Burlaki on the Hudson

I am still listening to music on an iPod. I am still reading books on a Sony PRS-505. It is pretty clear to me that those habits are not going to change, as my preferences outlined here were not swayed by the capabilities of an iPad.

However, I quickly found my iPad to be useful in many situations – and nearly indispensable on occasion. How I managed in the past without it is a mystery to me.

I now read books less while on the bus in favor of catching up with online stuff that I otherwise would catch up with after coming back home in the evening. As a direct consequence, I now spend less time in front of a computer at home, and more time doing something with the family. The net effect is I gave up on some reading in favor of being with the family. If you discard the somewhat embarrassing connotation that I could not simply give up on online stuff in favor of that, it sounds like a positive outcome.

Ok, maybe, “reading less” is not a positive achievement when considered on its own merits. I still need to figure the proper balance.

3G connectivity causes the only buggy behavior that I have noticed so far. Occasionally, after having suggested a nearby wi-fi network to connect to, 3G conks out completely even if I declined connecting to wi-fi. The device shows full bars on the signal strength gauge, but refuses to even attempt restoring 3G connection. On most occasions, I am told of a “problem” via an error message “Unable to initialize cellular data network”. So far, it happened to me a handful of times, and every time I had to go to Settings and flip the Cellular Data switch off and then back on. Every time the problem was resolved after that. Annoying, but apparently a fact of life.

Otherwise, 3G connection works reasonable well while I am on a bus. There is some latency in loading pages, but nothing that can’t be tolerated. I resumed following blogs of a number of people whom I liked to read in the past. I go through my personal emails and write an occasional reply. I started visiting a number of social networking sites again, which I only sporadically graced with my presence in the past.

Hey, I even downloaded a few free versions of popular games, such as Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja, in case I find myself with a few spare minutes at the end of the ride, when I don’t feel that picking up a book to read a few pages would be practical. Yup, I can see how playing something of that kind can help killing a few minutes. Can’t imagine investing more than that in the activity.

I also put a few videos on the iPad, but after a single viewing concluded that I’d rather spend time reading. Maybe, under different conditions and with something that I can’t wait to watch at home, I’ll be more inclined for that.

As various people told me it would, the iPad handiness as a by-my-side reference device has already become apparent. Starting with using Shazam to identify songs from the 80′s that I could not otherwise name from memory, checking tomorrow’s weather without flipping TV channels, or simply looking up something cursorily related to what I just heard on TV or in a conversation, I can now satisfy my need for information the moment I need it.

I must say, I am pretty happy with my decision to get an iPad.

Gadgets

Why do I not need an iPad? Let me count the ways…

I listen to music only when I am on the move. Driving or walking. When I am otherwise stationary, say, on the bus during my commute, I prefer to read. And I do not listen to music and read at the same time. Given these parameters, a good old iPod – and mine is really old, the first chunky white-and-silver model there ever was – is a lot more convenient as compared to a gadget that one has to carry in a bag.

I do not want to read books on a glossy LED screen. Or hold a heavy brick in my hands when I read. As I said on previous occasions, I am rather happy with a dedicated electronic reader that takes advantage of eInk to go easy on my eyes. The reader might be a narrow-purposed gadget, but it does its job really well, and I’m not about to give up the superior experience for arguable convenience of having an all-in-one-device.

I am an indifferent gamer. There is simply no time in my life available for computer games (infrequent Wii sessions with Kimmy excepted) and I’ve never been too heartbroken about that either. If I am faced with idle time on my hands, I’d rather read.

I went through a period of time several years ago when I carried a laptop with me every day so that I could watch videos during my commute. There is definitely a modicum of value in having the ability to carry videos along and watch them on a reasonably-sized screen. But watching movies piece-meal is not my thing – and for all of the length of my commute, I do not spend enough time on the bus to watch any given movie in its entirety. Streaming most recent episodes for a couple of shows that other family members are not interested in could be a proposition for killing time during commute, except streaming video over 3G network neither works well nor fits into the monthly data transfer allotment available with an iPad. I have little interest in re-watching previous seasons of shows that I already have seen, and even less interest in shows that I have not seen. Anyway, I’d rather read.

You did notice the common thread, did you? Electronic book reader is the gadget ideally suited for my needs when it comes to entertaining myself during periods of idleness. Why would I need a tablet computer with all its bells and whistles, especially when it happens to be inferior at the function I deem the most important…

Email and internet – that’s why.

The corporate overlords have been tightening the screws for a long time now, and both my office PC and my BlackBerry nowadays are blocking access to practically everything I want to check during the day – blogs, personal email accounts, social networking sites. I come home late at night, have dinner, spend some time with the kids, and then retreat to my basement study to catch up on stuff.

Or take holidays. During the week in Florida I was pretty much unplugged all the time. That could be nice on many types of vacations, but not on a trip where I had plenty of time all to myself between my 10-year-old’s bedtime and my own… Yep, I read a lot.

Long story short, I decided I needed to catch up with modern times by equipping myself with something that would keep internet always at the ready for me. I first considered a smartphone, a Droid or some such, but small screen and typing with thumbs were among things that stopped me. Plus, a simple calculation showed that adding a new cell phone with generous data transfer allowance to our existing plan would mean higher monthly charges than the iPad 3G monthly plan. In a couple of years, that difference would negate the current difference in cost between a Droid and an iPad.

And when I found out that I could get myself an iPad with an 18-months credit-as-cash deal, it became a no-brainer.

I’m not going to do any product reviews. It will take me some time to ascertain whether the gadget will prove to be as useful – or, to be completely honest, necessary – as I’m hoping it will be. It will obviously cut into my commute book-reading time. But it should free up time at home.

But after a few days of playing around with it, I am already pretty happy with the new-found ability to remain connected when I otherwise couldn’t in the past. On-the-bus test will be first performed tonight…

Gadgets

I’ve been having internet connectivity problems with my main home PC ever since we moved into our house over a year ago.

The house configuration and the locations of various computers in the house are such that it only made sense to place the cable modem and the wireless router in the upstairs office, shared by Natasha and Becky. That office sits partially above the garage.

My office is in the basement, almost directly two levels underneath the upper one, with both the reinforced concrete floor of the garage and various piping above the office ceiling getting directly in the way of the wireless signal. Our Wii system, whose home is the family room in the basement, has no problem with streaming Netflix movies, as there is definitely less interference from the building materials in that direction. My work laptop, positioned at my office desk, would get a very low signal wireless signal but manage to stay connected with fairly rare hiccups, probably due to a pretty good wireless capabilities built into a corporate device.

My main desktop would get the same very low signal. It would connect to the network, briskly load a few online pages and then get stuck loading something. If there was no browser activity for a few minutes, it would get stuck on the very first URL request after a period of idleness. Short of pulling out the wireless USB adapter and putting it back after a few seconds in order to reconnect to the network, nothing would work once it got stuck. On some days, I would perform a dozen such re-connects during a couple of hours I needed to spend on my home PC.

I tried a number of things. Changed the router. Changed the adapter. Got rid of one anti-virus software and replaced it with another one (on the unproven theory that behind-the-scenes workings of the software may have been overloading the narrow channel I was getting from the router). Bought a USB extension cord and placed the adapter as far in the corner of the office as I could to get the possibly less obstructed directional flow from the router to the adapter. Some of those things seemingly improved matters at first but quickly deteriorated afterwards back to the same problem.

My next grand idea was to buy a powerful directional antenna to see if it can get and retain stronger signal. I scouted some of those online, but decided to venture into a nearby Best Buy to see what was available over the counter. It turned out that nothing of the kind was. Instead, I came across a couple of power-line adapter kits.

To be fair, my friend and colleague Brian clued me in on this device quite some time ago. I can only chalk it up to my obtuseness that I never quite figured out what exactly he was trying to explain to me when he described a rectangular box that plugs into an electrical outlet and connects via an ethernet cable to a computer, acting as a wired network adapter. If I recall correctly, when I went to get that after he had suggested it, I instead bought a wireless range expander which spectacularly failed to install on my home network and was returned to the store.

Today, searching for that non-existent directional antenna, I accidentally noticed boxes labeled as power-line adapters. After reading through descriptions on the boxes and consulting with a sales assistant – admittedly, considerably less research than I normally prefer to perform before spending more than a few bucks – I took a risk of choosing one and bringing it home. The box contained two identical pieces of hardware. One went into an electrical outlet next to the router upstairs (connected to one of the router ports). The other got plugged into an outlet next to my desktop and connected to the ethernet port in the back of my PC. I did not press any buttons or run any installation. The three lights on each device lit up and just like that I was on my home network without any wireless adapters present.

Given my earlier experience described a few paragraphs above, it may be premature to declare victory here after just an hour or so. But I certainly no longer rely on wireless signal for the connection – I even went to the trouble of removing wireless adapter software from the PC. The important thing is in that last hour, I have seen not a single hint of losing online connectivity. If I start having problems, they will be of a different kind. Which I’ll take, at this juncture. Fingers crossed anyway.

Hooray for technical progress, I say!

Gadgets

I’ve become such a true convert to electronic book reading since I bought my Sony reader at the start of the year, that I for once managed to come up all on my own with a gift idea for my wife on her birthday. (Never mind that her birthday is more than a month away, useful gifts don’t have to wait until specific dates, IMHO.)

Although I am mostly happy with my PRS-505, the fact that it’s been discontinued by Sony quite some time ago makes the price for a new unit available somewhere on eBay entirely outlandish. The new Kindle 3, conversely, is priced within my range of “inexpensive enough to no longer count as a fancy purchase”. Plus, it has native support for non-Latin documents (which did not exist on older versions of either Kindle or Sony). Kindle was a hands-down obvious choice to get for Natasha.

I played with it for a while myself – to better set myself up as a support-desk contact for when my lovely wife runs into tech problems. In short, I like it well enough. I might have gone for it instead of my Sony if the Cyrillic support existed natively before.

Its body is slightly bigger than that of PRS-505, but it is a bit lighter and thinner. I am not too crazy about the interface, but I happen to find faults with Sony’s as well. I doubt Natasha will ever truly need the Wi-Fi capability, so even though I had a bit of problem connecting the device to my home network, I find it hard to care about that. The screen looks crisp, the page-flip buttons are located fairly conveniently, the reading experience seems pleasant enough.

The only true problem I found so far is in its handling of PDF files. On my Sony, if I want to increase the font size while reading a PDF, the file gets reformatted so that I get multiple pages for each one page of the PDF. I end up flipping three of four pages for each one in the original PDF, but it remains a book-reading experience – the only hint that I am still reading the same page is the page counter on the bottom which stays the same with most page flips. On the Kindle, when I want to increase the size of the font of the same exact file, it performs a zoom-in action, displaying a portion of the page on the screen while having me use scroll bars to get to the other parts of the page. Reading consecutive lines while scrolling right and left is entirely impractical.

Good thing one can always convert files between formats – so Natasha will simply avoid PDFs.

Overall, I have no doubt she’ll enjoy her new gadget just as I have been enjoying mine.

Kimmy, by the way, is asking for one as well. Becky is the only reading-able member of the family who maintains her resistance. Something about being able to easily flip a few pages back to check on a specific passage that occurred earlier in the book…

Gadgets

My kids love to ski. I don’t. So, on our weekend skiing trip, I had ample opportunities to use my new reading gadget, whiling the time away at the lodge.

Overall, I am happy with my choice. I like the design and the feel of the reader, the user interface and the navigation is simple enough, and the reading experience is not at all taxing on the eyes. There are few bells and whistles beyond plain book-reading, but I neither care to listen to music while I read nor have any interest in carrying grayscale versions of my favorite photos on the device. Absence of 3G connectivity (and of the ability to buy and download books on-the-go) does not bother me in the least.

PRS-505 is not as small as to fit into an average shirt or jacket pocket, but a ski jacket provided me with a perfect compartment for it, and on other occasions I think I’ll be fine carrying it in a bag. On the other hand, I wanted the device with at least a 6″ screen, and I appreciate the fact that its navigation buttons do not demand too much of “dead” space around the screen to be accommodated.

Since this particular model is no longer being produced by Sony, it makes little sense for me to go into a detailed review. Let’s just say that if it was still freely available in the stores, I’d lean to strongly recommending it to others.

It is not without shortcomings, though. The one that bugs me the most is that there does not seem to exist an option to select the initial font size when the book is first formatted for reading. The device defaults to “small”, while I find “medium” more acceptable. Pressing the font change button causes the book to be re-formatted, which can take 15-20 seconds. Having the formatting process run twice before I start reading is a minor annoyance.

The device also self-reboots on me occasionally. In fact, when the “currently reading” value exists and I want to change to a different book, the reader is certain to reboot during “new” book’s formatting. After it restarts (45-60 seconds), the “current” book is no longer marked, and the formatting goes ahead without a problem. But with one book, I could not make the font larger, as the device kept rebooting during each “second” re-formatting. I am willing to attribute this as a side effect of russification, but I need to play with various formats to find out if it can be overcome. Strangely, I have all of the books on the device currently in its native .lrf format, which I least expected to cause me problems.

[update 02/26] After playing with different formats for a couple more days, I can conclude that initial formatting step (as well as re-formatting for font size change) is specific to native Sony .lrf book format. The involuntary reboot is definitely due to using .lrf with the russification hack – it does not occur with other formats. I do not have much of a choice if I want to be reading Russian books, because support for .epub format is currently limited enough so that I’d have to perform manual task of font embedding into each ePub file, and PDF does not really do it for me (table of contents gets dropped during conversion to PDF; re-sizing of the font size does not re-page the document, but simply breaks one page into two or three with the bottom of the initial page occupying just the portion of the screen and breaking off in mid-sentence – very disorienting), so I’ll probably ignore the few annoyances that .lrf causes me now. For an English-language-only user, seems like ePub format offers the best reading experience with practically no downside. [/update]

So, no, not perfect. On the other hand, I’ve yet to see a device of any kind that would not cause me some sort of annoyance design- or performance-wise. I have already practically recouped the money I spent to buy the reader by saving on skiing rental equipment and two days of lift passes for myself. Ability to not do something I don’t especially enjoy while generally accompanying the kids and keeping myself entertained – priceless!

Gadgets

I did not decide to look for an electronic book reader solely after perusing information about iPad. An e-reader was on my to-buy list for quite some time. But the iPad announcement gave me a push and I finally spent money on a gadget that I long wanted.

My procrastination was partially explained by indecision. There are quite a few of interesting devices out there and I spent a long time figuring out which one to choose.

I already stated in that iPad article that I wanted the benefits of an eInk screen for my electronic reading. iPad, with an LCD screen, was not seriously in contention, to be honest.

I have absolutely no need to “buy the book and start reading it in 60 seconds”. My only impulse buys when it comes to books are in the segment of gorgeous travel and/or architecture photo-books. Not exactly something you’d buy for reading on a smallish monochrome device. And, anyway, I read a lot of public-domain books, and the rest only on someone’s recommendation. Surely, upon hearing a most effusive of endorsements for a specific work, I can wait until I get home, download the book onto my PC and then transfer it to my reader.

As an aside, I don’t really know how book publishing economics work, but if I can get a 1000-page mass market paperback for $7.99 at Barnes & Noble, I cannot think of a case for a digital file – no physical materials, nil physical storage space, nothing-can-be-simpler no-expense on-demand reissue – to cost $9.99. Especially, when you consider that a member of my family cannot pick up that same file when I’m finished with it just as they would a traditional tome.

So, the main advantages of a Kindle or a Nook are not really that important to me. I know a couple of people who own Kindles, and they are happy with them. But their reading habits differ from mine. I heard of only one person I know who’s getting a Nook so far and it’s too soon to judge how he likes it, but regardless, it is too new a device for me (remember, late adopter).

Considerations of storage are not of big import to me. Books are not songs – you can’t go through several dozen in a day. Having your entire library constantly with you is a completely unnecessary luxury, IMHO. I’m sure I’d be fine with having just a few books that are next in my reading queue. In any case, the e-readers with the least internal memory on the market can still carry around 160 books. I don’t think I’d ever buy a flash card specifically for the reader.

When I first considered buying an e-reader, I was concerned with formats. Seeing as there are at least three dozen different ones out there, I’d rather not be tied to a specific one. All of the major players are now not as proprietary-minded about formats as they were in the past, or they provide conversion services, but I was for a while seriously considering Astak ezReader as a possibility, on the strength of it being the only e-reader on the market that seemingly handles practically every format directly. Then, I discovered Calibre, which does an excellent job converting practically anything into anything.

Finally, russification. I read quite a lot of Russian literature, and for any non-English work, I am not sure I’d prefer an English translation to a Russian one.

That more or less sealed Sony as the only serious choice. I knew for a fact that Sony readers can be updated to properly display Cyrillic, and I was not sure that any other readers had similar patches available. And regardless, I’d have to look “outside” for Russian-language books, which was another point against investing into Amazon or B&N service.

Several people I know highly recommended Sony in either PRS-505 or PRS-300 incarnation. The latter I deemed a little bit too small for my taste (5″ screen). The former has been discontinued for a while in favor of touch-screen PRS-600. But I heard a lot of complaints about the screen glare on the new model. I even went to the local Best Buy and performed a very simple test with the available display models: Sticking my finger in front of the screen of PRS-300 resulted only in some shadows on the surface; doing the same for PRS-600 resulted in a clear reflection of my finger. I don’t want to see my face reflecting back at me when I read. I am not so keen on touch-screen capability as to compromise on the reading experience.

Various online stores are offering PRS-505 at $300 and above, so I decided to try eBay first. There were quite a few listings for “brand-new, factory-sealed” items, and it did not take me long to win one of them, for a very reasonable sum of $227.50. I received the package within a few days; it was as advertized in pristine never-opened condition. I spent some time on russification, which went quite easily, and then loaded the tiny total of 47 books onto the new toy. Should last me at least a couple of months.

I’ll let you know how I like it some other time.

Gadgets

The newest Apple gadget is shiny enough and I suspect a whole lot of people are salivating at the prospect of getting their hands on one. Perusing the official iPad website, I caught myself on a stray thought about how neat it would be to own one of these.

Let’s recall my repeatedly stated admission that I am a late adopter. Let’s also admit that I am not an Apple devotee, never having bought into the unsubstantiated religious belief that Apple products are truly superior to those of their competitors’, and having never been impressed with the monetary expenses attendant to owning every “greatest” Apple device. (I do own an iPod, but I actually got it at absolutely no cost to me. I don’t own anything else from Apple.)

Those considerations pretty much negate any possibility of me going out and getting an iPad when it becomes available. But there are also considerations of “Do I need a portable – however slick – computer at all?”

I do not spend a lot of “free” time in front of a computer at home. When I do switch on my home PC it is either for a computer-enabled house chore (say, to review family finances) or for a personal project. In both cases, I am pretty sure that a desktop PC with a wide-screen 24″ monitor and a full-size keyboard is a device more conducive to efficient task completion.

I prefer to read during my lengthy commute. Books or periodicals, not daily newspapers or blogs. So, an Internet browser with 3G wireless capability, while an unquestionably nice thing to have available, is not exactly a necessity for me. And an ability to peruse emails on the go – or to respond to them – does not fit at all into my M.O. I occasionally scroll through my Blackberry inbox outside of business hours, but I am a big proponent of leaving work behind when I am on my personal time.

I am perfectly fine with using my iPod – do you know that I still have the original monochrome-screen clunky-by-current-standards model? – for music on the go. I haven’t ever bought anything on iTunes and don’t plan to – vast majority of what I listen to is in Russian and is not available on iTunes, and my tastes in music are so calcified in the past, that it is hard to imagine that I don’t own something that I like on a CD, long ago digitized for iPod.

I have my business schedule and all of my contacts on my Blackberry. Given that it is also my mobile phone and my business emails channel, I am more than happy to have all of that functionality in that one place.

I can’t work up much enthusiasm for watching movies or TV shows on a smallish screen.

I practically do not play computer games.

I can see how having all of your pictures on a device that can easily display them while being passed around has certain value as a great conversation starter. I don’t know how frequently it would be of use, though. Certainly, not a necessity.

Having maps of the entire world – whether GPS-enabled or not – with you can also be viewed as valuable, but I honestly do not see myself trying to navigate streets of an unfamiliar city while checking my progress on a tablet. If anything, it will attract thieves in no time.

I don’t engage in creative pursuits that may require jotting down ideas as they occur to me. And my retentive memory is above average in that I actually rarely take notes altogether.

I do make to-do lists for myself all the time. On post-it notes, more often than not. Replacing that media with a tablet for that particular purpose appears an overkill.

So, of all the items listed on the iPad features page, book e-reader would appear the most useful for me. Except, with an LCD screen, I would not get the benefits of eInk that practically every dedicated e-reader provides these days.

Of course, it should be noted that I have not joined the 21st century yet in buying myself an e-reader. But I suppose I’ll look into doing that rather than contemplating getting a tablet PC, however brilliant iPad looks from a distance.

Gadgets

Natasha and I have always said that we prefer digital cameras that are sized in a way that makes them feel substantial in your hands. None of that thumbs and forefingers nonsense, holding the camera as if it were a smelly diaper half a yard in front of your face. Real photographers use viewfinders anyway!

So, even when we bought non-DSLR cameras in the past, we always opted for SLR-like types. And DSLR, by definition, is not compact.

The obvious drawback to that approach is that you cannot carry your camera with you all the time. I’ve been lately finding myself in occasional situations where I wished I had a camera, but I’m definitely not lugging my hefty Nikon with me to work on an off chance that I come upon something worthwhile taking a snapshot of.

So, this week, I made an impulse decision that I needed to get me a compact digicam. Something cheap, not necessarily very advanced, but adequate in picture quality. I’d even settle on a 4-5 megapixels model, because I don’t believe that you ever need large-resolution pictures for non-professional purposes.

I popped into the nearby camera store, surveyed the models they had in the low range, spent a couple of hours researching those models on the internet, and confirmed my usual view that you don’t really save much money on ordering a low-end item online. I also discovered, to my surprise, that photographic progress left me somewhat behind, and cameras with resolutions below 8 megapixels are becoming scarce. Conversely, even the 8-megapixel models are now often priced in the range of a tank of gas.

I went back to the store and acquired a cool Fujifilm Finepix J12 (blue). Which is now settled in my jacket pocket. Now, all I have to do is become more aware of situations worth recording for posterity. And work on not feeling silly at stopping in the middle of my commute routine to take a picture of something.

I’ll keep you all updated.

Gadgets

As I mentioned, our car needs repairs. So I went to look for a shop.

In England, they are called garages. There is a ton of them around where we live, including a Vauxhall dealer one about ten minutes away. But I still have a lot of Brooklyn left in me, and Brooklyn wisdom suggests that a Russian mechanic will be cheaper and easier to deal with that a non-Russian one. Cheaper is the operative word, as I am reluctant to throw too much money at this car (and not very much keen on putting in an insurance claim for scratches and dents).

Our new friend Valera is knowledgeable in this field, so I ask him for an advice. He recommends a mechanic that he knows and trusts. Unfortunately, the shop is in Essex (north-east of London – we live in the Southeast), 25 miles away. Valera himself warns me that it is in the middle of nowhere, far from public transportation and all.

I decide that I have not got much to lose – I need to show the car to the guy to get an estimate, at least. So I get in the car, and start driving. First on motorways, then on major local roads… then on narrower roads… then on country roads where two-way traffic readily incorporates muddy swaths of grass on each side – it is either that or a head-on collision…

At some point, the navigation system makes me turn onto an unpaved dirt-track lane. My fairly small vehicle almost touches the hedgerows – on both sides at the same time. The road continues for about a mile, and I am thinking to myself, If there is a car going in the opposite direction, how the hell are we going to pass each other? Luckily, the track must have been one-way. Either that, or nobody else is stupid enough to drive on it.

Did I mention the grooves and potholes?

You gotta hand it to my navigation system, though. It knew exactly where I was and led me to the right place. For those who has never heard me talk about it, I bought a Magellan 700 a couple of years ago, loaded it with both North American and Western European maps, and cannot praise it enough. It has its own idiosyncrasies. You cannot easily dictate it your preferred approach beyond choosing an option from amongst shortest time or distance or most or least use of freeways and then relying on its algorithms for optimal route selection. The algorithm, on occasion, produces weird maneuvers (for instance, once, the system made me effect a left turn by turning right, then immediately left, followed by three right turns, and then going straight). New road patterns sometimes stupefy the system. But I have used it all over the States, in Canada and in five European countries by now, and it gets the job done. One of the more worthwhile personal technology investments, in my opinion. I also like the fact that it is portable, so I can use it in any car that I drive. It has become much cheaper, also, with competition from Garmin, Tom-Tom and the like driving the prices down.

Enough of the sales pitch. As the mechanic’s business card did not specify the house number, I found myself on the right street, but not able to locate the garage. I knew it had something to do with a place called Brook Farm, but when I drove up to it, I could not figure out where to go from there. It is a fairly deserted area, truly in the middle of nowhere. I pulled over to a muddy patch by the gate and got out. Beware of Dogs sign predicted what happened next with incredible clairvoyance, as two large shepherds did not fail to materialize, purposefully setting off in my direction. I started to retreat but then a woman got out of the house and called the dogs back. She kindly explained that I had to go through the gate and around back to find the garage in some farm outhouse. Whew!…

So, in no time afterwards, Jilvinas – he is Lithuanian – gave me an estimate for repairing all the dents and scratches. Quite a lot of money that is, but at the lower boundary of my expectations. I told him to go ahead, and will be bringing the car to him prior to our Brussels trip. That is bound to be yet another adventure: First, figuring out how to avoid the dirt lane, and then getting home by public transport when there is none in the vicinity…

Switching gears, Becky spent the day today with her friend from school. We dropped her off at their house in the morning and the friend’s parents dropped her back late in the evening. They went rollerblading in Greenwich Park – the day was quite nice and sunny – and then visited an indoor water park with pools and slides. Quite a lot of fun, I am being told.

The rest of the family took it slow, going to a mall for some idle shopping and following that up with a visit to one of my co-workers who lives in Chelsfield, Kent, a bit farther out of the city. I have been mentioning in conversation that we will possibly be looking for different accommodations (including buying) at some point, and she suggested that we take a look at her area.

The area is definitely cleaner, quieter and overall nicer than where we rent now. The train station is about as close from their house as our train station in Mottingham. Express trains get to the city as quick as from where we are, but I suppose that on weekends the trains do not run express, so weekend city outings will probably be a bit less simple.

The cost of our weekend trips to London actually deserves going on a tangent. My monthly pass for zones 2-4 (Canary Wharf, where I work, is not in central zone 1) costs £74.50. When we go to the city on a weekend, I need to get an additional daily “off-peak” pass for zones 1-2 (there is no such thing as just a zone 1 pass) – £5.10. Natasha has to get a similar pass for zones 1-4 – £5.70. Kids get daily passes for just £1 each when they travel with an adult who holds a monthly pass. Our total transportation cost for a day in London is £12.80.

Karen, my colleague, lives in zone 6, and, unlike from Mottingham, there is no convenient way of getting to Canary Wharf besides riding a train into the city center (zone 1), and taking a subway from there. So, if I lived in Chelsfield, I would have to get a monthly pass for zones 1-6, which is £165.20. However, I would not need to buy a separate ticket when traveling into the city center on a weekend. Kids’ passes would still be £1 each. We would only need to buy one adult “off-peak” daily pass for zones 1-6 – £6.70. Total day-trip cost: £8.70. Obviously, the difference not close enough to offset the monthly pass increase, but still an unexpected outcome.

I guess I could buy myself a zones 1-4 monthly even now at £127.50 and reduce our weekend costs to £7.70…

Anyway, back to Chelsfield. If we were to move there, my daily commute would also increase timewise to about one hour each way (door-to-door; from about 40-45 minutes right now). Driving to the city, if we wanted to do that, would definitely be longer by at least 20 minutes. More importantly, it would become completely unmanageable to keep Becky in her current school, and while finding her a public school (which are much better in Kent than in Greenwich) would be a welcome step for financial reasons, I am very reluctant to uproot her like that again, given that she has really taken to the Blackheath High and found herself quite a number of friends already.

But we would be living in an area where kids can actually ride bikes in the street and the cars do not queue up for minutes at an intersection.

There are other places like Chelsfield, obviously, that present a very similar choice of improved quality of surroundings at the cost of certain sacrifices. Something to think about. Our rental agreement runs through the end of September…

Chronicles, Gadgets, London & Environs

Famous England weather. It is not too cold, just cold enough to be unpleasant, and with wind, dark skies and intermittent rain, it is hard to will oneself to go outside…

We still do, though. My parents arrived for their very first visit to England, and I am using my vacation leftovers from the last year. It would be a waste to spend these days inside the house, so we keep figuring out things to do. Thursday was not too bad, and we drove all the way to Brighton, walked around, had a dinner. We went to Greenwich on Friday, and visited Royal Observatory. On Saturday, the rain started from the early morning and continued throughout the day. We piled into the car – six people cannot fit inside normally, so my dad spent quite some time with Kimmy on his lap, – and drove into London, on a sort of introductory tour. We then decided to forgo the search for parking and subsequent walking under the rain, and instead drove back to our area for a dinner in Blackheath. The rain continued pretty much into Sunday, but we still organized an expedition to the city via public transportation with the explicit purpose of getting onto a tour bus. Becky and I stayed home, on a lame excuse that we start school and work, respectively, early tomorrow morning.

Kimmy still has an off day on Monday, so her, Natasha and my mom and dad will follow up with another outing to the city.

Fun life!…

The kids, who have been always deprived of a pet on account of their father, skillfully negotiated acquisition of a fish. In all honesty, I simply could not come up with a good response to “How come we do not have one in England, since we had one in New Jersey?” Sending them out to buy a fish with my father miraculously resulted in two specimens for the price of one. Or, rather, a small tank came with a goldfish included, so they obviously needed to actually buy another fish. Well, who ended up preparing the tank and then transferring the fish in? If you point to the only person who did not care to acquire a fish in the first place, – your faithful narrator, – you are very perceptive…

Our New Jersey aquarium dweller was some kind of a survivor, enduring through spotty care and irregular feeding for several months (we gave it to a neighbor when we were leaving – Becky does occasionally wonder if it is still alive). I have a feeling that European fish will not turn out as lasting…

Several random notes.

For those who care about this stuff, a word of caution about our new camera (Canon PowerShot S3 IS). Shooting in Auto mode under less than perfect lighting conditions produces grainy pictures that no amount of Photoshop retouching can fully repair. If you have read my camera selection treatise, you may rightfully inquire whether making snapshots in fully automated mode was not the whole point. True; when we caught onto this shortcoming several days ago, our first thought was that we had seriously goofed with our choice. However, there are a couple of dozen preset modes for a variety of conditions, which we have not really explored yet. Stay tuned.

One observation that have not found its way in any of my previous posts is the number of eastern Europeans in London. In 2004, the European Union expanded into Eastern Europe, with the likes of Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary, along with Baltic states, joining in. Now, citizenship of any of those countries allows freedom of movement and unencumbered right to work throughout the Union. For some reason, Poles especially flock en masse to the United Kingdom. Everywhere you look, low-skill low-income jobs, such as janitors or fast-food servers, are occupied by Poles. They must still be financially better off here than in Poland, and the local employers surely pay them less than they would Brits.

From a certain point, these erstwhile satellites of the great Soviet Union have now attained an upper hand against the citizens of their onetime Big Brother. Russia is gradually becoming more authoritarian again, and while it is still a formidable world power, – thanks to whatever gas-related shenanigans it can pull off, – its common citizens live more or less behind an iron curtain again. Conversely, common citizens of Poland and its like now possess freedoms unimaginable just a generation ago…

And another long-shelved observation. I remember that my first lengthy stay here yielded a reflection on the number of good-looking women in London. That was obviously erroneous, as only an exceptional Englishwoman can be called beautiful and the percentage of foreign beautiful women is probably lower in London than in New York (even though London is a veritable melting pot on par with the Big Apple). Upon careful consideration, I have a pretty good explanation as to why I had that impression in the first place. The explanation is two-pronged.

First, you rarely see obese people in London. For every gorgeous woman that you see in New York, you probably bump into at least two overweight shapeless bodies, no? Absence of such physiques in London makes the entire female population instantly more attractive on average.

The second reason is the dressing up. Women traveling to work here do not have a habit of wearing athletic socks and sneakers and changing into formal attire at the office. It’s high heels all the way. No sweatpants either; in fact, much fewer pants, period. Skirts and dresses abound. I have to admit that it is easy to confuse well-dressed people for beautiful ones. In any case, seeing well-dressed people is much more pleasing to the eye…

On this sexist and also somewhat elitist note, I sign off for the day.

Chronicles, Gadgets, London & Environs, That's England

On Saturday at 6:45 in the morning, we were woken up by the loud knocks on the front door. I ran down the stairs in my sleepwear ensemble – that’s as far as I am willing to go into intimate details at the moment – and accepted the package with our new camera, specially delivered from Hong Kong.
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