LondonCrackers

Driven to Distraction

2009-08-27T16:04:00.003+01:00

I am now determinedly pursuing my UK driving license. I've been reading The Highway Code, studying a testing CD, and making a concerted effort to "get it right" when I'm motoring along the country roads. Driving in the UK does not come easily to me. US driving didn't come easily to me, either. I had to retake the maneuverability portion of the test after hours of practice one gray Sunday afternoon in the high school parking lot. Even as an adult, I still keep my hands at two and ten and get sweaty palms when driving in high-traffic areas. And I am not looking forward to taking the test again as an adult.

So taking my bloated American mini-van on narrow roads with cars parked on both sides and compact vehicles careening toward me takes a bit of courage to begin with, a sat-nav for moral support during, and a cup of tea or a glass of Chardonnay at the journey's end. But I'm getting better. I now stay on the correct side of the road all the time. The children can now talk while I drive. I still don't always talk back. I may turn the radio on during a journey sometime soon.

But I did something remarkable today: I parked the mini-van in my driveway. Let me explain. My driveway is about one foot wider than the van with concrete posts on either side. Cars line both sides of the road in front, so most of the time only one car can pass at a time. And they pass by frequently.

So when I returned from today's journey and could find no easily accessible street parking anywhere on the block, I gritted my teeth and said, "Right. Most Brits would back into a driveway this size -- surely I can do this." So I folded in the left-hand mirror, kept the left side within six inches of the post, and maneuvered my way in. Without being directed by anyone AND without scratching it on the fence posts.

Even my children are proud of me!

Geocaching

2009-08-22T17:31:00.003+01:00

Today we went exploring Cookham, a town north of Maidenhead, thanks to our new interest in geocaching. For those who haven't heard of it, geocaching involves using a GPS device, a sat-nav works well, to find a container that someone has hidden. Usually, there is a log to sign and small items to trade, which adds to the fun of actually finding what you are looking for. If you are interested, you can get started with geocaching.com and find hidden treasures throughout the world.

Since we are novices, we have been staying close to home and trying to combine a geocaching activity with something we were already doing. So today's hike took us past a 17th century inn, a church that's been around since before the Norman Conquest (and a newly-wed couple), a sarsen stone, and one specific telephone pole in order to solve a puzzle that would lead us to a cache that would give us the coordinates for the final cache that was holding the goodies. Well, we solved the puzzle, but we didn't find the cache holding the secret coordinates. Pretty disappointing. Still was a warm, sunny day with my favorite people.

License to Drive

2009-08-21T16:56:00.003+01:00

Mark and I are now on our way to being licensed drivers here in the UK -- none too soon, since we have to be fully licensed by the middle of November. We how have our hard-won provisional licenses. Since no one here has known us for more than two years, we had to go to our local DVLA (think DMV) in Oxford to apply in person. Driving in Oxford is not for the faint of heart; a native British friend said that she'd gladly drive in London any day, but even she takes advantage of the park and ride plan in Oxford. She wasn't kidding. We managed to get two tickets within ten minutes of each other for driving in the bus lanes.

Anyway, we are now looking for some good driving lessons (more for me than Mark-- I'm terrible at parallel parking) and studying the highway code to get ready for our theory and hazard perception tests. The theory test is about the same as in the US, except it uses UK laws. However, the hazard perception test is new to me. Basically, you are shown film clips that show a hazard forming, and you have to click a button as soon as you recognize the hazard. I bought a CD to help me prepare for this part, but I still need to install it on the computer. I'll have to do that this evening.

We'll always have Paris

2009-05-31T09:02:00.005+01:00

Last week, we took the Eurostar under the Chunnel to meet my folks for a few days in Paris. (I also took the opportunity to meet some remote co-workers at the Amazon.fr office.) We had a wonderful time, and finally managed to edit most of the footage down to the following four segments:

Bus Tour

One thing that's worth doing in any big city is hopping onto one of those open-top buses and getting a quick introduction to what all's available, where things are in relation to each other, and what looks interesting enough to merit a closer visit on foot. The following is set to the credits score from the Bourne trilogy, which featured many a high-speed chase through the streets of Paris:

Be Our Guest

This is kind of a parody of all the pictures (and slides...endless slides!) that my Dad used to bring home from my parents' trips to Europe, in which my Mom nearly always happened to be snacking on some local delicacy. Since Paris is synonymous with ~~gross~~fine cuisine, it seemed appropiate to document some of the highlights as we chewed our way across the capital:

Eiffel Tower

Well, you can hardly come to town and not visit this emblematic icon. Although we walked by and under it enroute to other stops, we didn't go up the elevator until our final morning in the city, before dragging our luggage back to the Gare du Nord. Note that, while it is fairly straightforward going up the tower, there are two elevators coming back down; the one we took terminates about halfway down, leaving you to navigate the stairs for the rest!

Lourve

We allocated one full day to exploring the famous musée of Paris, dutifully stopping to verify all the plot twists in Dan Brown's factually-challenged bestseller:

Of course, there is so much more to be said about Paris, and France and Europe in general, but that'll have to wait for another time :-)

A Poke in the Eye

2009-05-31T08:57:00.002+01:00

My parents arranged to meet a few of their college buddies from Capital over in Europe for a reunion tour, so got to spend a few days with us at the beginning and end of the trip. One thing we got to do was finally take a ride up into that big wheeley-thing that decorates the Thames pier:

aka "Football"

2009-05-31T08:47:00.002+01:00

Christopher has always been the more sports-minded of our kids, and adapted to England quickly enough by joining both his school's ~~soccer~~football team, as well as their cricket club! These are a few short snaps from his first official game:

Lyme Regis

2009-04-19T20:18:00.005+01:00

DailyMotion allows me to use my original audio track, but the video quality is rather poor, even with "HQ" enabled:

Conversely, YouTube forced me to change the audiotrack (still processing, as the current version is silent), but clearly provides the best video quality:

I suppose that if this is the worst I have to complain about, I should count myself pretty fortunate :-)

YouTube Hrmm

2009-04-19T19:28:00.002+01:00

It took some time to upload the second and much-longer video from our Easter vacation to YouTube, and when it finally was posted, I was startled to see that YouTube had automatically deleted the audio track. At Laura's request, I had set this episode to Yes' "Roundabout," a fitting pun on the dozens of roadside roundabouts we circled while driving through the English countryside. However, apparently Google has a spankin' new algorithm which actually listens for, and recognizes, popular tunes which may appear in your video, and refuses to play them until you can demonstrate copyright holder approval.

A similar warning had come up when I uploaded Stonehenge, but with a fairly light restriction that still allows the movie to be played in America, Britain, and a lengthy list of other net-centric nations. Even so, I assumed the detection was made against metadata, as I had not only titled the post to match the song, but had even listed "Spinal Tap" as a keyword. However, in the second vid, I hadn't mentioned group, album or track (although it's possible QuickTime .mov files retain some of the MP3 metadata, which I was lapse in not purging).

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I'm heeding the recommendation of this post to simply switch to an alternate video host for potentially litigious clips. Annoying, and in my mind, counter-productive, because frankly some of these 60's- and 70's-era bands could use a little modern publicity!

Stonehenge

2009-04-19T18:06:00.004+01:00

The kids got two weeks off from school for the Easter holidays, and we decided that we'd been "playing it safe" (keeping close to Maidenhead and it's immediate rail-accessible environs) long enough, so decided to strike out into the verdant verge for a 4day camping trip along England's "Jurassic Coast", down around Lyme Regis on the southern Atlantic coastline.

There are a lot of interesting points to visit between Berkshire and Dorset, but one that had long topped our hitlist was Stonehenge. A lot of the locals here shrug, "but it's just a bunch of rocks," typically to go on about how Avebury is both larger and less commercialized, if you go in for that sort of thing.

But that's not it at all. Stonehenge is more than a pile of rocks: it's a center of myth, legend, and folklore dating to before the time of wallpaper screensavers and forwarded emails with 3MB attachments showing precariously perched kittens and dancing babies. It's the primordial lodestone, a keynode of ley lines whose ferric poles pull at our cultural consciousness. Not to even get started about Seekers, Aspirants, Ovates, and your new-agey Hierophants!

"And their legacy remains...hewn, into the living rock of Stonehenge."

Hello! Goodbye.

2009-04-07T15:39:00.002+01:00

Tuesday I interviewed for a teacher assisting position at Chris's school and got it! It is the perfect way to learn the local school system and school culture. I'll be working in a year four classroom just down the hallway from Chris. So, after Easter I'll be saying hello to lots of new people.

Unfortunately, I have to say good-bye to Narcoossee Community School a bit more permanently than before. Originally, I had taken a leave of absence from the school, but that leave is now nearing expiration and I need to let them know if I am returning or not. Since I'm not going to commute across an ocean, I guess I have to say that I am not coming back. Sounds like a door closing with resounding finality.

Brown looks to Bezos

2009-03-10T15:37:00.005Z

Wow...how often does working on a retail website give you the opportunity to influence public policy?

People in England will get more online powers to rate GPs, police, childcare and councils, Gordon Brown has said. He said it was wrong that consumer websites such as Amazon...had "higher standards of transparency" than those for public services.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7934042.stm

Takeaway: always do your best...you never know who may be watching!

Walking clubs

2009-03-10T13:40:00.003Z

Going for a walk in England has been surprisingly different from walking in the United States. Of course, you still have to pick up one foot, move it forward, set it down, pick up the other foot, move it forward, set it down, and repeat as often as needed to get to your destination. Some things don't change when you cross an ocean. The difference is where you walk. In the US, typically I would go walking along residential streets or on the bike/pedestrian path beside the main road. In the England, people typically go walking over public paths (such as the Green Way) that lead you over open fields and natural areas. Sometimes these paths cross private lands that have a public right of way, which means the public has a right to free passage across private land, provided the public doesn't damage the private land in any way. This means that, even though we live close to the center of town, we have wide open natural areas very close at hand.

I've recently been on organized walks with two different groups. The advantage to these groups is that someone usually knows where he/she is going, has a map, and has probably been over the territory before. For me, this avoids the possibility of having to call the emergency rescue people on my cell phone. With the Thames Valley American Women's Club, I enjoyed a hike that included Hellfire Caves, the family (I forget which one) mausoleum, a lovely old church, and green rolling hills as far as the eye could see. We traveled along several rights of way, one of which took us through a pasture past some rather puzzled horses. Our leader also goes geo-caching, so we searched for and found a cache near the mausoleum. The box of treasure was hidden under some fallen branches, so it really took some digging through leaves -- which I would never have done in Florida, the home of fire ants, poisonous snakes, cockroaches, and every other creepy creature imaginable.

The second trip out and about was with the Wesley Walkers from the Methodist church. On this trip, I was the distantly youngest person; most of my fellow hikers were old enough to be my parents! But this did not slow any of them down. We crossed stiles and trudged through muddy fields over a four or five mile trail. Sometimes the trail resembled a slightly shorter path through the grassy fields, so I was glad someone had a map on this trip. Happily, this walk ended at a nearby pub!

Time on my Hands

2009-02-26T11:31:00.005Z

Since we moved into our house in early December, we emplaced our furniture around a variety of holiday decorations, including a Christmas tree. After those decorations came down (eventually :-), we determined there was a distinct gap in the dining room where the tree had once gone, and which none of our existing furniture adequately resolved.

Therefore, our Valentine's Day gift to the family was a grandfather clock, which filled the space marvelously without breaking the bank (trust us to find a pressboard grandfather clock!)

Oh, and for your BBC English lesson of the day, particle board is called "chipboard" in the UK :-)

Poster Boy

2009-02-26T09:25:00.003Z

When the ladies at church heard that I was "good with computers", one of them promptly decided that I would make a suitable graphic artist to replace the fellow who used to generate posters for their monthly "Arts Café" -- after all, he did the work on computers, and I worked with computers...right? Anyway, I was able to produce a couple of sample designs for this month's gig ("the best that PowerPoint provides!"), and it's actually kinda cool to see them posted up around town:

Shool Shedules

2009-02-26T07:26:00.008Z

Yes, I have heard some people call pronounce "school" as "shool" or "shole", rather than the American "skool" :-) But pronunciation wasn't the only educational surprise -- not by a long shot!

One of Jonathan's greatest transitions has been adapting to the Desborough academic calendar. Even though he's in his 8th year (what Americans would call 7th grade (Brits count Kindergarten...but note that 6th year has nothing to do with the crucially important 6th form, which doesn't kick-in until his 12th year...you got all that?)...anyway, even though he's only 13, his diary (that's calendar here) looks a lot like a typical day in college:

Mon: P.E., history, VoTech, English, maths
Tue: religion, art, English, science, Spanish
Wed: music, science, maths, VoTech, Spanish
Thr: computers, geography, Spanish, P.E., English
Fri: science, Spanish, maths, geography, English

But that's just for week "A"! In week "B", he goes to VoTech on Tuesday, history on Wednesday, German on Thursday, and drama and "social education" on Friday! So that's a total of 15 different subjects (including two foreign languages), in which classes continually change positions from day-to-day both physically and temporally (e.g., science occurs in period 1, 2, 4 or 5 on different days).

Being understandably bewildered by all of this, and often unsure of just where he was to be at any given time, Jonathan took to carrying his materials for all possible subjects with him every day (they don't have lockers or any personal storage areas), adding a 10-kilo rucksack to his worries.

Fortunately, after a month of accommodation, it seems we're gradually adapting to the educational climate, figuring out what needs to be packed when, comprehending their homework, discipline, and reporting policies, etc. It's been quite an adaptation, and probably hardest for Jonathan, whose school seems to have one leg very firmly planted in the "grammar-school" tradition of England's past (versus modern "comprehensive" schools, which are structured very similarly to the American institution).

Oxford

2009-02-25T19:45:00.002Z

Saturday dawned bright and beautiful, so we thought it would be a good day to finally take the train up to Oxford. I take trains running "to" Oxford just about every day (I come home each evening on the Paddington-to-Oxford line), but typically get off after one or two stops.

We packed our usual rucksack of sandwiches and snacks, then headed up for the great explore:

Pancake Day

2009-02-25T19:33:00.003Z

In many parts of the world, Tuesday was Mardi Gras -- the big party before Lent begins and we all have to focus on being better people. In the Maidenhead and the rest of the United Kingdom, Pancake Day was celebrated. Why pancakes? Well, the tradition is that butter, eggs, sugar, and other tasty ingredients are forbidden during Lent, so people had to use up these ingredients before confession time on Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday) to prepare for Ash Wednesday. The legend is that one woman was so involved in making her pancakes that she didn't realize it was time for the church service. She hurried to church but forgot she still had the frying pan -- complete with pancake -- still in her hand. And so we have Pancake Day! (For US people, these pancakes will look a lot more like crepes than the type of thing that you get at IHOP, Denny's, or Waffle House. Even so, I bought a ham and cheese filled pancake at the booth before the race. Still delicious.)

On Pancake Day, many towns have Pancake Races. In Maidenhead, teams of two from local businesses had relay races down King Street. The first participant had to flip the pancake twice while running and hand off the skillet to a second participant, who also had to run and flip the pancake twice. If the pancake flipped out of the pan, the runner had to pick up the pancake before continuing. Fancy dress was optional, but one team earned an award for coming dressed as a sword-wielding pirate and a construction worker in a hardhat. Fifteen teams entered this year, including the defending champions from Saisbury's, a local grocery store and sponsor of the event. Unfortunately for them, on one flip, the pancake flopped out of the pan, and one of the Wargraves' teams sprinted to victory.

Shevanigans

2009-02-25T19:21:00.002Z

So the takeaway is: don't ship a US vehicle to England...it's just not worth the fuss!

This was the tally of things which were "wrong" with our 2004 Ford Freestar and had to be physically repaired or replaced before it could be legally driven in the U.K.:

Front position lamps are a colour other than white
Offside headlamp aim too high (welcome to the U.K...aim low! yuk yuk)
No rear fog lamp system fitted
Rear indicators area colour other than amber
Front position lamps do not show steady light with indicators/hazards activated
Rear stop lamps do not show steady light when indicators/hazards are activated (e.g., they flash...isn't that what you'd want hazards to do?)
Front indicators do not meet the required angles of visibility (side repeaters required)

That last one was interesting...they ended up drilling holes in both sides of the van and mounting 6-bulb LED star projectors that shine every which way. And I'd wondered how they would do the license plate, since British license numbers are rather longer than US versions, and I doubted a wide plate would fit within the beveled recess on our bumper. Their solution was simplicity itself: turn on word-wrap! The final plates (fore and aft) ended up being two lines high, fitting both legal and physical requirements.

Sadly, none of this was cheap...or fast...or convenient...or to be honest, pleasant in any respect, or even necessary at the end of the day (since after four months' time in country, we've learned to get by quite well using public transport). By the time all was said and done, I'd have been about as happy to roll the thing off the cliffs of Dover and have done with it.

Snow Day!

2009-02-02T13:41:00.005Z

The kids have missed school before due to plenty of Hurricane Days, but this is the first time we've ever had school called off on account of snow!

Seeing

2009-01-25T15:57:00.000Z

I was invited to the arts group that is sponsored by the church we’ve been attending, so I gladly went along. I took along some small projects I’d been working on and some ideas for a story I’d been needing to get on paper. When I arrived, I found women working on paintings and drawings (not writing or crafting). They all smiled and nodded at me politely, but one friend asked if I wouldn’t like to try some drawing. Well, why not? This whole trip is supposed to be about trying new things.

When I arrived, one lady was studying a piece of wood with moss and lichen growing on it with a magnifying glass. She had picked up the wood on a trip to Scotland and was delighted to find so many beautiful things in one place. Then other ladies gathered around, equally amazed at the blooms and interesting textures. Then my friend set me up with drawing pencils, paper, and a mug, and instructed me to “draw what you see, not what you think is there.” A zen moment, if I ever heard one. After an hour and a half of “drawing you see” I felt relaxed and happy that I took the time to see the wonders around me.

We've made our bed, now we can lie on it.

2009-01-25T15:13:00.001Z

Every move has a few glitches, so international moves have to have at least twice as many … right? Our major furniture glitch was that the box springs for the queen-sized bed didn’t fit up the stairs and that the headboard came apart in transit. Mark and I “roughed it” with the mattress on the floor for a month and stored the box springs in the entry hall while we debated how best to repair the damage. We tried waiting for the moving company to come up with something (“We’ll take 90 days to process your claim; meanwhile, don’t do anything with the remaining pieces, or we’ll revoke your claim.”) or we could do something about it ourselves. Mark said the headboard was an easy fix – just use some L-brackets and wood glue to attach the shelf part to the part that actually holds the frame for the mattress. If it doesn’t work, we’re not out much on our fifteen-year-old headboard that is made from pressboard and very shiny veneer. After we lined up the two pieces of headboard, the gluing and bracketing went fairly quickly and yielded a headboard that was likely more solid than the first. Whew, one down, one to go.

The bigger question was how to get the box springs up the stairs. First, Mark peeled back the gray stuff on the bottom side to see the guts of our box springs. Yes, there are actual metal springs – and a wood frame – in there. So Mark sawed through the wooden frame, then we bent the box springs in half like a soft taco. Folding saved a lot of cutting and repair work over cutting! We tied up the taco with rope from the shed, then shoved the whole mess up the stairs. We untied it carefully, expecting it to spring open like a Jack-in-the box. It didn’t, but it stayed bent. We positioned people at both ends, while Mark installed metal braces to stabilize the sawn-through frame. Now we have a whole headboard, a bed-frame, the box springs on the second floor, and a mattress on top of it all. And it didn’t fall apart in the middle of the night!

Bonus: We have tons of extra space in the entry hall!

Indian Cooking, So Far

2009-01-25T15:10:00.000Z

Mark surprised me with an Indian cookbook for Christmas and said, “Please!!” So I leafed through the book to find something that was A) easy and B) not too objectionable to our kids. The oven-fried chilli chicken legs were a hit, so I moved on a few pages and tried chicken with peppercorns and shredded ginger. Wow! Chris came downstairs as I was cooking and exclaimed, “Wow, that smells GOOD!” It was. No leftovers. Complete success.

Special Note: Chris is developing a new character class for Dungeons and Dragons: the cook. After all, a cook uses a mortar and pestle to prepare spell components/ ingredients. Of course, we all know that chicken noodle soup has special healing properties. And who doesn’t feel better for having had a cup of hot cocoa with whipped cream and sprinkles? Definitely magical.

Double Vision

2009-01-25T10:52:00.004Z

Having lived all my life in traditional "detached" houses -- specifically, comparatively sprawling American ranch-style homes, with a good-sized yard wrapping around from front to back and a comfortable 20–30' separating you from your closest neighbors to the sides -- I'd kind of wondered what it would be like living in "terraced" (what the English call rowhouses or townhouses) or "semi-detached" (Americans would call these duplexes) homes.

What kind of special relationship do you develop with your wall/yard-mates? Does a feeling of camaraderie evolve from listening to the same creaking pipes every night? Joined at the housing hip like Siamese twins, sharing all the same housing woes, do you grow a unique social bond that none else could ever understand?

In reality, we've found the converse to be true. When a single structure is split into two logical homes, the wall between becomes a major architectural feature. Since there can never be any windows or doors in the separating wall, and connections between rooms (betwixt the "fore" and "aft" of the house) must generally run parallel to it, it is the opposing wall which receives the lion's share of broad, panoramic windows, if any of England's limited supply of natural lighting is to be captured and retained within.

And directly across from these many wide windows sits...the similarly-adorned external side of the house next-door! So the right-half of one duplex has all these huge windows, facing directly against the glassy surface of the left-half of the neighboring duplex; meaning that the family you really get to know quite well is not the one with whom you're sharing heat (side-stacked houses make for great insulation in winter), but sharing light...an interesting distinction.

(BTW, feel free to click on the above graphic...the source site is pretty funny :-)

Geotagging

2009-01-25T10:45:00.003Z

Blogger.com has introduced a new "geotagging" facility in beta, allowing posts to be linked to coordinates in Google Maps. (Of course, nothing was stopping people from manually creating per-post links, but this is better integrated into the editor and display templates.) Anyway, you can scroll back and find new "Location:" footers below many of our recent video posts. Kinda cool.

(Also, I don't know, but since Google owns both Blogger.com and YouTube, I would assume that automatic integration of such posts and videos into Google Earth isn't far off!)

By the Thames

2009-01-23T00:20:00.006Z

A short clip of Mom & Dad walking down by the Thames as it flows past Maidenhead's eastern shore...and a special treat for any fans of EPCOT's fantastic Impressions de France :-) (By the way, that's pronounced "tems", don'cha'no!)