Burlaki on the Thames

Kimmy’s Year 4 program in literature includes a module called “Fantasy Worlds”. Guess which texts she was supposed to be studying in that?

Harry Potter books! And not just the books - all movie installments to date were apparently part of the program as well.

On top of that - wait for it! - the pupils would then progress to watching Star Wars movies.

I’m not kidding!

Now, I like fantasy as a genre a lot and I am a big fan of the Star Wars, but I am not sure that they are an appropriate curriculum for a bunch of 8-year-olds. And, frankly, Star Wars as a literary work!? Really?

Many parents objected, Natasha included (I largely stay on the sidelines when it comes to communicating with schools; after all, Natasha is an educator by trade - she has an insider view on how to navigate a parent-teacher relationship). Star Wars were canned, cinema sessions rolled back, and the plan is now limited to the very first Harry Potter as sort of a modern fairy tale. But in greater detail than before.

I’m sure the kids would be unhappy if they knew that their parents prevented them from watching movies all the time.

One of the hotel associations that Natasha occasionally checks out in her travel planning routines was holding an anniversary online sale a couple of weeks ago. The promotion offered tremendous discounts on short stays at upmarket member hotels. Even though I do not have vacation days left this year, a weekend trip is not out of the question. So, we gave some thought to possibilities.

Among the destinations with hotel nights on sale, there were several of our big favorites - Rome, Barcelona, Venice, Florence - as well as a few cities that are high on our must-see list: Stockholm, Budapest, Lisbon. The problem with every one of those is that getting there requires a couple of hours of flying, which brings a one-way door-to-door trip to somewhere around 6-7 hours (an hour+ to get to the airport two hours before the flight on one end, getting through customs and baggage reclaim plus however long it takes to get to the city center on the other end, in addition to the actual flying time). I am very averse to spending 12 or more hours related to the air travel for a one- or two-night stay anywhere.

One destination, though, was only about 5 hours away door-to-door - and that by either car or train.

Paris!

(Ok, Amsterdam is almost within the same timescale - if by car - but in a toss-up between Amsterdam and Paris, the French capital wins easily for us.)

Yes, after several sessions of debating possibilities, we thought to ourselves: Why fight it!? We love Paris and we can get there easier than to most other places. Paris, on y va!

Alas, the online sale was a disaster. It was advertised much more widely than the membership in the association, and the deal was so attractive that the number of people trying to log on at the proscribed time easily overwhelmed the server hosting the association website. The group later sent us - and I assume everyone else - an email, apologizing for their ineptitude in managing that promotion and promising to make it up to us - and I assume to everyone else - in some unspecified ways at a later date.

We are not holding our breath for that. But we can’t let the decision to go to Paris expire in the shuffle. Natasha and I are booking a short visit independently. With my Mom expected in London in a few weeks, we can even book a trip for just the two of us.

Mmm, a couple of days in Paris for just Natasha and me! That will be heavenly!!

Again, Jim started it, and a few of my other friends followed suit.

This is supposedly a more in-depth evaluation of one’s political leanings, although I have a problem with how a number of questions were worded. Just as that other test, it seems to ignore some of the key political areas (crime? foreign policy?) - but, maybe, those cannot be fitted into such study.

In any case, I certainly like this outcome better, even though it is essentially the same verdict - “moderate libertarian” (but it does call me an “economic conservative”, which is how I always viewed myself).

You are a Social Liberal (71% permissive) and an… Economic Conservative (71% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian Link: The Politics Test

Explanation Of Results

We wanted to get beyond the two catch-alls of American politics, the Democratic and Republican parties, and see where people actually stand. Parties can bring together people with marginally differing values and make collective action easier. But party platforms can misrepresent their constituents, and blind loyalty to a party can convince individuals to harbor inconsistent views.

The goal of this test was to exactly classify your personal politics, without the traditional labels. We avoided the edgy party issues and focused on fundamental values. Your score is a measure of what you believe in, economically and socially.

Higher permissiveness, on either axis, indicates a “live and let live” philosophy. Of course, we’re almost conditioned in America, “Land of the Free”, to think positively of such a philosophy. But practically speaking, permissiveness (or its opposite, regulation) can create any number of outcomes:

For example, on the economic axis, a highly permissive system, like the American system of the early 1900s, might mean things like low taxes and increased scientific innovation. It might also result, as it did back then, in unrestricted child labor and millions of poor people with black lung.

At the other end of the economic spectrum, a highly regulated system might conserve the environment, establish national health care, and eliminate poverty. But as we’ve learned from the Soviet system, extreme regulation can also lead to stagnation, sameness, and unhappiness.

My friend Brian posted a lucid and thorough summary of the on-going financial crisis. Anyone who professes to be a “layman” in financial matters should head over and read it - you will be hard-pressed to find an explanation of what had happened in simpler terms anywhere. But even if you consider yourself a seasoned investor and/or well-informed individual, you still might find the article illuminating.

Trust me!

Or, better yet, don’t trust me. Go and see for yourselves.

I unexpectedly got inspired to play a bit with a Flickr plugin, the result of which is the Travelscapes widget on the right (it opens into a page that displays the entire photoset, if you click on “view more” link). I’ll likely work on several adjustments, but I like even the simplest form of it. Let me know if something does not seem to work. More pictures will eventually be added.

Enjoy!

It seems a bit premature to start ruminating on this subject - after all, we are not going back to the US as yet. But Jeri asked the question, and I figured I’d give it a try.

So, what will I miss of England and Europe once I eventually repatriate?

Would I be too predictable if I started with ease of European travel? I mentioned on many occasions that one of the primary reasons for our relocation to the UK was our desire for active exploration of Europe, a proposition that is not exactly viable when living Stateside, for obvious reasons of distances and expenses. We’ve done a large amount of traveling in the last couple of years and we’ve left tons of destinations still undiscovered. I don’t want to get into an analysis of whether the exploited our situation to the fullest. What I do know is that there have been periods of time when we were going on one trip or another literally every other week. And we made weekend-long jaunts to places in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, UK proper in a fairly painless manner in terms of time and expense. Back in the States, I will again be restricted to at most two trips to Europe every year. Oh, well.

Can I now appear completely wacky in stating that I will miss British weather? Yes, yes, I know, “the weather is dreadful” is a constant refrain in my narratives throughout this blog. Yet, of all the basic unpleasantness the weather can throw at me, I probably tolerate extreme heat the least. Despite the fact that British summer did not seem to happen at all for the last couple of years (not counting a couple of really nice weeks each April, as it were), I’d take the intermittently rainy and mostly cool summer months in London over scorching summer temperatures in New Jersey every day of the week - and twice on weekends.

Sometime a year ago, I posted a quick-hit list of what I thought England did better than the US. The handful of things on that list will undoubtedly be missed. Especially, I think, the pin-and-chip credit card approach.

And… I can’t really think of much else.

Foodstuffs? Maybe if we lived in France or Italy or Spain or Belgium, but not very much in England. You can get an excellent choice of continental delicacies at select markets, but it isn’t an everyday happenstance.

Café culture? Yes, I truly enjoy it. But, again, it’s not exactly a British phenomenon - Brits enjoy pubs much more, - so I cannot claim it to be part of my everyday life.

Less politicized society? Er… let’s leave it at that - maybe a topic for another post. Maybe.

An incomprehensible rarity of a police car waiting around the bend to catch you in the act of going over the speed limit? Should I be admitting that I’ll miss that? Especially, since the alternative is the evil speed cameras.

Top-flight live football on TV several times a week?

I’m afraid I’m reaching again…

Oops!

Not the label I thought appropriate for my political views. Although I always kind of thought of myself as “moderate”, and I long realized that my general distaste for big governments is nothing but “libertarian”.

Come to think of it, I’ve always said (most recently here) that I tend to agree with the Democrats on most of the major issues. I guess I should have been using the word “left” in place of the word “Democrats”. At close range, the only thing that puts me off in liberals is the government social programs and economic spending bit¹. Too bad that it happens to be by far my most important issue.

Via Jim.

——
¹Before anyone attempts to take me to task for being inconsistent (on the strength of my advocacy of the recently passed $700Bln rescue package), I am expressly for targeted government spending in times of crises. To me, an ability to avert - or, at a minimum, soften - an economic meltdown is a key responsibility for any government, alongside with matters of international trade, security, infrastructure and law enforcement.

One of my favorite animated shorts of all time. No knowledge of spoken languages required! Music bridges the widest of gaps!

It took me a few extra days to get around to writing the next installment of one of my favorite regular features of the blog. But here it is.

The first half of September gave me several opportunities to watch long-recorded movies. A man can only take so much football, in the end. So, I got around to watching a couple of recent hits that were on my “must-see” list, Live Free or Die Hard and Ocean’s Thirteen, two movies that I missed in the past but always wanted to see, Burnt by the Sun and The Incredibles, one “oldie” that I heard referred to many times as a “classic”, The Dirty Dozen, and a couple of flicks that we chosen on the basis of “the shortest-duration movie currently recorded on the PVR”, Shoot’ em Up and Rush Hour 3. There was also a children-oriented flick, The Thief Lord, that we watched as a family.

The brief impressions and reviews are below the fold for those who are interested.
Continue Reading »

So, Natasha posted the link to my lessons learned little soliloquy to Fodor’s and challenged people there to share their own expat lessons. It generated a discussion on Fodor’s that pushed her thread to the top of most active, and it also caused a heretofore unseen spike in visits to our website.

I’m guessing that the next phenomenon is a corollary to that. I discovered yesterday that my bailout-related musings have been quoted verbatim and linked to on a blog dedicated to housing problems in the US. The proprietor must be a “fodorite” - otherwise, I cannot fathom how he would select my humble opinion. And placed it right next to a Milton Friedman’s video-lecture!

I am greatly amused. And, I guess, thankful for the publicity, even though I have reservations of seeing almost the entire article of mine re-printed elsewhere.

There was still one question from Jeri - who graciously saved me from an embarrassment of having an “ask me a question” day without hearing a single question - that I neglected to address thus far.

What were the hardest cultural adjustments for you and your family when you moved to the UK?

The quick answer for this is I don’t think that British and Americans are drastically different culturally. Nor were we entirely new to some of the European features of living when we came over. There was hardly anything that can be pinpointed as a big cultural adjustment.

There were plenty of things that I would call everyday trifles that were - and still are - inconvenient to bear with. I explored quite a few of them in the past, in articles filed under That’s England category, starting with the things we take for granted in the US. They bother us occasionally - or provide reasons for ridicule. We learned to accept them and pay them little mind.

A few examples are below the fold.
Continue Reading »

Two years ago I landed in Heathrow to start my life in England.

I used to subscribe to the notion that an émigré should spend 3 years establishing himself in his new life before making any pronouncements on his overall successes or failures. This period of our life is not an emigration, but I will stick to the rule nonetheless.

Instead, I’m going to extemporize on what lessons I have learned in two years of living abroad.

I’ve learned that it is much harder to establish your life anew when you are an adult and a parent, than when you are a young person. The stress is much greater. The sense of wonderment is considerably tempered by the multitude of worries. All the conveniences and habits that you spent getting used to for years of your life get shred to pieces.

I’ve learned that you find new and wonderful friends no matter where you end up. And thankfully, old friends tug at your heart no matter how far away from them you find yourself.

I’ve learned that a stay-at-home spouse has the hardest time of all adjusting to the new environment. Kids quickly make friends at school; work keeps you busy enough to somewhat blur the edges of where you were before and where you are now. It’s someone who needs to search for things to do day in and day out that ends up feeling the weight of the change the sharpest.

I’ve learned that my oft-professed love of travels and of seeing new places was not an idle desire, but a true affliction. We’ve done as much recreational travel as work and school would allow during these last 24 months, and still nothing gets me as excited as the prospect of a new voyage.

I’ve learned, conversely, that there is a limit of how much a family can take of family travels. The logistics, the harassment and delays of air travel, the duration of travel by other modes of transport, the frequent packing and unpacking, the continuous search for compromises between interests of adults and kids - it all wearies even the most dedicated explorers after time.

I’ve learned - very quickly - that London is far from an ideal base for European forays. Getting across the strip of water known as the English Channel is fraught with hassle, no matter whether you use roads, railways or air.

I’ve learned that there are many things besides ease of travel that appeal to me in Europe. Many of them have to do with political issues, religion or other aspects of life that I am reluctant to discuss in a written form.

I’ve learned that life-long dreams do come true if you pursue them hard enough.

I’ve learned that fulfilling a life-long dream is not all that it’s cracked up to be, especially when events out of your control start wrecking some of your plans.

I’ve learned that I occasionally have regrets about having done it. Mostly, from purely materialistic perspective. As counter-intuitive as it sounds on the surface, we are likely worse off financially right now than we would be had we stayed in America and not sold our house.

I’ve learned that I have no doubts that it was a good thing that we took this plunge.

What?! You thought otherwise?!

It appears that a fair number of my online penpals is cheering the failure of the bailout plan in Congress. I’ve been making rounds recording my disagreement with their point of view - and at some point, I realized that I need to state my opinion in my space as well.

The objections to the plan run mostly along the lines of “how can we spend so much of taxpayers’ money to let those who caused the whole mess off the hook?” I happen to think that that point of view is terribly misguided.

You know who is going to suffer the most if the current financial crisis keeps spiraling downwards? The middle class. Not the rich - they will simply become less rich, but stay rich nonetheless. Not the poor - please forgive me my inadvertent snobbery, but the poor have little to lose, by definition. The middle class, conversely, will lose a lot when the corporations and consumers tighten their belts and spend less and less. A florist will not be able to sell her stock of roses, a waiter will earn fewer tips, a fledgling online business will see fewer orders. Thousands of corporate soldiers will be out of jobs. Many will lose their houses. Some of them may deserve it, on account of buying houses they could never afford. The vast majority will be innocent bystanders.

The Great Depression destroyed a few financiers. It destroyed a lot more of Average Joes. The unemployment rate hit 25% then, and the number of mortgages in default swelled to 40%. We are nowhere near those numbers right now (6% and 4%, respectively), but we are sliding towards that. Shouldn’t we be trying to take some action?

The recovery in 1933 arguably jump-started with federal cash infusions via the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation. In early nineties, the Resolution Trust Corporation dealt with S&L failures of the previous decade. Those were admittedly created years after the crises hit. But they provide a reasonably successful template. One that can be used now.

The plan would effectively transfer the burden of owning “troubled assets” from shareholders to taxpayers, and in the process deepen the budget deficit to somewhere above 6% of GDP. Yes, that is not fair to taxpayers, on the surface of it. But there is a fair chance that some of that money will be repaid (RTC did turn a modest profit even, didn’t it?). And what’s more important, the cost of after-the-fact unwinding of financial crises around the world in the last 30 years averaged 16% of GDP. Going with the Bernanke/Paulson proposal, in effect, should cost considerably less than sitting on our asses waiting for the natural bottom to hit in a few years. We do nothing - and we all suffer, some of us possibly losing everything in the process. We follow this plan - and there is a fair chance of stabilizing the economy to the point where other harsh decisions, regarding how to prevent this from happening again, can be made.

Update: And you know what, all of you who cite economists signing letters criticising the bailout? It’s all about whom you’d rather trust. Quoting Harward economist Greg Mankiw (emphasis mine),

Ben [Bernanke] is at least as smart as any of the economists who signed that letter or are complaining on blogs or editorial pages about the proposed policy. Moreover, Ben is far better informed than the critics. The Fed staff includes some of the best policy economists around. In his capacity as Fed chair, Ben understands the situation, as well as the pros, cons, and feasibility of the alternative policy options, better than any professor sitting alone in his office possibly could.

If I were a member of Congress, I would sit down with Ben, privately, to get his candid view. If he thinks this is the right thing to do, I would put my qualms aside and follow his advice.

P.S. Yes, I lost huge sums of money on the stock market in the last year-plus, even though I’m well-diversified with investments in what I would describe as “solid” companies. The bailout would benefit me in a very direct way. I’m mentioning this so no one doubts my motives.

The hot water is back. It seems that the “immersion” heater was wired improperly and lacked a rather essential fuse. The effing thing never ever worked before!!! And nobody - not the landlord, not his agent, certainly not the repair guys - knew about it.

Anyway, the slightly harassed repairmen made their third visit to our house in as many days - this time with a clear directive not to leave until they are sure that there is hot water in the house. They spend a good hour re-wiring the immersion heater, but they accomplished the objective splendidly.

Now we are waiting for the official date and time of the main heater repairs.

The other day we went with friends for a dinner to a trendy place in Mayfair. The meal itself was exceptional, the company was extraordinary, and live entertainment - first a virtuoso keyboardist and then a belly dancer - made the evening all the more fun.

Among the songs played (and danced to) there was Lambada. The song was incredibly popular in Russia when it first came out, even though few could dance it properly. But the requisite pelvic grinding was certainly a big attraction - as were the flashes of skin in the great music video.

I am not a skillful - or even willing - dancer, but I can dance lambada. Hence, the memories. We’ll leave it at that.

No hot water in the house and - although we are not yet in dire need of it - no heating. The heating unit has lost its ability to pump hot water, instead filling the house with loud banging in the pipes. It had to be turned off. There is a backup electric water heater, but it is not operational either, for unknown reasons.

And this is what makes the situation worse: The repairmen already came to the house twice in the last couple of days. On a weekend, no less. Yet all they can do is sympathetically explain what they think the problem is, but they cannot even attempt to fix it until the landlord provides his dispensation to spend a large sum of money on the repairs. The landlord lives in Japan, the house management agency that needs to deal with him is enjoying the weekend, so we may not get anything fixed until several days from now.

I knew there was a reason why I prefer owning a house to renting!

At least the study can be used as a warm refuge, what with two computers running in a fairly small room…

About a year ago, I started going to the gym. And a few months later, I stopped (an event not expressly commemorated on this blog).

Part of that was certainly that I lack mental make-up to enjoy the tedious process of exercising. To put it more bluntly, I hate it. With a proper video entertainment on hand I might be able to stay patient for a reasonable workout, but in a public gym, you get limited choice of that.

And the music they blasted over the speakers in that gym was simply atrocious!

My other excuse was the schedule. Early mornings are out because I’m not a morning person. The “greater lunch” starts around 11am, and the not too spacious gym gets overcrowded for a couple of hours. The best time to go there is right around 2pm, when the lunch crowd already left and the “after-work” crowd not yet arrived.

But when I moved on to my current US-centric role, 2pm became the time when I needed to be at my best multi-communicating on email, IM and phone, as the various people whom I needed to reach arrived in their New York office. And having only 4-5 hours a day to fit in all of the transatlantic meetings that you need to hold, tends to make you awfully unwilling to spend an hour in the middle of that on such trifles as exercising.

On the other hand, I can work from home considerably more often now than in times past when my physical presence in office was often necessary to make my regional business partners feel loved. And if I want to go to a local gym at lunchtime, I can find it fairly empty in the middle of any given weekday…

Not that I’d really go to a gym - the boredom hurdle is still there. But Natasha has lately been scouting local “health & leisure” centers for good swimming pool deals - have I mentioned anywhere that over our summer holidays she got into a habit of doing a couple of dozen laps every day? - and she insisted that I should join her once in a while.

Which is what I did today, for a nice half-hour swim at one of the new community centers in our area. Only £3 a pop - and we actually did not pay anything today, on pretenses of checking the place out before making our decision to join. Good facilities, few people at that time of the day. Natasha bought herself a multi-visit discount card, with an intent to go a couple of times a week. I might be keeping her company occasionally. Although I’ll be in trouble trying to keep up - I barely managed 10 laps by the time she finished her twentieth.

Continuing our Q&A exercise, in which I successfully engaged one single person to ask me questions, let’s address another one of Jeri’s queries. (Part 1 is here.)

I’m assuming your children are in British schools - what are the advantages and disadvantages of American vs. British school systems?

I did, in fact, produce a rambling essay on this very subject more than a year ago. It is worth to briefly restate it here.

Becky attends an independent - British equivalent for private; in other words, fee-paying - girls-only school that is reportedly one of the top schools in the country. Kimmy goes to a regular co-ed state school, one that is rated as “good” - but not exceptional - by the Ofsted.

After close to two years of experience with British schooling, I firmly hold that, if taught right, British approach to school education is both wider in its range and deeper in its substance than American schooling approach. The simplest example of greater depth is the fact that pupils actually learn how to prove mathematical theorems as opposed to just checking them off as “facts”; the former trains the mind, while the latter is pretty useless on its own merits, in my humble opinion.

The greater width is best characterized by the existence of more diverse subjects, as well as the social sciences curriculum that is balanced enough to teach children about the world, not just the country that they live in.

If taught right is a very important qualifier, though. The quality of schooling varies from area to area and, as you might experience in the US as well, tends to be worse in urban areas and better in more affluent suburban ones. Moreover, state schools are unflinchingly egalitarian, in that children with different abilities and attitudes are taught in the same classroom; the pressure on even the best teachers to dumb down the instruction to the lowest common denominator is too great - the student mix becomes a dominant factor in the level of schooling that your children obtain.

Having said all that, I have no doubt that, all other things being equal, my kids will end up more well-rounded and open-minded individuals than their American peers because of the years they will have spent in British schools.