Oh, that's not so bad

54 pounds for train to Edinburgh. There are cheaper flights, but at sucky times; many flights are more expensive. Bus is cheaper, but slow -- 1 hour flight, 5 hour train, 9 hour bus. 1 hour train to Glasgow; I put in for airbnb there, but given limited choice might have to resort to a hotel. Or try Couchsurfing.

Different cultures: ingredients lists on store-bought food often have actual percentages, though in an inconsistent manner. E.g. my current hummus is "chickpeas (46%), sunflower oil, tahini (14%)..." Speaking of which, I have yet to see any store hummus made entirely with olive oil. Some advertise "olive oil!" but this turns out to mean rapeseed (canola) 14%, olive 5% or something like that. Lots of Bloomington hummus used non-olive oil -- only Athena is 100% olive -- but still.

Tropicana OJ came in 1.5 L or smaller, vs. 64 or 96 oz. Still tastes good. Tesco Express had a fresh squeezed OJ that was even tastier. Tesco extra filtered milk tasted sour, though it's had two days to make me sick if it was going to. Goat milk was cheap (well, seemed like it; also not that much of it) but not very dramatic, though it turned out to be semi-skimmed. It's semi-skimmed and skimmed here, not low-fat and nonfat. Skimmed notes that it's 0.1% fat. Cheddar cheese is 'mature', not 'sharp'.

In restaurants you have to ask for water, and tap water else they'll bring bottled and charge; you also have to ask for the check, otherwise you can sit there forever. My last Italian place brought a whole plate of hard sort-of-minty things, it seemed rather excessive, especially since you can't chew them until they've softened up a bit. Or at least I was afraid to try.

I found the ur-eladrin

Well, maybe.
4e D&D turns the usual wood elf/high elf split into elves vs. eladrin, and gives eladrin eyes that are a single color, no white or pupil. This seemed weird and creepy, which has its virtues. Seemed like a weird idea, too. anima-mecanique tells me it's common these days in WoW and such, due to being easier to animate... and she's offline now so I can't annoy her by saying "4e really is WoW!"

But anyway, I've just read Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions and am reading The Broken Sword, and in both of them elves -- immortal, highly magical, and rather capricious -- have solid color eyes with no whites and "no visible pupils". Poul tries to be scientific with his magical beings -- the elves have funky alloys to avoid iron, and 3H3L has a magnesium "dagger of burniing" -- so I infer he wanted to avoid stating or having his scientific protagonist conclude that the elves actually lacked the usual aperture for light.

Given WoW I'm not sure anymore if 4e was harking back to this, but it might have been. Eladrin do seem a fair bit like Poul's elves, minus the immortality but with extra teleportation.

Poul's elves explicitly do have long, pointed, and movable ears -- Imric "cocks" his. A human likens them to ears of a beast. They're also sort of more androgynous -- the usual slender stuff, and the males are less lustful than human males, the females more lustful than human females. If you're a lusty human female, just accept the stereotype he's working with.

Also on the odd or interesting notes found in recent books, some Liaden stuff, for the appreciation of who knows.
"Lord of the Dance": Liadens do called line dances, like contra or country dance. I am amused.
Fledgling totally had a DDR machine.
Saltation refers to "maize buttons", which are vague but may be cornbread muffins. There's mention of "Trantor's docks". Also "LaDemeter miniguns", which sounds like a name in its own right -- the Demeter? -- but is probably rooted in Doc Smith's DeLameters. In Mouse and Dragon, the mob boss of Liad's Low Port had had a gay marriage before they broke up.

Third Friday the 3-cubed in London

Another late day, exacerbated by waking up after 4 hours of sleep and not getting back to sleep. Went to Chinatown for dim sum, at Gerrard's Corner. It was... not splendid. The cheung fun rolls were good. They had something new: beef with black pepper in in a small bun. I usually don't say things have too much black pepper, but I have to here. They didn't use transliteration at all: ha gow was "king prawn dumplings". They did have Chinese characters, and a lot of Chinese customers.

My first RPG.net had told me of a game store in the area, so I figured I'd check it out, Forbidden Planet. It's more accurate to say that it has RPGs -- though certainly a wider selection than the Game Preserve in Bton. Top floor is largely geeky toys, figurines and shirts and posters and such. Bottom floor is comics, *totally* dwarfing Vintage Phoenix, and manga, and SF books. (The sign pointing downstairs lists them as horror, SF, fantasy, slipstream, Pratchett, and Tolkien.)

I'm reminded that Chicago had a huge comic store I stumbled upon once. And a smaller but still bigger one. I think I rather have spent too much time in Bloomington, and not enough as an adult in really big cities... where did I get my comics from in SF? I don't remember. Did I?

Man was 8-10 pounds a volume, apart from some Oh! My Goddess on sale for 99 pence.
Mushi-shi has a manga, not sure if it's prior to the anime.
RPG section had lots of Exalted, Scions, RQ, BRP, WH, Traveller, Paranoia, Legends of Anglerre, GURPS, Hero...

Walked some more, hit Holborn, turned north for novelty, hopped on a bus for novelty, going to the upper deck and taking video from it. It ended shortly at Euston station, so I walked north from there, into less snazzy parts of London. A lot of wandering finds me resting at Costa Coffee, a Starbucks-alike. (No wi-fi, still using my phone.) Albeit one with no concept of "a coffee". I asked for one and had to come up with a type, like Americano or latte or "just hot water and filtered coffee" or "with milk". I went with latte, which turns out to have rather more milk than I expected.

BTW, my old complaint about no street signs? That must have been limited to Tower Hamlets, there's actually been plenty elsewhere. In a different location to the US: up on buildings (and in bigger letters.) Jill pointed out that they have different style or crest based on the local town... I want to say 'London' is actually like Boston, a whole Petri dish of townlets linked by public transit. I was in Tower Hamlets, there's the City of London, the City of Westminster, South Kensington, Camden... OTOH, Ken Livingstone was elected mayor of London with an electorate of five million, way more than any PM has, so obviously there's some higher level of authority.