I forgot to mention that on Sunday afternoon I also headed over to Buckingham Palace while I was waiting for a room to be made available at my hotel. Perhaps 100 yards away from the palace is the Canadian War Memorial.

In my view, the Canadian War Memorial is right beside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as the most potent war memorial I've ever seen. But where the Vietnam Memorial provides an overall impression of solemness, and possibly sadness or regret, the Canadian War Memorial evokes a profound sense of gratitude. It's a water cascade over a granite diamond that has images of maple leaves embedded into it, and the memorial is surrounded by maple trees. In autumn, the leaves from the trees fall onto the memorial and mix with the carvings. It's just stunning.

Image courtesy flickr user OwenBlacker

If you're ever in London, do yourself a favor and pop over to Green Park, right by Buckingham Palace. The palace is rather nice to look at as well.

I have arrived in London, where I'll be working for two weeks. So far, everything is going well.

Immigration was ridiculously fast. I mean, literally, I walked into the room and up to an available desk. The immigration officer did the usual routine of complete non-interest except when I mentioned I worked for Google, to which I got a "Oh, mhmm."

The hotel I'm staying in is really nice. Probably nicer than I deserve. The mirror in the bathroom has a section of fogproof glass. I can see the top of Big Ben's tower and the parliament building from the window.

It's also creepy. The minibar is computer controlled. If you remove anything from its spot, it bills your room. When I arrived, I opened up the minibar hoping that it had space to be used as a fridge (it doesn't). About 15 minutes later, a room service guy arrived with a can of Red Bull and put it in the minibar, and he implied that they had noticed that I had opened the minibar but hadn't taken anything out, so they wanted to restock the can in case I wanted it.

I spent last night wandering about the Square Mile, which is also creepy after dark (5:30) on a weekend. Nothing is open, including museums and things, and you can walk for blocks without seeing anyone. I originally went out to go see The Monument, but it's closed for renovations for 18 months, so I decided to just wander about. Guildhall is really impressive, though, even at night when you can't go inside. In fact, the whole city has this really cool feel from being a mixture of old medieval architecture and beautiful modern stuff. Walking along a long slim overstreet walkway and looking over to see a ruined section of the London Wall is awesome. I unfortunately don't have any pictures, as it was dark and my only photographic device is my phone, but trust me, it's great.

Also, 140 London Wall is perhaps the greatest address ever.

Cars driving on the opposite side of the road are kind of unsettling, too. I didn't realize to what extent I have subconscious feelings about what direction I have to watch out for cars, but when you're walking along the left side of the road and a car whips by from behind you, it's quite surprising.

The London office is quite a lot like New York. My major impression is that it's smaller and has better junk food.

So, it appears that my impression of London so far this time is impressive, yet creepy. More tales as the trip progresses.

As I sit here in my parents' house on the last night before I fly back to New York, gazing into the thick fog that's settled over the neighborhood, I feel compelled to take stock of my life. The last week has been a really great time, and it's going to be tough to leave, though I know I have to. Knowing how hard it is on my mom doesn't help either.

Overall, I feel like my life in New York is pretty good. Looking at it from the outside, it certainly looks awesome: I live in a great place, I work at one of the most desired places to work, and so forth. But for the most part, I feel unfulfilled, and I can't quantify exactly why. Part of it is that work isn't that interesting to me; I work on interesting projects, but the complete disconnect from the customer dampens my enthusiasm dramatically. I don't feel like that's it, though. Hopefully I can find what I need to change to feel better.

In other news, there are some exciting developments on this side of the country.

My parents have a new cat, and she's absolutely adorable. Her name is Gina, and she's quite small, roughly 2/3 the size of what I think of as a normal cat. She's got plenty of spunk, though, as she'll happily climb up onto my (six foot high) bed or chase a wine bottle cork around the house.

There's a new Catholic cathedral going up in Oakland right on Lake Merritt, and it's pretty impressive. It looks to be about eight stories tall, judging by the neighboring buildings, and is faced with glass panels in a elegant curve shape with a angled indent. Andrew Sherman has been keeping a log of its construction with a large helping of pictures.

Speaking of Lake Merritt, they're finally doing planning and construction for the southern end improvements, most notably: redesigning 12th Street and Lakeshore, adding more park space, and removing the horrible tunnels that go under the expressway. The design looks really good, though there are concerns about the number of trees being removed (both there and elsewhere), and I'm not convinced that the new restaurant that's being put where the boathouse used to be will be worth anything. There've previously been restaurants on the Lake and all of them have gone out of business. I wouldn't mind living in a high-rise apartment overlooking the lake someday, though.

Also, SCO was delisted in the last couple days, though not as a result of low share price (which it was already under advisement from NASDAQ about), but due to filing for bankruptcy.

New Haven consists largely of parking lots and medical emergencies.

I've never been so pleased to be denied a service in my life.

Thank you for your interest in Chase Identity Protection

What Happened:

We are sorry to inform you that we are unable to fulfill your request to participate in this program. The benefits of our product are based on the information and activity that takes place in your credit file. At this time, there is not enough information in your credit file so we cannot provide you with this service and you will not be charged.

So, basically, the bank says that they don't know enough about me to have any idea what would be normal or abnormal financial activity. That sounds like good news to me!

Wow, it has been a long while since I posted. Here's a quick recap of what's been going on in my busy busy life.

I have the best family sometimes.

On Thursday, my sister needed some rum for her apple pie, and mentioned that she'd never tried straight rum before, so we gave her a little bit of rum to try, which was very entertaining to watch.

Last night, I'm not entirely sure how it started since I wasn't in the room, but for some reason my dad brought out a green drink that's basically Armenian moonshine and had us try it. That started a whole sequence where we poked through the liquor cabinet and pulled out everything we wanted to try and sampled it.

Thanksgiving with my family is an event with a long tradition behind it, and this year followed in the same basic footprints as the others.

Today on the subway, as I headed home from seeing a show with my sister, a guy on the subway commented on the fact that I was only wearing a short-sleeved shirt and slacks despite the cold.

At this point, I've seen Kat every day since last Thursday, and I'll be seeing her again tonight. I've spent the last two nights at her apartment. When I walked her to the train station this morning, I asked if I was going to see her tonight, and she looked at me with this "Do you really have to ask?" expression on her face.