Living in London

In the last few days we have found ourselves taken with the game of snooker. We have become completely enamoured of the Embassy World Championships now being played (and televised on BBC2) over a total of 17 days. It’s really unbelievable how skilled these guys are at spin and geometry, and able to put the correct ball into the pocket while leaving the white ball perfectly positioned to make their next shot.

Unfortunately, our tentative favourite, Peter Ebdon, was eliminated yesterday. McCulloch and Stevens are battling it out this evening. It’s a toss up who we will be supporting (psychically) in the finals on May 2^nd. Because we know none of the players, we usually root for the underdog … but hair styles play a large part in Linda’s support, and Stevens has TOO MUCH HAIR GEL!  

I am in the second week of my new job and it is every bit as interesting, challenging and rewarding as I had hoped. I am working with a great group of people. My re-entry into the working world is going well.

My only challenge is that I am in the northwest of England which appears to be a bit of a technological backwater. I have no access to personal email or web sites during the work day (probably a good thing) but I wasn't prepared for the lack of WiFi or other high-speed internet access after work. There is no Starbucks and the Internet café that I found is actually in the office of a local real estate agent who put a folding table in the corner of his office and hooked up three PCs to his broadband connection. He calls this the CyberCafé. Unfortunately, the CyberCafé closes each evening at 6:00 PM — when the real estate agent goes home for the evening. I have managed to find only two hotels in the area with WiFi access and I am not currently staying at either of them.

Each evening I make a 10 minute walk to the neighbouring hotel for a fix of broadband. I get 2 hours or 75 MB of downloads for £5. By the time I retrieve my 80 - 90 emails and download a few of my favourite podcasts, I use up the 75 MB limit long before my 2 hours are up. To make it more challenging, there is a convention of senior citizens in this hotel the last couple of days. At the moment, someone is crooning Why Do Fools Fall In Love over a makeshift sound system in the lobby and encouraging people to join in the sing-a-long. Alas my voice just isn't up to it this evening.

It is difficult to keep up with the blog posts while sitting in a hotel lobby and with such limited access to the world. If all goes well, I will be staying at a hotel next week with high speed access. Ahh, to be reconnected again.

We had a terrific sushi dinner last night at Kulu Kulu, a most unusual sushi bar! Stools were arranged at the bar facing a conveyor belt that snaked through the room (think sushi boats without the water).

First, we have never eaten at a sushi bar where not one member of the staff was Japanese. Second the "art" of cutting fish is not what you would call elevated here – it all looks very amateurish. Maki are made at the bar, and nigiri comes from a mysterious window opening onto the conveyer belt.

The ambiance has all the panache of a Detroit strip mall diner, and the service is non-existent. Customers are requested to limit their stay to 45 minutes.

However, none of the above would deter us from a second visit. We had a good meal and recommend Kulu Kulu to anyone looking for good, quick sushi in London's Soho area. The fish was fresh (including the imitation crab ) although we were there at the beginning of the evening so everything was just going onto the conveyer belt as we sat down. There was plenty of variety, and the handrolls – especially the shrimp tempura-salmon rolls – were fantastic.

Thanks to Nicole and Bob for the suggestion.

Ratings (5 is the highest, most perfect score)

Food:	3
Service:	0
Ambiance:	0
Value:	4 — We were stuffed, and had two beers, for £35
Verdict:	We will absolutely return for fast, cheap, good sushi. Plus, they open at 5 pm which is big plus from our perspective.

 

Other Reviews:

• London Eating

Remember this song?:

Oh, do you know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
Oh, do you know the muffin man,
That lives on Drury Lane?

Oh, yes, I know the muffin man,
The muffin man , the muffin man,
Oh, yes, I know the muffin man,
That lives on Drury Lane.

Well guess where Drury Lane is located? Yep, in London. Here’s a fascinating blog post on it at one of our favourite sites.

You can listen to the tune by clicking on the player at the bottom of this site.

Get a job, she said! That is your primary task. Since last September, I have spent 20 - 30 hours a week networking and looking for a job.

Today I am proud to announce that I can mark the task complete. On Tuesday April 19 I will begin an interim position as the Head of Corporate Infrastructure Management with a large Civil Service employer. It promises to be a very challenging job as the organisation is undergoing a significant transformation over the next few years and I will get to help drive that change.

I also will have the opportunity to see a vast amount of England as I work in various cities throughout the country. I will spend a good amount of my time in the northwest of England but will travel to many other cities as well.

The position also feeds into my long term goal of becoming a turnaround specialist and someone who can quickly get up to speed in a challenging situation, helping organisations to move ahead.

Stay tuned for further reports from the road.

Click for larger image

We have previously posted on the fact that London is 950 miles farther north than San Francisco. The distance was driven home recently when I noticed that the satellite dishes on people's houses were darn near horizontal.

As I understand it, the satellite TV providers position their satellites in orbit over the equator. In order to pick up the signals, people in the northern hemisphere point their dishes southward towards the satellites over the equator. The closer to the equator, the sharper the angle of the dish. The farther north, the lower the angle. We are so far north in the UK that the dishes appear horizontal.

We have been eager to try some of the gastropubs located in the English countryside. Yesterday, during our driving adventure we made a slight detour to The Greyhound, located in an old coaching inn on the single main street in Stockbridge.

It was lunch, and we dined sans wine, so we did not have the full dining experience – but still found it quite pleasant. The 15th century low ceilings meant that we had to duck on the way to the lady's room but confirmed our presence in a country pub.

Linda had a cauliflower crème soup and a linguine dish that was rich but delicious; Heather’s Scottish rib-eye was the best beef we have tasted since we arrived in the U.K. The chef, Darren Bunn worked at the Criterion Grill in the West End before moving to Stockbridge, and has earned The Greyhound a Michelin star for the past two years.

Ratings (5 is the highest, most perfect score)

Food:	3
Service:	4
Ambiance:	3 (in that typical low-beams, big-fireplace, 15th century building style)
Verdict:	Would return if we were in the area

 

Other Reviews:

• The Times

• The Guardian

We took to the roads of England for the first time today. Following the advice of many other expats who have made the transition from driving on the right hand side to driving on the left, we rented a car and headed out of town for a little trial trip. We made our way into the southwest countryside with Stonehenge as our destination. Seven hours, 200 miles, a wonderful lunch, and some big stones later, we are home safe and sound.

Driving for the first time in England was intense to say the least, and not quite in the ways we had feared. It’s not that weird to sit on the right side of the car or to have the shifter on the left (we did get an automatic). We didn’t feel as if we were learning to drive all over again or anything like that.

The weird stuff is what’s stored in our ‘muscle memory.’ There are patterns and habits that are so deeply ingrained that we had to focus perpetually in order to ‘override’ our instincts. One example is having our body on the right side of the lane – we have such a deep instinct to align our body with the left side of the lane that we constantly had to fight the car drifting to the left (so that our line of sight is where it used to be).

Another example is looking in the rear view mirror, previously located up and to the right. Today we rarely checked the rear view mirror in our British car. Instead, we found ourselves looking constantly into the right hand side mirror — even when we were in the right hand passing lane and the right side mirror showed nothing but the shoulder of the road.

We are home now and none the worse for wear. Our shoulders are a little tense, which is undoubtedly a combination of the stress of driving in England for the first time and the wonderful ergonomics and quality of the seats in our Ford Focus.

My apologies for the tabloid headline but it was just too tempting.

Tony Blair has met with the Queen and requested that Parliament be dissolved on April 11 — and she has graciously consented to do so. It turns out that dissolving the parliament is a normal part of the election process. Cool!

The Prime Minister has called for an election on May 5. (05/05/05) The race is on for a month long campaign. (I suspect that many Americans would welcome the opportunity to dissolve congress, especially if they only had to endure a month of campaigning.)

All of the major papers have sections dedicated to the latest news on the UK election. Stay up to date with these links:

• Financial Times
• The Guardian
• The Evening Standard
• BBC
• Election Watch (blog)
• Lost in Westminster (blog)

Surprisingly,The Times does not have a section dedicated to the election, at least not yet. Stay tuned . . .

The upcoming wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles continues to generate controversy and headlines.

First, there was the news that the couple would have to change the wedding venue from Windsor Castle to the nearby town hall. Apparently, licensing the royal palace would cause too much disruption (not to mention the fact that it would have enabled commoners to enjoy the same right as the Prince of Wales to marry in the castle, which is the Queen’s favourite residence). The consolation for us commoners is that the town hall will allow the public to cheer the newlyweds as they arrive and leave.

And this is just the beginning. According to an article the Times, "the Queen is deeply concerned at the shambolic preparations for her son’s second wedding." Apparently, the change in venue will cost the residents of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead £1 million ($1.87 million).

Then came the startling headlines that the Queen will not attend the ceremony. Stating that she wanted to respect her son's wish for a low-key occasion, the Queen opted to attend the blessing and reception.

Now the couple have fallen victim to an unfortunate confluence of international events. The wedding, originally scheduled for Friday, April 8, now conflicts with the funeral of the pope. What were the chances of that?

At first, a spokesperson for the Prince said the wedding would go ahead as planned. But then several VIP's (including the Prime Minister) said that they would be heading to Rome to attend the funeral, the couple agreed to postpone the wedding. The couple have now announced that the wedding will be moved to Saturday morning.

For all the latest, as well as a complete history, see the Charles and Camilla section at the Times.

It is a beautiful Sunday morning in London and I decided to venture out to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. Anyone may turn up unannounced and use this legendary locale to exercise their rights to free speech. Of course, the hecklers can be counted upon to reciprocate in kind. The corner has hosted such greats as Marx, Lenin, and George Orwell.

Although I wasn't expecting any world class orators, I thought that there was enough controversy in Europe these days to at least have an interesting speaker. With the war in Iraq a perennial favourite, Wolfowitz being confirmed as president of the World Bank, the upcoming UK elections and the impending vote on the EU constitution, I was sure there would be something interesting to hold my attention.

To my dismay there was only an aging English bloke who was railing on about the importance of Jesus in your life. He was highlighting the attractiveness of his beliefs by clamouring that taking the narrow road with Jesus would require me to turn away from my friends and my family. I walked away as he was recounting his experience in the Vietnam War when he asked himself the soul-searching question, "what am I doing here?" Apparently Jesus had an answer for him but I didn't wait around to hear what it was.

I wandered south in the park to the Honest Sausage and could not resist. I ordered a Park Porker. Unfortunately it was overcooked and smothered in an unappetizing sauce which leaked all over my hands. I tossed it after a few bites and strolled home taking in the emergence of spring among the flowers and the squirrels and the thousands of revelers. At least I got a good 4.5 miles worth of exercise out of the walk.