London & Paris Day 7 & 8: Portobello Road, Covent Garden & Camden Town

(This is the final part in my travelogue. For the earlier parts, see here, here, here, here and here. Or just start at the first one)

And in a blink of an eye, a week in Europe had passed, meaning we only had one day left. Pat and MY had other plans to visit friends, so WY and I went our own way to London. Since it was Saturday and weather was fantastic, we decided to hit some of the markets around London. First stop was Portobello Road market in Notting Hill, the place made famous by that Julia Roberts-Hugh Grant movie.

For starters, its nothing like the movie. But that doesn’t mean you should skip it, its a very interesting place by its own right. We exited at the Notting Hill station, and followed the masses of people trudging in the cold morning.

Along the way to the market i saw this. Really? Orwell stayed here? Cool.

Portobello road Market is actually stalls and shops selling many different stuff, from souveniers, clothes to food, all divided into different sections. Basically the best way to describe it is ‘gwailou flea market’, except that its more upmarket and very clean. And the stuff you find there is very diverse and original, not the usual same stuff repeated over many stalls as you do here.

This one was probably cashing on the World Cup fever (of course this pic was before England were booted out…)

This one sold round bags with classic B&W pics on them. Audrey Hepburn on the top right there, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

This stall sold ONLY horns…

this entire shop sold vintage sewing machines…

…and this one sold figurines of historic infantry units, mostly 19th century and WWI. I thought of getting a couple for Sin Loong (the biggest war buff I know) but they cost GBP8 per pair! They didn’t have any of Malaya though. The closest they had was Burmese and Ceylon WWI infantry.

After awhile we reached the food section of the market, and we saw a Turkish restaurant selling kebabs. After listening to Pat crave for kebabs all week, we tried it! GBP3, tastes real good. Authentic Turkish kebab!

We also bought some cherries, a croissant, a choc muffin and brownie. We sat in a Spanish coffeeshop and ate our mid morning snack while drinking espresso…

By about 11am we reached the end of the market, it was on to the next stop – Covent Garden. Coming out of the train station, i had no idea where it was nor how it looked like. I asked a bobby standing outside, and he pointed us down the road to this building.

Covent Garden has small little specialty shops, some foodstalls, and plenty of (very talented) street performers. This guy here is one of the funniest comedians i’ve heard, don’t be put off by his lack of clothes. A lady in front of me was telling her friend that these guys have to audition before they can stand a chance to perform here.

I also bought this small little flipping board toy my mom had when i was little. Its called Jacob’s Ladder.

After going round the market we were hungry, so we checked out the food stalls.

We settled for a beefburger and a hotdog (GBP4.50 each). Tasted okay, but the lines for both stalls were quite long.

This is a build-your-own-teddybear shop that’s also quite popular in Australia. You won’t believe how much they charge for one.

At about 2pm, we moved on to the THIRD market – Camden Town, as recommended by Kien Wei.

I simply had no idea what kind of place it was, it turned out to be a punk rock / goth hangout! As soon as you exit the station, there are guys and girls with mohawk holding up signs advertising for tattoo parlours. But a little away from the station, Camden Town is more normal, selling clothes and trinkets.

At about 4pm we settled in at a pub next to the Camden river canal for a pint of Stella Artois.

After a full day and lots of walking, were kinda tired, so we took a train back to Hounslow. Took a pic of our home.

We were supposed to meet Pat & MY at six plus to go for dinner. Turned out they went to Asda and by the time they came back, it was 7.30pm. So we decided to go out later, coz we wanted to watch the England vs. USA match on Sky.

Robert Green conceding that first goal…

It was almost 10.30pm before we found a good place to eat. This Turkish restaurant had generous servings for GBP7.

So the next morning it was all packing up and time to say goodbye to our wonderful hosts… one group pic.

Pat & MY went down to London to catch a bus to Manchester while we boarded our plane back to Malaysia.

What a great holiday it was. Great memories, and carrying back lots of gifts and shopping!

London & Paris Day 6: Sacre Couer, Monmartre & Notre Dame

For the earlier parts in this travelogue, check it out here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

So Day 6 is our second day in Paris. Frankly, this was the only day of our entire holiday we slept in, waking up relatively late at about 7.30am. Probably due to the tiring earlier few days. I told Pat I’d met them before 9am for breakfast, and we went down at exactly 9am.

Breakfast for this 3-star hotel was surprisingly good, they had complimentary buffet breakfast with chocolate croissants, ham slices, cereal, milk, juice and yoghurt. They had bread, too, but it almost tasted stale (which didn’t give us a good impression of fresh bread!). But all in all we ate quite a lot, in preparation for a long day ahead.

(didn’t take long for me to figure out ‘sucre’ means ‘sugar’)

After a leisurely breakfast, we went on to the train station again. Back when i was planning for this trip, i asked around my friends on what’s the best place to visit in or near Paris other than the usual top attractions. Almost all the replies (including a pal of mine who’s from Paris) told me to go to Montmartre and the Sacre-Couer.

We took the train (had to change lines 3 times) to get to this place just outside Paris.

Monmartre was once artist enclave, now its become quite a huge tourist attraction and commands on of the best hilltop view of Paris and the surroundings. And sitting majestically atop the hill is none other than the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus), or Sacre Coeur in short.

On a clear day, you can see very far.

This white church is really a sight to behold. When we went inside, there was a service going on but tourist can still walk around and snap pics. Unfortunately due to low lights you can’t really get good shots in there (no flash photography). One notable sight is the huge stain-glassed window on each side of the centre dome.

Under the shade of a tree in the cool air, the 4 of us sat down on the kerb and ate our lunch of sandwiches, snack bars and yoghurt.

Walking down from the basilica, Monmartre is a small little town with painters and musicians displaying their crafts, and lots of small shops selling the usual touristy stuff. We got some souveniers and T-shirts here.

After Montmartre, we took a short train ride to the next stop in our itinerary, none other than the most famous cathedral in all of Paris – Notre Dame.

The place was full of tourists, but the line entering the cathedral was pretty fast since it was free. While lining up, i happened to be standing to a French tourguide explaining to a small group of tourists in English about the significance of the statues you see on the facade below. Very interesting to say the least!

Inside Notre Dame was beautiful, comparable to the Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. But as usual, no photography allowed.

After Notre Dame we took a walk around the island (Notre Dame is located on one of two very, very small islands in the centre of the Seine River).

There’s also a park behind the cathedral with blooming flowers and live summer band performing.

We tried the crepe with Nutella and ice-cream from this stall. The crepe was just ok, but on a sunny day, the ice-cream was really refreshing.

After walking around some more, we decided to do something what Parisiens seem to love doing – sit at a roadside cafe, drink beer and watch people go by…

Anyway, at about 5.30pm it was time to get back to Paris centre. We looked around for some time to find a place for dinner near our hotel. Most restaurants didn’t have English on their menus, a pizza place did, but dinner wasn’t served until 7pm (apparently Parisiens don’t have dinner so early). Finally we settled on this quiet restaurant, that serve a 3-course meal for just 12.50 Euros.

For starters i had the tuna salad,

beef kebab and rice for the main dish (the rice was a little bland),

And cream caramel for desserts (everyone else had ice-cream).

Then it was a mad rush back to the hotel to get our bags, get to Gare du Nord, get through customs checkpoint and onto the Eurostar. We made it with only 4 mins to spare (!). And then after 2hrs 20mins, we were back in London.

Next – final day in London.

London & Paris Day 5: Eiffel Tower, Seine Cruise & The Louvre

(This is the 4th part in the series, click to see the 1st, 2nd and 3rd parts)

Day 5 Thursday started REEEALLY early, were had to be up by 4.15am and were in St. Pancras train station by 5.15am (cab driver told us it would take 45 mins to reach, but it actually took only 20 mins). Our cab was expensive (GBP35) but we had no choice since the trains don’t run so bloody early in the morning. So in St. Pancras, we waitied for about 1.5 hours for the train (6.50am), while eating our breakfast bought from Asda the day before.

Eurostar leaves from London to Paris in takes about 2hrs 20mins via the Channel Tunnel. Once in France, you can see vast empty fields dotted by small villages with a church steeple in the middle. Very quaint. The train cabin is simple but quite comfortable.

The disembarkation point in Paris is the huge train station Gare du Nord. As soon as you alight the train and onto the platform, this is the first sight that greets you:

(I guess American megacorporations are slowly taking over the world)

By the time we were in Paris, it had started to drizzle, and it was pretty cooling despite in summer. Our French guide Cyril was there to meet us. After a roll call, we were quickly brought to a tour bus. We were taken on a whistlestop tour around Paris, and man, the traffic there is horrendous. Good thing we didn’t decide to find our own way! In retrospect, going to Paris on a guided tour is advisable if you don’t understand the language. For GBP219 (RM1095), we get return train tickets, a bus tour, free entry to Eiffel tower and the Louvre, plus 1 night stay in hotel. 2nd day is free and easy. Very worth it, hor?

Cyril gave us a condensed version of the history of Paris, meantime pointing out some of the lesser known landmarks along the way. But they were all interesting, like this row street where all the most expensive jewellery stores are located.

This square (i forgot the name) is where Princess Diana stayed just before she had her accident here.

Cyril brought us to a square located between two museums, where we had a direct view of Paris’ most famous landmark. At the time the rain had just stopped, but it was still cloudy. The place, like most tourist spots in Paris, has many Africans trying to sell you trinkets and stuff. Just say no or ignore them if you’re not interested.

After that, we were brought to the Eiffel Tower, our tour group were brought straight to the line to the lift. If you went there yourself, you’d have to line up for the ticket (which can take up to an hour at peak season) BEFORE you line up for the lift.

Our tour entitled us to go up to the 2nd level of the Tower, which has a fantastic view of Paris. You can see very far if the day is clear. Very beautiful.

Sitting on the bench looking out onto the Paris skyline, we had our packed lunch of bread and yoghurt.

After lunch we were taken on a River Seine cruise, Pat said that this was the highlight of our visit to Paris. It was really good, audio commentary was available in English.

Seine is typefied by many beautiful bridges across it, each with its own interesting story and history behind it.

Of course, you can also see dozens of medieval buildings that make Paris so romantic.

Next was our visit to the famous Louvre Museum. This is the glass pyramid designed by I.M. Pei, featured in the Da Vinci Code.

Louvre is a huge museum with thousands and thousands exhibits, almost every nook and cranny and ceiling is covered with art and items.

But actually, after visiting the British Museum, we were didn’t really want to spend too much time here, basically spent some time to look for the ‘Three Ladies of the Louvre’, who were…

Venus de Milo (the Greek Goddess of Love, Aphrodite)…

The Winged Victory of Samothrace (the Greek Goddess of Victory, Nike)…

and the most famous of all, the Mona Lisa.

On the wall directly facing Mona Lisa, is one of the biggest paintings in the Louvre, the Wedding at Cana. You can’t really see it in the pic, but the painting stretches from the floor right up to the ceiling. If you read the description in Wikipedia, there are lots of subtlety in the drawing, least of all Jesus looking straight at you.

We were getting really tired by 5pm so we decided to check in our hotel. But first, we had to find it. Armed with a map from Cyril, and a handy Metro map (very useful, this isn’t easily available in Paris) we plunged into the labyrinthine maze of Paris’ underground.

This is a self cleaning toilet found all over Paris.

We exited out at Republique station, a large interchange. Above on the streets, its actually a small park in the middle of a 7 road interchange. We tried (unsuccessfully to find our bearings) so we decided to ask a nice French lady. Unfortunately, she spoke no English (or perhaps refused to) so judging from her hand gestures, we decided to go one direction. She was right and we found our hotel some 200m away.

Despite some negative reviews on tripadvisor, we found our room quite clean and nice.

Dinner was at a small restaurant near the hotel. We chose it coz it was affordable, plus the menu had English translations (altho our nice waitress didn’t speak English). This was my steak, followed by coffee and beer.

After dinner we took another metro down to the Champs-Elysees, the famous road lined with posh shops and restaurants leading up to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a beautiful sight of the Arc with the sun setting behind it.

We passed by the flagship LV store. No, we didn’t go in.

We used the underpass to get to the Arc. Really beautiful in the evening light.

By nightfall, we walked a long distance to the Seine to catch the Eiffel Tower lights.

It was a long day for us, almost 20 hours, and we had a very good night sleep in Paris.

London & Paris Day 4: London Eye, Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Oxford Street

(For the other days in the series, you can read part 1 here, then part 2 here)

Okay, Day 4 started bright and early as usual. With the early sunrise in summer, we’ve got used to getting up at about 5.30am and getting by with 5-6 hours each night. That way we usually can take our time with breakfast, Pat even went jogging around Lampton Park on some mornings. Day 4 started with Eye on London, which we’ve passed by a few times in the previous days. The ride starts at 9.30am, if you’re planning to visit in spring or summer, make sure you prebook or come early, coz the line is pretty long. I’ve read that at peak hours in summer it takes up to an hour.

We didn’t prebook but it took us only about 20 mins to get our tickets (GBP17.90).

That place gets crowded pretty fast, especially when there are school children. It’s a bit like Eye on Malaysia, but much bigger and higher.

You can see most of central London including Westminster from the top.

That’s Pat taking a pic of us from below coz he didn’t join us for the ride.

Then we crossed the Westminster bridge on foot again. En route, bumped into the Subway Dude. He looked like he’s standing at attention.

Next stop – Tower of London. Pretty interesting place, its good if you can catch one of the guided tours conducted by the yeoman – they’re funny and informative. This was our yeoman, didn’t catch his name but he was hilarious.

After awhile we decided to walk around ourselves coz the crowd made it difficult to catch what he was saying. Tower of London is pretty small so it can get crowded at times. However, the highlight of this place is the Queen’s crown jewels, housed in a maximum security vault in this building.

Of course, no pics allowed. But we managed one last pic before going in.

The crown jewels and the assorted collection inside – well, its something you gotta see it to believe it. Then you will realize why the Queen is the richest woman on earth (or is it J.K.Rowling?) and why London was the centre of the world at one time. We went past the crown jewels twice to fully appreciate the finery of the diamonds and gold.

Tower of London is also the home to ravens – it is believe that if the ravens are ever to leave the tower, the kingdom will fall. So they have a ravenmaster who clip their wings so as the ensure the kingdom is safe…

Once you exit, you will see an excellent view of the Tower of London. We didn’t go there but you can actually climb up to the motor room. Hard to take a pic with the low lights due to cloudy weather, but it turned out well.

Just outside Tower of London, we had one of the cheapest meal – GBP5.99 for fish and chips including a pint of beer.

It tasted alright, not fantastic but at that price I can’t complain.

After a quick lunch, we headed off to the most famous cathedral in London – St. Paul’s! The pride of Sir Christopher Wren…

(note the bird on top the queen’s head!)

Again, no pics allowed inside, but we managed to get a few before enter the sanctuary proper. WY and I also climb up the Stone Gallery (376 steps) past the Whispering Gallery. We would have made it to the Golden Gallery (530 steps) at the summit, but it was almost closing time and we had to leave.

After St. Paul’s, we went back to Oxford Street (that made it 3 times in 3 days!). The girls went shopping at Primark while Pat and I went to Waterstone’s. I only bought one book there (Hemmingway’s Old Man and the Sea GBP5.99) coz I’d hoped to visit Charing Cross on Saturday.

Oxford Street is THE place to do some serious shopping if you’re in London, all the big shops are here.

We also dropped by Thorton’s to get some nice chocs for friends and family (Fountaineers, if you’re coming for the next SG, you’ll taste it!)

We left central London earlier on day 4 coz we’re going to Paris the following day, so we had dinner back in Hounslow. We tried the bar Yates (there’s a chain of them across England) and it was pretty cheap and affordable! GBP6.95 for two meals. I had the bacon cheeseburger on the right while WY had the bangers and mash.

After dinner we did some grocery shopping at Asda to prepare for Paris the following day.

To be continued on Day 5.

London & Paris Day 3: Arsenal, British Museum, Chinatown & West End

(For the previous day’s post, which is the first in the series, you can read it here)

Day 3 started with some amendments to our itinerary, we ended with some free time early in the morning. MY went to meet her relatives, so Pat and us decided to visit Highbury! Months ago we had intended to visit here, but it got bumped off the priority list of places to visit when we had too many things to see and do. Something about Arsenal – i’ve been following them since I followed football when i was 7 years old, although i’ve kind of drifted away from footie in general in the last 10 years or so. But since I’m IN London, it’d be a crying shame not to see Highbury and the Emirates…

So anyway, the train ride was quite long from the west to the north, but we finally arrived. The weather was cold and it was drizzling a bit.

This is downtown Highbury. Looks as bleak as how Nick Hornby described it in Fever Pitch, with all the tiny council houses.

And this, is Highbury, the old hallowed grounds of Arsenal FC. It has since be turned into a luxury apartment complex after Arsenal moved to the Emirates (called Highbury Stadium Square), but they’ve maintained the old art deco facade. The marble halls and the bronze bust of the late great Herbert Chapman is still there, visible once you enter the large door in front.

Of course, one tube station away is the new stadium in Ashburton Grove called the Emirates.

Bought some shirts at the armoury. And this was supposed to be an unplanned visit! (Didn’t spend as much as Naz and S-Kay though heheh)

Walking back to the tube, it was mid morning and we were hungry already. So we stopped at a little Spanish cafe near the stadium.

Strange how a Spanish cafe serves full English breakfast! I shared the sandwich with WY (GBP3.40 including coffee).

Then it was back to central London to tackle the biggest challenge so far – the British Museum!

The Museum is a huuuuuge place, it would probably take you a week or so to visit every room (and there are 70 over rooms). Obviously, it was impossible to cover everything, so to make the most of our short time there, I followed their 3-hour self-tour where you can see 50 or so of their most famous artifacts.

But personally for me, there were two that I really wanted to see – one was the Rosetta stone, which held the key to first translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The other, was a very obscure piece, very hard to find in the museum. It’s the Cyrus Cylinder, which we studied in Project Timothy (see Ezra 1:4-5). It was much smaller than i thought. Yep, that’s me flashing the V sign behind the first human rights charter in history.

Of course, we took tons of photos of all the amazing artifacts on display throughout the museum. This is an interesting one, a large piece of jade in the Chinese civilization section.

After the British Museum, we were understandably tired and hungry, and tried to find the fish and chips that Ron Choong told me about. This one was probably it (Ron, if you’re reading this, is THIS the one?) But they were pretty pricey, so we decided to skip to Chinatown for lunch.

We decided against going to the famous Wong Kei restaurant (didn’t really feel like getting shouted at by rude waiters) so we tried another friendlier (and not to mention cheaper) restaurant.

We went for Cafe TPT, the one shown on the right below.

The place was miniscule, but the food was good. For GBP6, we got a drink, a starter soup, main dish (some XO rib noodles for me) and desserts. Definitely worth it in London!

When we came out of the restaurant, it started drizzling again, so with our brollies, we walked all the way to Oxford St for shopping. Pat went to meet MY at the tube station, while we went souvenier shopping.

Dinner was at the trendy pub Lo Profile to prop our tired feet. The place was excellent, with good food and a nice New York-style deco. I had the roast pork stomach. Tastes much better than it sounds, trust me.

We had an early dinner coz we’ve booked half priced tickets (GBP36) to catch a musical at West End. When it came which musical to watch, I guess there was no question to my first choice

Inside the elegant Queen’s Theater.

And it’s about to start…

Of course, can’t take pics during the performance. The show was good, unfortunately it was a very long tired and we were all quite tired. But undoubtedly it was well produced and the stars were talented.

So after a 19-hour day, we reached home to crash… only to start another busy day tomorrow Yep next we’ll take on the London Eye, Tower of London and St Paul’s Cathedral…

London & Paris Day 1 & 2: Arrival, Buckingham Palace, City Tour & Westminster Abbey

So we finally took off from KLIA last Sunday, for our 8 day trip to London and Paris. There were four of us – me and WY, along with my good pals Pat and MY. Our flight was from KLIA at about 10am, and we landed in Heathrow at past 4 in the afternoon. What do you do during a 12-hour non-stop flight? Well, I slept a little (unsuccessfully) so I watched a lot movies (4 movies) and TV shows (2 episodes of The Simpsons).

The weather was good when we reached the UK, and we finally got a clear glimpse of the British Isles.

Our hosts were MY’s uncle and his wife, who own a beautiful two storey home in Hounslow, very near Heathrow. Here’s us sitting in his garden watching the aeroplanes whizz by every 90 seconds or so (actually in the photo I’ve been up for almost 20hours so I was quite sleepy!) We had a great dinner at home with roast chicken and pork (although I was still very full from the airline meals).

The house is has a large garden, about twice the size of the house, where they plant lots of fruit trees and seasonal vegetables.

Since it was early summer, it was still bright after dinner so we took a walk in Hounslow town. It’s pretty but it has most of the big stores like Marks & Spencer, Primark, SportsDirect and TKmaxx. There’s also an Asda nearby.

After that we went to bed after the first of many long, long days.

We woke up early on day 2. Pat told us that the thing with summer is that your body tends to rise early with the sun, even though you sleep less you don’t really feel tired. This is the view outside my room at 5.30am. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Breakfast at home, mostly from Asda. You can see my morning cuppa coffee there.

Then after getting a 1-week Oyster card (about GBP36) for the tube, we’re off too London! Out of the tube station in Waterloo, the first thing we saw were the big double deckers!

We took a long walk from Waterloo past the Eye on London, across the Thames via the Westminster Bridge and we could see Big Ben in all its glory. That’s the houses of parliament beside it.

Then we continued our slow sightseeing walk to Buckingham Palace via St. James Park. Here’s Pat in the phone booth.

St James Park is a large royal park with lots of ducks, mallards and pigeons.

And not to mention chipmonks. Really BIG chipmonks.

View of the Eye from the blue bridge at St. James.

Reached Buckingham Palace in time for the Changing of the Guard. That’s the Victoria Memorial in front of it. You can see the large crowd swelling way before 11am.

Well I guess you can say the Changing of the Guard is a little overrated, especially with all the over-eager tourist pushing and climbing the steel fence, but I suppose its one of those thing you should at least try to watch once.

Then we walked to Westminster Abbey to grab our first lunch. It was fish and chips for me. No beer yet, though.

The great Abbey was indeed spectacular, rich in history and sights. They had this nifty audio guide you can borrow for free (voiced by Jeremy Irons) explaining some of the more important sites and artifacts. The only downside is that you can’t take photographs inside the abbey. I got a cool gift from the shop, though.

After that, we were not done. It was still early in the afternoon, we took another train to Trafalgar Square to see Nelson’s Column and the lions. By the way, there are hardly any pigeons left here.

We redeemed our pre-purchased unlimited open bus tour, and hopped on this red bus that goes around London. There’s a tour guide, she’s really charismatic and funny! That’s her on the left.

We actually took the full route of the bus tour, including an equally good Thames River cruise.

After a long, long day, we had a late dinner at Oxford Street in a typical English pub (called Coach & Horses. Funny). I had the bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes) with a pint of Stella Artois. Delicious.

After that we still had a little time for shopping we got some shoes from the large SportsDirect outlet on Oxford Street. You can get Fila and Reebok running shoes from as low as GBP14 there. After that we took the long train ride back home to Hounslow, trying to stay awake in the train. Tired, but happy.

So that was our first full day in London. Next, we take on Highbury, British Museum, Chinatown and West End.

Up and Away…

After months of waiting and planning, I’m off for my holiday!

See you all back here in sometime mid-next week.

Goodbye Forever

Tomorrow’s my last day at this place. No, I’m not changing jobs (yet), I’m just moving office.

You can see I’m in the midst of packing my stuff (boxes everywhere), its unbelievable how much stuff you can accumulate in just 2 years plus. The white safety helmet behind my seat there, its followed me since my first job.

And that’s my morning cup of coffee, made by my excellent tealady. Thank goodness she’s moving with us!

Man, I’m gonna miss this place.

Thosai, Anyone?

There was this Northern Indian restaurant near my old office called Vedas Curry House, it served the best thosai with chutney I’ve tasted. Well, granted, I haven’t tried many places (my fixation with thosai is a pretty recent thing), but it was still the best.

It all started with finding a healthier alternative to roti canai, and I learnt that thosai did the job well.

The problem with most of the mamak eateries is that they make it too crispy or their mixture is too bland. Either way, it usually tastes horrible. I can understand the formula to good thosai not something anyone can concoct.

But anyway. I need to find a good shop since Vedas is long gone. Preferably near my office!

Mind Your Language With Mr. Jeremy Brown

Does anyone remember this show? That old British politically-incorrect comedy about a bunch of international students taking English classes in a night school.

We were all young then, loved the slapstick humour, didn’t really see the mildly offensive national stereotypes that people get so worked up over these days. There were the bickering Pakistani and Indian guys (Ali Nadim and Ranjit Singh) the girl-crazy Italian and Greek (Giovanni and Max), and many others. A quick look at youtube and you can see lots of the episodes resurrected there.

Then there was Ms. Courtney, the strict headmistress who never seemed to like anybody.

But the star of the show was of course the teacher, Mr. Brown. Naive and unassuming, always trying to fight off the amourous moves by the French babe (Danielle).

Looking back at that era, there were many late night English comedies on our telly from the UK, like Yes Minister, Allo Allo and the sort. I guess I owe to them in part my fascination with the British and English.