My short business trip to Chicago is coming to an end. Seeing my parents and my brother’s family was a bonus; going to a baseball game with co-workers gave me a necessary jolt of American culture; further socializing with said co-workers was mostly fun; otherwise, I could have probably stayed…
No sooner did I mention in my previous post that I had never personally encountered a manned police speed checkpoint, that I came upon one on my morning school run. From the opposite direction to the one that policemen were watching. And on my way back, in less than half…
After promising it on several occasions, I am carrying on with my expatriate experience series of articles. The first entry dealt with relocation package specifics. This post is about UK driver licensing. A foreign resident in England who holds a valid driver license from abroad can use it without getting…
It may come as a surprise to many, but in England, a person cannot watch TV unless (s)he is licensed to do so. Yep, you need a license – £135 per year for a color television – if you want to enjoy this most obvious of the modern amenities. I…
As I pass myself off for an expatriate blogger, I guess I should at least occasionally post entries that fellow expatriates could use as empirical advice. This lengthy entry concerns relocation package negotiation. Actually, I am hardly qualified to say anything about the negotiation itself. Primarily, because I did a…
In our many years in New Jersey, we cannot recall ever having a breakfast outside. Barbecues, parties – yes, but never a breakfast. There were several excuses for that, such as absence of a deck and complicated logistics of carrying stuff down wooden steps to the patio, but the fact…
One of the favorite types of company outings in England is The Quiz. Guys from one of my partner technology teams has invited me to theirs. They must have thought that having a Russian-American on their team would give them some competitive advantage… The quiz works very simply. There are…
That hail on Sunday was a precursor to worsening weather – with the official start of the spring, the temperatures dropped to near freezing, the skies turned to mostly grey, and several short snowfalls made an appearance, melting instantly. Natasha’s dad continued his exploration of London nonetheless, only devoting more…
It has been a while since we managed to stay active on both Saturday and Sunday of the same weekend. Winter weather is hardly conducive to outings, and you can only go on back-to-back museum trips so much. But with spring-like weather, hundreds of places that we want to visit…
Sincere apologies to my faithful readers for such a long gap in my posts. I was not in much of a mood for writing. My family in New York has suffered through an inconceivable loss, and a beautiful little girl has never got a chance to open her eyes and…
It’s nothing short of amazing that I don’t impersonate Natasha-without-her-voice today. Try singing karaoke for a hundred songs in one sitting, and you’ll understand… We went to visit our new friends Valera and Zhanna (whose daughter is Kimmy’s classmate). There was a nice meal, highlighted by Zeppelins, traditional Lithuanian stuffed…
I forgot to check with the groundhog this year. Did it see its shadow or not? To be honest, it would not make any difference. The winter never really came to England. Late fall lingered… and gradually morphed into early spring… I will be first to admit that for a…
Days are really slowing down. Maybe it’s a function of the general decrease in our touristic activity or possibly routine is continuing to take a greater hold. It could be a function of waiting – I am in the middle of the fun period of knowing the size of my…
It seems as if every other weekend or so, there is no train service at Mottingham, “due to planned engineering work”. As inconvenient as that is, it is a common occurrence with London rail transport (subway included), and you can find out in advance which lines will be closed. Unfortunately,…
He woke up, got out of bed and moved his bowels. If I could find a daily narrative as gripping as that, I swear I would post daily as opposed to once in a few days. I am reading the fourth installment of George Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire.…
A whole new religion is being born, and Natasha is its prophet. The cult’s mantra is Happiness is when you have beets! It all started when my parents were still here. Both Natasha and my mom are famous for their borsch, even though their recipes are different. My mom wanted…
I drove my parents to the airport in the morning, and we are all by ourselves again. Time to get back to work, school and otherwise routine existence. Time to resume our grand plan of Old World exploration, too. Upon returning from Switzerland, we did a few things with the…
Anglification of me – I have watched three full soccer games on TV over the last four days. The curious thing is that I also caught a glimpse of a match between two 4th-tier teams (so-called CocaCola League 2) – on the main sports channel, in primetime. I guess you…
If anybody has a chance to go see Mary Poppins on Broadway – we highly recommend it. Going by our Travelog ratings system, ♥♥♥. Magnificent production, great songs, fun all around. In a word, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!! We went to the city rather late last night, so as to not tire the…
Natasha made a fantastic stir-fry today. Somehow, she disregarded my preference for having meat at dinner… After foolishly expressing my dissatisfaction, I had to work overtime to praise leftover spaghetti with ground beef to avoid going altogether hungry… For the second Saturday in a row, we were greeted by pleasant…