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Category: Chronicles

The adventures start..

These newcomers to London started with an act of sabotage! I did three rounds of laundry without a problem while I was by myself. As soon as my lovely wife got to it, one of my best dress shirts turned from white to salmon pink!!!… The first full day together…

Life is good (plus a few random notes)

Well, the car is parked in driveway, the wife and the kids are sleeping in their new beds – the new chapter in our life has officially commenced. And life is pretty damn good, at the moment (no little thanks to a bottle of nice Cotes-du-Rhone)… For such an exciting…

Strange games and more car suffering

I watched an unfamiliar billiards game on TV today – hold you jokes, I only have five channels to select from (one of those keeps running some documentaries about deer – !?!?), there is very little to choose from… The game is called Snooker, which sounds familiar, for some reason.…

If I’d only chose the day…

I’m back from my old life into the new one. Jet lag is not so bad when traveling eastward, plus I uncharacteristically managed a couple of hours of shut-eye on the plane. But going to bed early today is definitely the sensible thing to do, so I’ll be brief. The…

A lonely traveller

Everyone knows why we are doing it, right? I mean the London move. It’s because we want to be able to travel around Europe with more ease than is possible while living Stateside. Should I be at all concerned then that it has been two weeks and I went into…

A day of firsts (plus a bit more about cars)

Saturday was again spent on the run, and it was certainly a day of several firsts. I had my first full-day experience of using public transportation in suburban London. The atlas provided to me by the relocation agency keeps proving invaluable, plus I printed out several potential itineraries from the…

And a week went by…

After a long post last weekend, almost a week-long silence. To my regular audience – and I know who both of you are – my sincerest apologies. I had planned on writing the blog at the end of each workday, but there is too much stuff to deal with during…

Cars, cars…

Driving on the left side of the road is not hard after all. After a couple of hours, I was still struggling with the turn signal and wiper handles being on the wrong side (they are positioned correctly – from my US-centric perspective – in newer cars), and had to…

Commuting pains

Nothing to speak of as far as adventures are concerned, so here is a quick update on how commuting works out. First commute from the office was rather a disaster. I stayed in the office quite late, then left without checking the schedule. Subway ride was a few minutes slower…

Our new house

First commute took 55 minutes on the way in – but I came to the station good 10 minutes earlier than the next scheduled train. Once I start properly timing it, it should be closer to 45. All the way standing, though, – not a single vacant seat on either…

First full day

Well, we are now officially the proud renters of a nice house in Southeast London. The first full day as an England resident started with several mishaps. First, I went to the offices to check emails and get some stuff mailed to me at the office address, and found out…

So, what’s the plan?

I am officially on UK payroll effective October 1st. We have our work-permit visas, we found a very nice place to rent in London suburbia, our own house is on the market, we already sold one of our cars and some other house stuff and even held a garage sale…