New Travel Editor, Nana Chen

Hello! This fresh blogger is now in Ottawa and terribly jet lagged. I have flown, since last Thursday, from Taipei to Bangkok to London. London is a wonderful city that deserves better weather and prices. Talk about prices! I had to stop converting the pound to the US dollar to stop hurting myself. Having friends in the city helped immensely and I got to try proper fish and chips at a pub, finally. So greasy and so good. In town, my friend Elle pointed out Ian Brown, a singer of Stone Roses, who wore a short wet-looking mop on his head. I had no idea who the Stone Roses were, but the celebrity enjoyed Elle's gaze enough to walk out of the shop for us, or her, to take a better look. We saw his wet mop again in a video the next day. The style seems to be the "happening" hairdo of young trendy men in London. Go for it! Oh, yes. Be prepared, those of you traveling to London. The immigration line at Heathrow took about 35 minutes or longer to get through. That's with everything going smoothly. Once you get out, if the people picking you up have given up on you and disappeared, walk towards your right and you'll see the Airport Information desk beyond the pay phones. Be prepared to wait in line there too though. I asked them to make an announcement that I was looking for my friend Elle. Make sure you repeat unusual names a few times because they didn't say it right. I waited another ten minutes at the Meeting Point. It turned out Elle was not there yet. Luckily phones and the Internet are readily available. For those of you who live in Asia or know people who live in Asia, please tell them about the Asia-Europe-North America route. If I had flown from Taipei to Vancouver then Ottawa, as I initially planned, it would have cost me a great deal more. Check Zoom Air (http://www.flyzoom.com) and Canadian Affair (http://www.canadianaffair.com), two budget airlines worth looking into. That's it for now. It's time for me to nurse my jet lag. Take care. Nana Travel Editor