Walking clubs

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!

Trivial Pursuits

Our family celebrated New Year's by playing one of our favourite board-games: Trivial Pursuit, Extreme Geek Edition:


You play by taking one deck of questions apiece from other Trivia Pursuit editions (Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings in this case). Each move, you have to roll two dice: one to determine movement, and another to decide which type of question you'll receive. In this instance, we used a d8 for movement and d6 for category:

1-2: Harry Potter
3-4: Star Wars
5-6: Lord of the Rings

It's actually quite confusing as you try to swap the contents of 16 books and movies in and out of memory, especially as the films differed from the canonical text, and even some of the movies changed between theatrical, extended DVD, and "special edition" versions. It gets even better as you work your way through stocks of sherry and Hobgoblin, and you find yourself blinking at questions like, "Which Jedi Knight of Gondor drew forth the lightsaber Anduril from the Sorting Hat to slay the Rancor Nagini?"

ModCons

It's a small thing I suppose, but one minor accomplishment for today is that we finally got our British Telecomm landline phone activated. That's a key step, because it means I could finally place an order for Tiscali broadband and television. To actually have internet access at home again...now that's a way to "ring in" the new year!

Unbelievable!

That is the only way to describe today. Unbelievably frustrating, unbelievably funny, unbelievably reaffirming of the reasons we came here in the first place. So this is how the day went.

The postman rang the flat this morning to say that he had a package that wouldn't fit in the postbox. I usually love packages, but this package said that we had filled out the wrong forms to get the boys into school, the schools we wanted to enroll them in were full, and would we please start the process over again. So I spent the morning and early afternoon calling around to primary schools to see if any nearby schools had space for Christopher in their fifth year classes. After calling four schools, only one had space available and scheduled a tour for Friday morning. There is one more close by to call, so I'll take care of that later. Jonathan will need to enroll in Desborough School, which is all boys, and I'll be scheduling a tour as soon as someone calls me back! I'll fill out another form and turn that in tomorrow with all the associated passports, work permits, etc. at Maidenhead Town Hall. Unbelievably frustrating!

After dealing with all that, I was feeling a bit dejected and still had to go to the grocery store. Since we did get some of our things, including baking pans and a cookbook yesterday, I decided to bake a cake. Gingerbread seemed nice and seasonal and had a short list of ingredients, so that sounded wonderful. I made the list and off I went to Sainsbury's. I had trouble finding the baking powder and baking soda, but the helpful were able to direct me. However, they not only couldn't find the molasses, they didn't even know what it was! I tried describing it as something that might be found with syrup and was thick and sweet like honey, but it was nowhere to be found. One stocker was undeterred -- he took our hunting expedition to the experts at the store bakery. They should know what to put into gingerbread! And they do, but it's not what the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook says should go into gingerbread. I explained to the baker that I was trying to bake my first cake in the UK and that I was using an American cookbook. He asked when I was going to return to the store and offered to bring me some recipes from his own cookbook at home. Unbelievably wonderful and welcoming!

Of course, I then had to trek home with the groceries in the pull-along cart. Even though it was 4:30 PM, the skies were dark, but I enjoyed the walk through the park back to the flat. As I was on my way to my door, I finally met the neighbors across the hallway. They are a lovely Indian/Australian/English couple who invited us to tea or coffee at the weekend and offered to help us with anything. Even though lots of people say the British people are very reserved and polite, but not very quick to offer friendship, they weren't describing any of the people I encountered today. Unbelievably reaffirming of the reasons that we came across the ocean in the first place!

Double-Takes, Take II

Let's see, more oddments that just kind of creep up on you:

• When they use the word "Asian" over here, they're not referring to China, Japan, or southeast Asia (Vietnam, etc), the usual referents in the U.S. Instead they seem to mean India and Pakistan, the two Asian nations with whom Britian has had the most extensive political, cultural, and economic exchange.

• TV programme times don't align. If you look at TV listings in the U.S., shows pretty much line up on the hour and half-hour boundaries, forming neat little columns. They don't do that here -- shows start and end all over the place, creating jagged stairsteps in the listings. You don't much notice sitting on a single channel, but if you try hopping channels, you find there's no way to catch the start of programme "Y" without missing the end of programme "X".

• Most people know that when they say "chips" over here, they're referring to what Americans call "french fries". However, I hadn't fully grokked the difference between British chips and American fries. Yes, the British versions are thicker and heavier (what we'd call "steak fries"), but that isn't where the difference ends. The surface "skin" of British chips is considerably tougher and chewier than the lightly crisped shell to which Yanks are accustomed. Eating a single British chip can be an absorbing experience, requiring muscle, teeth, and tongue working together in combination; these aren't the throwaway light frills of American fast-food that practically melt in your mouth and serve as little more than a vessel for salt and ketchup. My understanding is that the difference results from being fried twice: once in hot oil to seal the surface, then again at a lower-temperature to thoroughly cook the contents.

• I already knew that British paper (A4) was slightly longer and narrower than American "letter"-sized. However, I didn't appreciate that their envelopes differed as well. Rather than the elaborate and somewhat exacting tripart fold required to slide a document into an American business envelope, British versions only require a single half-fold; as their paper is longer to start with, this yields an envelope which is considerably taller and more square in aspect ratio, rather like a Hallmark greeting card. This provides comfortably more room to write addresses, and the once-folded contents make for a slimmer package overall.

• At least some organizations over here (e.g., National Rail) use the abbreviation DMR to stand for December. I don't know if this was due to a conflict with Dec, or what the story is (although I'm sure it adds confusion at their DMR stop). Maybe next fall will find me puzzling over SMR, OTR, and NMR :-)
  

Miscellaneous Changes

Today marks our first full week in England, so what are some other miscellaneous differences we've observed?

• Wall switches go down to turn lights on, up to turn them off.

• You simply cannot buy a gallon of milk in England; the largest size appears to be 2qt.

• Tesco's sells eggs by the 6pk or the 15, but not by the dozen. I can't explain why this freaked me out so much, or why it seemed to suggest such a sinister rupture in the foundations of the universe, but it did. Somehow, at a very fundamental level, I guess I assumed that eggs were magically produced by the dozen -- that this is how they were made. Breaking that divine arrangement seemed to me a bewildering structural repinning of the cosmos from which I have not yet fully recovered. Oh, and they're all brown. Apparently America hordes the entire world's supply of pristine white shells for its own consumption. (We have not yet established how this will impact coloring eggs for Easter!)
  

• The water in London is hard as rock. Okay, so we have hard water many places in America, so what's the big deal? Well here it comes out of the tap nice and clean, with only the slightest sharpness when drunk straight from a glass; however, when you boil it, so as perhaps to make tea, the heat causes all those microscopic particulates to glom together into worrying large clumps known hereabouts as floaty bits that can turn your crystal cup of Earl Grey into a murky brown soup swirling with malign portent -- and that before you add the milk! One of the first things we procured was a filtered pitcher to keep in the fridge :-)

• Light-bulbs are pinned, not screwed, so don't bother bringing any over.

• We'd noticed right away the interesting custom of having a power-switch directly on every outlet jack, something which seemed curious but innocuous on first glance. We've since learned it has to do with the considerably higher voltage used here (220v to US's 110v). With that much power surging through a line, if it were to short-out or ground through some spilled water, you'd be toasted right proper. Therefore, they have to take considerably more care with their outlets than people do in America, where a handyman's slip with a screwdriver may yield a surprised yelp, but little lasting damage. This is also why there are commonly no outlets at all in bathrooms, where the chance of appliances falling into tubs or toilets is considered too great to risk. In fact, many bathrooms don't even have wall-mounted light switches inside the room, as a wet hand could slap against it and generate a shock!

• They have a lot of firedoors here...you have to go through multiple doors (heavy ones too) to get in and out of stairwells, etc. It's almost like they had some kind of major fire in the recent past and are still uptight about it.
  

First Day at Work

Today was my first day of work at Amazon's Slough office, which went fairly well as such things go: got all my paperwork filed, met the team members, etc. On the flip-side, still didn't have a phone or computer by the days' end, after planning this arrival for what -- 5 months? Some things never change :-)

This was also my first experience with my projected "morning commute" -- a walk to the rail station in my town, followed by a short rail ride into Slough, followed by a second walk to Amazon's offices. Of course, the first walk will change when we find permanent housing, but this morning was a decent dress-rehearsal.

One thing I noted right off: it's COLD in the pre-dawn morning, and that light drizzle doesn't help matters any! The best I can say is that it's a brisk speed-walk that wakes you up and makes you want to get to work, where it's warm!

By way of contrast, the evening walk-in-reverse is a much calmer and quieter saunter. For one thing, you're not jostling with hundreds of other rush-hour commuters trying to jam into the same train; while everyone tends to start between 7am-9am, people wander home at a much wider range of times, lessening the crush. Also, it's considerably warmer, since there's only been a few hours of darkness rather than the 16hrs+ leading up to morning.

In both respects, I was surprised to find the morning commute not greatly dissimilar than that to which I was accustomed in Orlando: both took about 40min all told, both cost a chunk of my first hour's pay (tolls and gas in Florida, RailCard in England), both found me rushing in the morning and relaxed in the evening. The main difference was that it was more comfortable in the car, but I get more exercise this way; also, I like the fact that I can text and play with my iTouch on the train, which was a rather dicey proposition when driving. And I suppose there's some abstract moral superiority about managing my carbon footprint, if I went for that sort of thing :-P

Another observation from all the walking we've done these last few days: you really end up appreciating dinner when it finally comes! A hot plate of chicken or lamb tastes ever-so-sweet when you really had to work to get it :-) As it is, the kids have to trek across town to the grocery store, pack a few day's food into a handful of cloth bags, then CARRY them back home. That whole chicken and bottled water gets heavy, yo! Once you've done that in the cold and the rain, and you finally settle down to a hot sizzling platter of meat and veg -- OH! -- that's not something you can take for granted.

This stands out in my mind because I remember too many sumptious meals back in the US where, as I progressed through the various courses laid out before me, I really had to stop and try to remember exactly what work I'd done that day to justify such a scrumptious feast. After all, I'd drive to work; take the lift up to the 5th floor; probably break for a nice lunch around noon; drive back home; and do little more than twiddle my fingers atop a plastic tray in the meanwhile. Not that such worries ever actually stopped me from enjoying my life of leisure, but it did prompt me to wonder if I and my family weren't missing something in our sheltered existence of ease.

Now I'm sure some of my friends and family are thinking that there were easier ways to explore my urge for authentic, genuine living without actually moving to another country; but, well, when was I ever content to do things the usual way? And after all, wasn't avoiding "ease" part of the problem after all?

Not that our move was in any way especially arduous when you consider what your own ancestors had to undertake in order to replant your family tree across continents. Where they had to step onto a creaky, leaky wooden vessel and brave a storm-ridden voyage before risky winds and uncertain currents, we were able to simply fall asleep over one continent and awaken 5,000 miles away -- how much work is THAT?

All of which leads me to my point, which is [maximum post length exceeded]

...And On To London!

Figuring we'd gotten our feet wet yesterday by exploring Maidenhead (and only scratching the surface at that), we thought Sunday would be a nice low-traffic day to introduce the boys to The City.

We took the train in from Maidenhead to Paddington. For a full-day RailCard (good for round-trip rail to London, all Underground zones, and all street busses), it was £13 each for Laura and I, plus £1 apiece for the boys. I think it'll get cheaper when we apply for the "Family Card", which provides discounts for adults traveling in the company of a child; plus many days it'll just be Laura taking the kids into town while I'm at work, which looks to be about £15 for an off-peak day-trip.

Anyway, once we got into town (about 25min), we walked along Edgware Road for awhile, just looking at the shops and getting a feel for the other pedestrians. Then we took the Tube up to Regency Park, where we had lunch (we'd packed PB&J's -- the guidebook lied, they DO sell peanut butter in England!). We enjoyed throwing some crusts to some extremely corpulent pigeons, and a pair of fat little squirrels that would literally walk up and eat out of your hands.

We picked up a bus into Camden, a neat little town that was doing a good business for a Sunday. From there we hopped the Tube down to the south side of London Bridge. We hiked back over the Thames across the bridge, and wandered around the banking district for a bit. (Not entirely intentionally, but it never hurt anyone to get a little lost once in awhile. In the rain. In November.)

Once we were properly oriented, we made our way over to the Tower of London, which none of us had ever seen. We were too late for the full tour, but it was neat skirting the battlements and looking in on a real keep. Finally we walked west through town to a working Tube stop (somewhat rare on a Sunday), made our way back to Paddington, and thence over rail to Maidenhead. The whole tour ran for about eight hours, and made for a pretty good introduction to the area and how to get around it.

(Note: Laura feels that I've left out some of the uglier bits of the trip -- alright, so maybe we got lost A FEW times, and maybe all those stops weren't entirely deliberate -- but I'm trying to put a happy face on what was undoubtedly a profoundly educational experience for us all :-)

Day Two

We kicked off the morning by watching some Saturday morning cartoons (yes, they have Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh here too!), then headed down to MacDonald's for a familiar and kid-friendly breakfast.

Next we had a 10am appointment with Barclays to setup a UK bank account. They normally ask for the last 3 month's original bank statements, but unfortunately ours somehow got packed in the shipping crate. Happily, they gave us the benefit of the doubt after seeing the reams of HSMP documentation we brought along in a backpack. We populated the account with some traveler's cheques we'd obtained in the US, after hearing that cashier's checks and even institutional wires can take days or weeks to clear between nations. So now we've got a bank account established, which is a prerequisite for many other accounts and subscriptions in the UK. It'll be even better in a week when we get our cheques and debit cards in the mail!

After that we went looking for cell phones. Unfortunately, cell providers are apparently NOT as trusting as banks -- maybe that's why there's currently a banking credit crunch, but telecomms seem alive and well? Anyway, they said we wouldn't be able to get proper mobile accounts until we'd been in the area a few months, so for the time being we just picked up some cheap(ish) PAYG (pay as you go) phones. They're a bit pricy on a per-minute basis, so we won't be using them heavily until we get the normal accounts. I doubt our selection was optimal, but we needed something quickly, and we can refund these toward the final phones in a couple months, so there shouldn't be much harm done.

While Laura and Christopher were taking a break, Jonathan and I watched a street musician playing some Irish jigs on his guitar and harmonica. Jonathan threw him a quid, and then we watched a little girl dance to the music for awhile. All this occured on a nice stone-paved pedestrian shopping district off-limits to cars, such as you just don't find much anymore in America. It was really a lovely morning: the sky was grey and a bit overcast, but the air was brisk and lively. There were dozens of other families out shopping, which generated a happy buzz of children's voices.

Finally we went looking for a supermarket. Our temporary housing has a surprisingly nice kitchen, but didn't come stocked with food. After some roaming (found the library!) we came across a Tesco Metro, which was more than adequate in loading us down with bags to carry back to our flat. We'll need to look into one of those little rolling carts I see other people using!

Interesting things we've learned so far:

• Maidenhead has beautiful subways (pedestrian underpasses) decorated in tile mosaics...very nice!
• Aer Lingus plays classical music during taxiing, loading, and pretty much any time they're not actually in the air
• Doors in England often don't have doorknobs
• Electrical outlets in England each have their own power switch right on the outlet
• Many English TV channels don't run for 24hrs; if you tune in too early for an evening station, or too late for a morning frequency, you just get a notice listing their operating hours
• Always bring recent original bank statements with you (in your carry-on) when moving...duh!
• It can be good to have your luggage temporarily misplaced
• Most clocks in the UK run on "military time" (24hr)
• If people drive on the left side of the street, it makes sense to walk on the right
• England has combo washer-dryers that use the same chamber (no moving wet laundry!)
• English (European?) toilets have a little button for No.1, and a bigger button for No.2
  

More to come!

Day One

Yesterday was our first day in the UK. We flew in on Aer Lingus, which proved to be a perfectly capable carrier. My only nit might be that they didn't have per-seat individual TV screens, which are pretty handy for long-haul transatlantic flights; however, we'd brought along a full complements of iPods and laptops which kept us more than occupied for the crossing. Regrettably, neither Laura nor I were able to sleep very well on the flight, although the kids each curled up and sacked-out (we were lucky enough to have two empty seats in our row).

We transfered in Dublin for the final 1hr leg to Heathrow, which was pleasantly uneventful. The only real hitch in the flights was that our meticulously weighed-and-balanced suitcases didn't arrive in London with us. We really had no cause for complaint, as we hadn't exactly looked forward to lugging 375lbs of luggage, plus 60lbs of carry-on, through Heathrow; our hired taxi driver heaved a similar sigh of relief at finding us so unencumbered.

Our driver took us to Maidenhead, where we were able to find our lodgings without too much trouble. Unfortunately, the apartment complex didn't have an onsite office, so I had to find a working phone to call our agent to meet us with the keys; fortunately a kindly manager at a local phone store allowed me to call from his desk. In 30min or so, our property agent met us, showed us up to our flat, and gave us a helpful orientation to the area. It turned out we didn't think to ask all the right questions -- it later took awhile to figure out how the phone worked (hello GoTalk), which I needed in order to get the DSL modem working, and we're still eyeing the unfamiliar knobs on the oven and shower with dubious apprehension.

While Laura waited for the luggage to arrive, the kids and I took a walk down High Street in search of supper. We picked up some brochures for banks and cell phones, then bought some carry-out at the West Cornwall Pasty shoppe...hmm, steak and stilton!

Finally, it was time to crash hard, as we were all wobbly with exhaustion and had absolutely no idea what time it was (my laptop was still in Seattle time, the iPods were Orlando, and for some reason our apartment stove thought it was in Novobirsk.)

So far this morning, only Christopher and I are up. He found some familiar cartoons on the telly, and I'm...well, talking to you :-) Probably time to go hunt for some breakfast, so...more to come!