Back From London

I'm back from London, and it
was an okay trip, but not too enjoyable, and long. So here's the
details:

Got there on All Soul's Day and had an uneventful transfer from
Heathrow to my hotel on Baker Street. All Soul's Day is one of the
more important feast days to me, for quasi-religious reasons. It was
the day in 1755 when Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake -- a very
large earthquake, followed within the hour by a tsunami, which was in
turn followed by a great fire which burned out of control for days.
It so happened that Nov. 1 was on a Sunday in 1755, and the several
hugh cathedrals and smaller churches were full of people. Lisbon had a population of about
250,000 people, of whom about 100,000 died. The reason I think of it
often, especially on Nov. 1, is because of the effect it had on
philosophy and subsequent thinking of the enlightenment philosophers,
including our founding fathers. The obvious question was how could a
loving God do this to so many innocent people, especially in church on
a feast day? And the answer, marking a big break with entrenched
religious thinking of the day (and still with us, sad to say) is that
He didn't do anything. Most of our founding fathers didn't think God
had a lot to do with our day-to-day lives. They thought the world ran according to natural laws and God didn't intervene.

Anyway, the following day, Monday, I met the retired British Foreign
Service diplomat whose apartment in Pimlico I was renting, and settled
in, and made it to Harley Street for my two o'clock appointment with
Mr. Hadi Zambarakji, my ophthalmologist. To digress again, in England
they are Mr., not Dr., and they are consultants, not doctors.

My consultant, Mr. Zambarakji, examined my eyes and concluded I indeed
had a secondary cataract in my right eye, which he zapped with a
laser. It has recovered very nicely, and now I have 20/25 vision in
that eye. The laser didn't hurt at all. I felt nothing, and the only
thing I heard was him "pulling the trigger" 10 or 12 times.

I was scheduled for cataract surgery at 7:00 Friday morning at
Wellington Hospital at St. John's Wood, the same place I went to for
the detached retina last year. Because my Visa card had had some sort
of security restrictions placed on it, so I effectively couldn't use
it. So I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday emailing my bank in
Jackson, Security in Charlotte, etc., to get my card activated. But I
was able to get enough money to pay for the doctor. I had to pay up
front for the hospital and doctor and I'll submit a claim to Blue
Cross.

Things went well after surgery; I left the hospital around noon
Friday. By Saturday morning I was having an allergic reaction to the
drops I was putting in the eye, but I didn't realize it. But by
Saturday sometime in the night I knew it wasn't right, so Sunday
morning I called and ended up going back to the hospital to see Mr. Z.
He thought I was allergic to the preservative in the drops, and
changed drops, and I started recovering. He also discovered I had
somehow gotten a scratch on the eye, which was somewhat painful. And
he said I had to stay beyond Tuesday -- I had appointments on M, W and
F, and left Saturday morning early to come back to Tirana.

My left eye is steadily improving and I think it will end up about
like the right eye. Mr. Z. said he was trying to match the left with
the right eye, and I think it will end up that way. If it does, then
I probably won't get glasses, as 20/25 seems damn near perfect to me.
I'll have to get reading/computer glasses, though.

Gunpowder Day also came while I was in London. Or Guy Fawkes Day. November 5, 1605 the plot to blow up Parliament was discovered. Now it is celebrated with fireworks, not just on November 5, but for a few days before and a few days after. I didn't venture out to see any, but I heard a lot.

The apartment was nice, and the only drawback was that the man in the adjoining apartment was obviously a Chelsea football fan, which in and of itself was of no moment; however, Chelsea had two big games while I was there, and the win over Manchester United really got him excited.

So much for London. It was cold, wet, dark -- very much like Seattle in winter.

I got back to Tirana at one, went to the wine store with Cindy on the
way back, and chilled out until we went to the Marine Ball that night.
My eye was droopy, but I enjoyed sitting at the table chilling and
talking to the people who weren't dancing. I did dance once -- I'm
sure I did an excellent job.

I've been to work two days now, and tomorrow I think I'm coming home
early to rest my eyes. Reading is a little difficult and irritates my
eyes, so I don't do a lot of it. Monday morning going through emails
was about all I did for the rest of the day.