Burlaki [back] on the Hudson

We went to see the Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre in London last night. Confirming what I have been hearing for years, it’s a tremendous show, with imaginative colorful costumes and contraptions depicting various animals, and simple but expressive sets. The acting, I felt, was a bit on the mediocre side, but that cannot negate the overall positive impression.

One little problem. For once in our lives, we did not bother with choosing our seats, but instead went for what was available through a distributor. Ended up in the fourth row of the mezzanine, which, at this particular theater, has less than ideal acoustics.

But the most important thing is, this show is not suited for viewing from above. The sets that depict savannah lose their impact on the viewer because of the perspective. For instance, when the sliding strip of vegetation is meant to create an effect of moving through a grassy terrain, and you see the actors’ shuffling feet from your perched viewpoint, it all looks rather weird.

In addition, parts of the stage open up to let in or take away both the characters and some additional decorations, and seeing the gaps in the floor or some of the mechanisms is downright disillusioning.

Not being able to properly see the parts of the show where the animals move through the orchestra is also a downer.

Well, the kids loved it anyway! That’s all that matters.

Art & Culture

My cousin Alex – who, in our family parlance, would be referred to as my brother – is on a work assignment in Dublin for the next couple of weeks. Obviously, we wanted to come and visit. And the truths exposed in my onetime editorial on the costs of European travel garnered new evidence.

Four travelers, less than a week’s notice, understandable constraints of time between the end of schoolday on Friday and beginning of the next schoolday on Monday. The route, London – Dublin, is served by a plethora of airlines, from majors to regionals. The actual trip is just a bit over an hour. One would have thought that even at the last moment, the fares would be under £100 per person.
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Travel

“A nice weekend is one that allows you to catch up on your sleep a little bit.”

I was ready to adopt this new motto, having had two prior travel weekends in a row – I never stay in bed late when I am traveling, never mind the fact that I usually feel less than comfortable in hotel beds, – so some extra shut-eye was overdue.

Given the times of my awakenings on Saturday and Sunday – let’s put it cryptically at closer to noon than to my weekday 6:50 alarm-clock moment – the weekend was quite nice. But it also encompassed an interesting bit of entertainment and a boisterous get-together with friends.
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Art & Culture, Chronicles

This week heralded another milestone in our parenting life: For the first time ever, we let Becky use public transportation all on her own.

The determining factor was scheduling: When Kimmy has her swimming lessons on Wednesdays, Becky needs to stay in school resource center for over an hour after classes, until Natasha can drive over and pick her up. Instead, a bus stopping a block away from her school can take Becky directly to Eltham High Street – where the swimming center is located – to meet up with her mom and sister, saving both on her waiting time and on a car trip for Natasha.

Furthermore, Becky can also switch to another bus there and ride just a couple more stops to get home. On Mondays and Fridays, with no planned after-school activities, that would allow Natasha to bring Kimmy home right after picking her up and start about feeding first her and then Becky, as opposed to undertaking an hour-long exercise of driving between schools, waiting for Becky to come out, and driving back home. It would save about £5 of gasoline per week, too.

The decision to let Becky do that – she herself is quite keen, given that there are a couple of girls she knows who ride on the same bus daily, – is psychologically mitigated by our everyday observation of even younger children traveling to/from school on their own every day. It may be an uncomfortable proposition for an American parent, but it’s entirely commonplace in Europe. And, after all, I started traveling to a chess club on my own across a big city when I was 8 or 9. Becky is certainly mature enough to handle that.

… and cunning enough to use our acquiescence to her advantage. As soon as we agreed to “pilot” the scheme, she arranged for a meeting at the O₂ mall with a friend she had made on the ski holiday, and presented it to us as a done deal that did not even require our participation of driving here there: It’s on a direct bus route from our house.

Man, how the children grow!…

Children & Schooling

I remember when this video came out, how amazed we were with what then seemed a pinnacle of CGI wizardry. Compare it with what you see in an average movie these days, and it’s downright primitivist.

It still evokes tons of memories, though, and the Knopfler fans among us can surely still appreciate the wizardry of sound.

Videos & Music

The property management agency for our landlord has decided that doors and windows of the laundry room need to be replaced. Fine by us – it’s not like we are paying. The contractors did not show up when they were expected several weeks ago, but except for a little annoyance – after all, Natasha planned her entire day around that, – it was not a big deal.

Then they called earlier this week to re-arrange a visit, and showed up this morning, bright and early. No qualms about the quality of their work, the new door is a huge improvement over the old one (that started to rot, as it were).

It would all be fine and dandy, except for one little problem: They knocked our phones and internet out.

There are three working phone jacks in this house, as I have discovered in the past. One of them is located in the master bedroom, which, to me, is not an obvious place to place it, if you consider that neither of the two reception rooms have one. The second working jack is the entrance hallway, with no power outlet anywhere near it (which probably was ok 10-15 years ago, when phones were simple, but is hard to get around these days with a phone base requiring electricity). The last phone jack is in the bedroom that we designated as the office, which is exactly the right place for it.

Only, that last phone jack was clearly put in not at the same time as all the other wiring, but at a later date. There is a separate cable running from the main phone connection box in the laundry room through the walls up the second floor.

Uh-oh, the laundry room!… Whatever the contractors did today, they must have somehow damaged the connection of that separate cable to the phone box. Nothing visible to the eye, but the phone jack in the office went dead at some point while they were working in the vicinity of that cable, and I do not believe in coincidences so improbable as to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The phones were out, since the cordless phone base was connected to this jack, and the broadband was out, since the router was right there as well.

My enterprising wife found an old corded phone, which she plugged into the hallway jack. A call to the phone company yielded the usually atrocious customer service experience and an offer to send a technician to the house in two weeks’ time for a small contribution of £150. A call to the property management agency resulted in a promise to cover that cost if we could produce a proof that it were the contractors who caused the problem. A call to my office provided me with a diversion from my regular daily functions, but did very little in terms of bringing me joy.

After I came home, I moved the phone base and the router to the master bedroom, restoring the essential communications (thankfully, wirelessly connected computers care little about the physical location of the router). They will probably live there from now on, unless we manage to convince the estate agents to commit to covering the cost of phone repair unconditionally.

What this illustrated to me is how much I hate living in somebody else’s house and depending on strangers to take care of the dwelling. Were the house mine, I’d have some financial recourse against the stupid contractors. Or at least would have splurged on an inside wiring protection plan that many phone companies offer…

Chronicles

I admittedly do not like packaged vacations.

There are few things in this world that annoy me more than having to waste my time on account of strangers. Coupled with the penchant I have for being punctual, I would certainly waste disproportionate amount of time if I joined a tour group, which would prevent me from enjoying whatever such holiday could offer.

I am also not much for lazy do-nothingness. The first day at the beach is grand, the second is ok, the third is boringly drawn-out, and by the fourth I am ready to return home if no diversion is forthcoming. Ok, with good company and pleasant conversation, I can probably survive a week-long sojourn at a Caribbean all-inclusive resort, but I would be perpetually conflicted by the inherent desire to extract maximum value from the all-you-can-eat-and-drink around-the-clock buffets against my need to wander outside regimented boundaries.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a do-it-on-the-whim traveler. I have my moments, surely, but most of the time I prefer to plan well ahead and minimize surprises. But what I do plan for is exploring, and that leaves little room for trip-mates who do not share my mindset (or my punctuality), for itineraries that are made with an average highlight-seeking tourist in mind, or for strict daily schedules.

It was with some trepidation that I was looking forward to a stay at an all-inclusive Club Med for our skiing holiday.
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Travel

The concept of vehicle registration in Britain is substituted by the notion of the road tax. Same thing, different name, really, except that the proof of you having paid the tax – known as the Tax Disc – has to be prominently displayed on your windshield (while the proof of inspection does not).

The real difference is in cost. I don’t recall paying more than $80 a year for registration of my FX35 in New Jersey (which was the most expensive to register of all the cars that I used to own). Here, I just paid £205 for the privilege to drive my X3 for another year. Ouch!

That's England

Disclaimer #1: Admittedly, I am not much of a skier.

Disclaimer #2: The closest that I’ve ever been to a major North American skiing resort is Mont-Tremblant in Quebec, which normally figures somewhere in the Top 20 on the travel magazines’ lists. I have never been to Colorado, Utah or British Columbia, having otherwise satisfied my limited skiing needs with Poconos and once with Vermont.

So, while I want to make a statement of the kind of There’s nothing like skiing in Alps, it will probably ring hollow. And yet, I am pretty sure that an Alpine skiing experience is likely to leave a lasting impression on anyone who’s done it for the very first time.

You clearly need nice weather for your skiing trip to be enjoyable, and we lucked into an entire week of bright blue skies, warm sun and no wind (funnily, the day of our departure started out very foggy and considerably less pleasant than the preceding week). You obviously need good snow on the slopes, as well, and there was a huge snowfall several days before our arrival. And last, but not least, you need gorgeous scenery. And the scenery in Alps is simply breathtaking.

 
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Travel

We are back from our excellent Alpine adventure, and since I am sure that everyone is anxious to hear about it, here is a brief recap.

Yes, the skies were azure, the snow was sparkling, the setting was altogether gorgeous, and we enjoyed ourselves tremendously. My three ladies skied as much as was possible within the regimented instruction boundaries. Yours truly, who is not a big skier to start with, managed to pull a knee tendon literally within the first hour of the first day of skiing, after which any attempts to fake some sort of enjoyment of the activity became entirely futile. I contented myself with a bit of snow-walking, but primarily with free bar drinks mixed with sauna, hammam and swimming pool sessions.

I additionally spent a whole day sightseeing in Zurich in the company of two old friends, one of whom I have not seen in almost exactly twenty years. The four of us also went out to dinner with our good friends who live in a sleepy suburb of Geneva. Add in a trip to an indoor water park and an overnight in Reims on the way back, and the holiday ended up not being just about skiing. Which is the only way I’d take it anyway.

I’ll write a series of detailed reports in the next couple of days.

Only five weeks until the next trip…

Travel

YouTube is such a trip down history lane. This one has been one of my favorites for cool twenty years or so. And did you know that Robin Williams is in this video? I had no idea until I watched it again for the first time since probably 1991…

 
And with that, we are off to Switzerland. Don’t despair, we’ll be back in just over a week.

Cheerio!

Videos & Music

A very random meme, but a good illustration of the genre (which you can learn about here). Here are The Rules of this one:

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Let’s try it.
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Idle Amusements

On what was likely the first nice day of the year, I decided to work from home. Actually, I decided that the day before, since there were a couple of important chores to attend to prior to leaving for our Alpine skiing trip. The nice weather was purely coincidental.

That was not the last of coincidences, though. On this same day, my laptop decided that it is not going to allow me to properly connect to the corporate network remotely. I spent about an hour tinkering with it, but finally gave up, used my Blackberry to announce to one or two people who cared that I was converting the day into a day-off, and allowed myself to marvel at how circumstances conspired to force me to enjoy the nice weather.

So when Natasha asked “Do you want to go have lunch in Blackheath?”, I gladly agreed.
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Chronicles

I finished reading Stephen Clarke’s A Year in the Merde the other day, and I must say that it was a fun read.

The book that seemingly aims to ridicule the deserving bits of French way of life, succeeds in that, and more. It actually does a good job of exploring insecurities of a person suddenly faced with a world heretofore foreign to him. (And it heaps considerable ridicule on the Anglo-Saxon behavioral patterns, as well.)

The circumstances are habitually exaggerated and the stereotypes, subsequently, get decidedly grotesque and overblown treatment. The story is terribly over-libidinous as well. But anybody who has ever been to Paris will readily recognize many familiar and uncomfortable situations – and laugh at their own recollections as much as at the story.

Since the author is British, some of the stereotypes explored in his account would make less sense to an American. I obviously have an advantage of being already familiar with some British specifics, but I do not believe that an American reader without the additional insight that I possess would be much disadvantaged.

I suppose I can only recommend this book to people who have generally positive feelings about France. The book’s protagonist does warm up to several aspects of Parisian life towards the end, so that derision gradually lets appreciation to participate in the proceedings. French-haters will be repulsed, I am sure.

Books & Movies

Taking a relay baton from Jason, here are a few tidbits about me that you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask.
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Stuff About Us

The indefatigable London mayor, Ken Livingstone, has just inaugurated a low emission zone (LEZ) scheme. It establishes stinging fees – £200 per trip – for high-polluting vehicles’ privilege of driving within Greater London. The heaviest lorries are subject to restrictions effective today, while other lorries, buses, coaches, minibuses and large vans will be phased in over the next four years.

For newer vehicles that satisfy Euro III emission standards the fees are waived (the standard goes to Euro IV in January 2012). The owners of older vehicles will have to clean their engines if they want to avoid the penalties.

For any expatriate that may be concerned with this, cars and motorcycles are exempt. Although, if you are relocating, you may be on the hook from your moving company for the extra couple of hundred quid if their lorry does not meet emission standards.

Information about LEZ can be found on Transport for London website.

London & Environs

Because I live five hours ahead of the Eastern time zone, I cannot conceivably watch the late-night football games in their entirety. Let’s just say that I am not rabid enough a fan, and leave it at that. So for the second time in a row, I watched the first half of an important game until well after midnight, went to bed with the team that I was mildly rooting for unconvincingly ahead… and woke next morning to a Giant upset.

I admire how the Patriots put their team together (although I am disturbed by the on-going Spygate allegations) and I would have liked to witness an undefeated history – hence, my rooting in this Superbowl, – but I cannot help thinking that I personally have not seen their greatness this season: In every game of theirs that I chanced to watch, they produced a middling effort and squeaked by on stamina. The Giants, on the other hand, had an aura of destiny all over them in the last few weeks.

And – damn! – I had a stray thought before the game that putting some money on the Giants was a promising bet. Alas, I am not much into betting…

Oh well… Every time a New York team beats a Boston team, it is ultimately a happy occasion. Hope the Yankees take a hint…

 
[update at 4pm] I caught the fourth quarter replay while running on a treadmill at the gym, and I realize that at some point with less than two minutes to play, the Giants had in succession a near lost fumble, a near interception and then a near sack on third and long. The latter inexplicably turned into a circus catch by Tyree, which set the stage for another couple of botched plays, culminating with the touchdown on another third and long. Not exactly an emphatic performance, but perfectly in line with the resilient label.

The Patriots seemed to let it get away, further convincing me that their greatness was somewhat exaggerated.

Sports

We have arranged with our friends Mila, Andrey and their kids to spend the Saturday afternoon on our territory, and the weather was seemingly cooperating, sunny and bright. The meeting point was Greenwich Park, and we got there a bit ahead of the time in order to spend some time outside in the fresh air…

… and immediately realized that with the wind, the temperatures were not so pleasant. We had to resort to playing tag in order to keep ourselves warm – being cold and wheezing from exertion is worse than just being cold, trust me, – but soon gave up and went inside Royal Observatory for a well-needed reprieve.
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Chronicles

It would be too spooky if on the very day that I suddenly decided to count how many days we’ve lived in England, the number would come out round. Alas, I was off by just 11 days from a really round one, even though “500 days” carry absolutely no significance timeline-wise…

I managed to post more than once a day on average in January, stepping up expropriations – let’s put it nicely as expanding distribution – of other people’s finds of fun web stuff and diving into movie reviews and such. Not many of those posts are chronicling our adventures or dispensing expatriate advice – a rather drastic departure from this blog’s main theme. As I continue to search for the right balance, here is a wrap-up of the last week.
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Chronicles