Part 3 - Elementary, my dear

In the UK, it is tough to cross a road or walk into a store without bumping into a teddy bear. They are everywhere, dressed up as all possible historic & contemporary characters worth their salt. I had a feeling that a tourist attraction in UK really means business the day it brings out its own teddy bear. Name any street in England or Scotland that had some historic relevance, had some particularly bloody past, was visited by a celebrity or just plain, sounds cool & chances are that you will be able to buy a Teddy bear with that message.

Like hundreds of other Sherlock Holmes fans, I have also tried to decipher many a man & woman's past from the way he/she dressed, walked or carried a pen. Probably it was the lack of easy availability of hallucinogens that prevented me from being too successful in those attempts. Holmes is the ultimate intellectual super hero. Here was a guy who does no cardiac exercises or weights or martial arts, has no annoying accents or pointy moustaches, wears his clothes in the right order, does not have an underground lair, but is still able to get the crook by sheer deduction - how cool is that?

So I was really glad to actually pass through 21 B Baker Street. I suppose it is the quirky English humour that has really turned an address into a tourist destination. There was a plaque saying that the legendary detective still gets a lot of cases by mail to that address. Of course, there were the mandatory teddy bears for sale.

One thing that stands out in England is the way they have branded mundane things & how poor tourists like me spend precious forex on them. The Underground is a major brand with everything from boxer shorts to ashtrays on it. The English cop's hat, the telephone booths, the double decker buses, the big clock etc etc. Why cant we make miniature ambys and sell them for dollars?

The original plan was to run around the whole day, visit Harrods, meet a cousin of ours & then catch a train to scotland. After successfully completing task 1 only the whole day, we decided to take a morning train & thus get some well deserved sleep. We planned to meet up with one of Ps cousins for dinner. So he takes us to this pseud Chinese joint called "Memories of (some chinese guy)". And we sit down and I freeze. There are these nice little chopsticks on the table & nothing else.

So I look desperately at my better half for some support, some solace & she mumbles something to the effect of "Just Try.." Luckily I am not one of those who find every minute a challenge & takes it head on. So I asked for forks. Surprise surprise so did her cousin & from that moment we really bonded. Till date I havent really met a horizontally challenged chinese guy & I believe their way of eating might have something to do with this. I mean how much can you eat with two little sticks? I am sure a lot of chinese folk are just eating very little out of sheer frustration on not being able to eat more. We Indians on the other hand know that we can eat as much as our hand will allow.

(Here, let me point out that the above is not an extraordinary observation. I am sure that there are countless obscure authors who have written the same about Chinese before. So if you think this is your idea, please claim it. But do it before I get a two book deal & a movie offer from Dream works. Dont come back running then)