Little Venice & Broken Things

Right before we got on the plane to come to London, Becky started to have problems with her phone. The screen would become this green pixelated display, and you could nothing with it. I looked it up on the web and Google acknowledged that this was a problem with certain Pixel 8 phones. Becky and I have the exact same phone and were bought at the same time and yes, of course hers is the one that does it not mine. Google would fix it for free IF we were in the United States, but since we are in the UK we would need to ship it to them and then they would repair it and then they would ship it back. I tried to explain that Becky could not be without a phone for that long, as it was the phone was now unreliable, and this was bad as she needed it for navigation and communication every day. After an hour-long chat with three different customer service people, I got nowhere.

I finally took it to a repair place here in London. The very nice gentleman at ISmash knew of the problem and replaced the screen all in less than an hour. Now her phone is working great, and I am trying to get reimbursed b Google. We will see. Thank you ISmash, yes that is the name of the store.

One morning I woke up and as I cleaned my glasses the frame broke. Just cracked apart in one place, but it was clear there were cracks beginning to show in other places. We go to Southlake Optometry Group, and I contacted them. Connie at SOG tracked down a local optometry store near where we are in London and communicated with them about our situation. I walked down to the 36 Opticians and Natlie helped me find a pair of frames that would fit my current lenses and got me all setup and out the door. Another great experience.

We also had a British/UK trivia night at the Daniel House. Tom compiled the questions, and we broke into teams. We paired up with Carolyn and Caroline and we made a great team. We won!!! We got some wonderful cloth bags from the V&A. It was a great deal of fun and many questions were very surprising. Like how much of the underground tube is underground. The answer is only 45%. We all want to know why it is called the underground tube?????

One day Becky rode the tube with a student who wanted to show Becky the area her internship was in. Turns out it is an area called Little Venice. Becky explored it some and we went back the next day and did some more exploring. We mostly found some great food trucks, and each grab a great lunch. Then we walked over to the Queens Garden and Regions Park. It was a very nice time.

I had a quick dinner out with Elliot and Drew as we are trying to keep a guy’s night out each week. We ran off to Churchill Arms pub. They serve Thai food, which is not what we expected, but it was good.

We ended the day by gong to a show in the West End. Four students had gotten tickets to a random show. On the day of their tickets, you are notified of the show you will see, it will be any show that is currently showing in the West End. Two of the students could not attend due to the fact that one of their classes would be attending a lecture downtown that night. They gave us their tickets and Beck and I and the two other students went and saw The Tempest.

It was a very interesting production and stared Sigourney Weaver. The show was OK, but Sigourney Weaver was not good at all. Just being able to see Shakespeare on the West End is a great experience and the time with the students was great. We had an overall wonderful time and were very grateful that the students gave us their tickets.