6Sep08
With another coursemate, we visited the Greenwich Meridian Line (also called the Prime Meridian of the World: Longitude 0 degrees 0 minutes 0 seconds) - that was established by John Flamsteed around 1675. As with thousands of visitors to this place, I straddled the GMLine - and for that moment, I was both east of the Prime Longitude, as well as west of it. Singapore is GMTime 103degrees 48mins east. The Prime Meridian is not as simple as it looks. There are 3 other Prime Meridians established by 3 other different astronomers, and to add to the confusion, it seems that all the 4 Prime Meridians pass through the Greenwich Old Royal Observatory building. In 1884, 25 countries agreed to adopt George Airy's Greenwich Meridian.
In the afternoon, I went to London's Chinatown, near Leicester Square. I immediately felt at home when I saw the array of oriental foodstuff there. Besides having a meal in a Chinese restaurant, I also bought some Fuzhou meesuah (vermicelli) and dried chrysanthemum.
I saw durians on sale in one shop in Chinatown. It looked like the Thai variety - large ones - and was selling at about 5 pounds per kg.
The 'fast track' of escalators in UK is the left side - in contrast to Singapore's, which is the right side. It wasn't difficult to switch to the UK system as many of them abide by the guide and it offered an immediate visual prompt.
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