First, let me say a few words about my tube ride to Arsenal. Under normal circumstances, it would have been an easy ride from Camden Town to Kings Cross, changing to the Piccadilly Line and getting off a few stops later at Arsenal. But…oh no. Before I left my house, I checked on the Transport for London web site about the current travel status. More or less all lines were reporting good service. So I get to the Camden Town tube station, get on the first train via Bank when I hear the voice of the driver…”This train does not stop at Kings Cross due to an earlier defective Eurostar train…” What?

Now, it is certainly true that Eurostar trains run from Kings Cross (the station recently got re-opened after some major refurbishment to serve as the new Eurostar Terminal) to Paris. But certainly not on a Northern Line platform. Well, maybe I missed something here, but that sounded quite ridiculous to me. Anyway, what can you do. So I got to Leicester Square and changed to Piccadilly. Standing on the platform there, I heard the voice of one of the announcers at the station…”We are experiencing severe delays on the Piccadilly Line…”. Nice. It keeps getting better.

So after 3 minutes, a train arrives at Leicester Square, packed with people like sardines – which is actually normal during rush hour in London. Luckily, I managed to sneak in. Arsenal is a couple of stops away from Leicester Square and the tube ride was not fun at all. While we were passing stations, the platforms were packed with people, simply unable to get on because of literally no space. Holloway Road station was even closed due to overcrowding. This was the first time I heard Emma Clarke saying: “This station is closed”. Wow.

Approaching the Stadium was really nice, the new Arsenal home is pretty modern and very impressive. With all its comfy seats, the clear orientation system, the video walls and its professional appearance in general, it reminded me of the sport venues in the North America (like Madison Square Garden or GM Place). The game itself felt like an easy game for Arsenal. Unfortunately for them, they felt a little too secure after leading 2-0 by half time. Steaua scored a goal in the second half and could have scored an equalizer, but in the end Arsenal managed to bring home the victory.

Considering the masses of people (attendance was about 60,000) we left a little before the final whistle but still had to queue in front of the tube station entrance to get in for about 10 to 15 minutes. I am sometimes wondering how people still keep their sanity in this city, under these conditions. The thing is: during rush hour, it is actually the same. Every day.

Anyway, enough ranting about the London Underground. Going to an Arsenal game was just great and I am glad I was given the opportunity. I also took some pictures.

Some of you might not know who Andy McKee is. A couple of months ago, I did not know him either but then I stumbled across one of his videos on YouTube. It was almost unbelievable to see him play like that. And luckily I found out on his web site that he is touring and will be playing in London end of November. So getting a ticket was almost a must.

The gig took place at a pub called George IV, located in Chiswick. I have never been there and for some reason I expected a rather smoke-filled and dark place, crammed with people. But it was totally not like that. Very spacious, bright and tables to sit at (their event room is normally used for comedy nights as well).

Isodore and Clay was the band that played before Andy came on stage. I wouldn’t call them a support band, cause they were clearly more than that. The five guys, led by Michael as the front man, delivered a great performance and I really liked their soft and harmonic tunes. Full of emotion, I would say, and a great introduction of things to come that night.

When Andy came on stage, very down-to-earth and like the guy next door, wearing jeans and a Marshall t-shirt, the welcome by the audience was just amazing. He started the evening with a couple of songs on his “regular” guitar, including Drifting, Rylynn (dedicated to his best friends daughter), For My Father (dedicated to his dad) and Art of Motion. In between the songs, apart from re-tuning his guitar, he had little chats with the audience, showing what a funny and down-to-earth this 28 year old chap from Topeka, Kansas, really is.

After the intermission, he showed us his harp guitar, introducing it with “Are you ready for the tuba?”. The guy next to me said, with a smile: “What are you trying to compensate for?”. You can see him play this instrument on YouTube as well. The group of people who play harp guitar is reasonably small, but maybe you can spot Andy in one of the pictures of this elite group. Again, I have never seen someone play such an instrument, but – as everything that evening – it was pretty WOW. Songs after the break included Toto (the chorus part is probably my favorite), Heather’s Song (dedicated to his sister), Into The Ocean (in reference to his experiences when spending time in California), Shanghai (written almost entirely in a hotel room when being on tour in China) and She (dedicated to his girlfriend). He finished off the evening with an encore which will be featured on his new duet album, where he plays together with another amazing guitar player he got influenced by: Don Ross. The album is due to come out in January.

After the show a lot of fans stayed at the venue to buy CDs (the ones I wanted were out of stock already), get an autograph or have a little chat with the maestro himself. We got lucky and were one of the first ones in the queue and he signed our tickets for us. During this little chat I found out that he will be playing in Linz, Austria, next year and that he is – indeed – just a great and nice guy. And apart from having a great time, that evening made one thing clear to me: He just purely loves what he is doing – the love and passion for the music and the instrument. YouTube helped him to become famous in a way, but even if that would not have happened, he would still love playing and performing. He just loves what he is doing, and considering the response from the audience, people really appreciate that.

I was very thrilled by the nice and friendly atmosphere (I tried to capture it with some photos which can be found in the Photos section), that’s why I would say it was one of the best concerts I have ever been to. Normally, you don’t get that up close to such a great musician and I really enjoyed every second of it. So if you are lucky and Andy plays a gig near you…well, you know what to do.

The title of the book is “Ein Jahr in London – Reise in den Alltag” by Anna Regeniter. Today she works as a journalist for Spiegel Online and lives in England. She tells her own story when she moved to London to spend a year there working as a teacher for German.

In a quite humorous, but also honest manner, she talks about her experiences with living in London, from the troubles when having to find a place to live to checking out the british pub culture. The book itself is an easy-read with 192 pages and is split up into 12 chapters.

So if you are considering to move to London and want to gain something out of the experiences (and mistakes) someone else already has made, get this book. It can be nicely combined with a typical tourist guide book. But I doubt that you will find some of the tips Anna gives you in “3 days in London – what to do?”.

When I came back to London Monday night, it was freezing cold, and I thought: “Well, that was a short summer this year.”. Tuesday was bad as well, but towards the weekend it got better and better, with temperatures around 20° celcius. The weekend should be nice as well.

To let you know how our office looks like, I took some pictures on Friday. A place at the window would be nice, but you can’t have everything right. I don’t wanna sound ungrateful, cause I have a new and shiny MacBook Pro and a large screen, as posted earlier. I am satisfied .

I kinda expected that my MacBook Pro would not be ready on my start date, they told me that it might take a couple more weeks until I get it. But my tears dried quickly, cause they gave me my monitor. It’s always nice to have a 24” flat panel screen to work with . Apart from such administrative stuff (I received my final badge Friday), I spent most of the time getting familiar with the project that I will be working on with Drew over the next couple of months and getting up to speed with the YUI library.

I haven’t done anything with YUI before. So getting to know what the library has to offer and learning the singleton/module pattern syntax introduced by Douglas Crockford caused me some headaches this week. It’s really great stuff, but I need to get used to it and learn how it works.

Apart from relaxing, I actually won’t do much this weekend. I am gonna play a bit with the YUI stuff and start converting my current javascript files to the YUI and the new syntax. Well, what else…I definitely should go running in Regent’s Park, cause it’s kinda nice outside.

Anyways, the first day was pretty good. I got introduced to so many people (I will take ages for me to learn their names), finally met Chris and was informed that I will work with amazing Drew on a very interesting project. The atmosphere at Yahoo! is, as expected, very relaxed and laid back. But don’t get misguided by this kind of work ethic: the guys who work there really know what they are doing and are real experts in their respective fields. I really can consider myself fortunate that I got this job.

After my first day, I went for a 40-minute run in Regent’s Park, which was kinda nice, cause it finally stopped raining and the sun came out. So, all in all, my first day at work in London was very satisfactory. Looking forward to the next days…

The flight with Austrian was pretty smooth, but due to construction works, the trip from Heathrow Airport to Camden Town tube station took a little bit longer than I had expected. The guy from the real estate company handed over the flat to me, and I was really surprised by the nice and thoughtful service. After that, there were some problems with the forwarding agent I hired to ship my stuff from Vienna to London. First, there was a delay regarding the delivery, and then he refused to deliver my boxes up to the 3rd floor (although this agreement was part of the contract). Anyways, after some negotiation I was able to convince him to actually deliver my boxes into my new apartment. I don’t want to think about how I would have dealt with that 2 metre IKEA cupboard on my own.

Saturday evening and night I started unpacking but finishing it that night was impossible. The place was just crammed full of moving boxes. Unfortunately, I did not get much sleep then cause I found out that the location of the flat (near Camden Town tube station, with lots of shops and bars on Camden High Street) is also its big disadvantage. Apart from my stays in NYC and Cologne, I was always used to live in quiet areas, with almost no traffic noise. How lucky I was. Now I need to get used to hear about 30 cars per minute passing by and some buses every couple of minutes stopping and starting. The first night was horrible and I barely got about 3 hours of sleep. Additionally, at about 3am in the morning the traffic noise was supplemented with screams of drunken people walking by on the street to the bus stop, I believe. How nice. But guess what: I already ordered ear plugs .So this is the big downside that I see so far.

Today, Sunday, I was able to unpack the rest of my stuff and store it accordingly. It is basically making the best out of little space. Here are some pictures:

Tomorrow is my first day at Yahoo!. Really looking forward to it. Will let you know how it goes .