to business class if the original fare was of a certain set of fare classes. My flight from Toronto to London a few days later was of a specific fare class that I could not use my status coupons on, so I figured this was my last chance to use an upgrade coupon, as I haven't flown enough miles this year to requalify as an Elite flyer.

The only bad thing about the entire flight I mentioned in my last entry, and that was the fact that it left 50 minutes late. However, the captain but the pedal down and we only landed 30 minutes late in Toronto. Otherwise, it was quite fine. The business class seat was one of the "old" style of regular, but larger and cushier seats than economy. My IFE (In-Flight Entertainment) system worked fine, and I spent my time watching Ghost Town staring Ricky Gervais, eating a nice meal and drinking free Heinekens, though not too many as I was driving when I got to Toronto. I landed, and faced a customs and immigration line of 0 people ahead of me (one of the benefits of leaving the plane from seat 1A). I arrived at the luggage carousel, which in Toronto is usually an incredibly long wait. No difference this time, however my bag was the first one off, which made the wait much less than it could have been. I walked out of the airport relaxed and happy, which isn't usually a way one leaves an airport.

Christmas itself was good. I saw my family and had a big turkey dinner. Christmas Eve was dark and rainy, but at least it was just above the freezing so that I didn't face icy roads. Christmas Day itself was gray, but dry other than a little light snow in the morning. Boxing Day saw some snow, but later in the day the clouds did break and there was some sun.

I took some photos to try and capture the mixture of white and grey. It's a strange mix of depressing and pretty.

Boxing Day was my second flight - from Toronto to London. Driving to the airport I passed this plane from now defunct airways XL, one of many low cost airlines that bought the farm this year. XL left a number of UK folks stranded around the globe, but luckily the lead singer of Iron Maiden was available to save the day. Not sure why the plane is now in Toronto - perhaps someone bought it.

I did have a bit of an incident on Boxing Day. Walking to a table in a fast food restaurant, I accidentally hip-checked a table, and broke the screen on my mobile phone. With no screen, I actually can't do much with it. I can't look up people's phone numbers, and find myself unable to send any messages. No txt till l8r, lol.

My flight to London was again eventfully uneventful. I wasn't expecting to be able to get an upgrade, but ended up getting an "op up." An Air Canada flight to London was cancelled the day before, and Air Canada was still catching up. As such, they were cramming the plane as full as possible. To make sure every seat was full, Air Canada was even putting folks into the business class seats, so I got bumped up to Business Class, in what is called an Operational Upgrade, or "op up."

The plane had lie-flat seats, so I got to stretch out and lie back.

I did get a few hours sleep, and watched a movie (some historical thing about American wines and a contest in France). The only event was the fact that someone vomited in the sink in the bathroom. Walking out of the bathroom I told the flight attendants in the galley.

"The sink is clogged up," I said.

"I'll check it," one of the guys said, wandering towards the bathroom.

Sure that the situation was in hand, I turned myself to other matters. "Can I have another Heineken?"

As the remaining flight attendant popped me a fresh beer, the other flight attendant returned. "Okay, I'll let you have this beer, but then no more," he said to me.

"What, why?" I asked.

"Well, you just threw up in the sink," he said.

"No, man, that wasn't me. I just found it like that."

"Oh, okay. I think I know who it was," he said, though he never did bring me another beer after that one. Which was fine, because I pressed the ZZZ button, got the bed to lie flat and fell asleep after finishing my Heineken.

It was more comfortable than trying to sleep sitting up in economy, but frankly it still stunk. I arrived in London having only a couple of hours sleep, feeling tired and achy and just wanting to get home.

Sadly, it took two hours to get from Heathrow to my place due to closures on the London Underground. Tube closures... I am back in London.