Donedone in LONDON

I know I deserve to be )*^*$&%£"£%)($$$ for the delay in this post, but I was ROOTed (details on that later).
Ok, so from the airport in 'saddi dilli', the immigration officer told me that bengalis are VERY INTELLIGENT and the sutoms officer said I could bring back a lappy with zero taxes. Duh!!!!
On flight, I watched Khosla ka Ghosla, and Sanjeev kapoor's crooked recipes, and then the screen blew off. Then for the first time, after five flights I realised that from above, clouds tell many a more stories.
The screen was reset and I watched Notes on a Scandal. Yeah, yeah I know you are NOT interested in this, but I must go on (I am a compulsive blabber mouth).

Down at Heathrow airport, I realised that in order to be CLEARED in a minute, one needs to stand for two hours. I got muged, bought a £5 calling card valid for 5 minutes (DONT shoot me for this).
1 hour drive to Wantage and that was all I saw of London.
Then at the Divall's place. (Did you see my room video?). Marta, Edwin and 17 months old Benjamin Divall, and there is yet another Divall in the pipeline.
I fell down dead as soon as I hit the pillow. Not much next day, I went oon a walk with the Divalls around the village, and I must emphasize that this place is BEAUTIFUL, all green, much like it was in HRI, quiet, clean and green. And the Brits are helpful and they don't like the Americans.
Marta is Hungarian and makes great cakes. We watched a brit movie "Very Annie Mary", the girl was dopey, the script was very english in humour (I don't know what it means, but Marta said it, so I think its the best way to describe it).
The next morning Edwin took me to RAL. 20 minutes by car, and the way is something like the hills and greenery you must have seen in LOTR. There are horse riding clubs, and just hills on the way. Then there are also houses with thatched slanting roofs which look like white huts on the hills.
I got a day pass for visitors at the RAL gate. Edwin works in the same building as me in the next extension. He took me to Bill's room.
What I now saw was a TALL, LANKY, Rectangular faced man who said,"don't call me Sir, call me Bill". Ok then, Bill.
So I was intoduced to my computer, which according to Bill is terribly slow. Enough work for 30 minutes discussing what I don't know. (Bill started with what I may know, but it turned out,ofcourse, that Kgp hadn't been of help, and we talked about whati didn't know, and what I still don't know).
Restaurant:
Because Bill needed to refill his system with caffeine, and he can't do without it.
I another Bill, BIG,FAT,WHITE HAIR; typically Scottish in his ways.
I learnt that he had partially lost his eye sight in an accident a few years back, so he peers into books n monitor with a magnifying glass, which is really very disconcerting for a new person. I still haven't come to terms with it.
Back to Office:
Started with something called the ROOT. Its a programming language, and it is SICK. And just before lunch I realised that I didn'thave a wallet anymore and no money, no I-card.
Thankfully the Divalls don't have locks on their room doors (spare the toilet and bathroom, THANK GOD for that!), so martha found it in my cupboard when I asked her to take a peep in.
Bill paid my lunch bill again (why else did he get this name !). His also invited me to his home in Abingdon (another village between Wantage and Didcot).
For your information, Bill (Dr. WJ Murray had his education in Oxford, Doctorate in Cambridge and has two sons and two daughters), (this was for Mummy and Mashi, because they are always interested in offline stuff).
Back "Home " with Edwin, and I had a very heavy lappy bag to carry. It took good two hours of Edwin, Marta and Me to set it up on their home wi-fi. MAC address sMACked us all. Finally I had a room, a table, a cupboard, an INDIAN PIN PLUG point, and internet conection, all at the same time. Alright, so i cooked my supper (boiled rice and heated ready-to-eat dal makhni ). And I went to bed with quarks and leptons and of course Peter Higgs, teh man who has tormented all souls in PPDs* around the world.

Day 2 at work:
I tooka bus to work. Its a good half an hour ride through all the villages between Wantage (where I stay) and Didcot (where I work). Tickets are £4 for a single side journey from Wantage to Didcot! For four weeks its £34 throughout the whole of oxfordshire!! I wonder where they got their arithmatic classes from.
My boss (thin Bill) is out of station, and I was under the scottish eyes of Fat Bill. He took me for breakfast, and his name is Bill for the same reason.
There was a lecture by a German prof, and I realised that germans speak english with a lot more clarity and the brits.
Lunch was with a sea of cynical brits. Each one of them hated America, the science they had developed, and teh director of the PPD at RAL asked me if I had learnt english in school or not. One of the brits reminded him that indian history has an english part to it. And the director was amused that we still had english in our educational, technical and social veins. Cynical, I had said.
The english accent is awee bit harder to catch than the american one, and the first two days I just smiled or laughed whenever they did, not getting the joke very much!
In the evening, I lost my way to home.
Jane Bruffel, the HR secretary in PPD offered to drop me home, and I insisted that she left me at Sainbury's, a departmental store. I shopped well, Vaseline (because its cold here), apricot petit, apples (Happy Baba?), oatmeal bread, cheese (with onions and chives), chocolate cookies and pomegranate juice (Mummy!). So on this parade to make my parents happy, I realised I din't know the way back (or rather had forgotten it). So I walked back to the main market circle and started walking downhill. I spotted the man who got up on the bus the same morning with me. I started following him. Uphill, downhill, into the lanes, on the roads and then he just vanished into thin air. Wasborough Avenue was nowhere in sight. 6 people and 1000 directions later I found Barnwell. Kept walking ahead in the hope of getting somewhere atleast. And suddenly (after a good 35 minutes of walking) I realised I had the village map!
Bang at 27, Wasborough Avenue. I still wasn'tquite sure if it was the same Wasborough Avenue that the Divalls lived in, till The key clicked open the door and I found myself inside.
Benjamin crying. Yes! I was there, right where I should have been an hour earlier.
For some strange reason, the Oxfordshire authorities want houses on the same avenue, or street look the same. So, if you want to build a house there, it must look exactly like the ones in your lane, even though they may be a hundred years old.
I ate a mango-coconut cake that Marta had made for May-day market. The 7th was a public holiday because it was the first monday of May, and they celebrated May-Day.
Day three in to work, and I am still ROOTed, but know the quarks and the leptons better.
P.S. ::
# I wonder why were english toilets made.
# These firangis eat nothing more than cream, cheese, potatoes and salt. Sometimes bread too.
# They have a peculiar traffice system. You see a car coming, you wait. So when the road is absolutely clear, you turn or cross. And nobody overtakes. Buses wait! Drivers wait till you get on, insert your ticket in the machine and have it read, then the next one gets on, etc. And, they never get late!
#Martha used to cook Indian stuff a lot before Benj was born, so she has loads of spices, and oil, which she said I should use.
# I am better off being desi.
*Particle Physics Department.