After having the good fortune of visiting Christmas markets in Berlin, Hamburg, Basel, Vienna, and Budapest, I was excited to learn that London has its own Christmas markets. Mulled wine, German style miniature Christmas houses and villages, and European Christmas stalls are things I have loved and enjoyed the last few years, and initially discovered during a trip to Chicago in November 2009, when I first learned about the Christmas market culture that exists all over Germany. So I was a bit disappointed to find out that London’s version of Christmas markets is really just a fair-type setting with children’s rides, arcade games, sprinkled with mulled wine stalls and artificial lit-up Christmas trees. The biggest one at Hyde Park called Winter Wonderland even charges admission, which would never happen in a place like Germany and Austria, but it’s mainly because this place has real roller coaster type rides. Well, at least now I know what to expect if I ever come back to London during the Christmas season.

In Tokyo, there are “up” arrows denoting to walk up the stairs in the subway, and “down” arrows denoting to walk down the stairs. Everyone (except Chris and me) follows this while in Japan, even if it means queuing up in a single file line. There is no crowding in the stairwells, just neat lines. The same is the case with boarding the trains on the platform; everyone lines up. No one crowds around the door.

In New York City in subway stations, people crowd around subway doors. But the order that I never quite appreciated before was that people always walk in the way that in the U.S., you are expected to walk: keep right, keep right, keep right. You walk to the right, and to your left, are people walking to their right. Occasionally you will see people in a rush interrupting this, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Well, here in London, as I’ve observed in the last two days, there’s no order at all. People crowd around train doors, and when walking on the street, sidewalks, or underground, no one keeps left or right; everyone just walks right into each other or gets close enough to move out of the way just at the very last second before running into each other. I figured… okay, I’m here in the UK, and people are technically supposed to keep left. I tried to keep left, but it made no freaking difference. People were constantly walking into me and getting into my personal space, and I still just don’t get it. Does it add a little extra drama or interest to the day? Is there not enough stress already in life as is that they feel the need to add this to their walking commute?

Ever since I found out that chicken tikka masala was supposedly the national dish of the UK, I knew I had to explore Indian food in London more. While doing restaurant research for this trip, I became a bit obsessive and actually made five restaurant reservations, including three Michelin-star-rated restaurants and one famous afternoon tea spot that won the 2017 award for best afternoon tea in London, and is also a spot where Princess Diana, Winston Churchill, and Oscar Wilde used to frequent.

The first spot we ate at is The Quilon, a modern South Indian restaurant named after the city where Chris’s dad was born. The decor was chic and refined, and the presentation of the food was much different than what I am accustomed to in Indian restaurants back in New York. Everything is much more formal, artfully presented, and at this specific restaurant, vibrantly fresh. Even the little pappadams came with their own assortment of chutneys, including the true standout, a freshly grated coconut chutney that had a texture I’d never enjoyed before. The Kerala fish curry was so good with different nuanced flavors that I wish we could have packed just the curry gravy to take back with us. And the paratha that they gave us was so flaky and fresh, with each layer of dough distinct from one another.

Chris makes fun of me when I say this, but I think the level of innovation in Indian and Chinese restaurants in London far surpasses that of New York City or San Francisco. In London, they seem to be playing on traditional flavors but making the presentation and techniques a lot more modern, and that’s what has been so fun about reading about the London dining scene… even if it isn’t traditional British pub/white people cuisine. They’re not trying too hard like some places (ahem, Mission Chinese), but trying just enough to be interesting and different.

My manager originally scheduled a 1:1 video meeting with me at at time when I’d be in transit to the airport tonight, so instead, I agreed to chat with her over video at 8:30pm ET. I usually never take any calls that late, but I figured.. she really wanted to sync before I left the country, and I’d feel better leaving the country knowing she wasn’t obsessing over my accounts while I was gone.

So I joined my Zoom meeting with her tonight from the American Airlines First Class lounge at JFK. She asked me where I was, and I told her I was in the AA airport lounge.

“Wow! I never fly a class high enough to get lounge access” she exclaimed.

“Well…” I began with a smile on my face. “It’s not the class of your ticket that matters as much as it does your airline status with American. I have access because I have executive platinum status with AA.”

She had a stunned look on her face, probably not sure how to react to what I just told her and how I kind of schooled her. It’s so awkward for me having these conversations with much older people at work because they’re probably all wondering how I got all these miles given that my work trips definitely don’t amount to over 100,000 miles flown per year… and then they’re also probably wondering how I have more status and miles flown than they do.

After my morning meetings and scheduled lunch, I ended up getting to the Boston airport earlier than I expected and managed to make it onto an earlier flight. It’s probably one of the only times when I’ve managed to get off the standby list and an actual seat on an earlier flight. It would have arrived about two hours before my original flight, which made me happy. What ended up not making me happy was when we discovered that all flights landing at LaGuardia tonight would be delayed due to issues with the winds, and so now, my flight is scheduled to depart 11 minutes after my original flight.

It never quite works out the way we hope it will, does it?

A friend cancelled on me for dinner tonight, so I ended up having a subpar ramen meal alone in Boston Chinatown. I regretted it a lot after my first bite and wished I just spent a few extra minutes looking for an ATM to go to one of my old trusted cash-only standbys. This was after I tried going into Shojo, what is supposed to be a hip Asian fusion restaurant, and despite the restaurant being only 20 percent full and having plenty of bar seats available, they insisted they were fully booked and couldn’t accommodate me, a single person at the bar. It was only 5:55pm. Their air in speaking to me was so snooty that it wasn’t even worth saying anything. I just said, “well, that’s sad,” and I left. What’s also sad is these types of restaurants having an arrogant attitude when their food is probably sub par and their staff likely know little to nothing about good Asian food or actual Asian culture.