A visit to HMS Ocean

HMS Ocean, current Royal Navy's biggest ship is the obvious symbol of excessive military presence in Olympic London. She is serving as helicopter base and barracks for troops and thus usually remains closed to public, but today civilians were let on board for the second time since she had arrived. I wasn't a fan of that security frenzy and still think it was at the very least questionable decision to militarise the event, but it's always interesting to get a look at such a great piece of engineering.

Possibly the pause between Olympics and Paralympics is to blame, but there was almost no queue so it was only needed to wait for the ferry boat to get there. Like at HMS St Albans two years ago, only limited spaces were open, but still it was quite possible to learn something new.

When looking from the distance, I thought those niches in ship's sides are closed with some cover not visible from there when it's not moored. It turned out they're "permanent" housing landing crafts on their cranes (davits):

The font used in various writings is more strict than on HMS St Albans, but resembles pub menu a bit. I actually like it, it's just surprising to read something like "Danger! Explosives!" in careful curlicues:

Some internal warnings (guess nothing secret):

Hangar deck with a "folded" Lynx helicopter and some other vehicles:

Helicopters are brought to the flight deck from there by two lifts like this:

The flight deck has not ski-jump deck and thus is suitable only for helicopters and jump jets:

Since Harriers are now retired, the only option are helicopters. Same is true for older HMS Illustrious which while boasting a ramp, still cannot operate fixed wing aircraft. New "true" aircraft carrier is only expected by 2020 and meanwhile there were thoughts to share one with France. Later rejected, they still did spark inevitable jokes like "what shall we do when French half surrenders?"

Ground connection on the flight deck:

The ship is quite tall as well - taller than great deal of houses in London:

Finally, a video from the ferry boat showing HMS Ocean from all sides, and a link to the corresponding Flickr set:

The emperor's new clothes

It was very disappointing to find almost no people in the embassy today comparing to the recent parliamentary elections. One who hasn't been to polling station previous time might have thought that there still was a fair amount of people voting, especially given that not every londoner is Russian yet. But I'm only going to say that we didn't have to queue this time at all, and it took us several hours to get into the embassy back in December.

It was raining in London today, but was it a disaster? I bet it was also hot today in Dubai and chilly in Alaska. But even the usual picket on the opposite site of the road featuring some Moscow celebrities dissolved rather quickly.

I do hope people in Russia can boast stronger morale.

Protests and Santas

We've been to two Russian elections fraud protests, a picket near the embassy yesterday and today's rally near the Westminster Abbey. The second one was, by the way, organised much better with more people attended it despite (or thanks to) the lack of scandalous Russian oligarchs who came to the embassy. Here are some pics from both events.

On our way back we bumped into the crowd of people dressed like Father Christmas, cheering and drinking. We actually met them in previous two years as well in December, but this time I found a link of what's that all about, and managed to take better pictures.

Brace yourselves - Christmas is coming!

"Tour du Danger"

For a city as big as London it is hard to stay slow, relaxed and bike-friendly. Activists praise very well organised facilities of Amsterdam and Copenhagen, but it's usually omitted that the population of those two cities combined makes only 15% of the number of Londoners. So yes, maybe you couldn't expect that much in the given circumstances. Those who think otherwise still were witnessing that it was getting a bit better every single year. The death toll for cyclists has been continually decreasing: 21 lethal accidents in 2005, 19 in 2006, 15 in 2007 and 2008, then 13 in 2009, then only 10 in 2010. One too many, but the tendency was optimistic, especially considering that every year more and more people were getting involved as cycling gained its former popularity back.

As a mayor of London, Boris Johnson started with very inspiring pledges. Commuting by bike himself, he established the bike hire scheme (hence the unofficial but widely used name, BorisBikes), backed campaigns encouraging people to get on two wheels and introduced dedicated bike lanes, so called "cycle superhighways". Maybe it wasn't that bad after all.

So it went like that. Until 2011:

It's only November now, it's not snowing or even raining much, and yet there are already 15 cyclists killed on the streets by motorised vehicles - a regrettable record! Tensions were also risen by the contradictory TfL decisions over the redesign of several key junctions and "road bottlenecks", Blackfriars bridge to name. More of that, the city authorities (and "the cycling enthusiast" mayor himself) kept saying "No" to any suggestions, simply declining the existence of the problem.

In last three weeks, two people got killed on the same junction, and even more, on the very much celebrated "cycle superhighway", which suddenly turned out to be nothing more than a stripe of blue paint offering false feeling of protection.

In brief, that's how a humble flashride planned by two bloggers became an enormous "Tour du Danger". Today hundreds of cyclists rode through 10 of the most dangerous junctions in Central London and around in attempt to raise attention.

If you managed to forget about the reasons of the event, it was pleasant and smooth. It was different from the SkyRide experience as this time I was the one being marshalled having enough time to ring the bell and raise hand to greet cheering bystanders. Many thanks to today's marshals blocking the roads for us and enduring the yelling motorists' aggression (poor lads, today they reached their undoubtedly urgent Saturday destinations 5 or even 10 minutes later).

I only have videos of minutes before start and finish, and they don't provide the full idea of the event scale. More informative videos are easy to find though (search for #tourdudanger hashtags):

Some pictures (peek into the full Flickr set if interested):

Now a few tips to stay safe. They're trivial and most likely you already know them, but I'm still typing as it should also help me remember these points better myself:

• Be careful on left turns - it's surprising but most accidents happen on left turns rather than on more complex right ones requiring your to negotiate through lanes. If you're turning together with a large vehicle as a bus or a lorry, it can get too close to pavement with its long body, hitting you eventually. And if you're not taking a turn moving forward through a junction, it's even more dangerous as you need to make absolutely sure nobody is going to take that turn from the lane right to you. Hence always try to stay behind (not even in front of, when possible, for it wasn't enough for some victims) the larger vehicles when passing junctions.
• Ladies, take extra care - most of the victims are females, e.g. 10 out of 13 in 2009. I don't know why, but it is a very disturbing fact considering that there are not so many women cycling at all. So if you're a woman, please think what in your road behaviour could you improve. If you're male, however, it's worth thinking as well.
• Consider wearing a helmet - I can understand "Dutch-style" activists who are against wearing lycra and helmets as it turns casual cycling into something you need to be prepared for with a special set of clothes, shoes and stuff, making actually taking a bus a lesser hassle. As to me, lycra is too much indeed, and certainly helmet won't help you if you get run over. Still, if you're just knocked off your bike, it might help you get away with that. Incidents like that also happen. And fasten your chinstrap - many people have them dangling way below their chins rendering their helmets almost useless.

Another thing to remember is that we're having troubles also because of more people cycling, more than ever in last years. I can see that even with my short experience of living in London, there are more and more people on the roads. So don't be afraid and join us. It's fun.

P.S. I was recording the route, see it here. It's not very accurate near the Hyde park - my phone lost the signal there for some reason, so it just shows a straight way through Green park - but apart from that it's fine.

Update: You can see me twice (blue helmet, black beard) in BBC report starting from 31s and 59s.

Update: More decent and numerous photos from another participant (found myself there as well).

Update: Report from one of organisers with more links to media coverage.

"No occupation, just visiting"

An arguably copycat demo has broken out today near the St. Paul's cathedral with an intention to occupy the London Stock Exchange like the Wall Street in US is. Similar to other protests by left-wing activists which happened often in last two years, this one still introduced something new.

The narrow passages connecting the squares around the cathedral with the main streets were blocked by police as well as by private guards. The signs telling about the private status of those side streets were put outside and only tenants were let in. That was the first thing I didn't notice on the previous similar events.

Major landmark on Saturday - yes, the tourists were there and were apparently happy to see something not offered by their travel guides. As the police presence grew heavy, more an more of them were scared away but at the beginning it was a mixture of protesting locals and random people. Not as easy to make a distinction though as everybody brings a camera on demonstrations nowadays.

There were much more police than usually, clearly prepared to block all the means of getting to the building - from the very beginning the arc was already put under control, and as the crowd thickened more of them appeared proportionally.

So I'd say that the planned occupation has really happened, only the occupants were wearing uniforms.

Another successfully occupied venues were posts and railings - it was nearly impossible to find a place to chain a bike in 500m radius.

I tried to sketch, but it was hard to concentrate.

According to the most recent tweets protesters are now being kettled away. That was, I suppose, expected and doesn't mean much - what will define the success of today's action will be the number of people staying for occupation on the streets, not necessarily near the Stock Exchange. Nights became noticeably colder recently so that'd be a challenge to carry on.

You're welcome to peek into the full Flickr set if interested.

Update: BBC tells Assange was there addressing the protesters. I left too early to see him.

Mind over Matter at Shoreditch

An exhibition has opened recently at Shoreditch Town Hall featuring the stories and portraits of older people who donated their brains to help scientists in a fight against dementia. I didn't expect much from it but now having it visited I should say that was the best photo gallery I've seen so far.

It's not really much one can do with some shabby basement space after hanging your pictures on the walls, but by adding carefully adjusted lights, background sounds and a bit of creativity a fantastic effect could be achieved.

First you see the portrait of a man or woman and read their story pinned near the photo, and several minutes later in another room you suddenly recognise that story being narrated by that very person from the speakers in the dark corner. You also notice some short phrases on the walls here and there in places which you didn't think were the part of the exhibition. Then suddenly the next room (you got there through a hole in the wall) contains no portraits like the ones you walked through before but is empty apart from medical containers for human organs on the floor and white coats on the hangers. Then you realise you no longer hear the monologues read in old man's voice but just some lifeless background noise. You leave that room, take another turn and enter a hall with black rectangles on its walls instead of the photos. Coming close you see that they're not plain black, just very dark, so to see what's on them you have to concentrate like trying to remember something you once knew so well... then a projector turns on behind you back producing for a moment a bright, large and clear picture of a laughing young woman which fades away as quickly as it has appeared. You're not old yet but now you probably understand what's battling your failing mind for your own memories feels like.

Strangely it doesn't make you sad or ineffectively afraid of inevitable but calms you much, so don't be concerned about getting upset. And also you will likely feel a huge respect both for the donors and for scientists. The exhibition will last until October 23rd and it's well worth a visit.

A night in museum

I realised suddenly this morning that the EU-wide Researchers' Night was to take place today. Here in London it was hosted by several venues but as most of them required pre-booking, we decided to go for the most obvious option - the Natural History Museum, which was also participating.

The difference from the usual exhibitions (besides the late closure) were the real researchers working in museum itself and London universities telling visitors about their work and answering questions.

I don't know if that was really exciting for the people not usually working with public to answer endless lame questions from people like us wandering around but even if so the speakers were very nice to everybody indeed. And apart from just pleasure of talking to clever and nice people, I managed to learn a lot of things I didn't know before, e.g. about deciduous teeth of apes, how long does it take for an abandoned shell to fossilise or is the genetic distance between daytime and night butterflies longer than between two random ones.

Having remembered my obsession with insects back in my childhood (I was a huge fan, read a lot and had my own collection), I rushed to entomology section where I had a chance to talk to speaker a bit longer, and was even asked if I am a scientist myself by any chance. Alas, not in the slightest bit :( This is the gentleman who endured my curiosity:

It as also allowed and welcomed to use various equipment: microscopes, preparations, cameras and even peculiar things like a special air drill used to break down the crystals covering the fossilised bones. For the latter option, you were given a real piece of rock with an ancient bone in it to play with.

All that was organised as desks standing in the museum halls with a unrestricted access. But we also went to a couple of special exhibitions which required to be there at specific time. First was museum library which is usually closed to public and contains a lot of hand-drawn pictures of New World species, many of them now extinct and not ever taken a photo of. And also among the books shown there was a very first edition of The Origin of Species:

The second special event was a surgery section where three stages of cardiac arrest treatment were shown in a form of a dramatised show (performed by real doctors and nurses) with the comments given by an ICL professor:

For those of visitors who missed their traditional Friday pub, wine and beer was served as well as snacks and sandwiches. Everybody was enjoying their drinks right beside the desks with scientific equipment, and so did the scientists themselves (below is the sea algae desk):

A very unusual Friday night it was, and as much appreciated. But on the other thought, it is hard to tell what is unusual in London as something not typical is happening there at any given moment. What a great place it is to live in.

P.S. The full Flickr set is also available.

Navalny at LSE

Alexey Navalny, by far the most famous Russian whistleblower and lawyer was speaking today at LSE about his fight with corruption.

I was lucky to arrive earlier than I planned so I had no problems with getting in, but there were more people in the queue than it was possible to get seated and many visitors were not let into. This is quite typical for LSE public events, but I am not sure if it is still usual for the lectures being interesting almost only to foreigners. Roughly 3/4 of the audience were Russians (it was easy to measure as Navalny once asked Russian speakers to raise their hands), most of them students, most of those students from the LSE. As somebody mentioned in their Twitter ironically, the speaker was very likely talking to children of his opponents.

I haven't been to that many LSE public lectures but still this was the first one I attended organised more as an interview than as a talk. Instead of giving a speech, Navalny was answering questions asked by the host, who was reading them from the sheet of paper, eyes buried in his notes. That was when Navalny asked Russians to raise hands: "Alas, not all of you are Russian speakers so I can't speak Russian, and I'm tired talking in English", he complained.

Russian media always mention Navalny's "brilliant English". That's not true. His speech is fluent but with many grammatical mistakes seasoned with a heavy accent. It is not really his fault as he is a Russian politician and lives in Russia, and also he's simply famous enough to get invited here and there across the globe having people listening to him anyway. And my English is also far from being perfect, so how can I judge. Still, that surprised me enough to mention that.

I liked some of Navalny's points:

• In its history, Russia has never been as rich as it is now, so people generally don't mind negative aspects they face when dealing with the public institutions.
• Western societies, UK particularly, are also generally fine with filthy rich Russians, not being interested in how had they acquired their money. "There are so many people with LSE diplomas in Transneft and Rosneft, do you run a special embezzlement course here?" (host laughing).
• There is no good cop in Russian presidential tandem, as there is no bad cop either. They're both evil and even more precisely, there is only one guy who's in charge, not two of them. For the same reason it doesn't really matter who of them will "win" the next elections.
• Putin's rating is not a complete fake and he's indeed the most popular politician in the country. But his real figure is hardly higher than 35%, and when everybody learns that, it will drop significantly.

But what I didn't like today was the same attitude I didn't like in Navalny before this talk when reading his posts back in Russia.

The man on the slide above is Oleg Simakov, a supposedly corrupt Russian official, as many of them are (at least he was caught red-handed with £1.000.000 deal). But he was never named during the talk while mentioned several times, because he was always referred by Navalny only as "Mister Unibrow". That might be funny (well, for the first two or three times) but don't you find that Mr. Putin is already very good with rude jokes? Do we really need another guy with this precious talent?

I also had a chance to ask Navalny about his late political commercials showing him shooting a stereotypical immigrant with a handgun. My question was how did his beliefs change since that moment and does he regret now or proud of that activity. The answer I got was long and calm but in brief he told that yes, he's fine with that. I don't really think Navalny is a true racist or something, but I have a strong feeling he's not very picky with his methods. Whatever works, he will use. First liberal socialism in Yabloko party, then nationalism turned out to be less effective, so why don't we try corruption - oh yeah, that works. Okay, but what will be the next? I am not really comfortable with that approach, if you ask me.

There were funny moments as well. "We are not living in a better country because of ourselves", said Navalny solemnly, which, in the context given, made me giggle. Some of us are actually living in a better country, aren't we.

***

Speaking of who lives where, while standing in the line I overheard some talks between Russian students. Many of them are concerned by the new immigration rules which no longer privilege foreign UK graduates over other foreign workers, so if you don't manage to secure a job soon enough after graduating (being now handicapped by the foreign workforce limitations during your search), you have to leave. "It's actually not that bad", - said one guy - "There are much more opportunities in Moscow. Not as comfortable as London, but nothing money can't buy". And as I mentioned in the beginning, I couldn't help thinking that many corrupts targeted by Navalny reason in a very similar way.

Open House 2011

BBC Studio A

It wasn't the best idea to start the Open House weekend with Alexandra Palace or, more precisely, with the first British TV studio. The venue hasn't changed much since the last time I've been there - its "People's palace" motto will probably make you remember another modern cliché, "broken society".

Looking so magnificently from the distance, inside it is nothing more than a rather shabby empty box. Still, we were expecting the famous TV studio left intact and even the 20 minutes film which everybody had to watch right after getting inside (and you weren't allowed to proceed to other rooms until it ended) didn't really disappoint us. However, the studio itself was a major failure. Several mannequins in the corner were the only interesting part:

Apart from that, there was only a collection of old TV sets, radios, recorders and some cameras. All that was donated by public and never really belonged there, and the exhibition wasn't really organised very well - things just lined up on shelves, that's all. The design of the Golden Era electronic devices is generally nice but hey I was born in USSR and I still do remember devices like those being used by people in everyday life. Yawn.

And yes, there was dust everywhere, on every surface. Something you don't really expect from any of London museums, even from the improvised one:

What I liked though was a strange TV set with a screen placed upside down and a built-in mirror to watch the proper picture:

Also, I learned about one of the oldest electronics brand in the UK:

There was also a chance for visitors to get a glimpse of the theatre currently being refurbished, but the entrance to the hall was restricted and you were only let to peek through the glass, which in addition to the poor light conditions made it very hard to actually see a thing:

St. Augustine's tower

The oldest building in Hackney was once a part of the 13th century church with additional floors built on 300 years later and then bought from the Church by council in the beginning of the last century.

It is amazingly spacious inside on all of its 4 floors thanks to the lack of internal walls and the spiral staircase being so narrow that space is left only for one person:

The wooden details of the interior including floors and ceilings still look quite authentic while being obviously not as old as the tower itself, so they doesn't spoil the impression as it often happens:

The exit to the roof is also very narrow and you have to bend to get through it. And on the roof, it is awesome.

Livery Halls and the Guildhall

Pardon my ignorance, but the City of London halls we visited at the end of the day all looked somehow similar to me. All of them hit first by the Great Fire, than by bombs, rebuilt several times and their rich interiors restored. They look splendid inside and outside but there is little interesting you can say beside the fact that it looks very noble and expensive. Perhaps it takes a lot more of history knowledge than I have to get the proper impression and get all the references.

The story of livery companies and their role in London development is undoubtedly worth studying. Still it is hard to connect in the mind, say, carpenters as workers and this as their guild place:

The Guildhall is a building that consists of several ones of different ages now forming a single complex. It is well visible form the outside:

Inside, it is again a combination of the old halls and chambers followed by the modern glass passages and then again by an ancient crypt:

The Open House weekend continues tomorrow but unfortunately I won't be able to carry on as I have to work on that day - but those of you who are in London still have a chance. Use it!

***

The full Flickr set for today is, as usually, here.

The previous Open House weekend (which I, to be honest, liked more):

Village Underground
The Slice of Reality
The Linear House