Credit crunch has affected life style of most Londoners, more or less and that's something noticeable on a day to day basis. In the office itself, after first round of redundancy and an expected 12.5% pay cut at all levels coming May, the business at the canteen has become poorer as most colleagues are now bringing lunch box to work. Retail shops are closing down one after another, a
Slug and Lettuce nearby my office had just closed down.
On the other hand, it's a good time for shoppers to grab some bargains, the sales have been non-stopping since before Christmas, this is unusual. For foreign tourists who are not affected directly by credit crunch this is the best time to travel and shop in the UK as pound sterling has dropped to the lowest point in many years. Good for people like me who rarely buy things at original price.
Bought this back in December at
WHSmith for £10 (RRP £30). I used to hate history back in old school days but nowadays I find it interesting after traveling a bit around the historical cities in Europe. Malaysia's history never interested me as you don't know what's true what's not. I heard Hang Tuah who used to be the Malay hero was taken out from the text book because he was later found out to be Chinese origin. What a joke.
Bought 3 books by
Jeremy Clarkson from WHSmith as well for £10 (RRP £7.99 each). He is one of the very few British others than footballers whom I admired, for his great sense of humour.
Zavvi is one of the high profiled retail chain who became the casualty of the economy downturn. I had grabbed "
The Magnificient Seven" (my all time greats! read
here) for
£2 (RRP £7.99), "Future Proof" for £2 (RRP £10.99) and few button badges for 25p each from the megastore located at Tottenham Court Road. The music albums were selling cheap as well but I still prefer to download free :p Heard most Zavvi stores were purchased by
HMV to be merged into their chain. I doubt HMV will survive as they have already got so many stores along Oxford Street, with market shrinking.
I have stop traveling on Oyster monthly and change to Oyster pre paid as this could save me
around £40-50 per month by taking bus instead of underground. In London one has to learn to walk as it's often faster and cheaper to do so. Wearing leather shoes is something torturing so I decided to get a pair of decent trainers to wear to work. Bought the
Nike Reax Run III from Sports World Oxford Street for
£35 (RRP £49.99), really lightweight and comfortable.
Perhaps we should all listen to Gordon Brown to spend out of credit crunch.
The story behind: originally the land owner submitted a building plan but it was disapproved by the authority. He was pissed and submitted another plan for a tank to be placed there. The authority thought it was a septic tank and approved it... and next thing you see is a real tank there.
two policemen came and questioned what was I doing there. I was not surprised as this is not the first time. Two years ago when I was shooting at Canary Wharf for buildings and kids playing I was stopped and demanded to delete the kids photos. This is not a very photographers friendly country. If you take photos of high profile buildings you are a suspect terrorist, if you take photos of kids you are a suspect pedophile.
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