On Saturday I travelled to London to attend Summer in the City, an event which a lot of popular YouTubers would be at. One of the YouTubers was Laci Green and as she is a hero of mine I was quite keen to attend. As I was going to be in London, I thought I would tie that in to a visit with my good friend Dalfino Madrigal Keyte. Everything was planned out quite nicely and it was sure to be a lovely day. But let’s just say that the plan did not go at all as I thought it would; though not really for the worse.
The night before the event, I had a message from Dalfino: he had tried to use his bank card on one of those third party cash machines you see in shops and it just ‘ate’ it. Later, he even explained that they couldn’t take it out of the machine and he’d have to contact his bank for a new one! So I’d strongly suggest not using those machines if a proper one is available. Anyway, when Dalfino told me about this, I thought he was telling me that he would no longer be able to meet me. This was quite sad and, at that exact moment, I was also speaking to my friend Tülin and I told her about Dalfino’s cancellation; being a very kind person, she then offered to travel to London and spend the day with me instead. As I haven’t seen very much of her in quite a while, I was keen to accept that offer and she quickly booked the tickets. Other than one slight alteration, the plan was still going smoothly.
A little while later, however, I had another message from Dalfino; he didn’t mean to actually cancel the event, just that we needed a new plan and things would be a lot harder because of his lack of card. Uh oh. Would Tülin then feel her gesture had been completely in vain, were Dalfino to be a part of the day? I told her about my misunderstanding and, it turns out, she’d already started to think of a lot of one on one things the pair of us could do, since we had not seen each other in so long. Though I felt terrible about neglecting Dalfino, I decided to prioritise seeing Tülin.
Anyway, I went to London and had a lot of fun riding around on the underground train system. I’d not really done it before, and doing it by myself to get quite a distance (I was riding on several trains for about an hour) was a good experience. Eventually I arrived at the location of the event, showed my ticket and went in… Only to find that the ticket I bought (which was already quite expensive) did not cover the single thing I wanted to do there (to see Laci Green). In fact, my expensive ticket only really covered a few stalls and talks that didn’t really interest me all that much. So, sadly, I left very shortly after arriving. What was especially annoying was that I had emailed them before the event to ask questions about the tickets and schedules, because the website was very unclear, and I was lead to believe that my ticket was all I needed. Alas, all tickets are non-refundable.
I hopped back on a train and had a slightly less fun train ride back in the direction I had come from. I had a short wait before Tülin arrived, but what’s a short wait when you have a 3DS and a yoyo? When she got there, it was a very happy reunion and we spent the day happily wandering around London. At one point, we had some especially delicious vegetarian noodles. We also went to Chinatown, the Embankment, a nice anime shop (I forgot the name) and several other enjoyable locations. Of course, there was also a dinner at Nando’s (a place I cannot resist going to on special occasions). I got a lot of nice photos and did a lot of fun things, though it was not my original plan at all, I still had a wonderful day.
Eventually the day ended, and we said goodbye. As I was instructed by the sign in the train station, I went to Platform 1 to catch my train back to Chippenham. As it began to leave, an annoucement said “This is the 1945 train to Swansea…” and, perhaps that was just karma for my having neglected Dalfino!
The night before the event, I had a message from Dalfino: he had tried to use his bank card on one of those third party cash machines you see in shops and it just ‘ate’ it. Later, he even explained that they couldn’t take it out of the machine and he’d have to contact his bank for a new one! So I’d strongly suggest not using those machines if a proper one is available. Anyway, when Dalfino told me about this, I thought he was telling me that he would no longer be able to meet me. This was quite sad and, at that exact moment, I was also speaking to my friend Tülin and I told her about Dalfino’s cancellation; being a very kind person, she then offered to travel to London and spend the day with me instead. As I haven’t seen very much of her in quite a while, I was keen to accept that offer and she quickly booked the tickets. Other than one slight alteration, the plan was still going smoothly.
A little while later, however, I had another message from Dalfino; he didn’t mean to actually cancel the event, just that we needed a new plan and things would be a lot harder because of his lack of card. Uh oh. Would Tülin then feel her gesture had been completely in vain, were Dalfino to be a part of the day? I told her about my misunderstanding and, it turns out, she’d already started to think of a lot of one on one things the pair of us could do, since we had not seen each other in so long. Though I felt terrible about neglecting Dalfino, I decided to prioritise seeing Tülin.
Anyway, I went to London and had a lot of fun riding around on the underground train system. I’d not really done it before, and doing it by myself to get quite a distance (I was riding on several trains for about an hour) was a good experience. Eventually I arrived at the location of the event, showed my ticket and went in… Only to find that the ticket I bought (which was already quite expensive) did not cover the single thing I wanted to do there (to see Laci Green). In fact, my expensive ticket only really covered a few stalls and talks that didn’t really interest me all that much. So, sadly, I left very shortly after arriving. What was especially annoying was that I had emailed them before the event to ask questions about the tickets and schedules, because the website was very unclear, and I was lead to believe that my ticket was all I needed. Alas, all tickets are non-refundable.
I hopped back on a train and had a slightly less fun train ride back in the direction I had come from. I had a short wait before Tülin arrived, but what’s a short wait when you have a 3DS and a yoyo? When she got there, it was a very happy reunion and we spent the day happily wandering around London. At one point, we had some especially delicious vegetarian noodles. We also went to Chinatown, the Embankment, a nice anime shop (I forgot the name) and several other enjoyable locations. Of course, there was also a dinner at Nando’s (a place I cannot resist going to on special occasions). I got a lot of nice photos and did a lot of fun things, though it was not my original plan at all, I still had a wonderful day.
Eventually the day ended, and we said goodbye. As I was instructed by the sign in the train station, I went to Platform 1 to catch my train back to Chippenham. As it began to leave, an annoucement said “This is the 1945 train to Swansea…” and, perhaps that was just karma for my having neglected Dalfino!
