Yep, you guessed it. I am a big softie and I am trying to change the world, well, I am trying. Earlier this week I watched a show on BBC about homelessness in London and what they go through. This made me think a lot about the subject because I for one do not want to become homeless ever as it must be a bad place to be in your life. One thing does bug me about homeless people and I suppose the few bad apples give them the bad rep they carry around with them. Whenever you dig into your pockets and hand someone money, they end up splurging it on either booze or drugs and that makes me furious as to why so I give away my hard earned money?

 Anyway, thinking about the show made me realise just how cruel people can be and that we should really try to make a difference in someone’s lives even if it is just temporary. There are hundreds of homeless people living in London and so many more from Europe end up on the streets in the hunt for a better life. I always tend to see large groups of men in summer time sleep in the small park close to my work. There is a smaller group that tend to sleep on the church steps from time to time. Then I get to see something good happen at other times where a charity delivers food and a hot drink to these homeless people at around 7am in front of Charing Cross Police Station.

I still have mixed feelings about homelessness but that would not stop me from buying someone food if they ask me for it but they won’t see a penny!

A hidden treasure was discovered in Central London a couple of weeks back whilst doing another round of sightseeing. Yep, believe it or not, we still have a lot of sightseeing ground to cover, even five years later and there is always something new popping up. London is really amazing in that respect as it is ever-evolving into something new and exciting. This hidden treasure was in the famous Trocadero Centre in Piccadilly Circus.

The Trocadero Centre is already famous for housing a massive arcade on three floors, a bowling alley, sports bar and cinema. Ripley’s Believe it or Not moved into the building recently and tourists and locals have been enjoying the Rainforest Café for years. Now Trocadero opened their doors to Gamersbase where people can sit in pure “gamers luxury” and play on their networks and their games. Gamersbase have teamed up with HMV and boy is the setup sweet.

Whether you love playing LAN games or just curious about the latest games coming out before buying them, pop down there and give it a whirl. This set up is perfect for people who want to meet more gamers or test out games without forking out a fortune for it. If you have ever played in a LAN, you will know that it is great and not to be missed.

Exploring London can be a daunting task most of the time but you should make some time to set your inner-child free and let them explore London. There are always constant changes about in London; you might see something now that will disappear within weeks. We went exploring on Sunday and hit central London. Amazingly we managed to walk from Piccadilly Circus all the way to Oxford Street, Soho and back and we saw so much.

This is then we discovered the new Nokia store in Reagent Street, just off Piccadilly Circus. It is not too far from the Apple store, if you know where that is. The best thing about this Nokia store is that it is interactive. They have a few stalls where you can sit on a stool and explore the new phone from top to bottom, if you want.

Guess this post is not as informative as you would have liked but at least we took a few interesting photos to spice it up with! It shows you that you do not have to spend money to explore London and to have fun or at least to be entertained.

One of the top reasons why I decided to come to London was the endless amount of things I could see and experience within the M25. Today reminded me of that very reason when I found a small brick-a-brac shop on a road a rarely walk. There was antique furniture outside on the pavement and a few boxes scattered with books and small toys. One of those boxes caught my eye and I leaned closer to find a whole set of Star Wars action figures.

Excitement won’t be the correct word to use but I sure felt something when I saw them. The gentleman in the shop came outside and with a smile on his face told me that they were £6 each, which is a bargain for anything related to Star Wars. They even had 3CPO and Princess Leia and the mighty Darth Vader. Sadly I had no cash on me and I doubt they would have accepted a debit card so I took a photo instead.

I am seriously tempted to withdraw some money and get Darth Vader at least, definitely a collectable. With this find in mind, I urge you to scour through Charity Shops; they sometimes have amazing things hidden away for next to nothing.  

Yup, the impossible has officially been done, mark this day! As most Londoners know, travelling to any of London’s airports in the middle of the night can be quite costly because the Underground terminates at 01:00 and so do the trains. You will need to rely completely on night busses or by booking a taxi to get there. Now, the night busses can be a bit scary at night so if you decide to take our advice, please take caution.

The Night Busses in London start at around 01:00 each morning and most of them will run twice within the hour. I would check the information on the bus stop before taking that as gospel as it might change in the future. When using Night Busses, I would avoid sitting way at the back all alone; sit closer to the driver or another group of people. Best advice, act like a moody teenager, people tend to leave them alone, hehe!

Anyway, we travelled to Heathrow Airport from Norwood which is close to Croydon by taking a Night Bus straight to West Croydon Bus Station and switching there to catch one of a few express busses to Heathrow Airport. It cost me nothing more than my normal bus pass I had loaded onto my Oyster Card. Compare that now to taking a taxi to Heathrow which would have cost me around £70 because it was 03:00 in the morning and I stay way on the other side of London. I thought that we would be the only crazy people travelling that time of the morning, boy was I pleasantly surprised to find a lot more people out there.

To be honest, I do not feel any safer by taking a taxi that time of the morning but I suppose some people do. So, here is a thought… explore all the options before you do something, there can be a cheaper, faster and better way to experience London!

Got any questions?

This post will be more about the much deserved praise the NHS deserves than anything else. In case you do not know who or what the NHS is, I’ll tell you again. The NHS stands for National Healthcare Service which is available to all residents in England at no extra charge. It is what they call their Public Healthcare system. The best thing about the NHS is that they offer first class service to all patients without asking for a penny. You will still need to pay for a prescription if you need one but that is a given, medicine can be quite expensive.

Coming from a third-world country, I was gob smacked to find that England’s healthcare system works so brilliantly and better yet, I can get the healthcare I need without having to worry how to pay for it and most people take that for granted. You will never get that type of service and dedication in a third-world country, trust me!

The NHS has it sorted from their website with useful information, to their GP’s to their walk-in centres. Think about this the next time you moan about the NHS. It is just such a shame that people from other countries come in only to make use of their services and to abuse the system but hopefully that will get sorted out in the future. Saying that, I am from a third-world country but I do my part to support the community, not just take, take and take!

So, here is another round of applause to the NHS system, weather you like it or not! If you intend on living in London, then you will be in save hands when it comes to your health.

Wish I had more exciting news and this won’t blow your socks off but London finally have a few air-conditioned busses. I had not realised that the new busses had these little vents until I sat down and felt the nice cool air blowing on me. It could not have come at a more perfect time; it has been a scorcher for the last three days.

 Scorcher, yes, you read right. The weather in London has been fantastic and you can definitely see a lot more people smiling on the street. Summer time is an exciting time in London, so much to see and to do, never mind catching up with friends who live a borough or two away from you.

Anyway, to get back to this amazing new bus I got on yesterday. My initial thought when I got to the top of the double-decker bus that these people have to be crazy to not have any windows open, until I felt the nice cool air blowing on me. I did not even mind sitting in the sunny spot all the way home as I was cooling down. Now I’m going to mind even less sitting in traffic on a hot sunny day, as long as the air-conditioning is working.

Now to get TFL to do something about the conditions on the Underground. It gets unbearably hot down there, not worth taking a tube at all. I did see a few big industrial fans that did nothing but blow hot air around the platform. This is at least something but not enough yet considering how much we fork out on travel in the capital.

Amazing, I’ve recently only noticed that there is a lot of churches around London. There is about three around the corner from me, all different though but yet so close to each other. This discovery has sparked a new hobby for me to see how many different churches I can photograph and document in London, boy, which should be interesting as I have not explored 1/5^th of London yet!

Each church is built different and they all have their own story. It is actually fascinating how the heritage is preserved and how it reflects back on each community over the years.

Wednesday morning I had a meeting or two and when I returned I found that DHL had delivered my brand new mobile phone. Ecstatic was not the word. Rummaged through all the papers and little bags in the box and finally got to charge the new mobile phone. Why am I telling you this? Well, for one, it will bring so much more photos to this website as it has an amazing 9MP camera built in and I would be taking photos on the go!

Nothing fascinates me more than taking photos of everything I see, it may look like ordinary photos of the city but it is photos you do not normally see. I call it the working London because if you do not live here, you do not know what to expect. A working London photo tells you so much more about London than a simple guide can. You learn things and you recognise things better.

Call me sad if you must but I will be bringing you tonnes of working London photos in the near future. Oh, the camera has a panoramic feature, whooo that will be fun, especially in Central London. So, without further ado, here is the first photo of working London.