Hi friends!

I’ve been in London for three weeks and a day now and have finally gotten my head around my present circumstances enough to be able to jot down some thoughts and experiences.

Getting set up and finding an apartment:

The basics, learning to use English appliances:

Talking about common appliances seems like a boring subject (and maybe it is) but I have been fascinated by the differences with these and North America.  Strangely everything here seems to have two power switches, one at the wall outlet and one on the appliance; power strips have individual switches for each outlet.  Over and over I find myself forgetting to turn the wall outlet switch on and thus draining the battery in my “plugged in” laptop; must be a building-code safety thing.  On a lower-brow note many modern UK toilets here seem flush in direct proportion to the amount of effort exerted on the lever, requiring significant “pumping action” to get the desired effect, not unlike the facilities found on small sailboats; this is one of these “neither better, nor worse, just different” things that I find myself puzzling over continually.  Finally, one must really hunt for electrical outlets to get the laptop plugged in.  North American building codes seem to insure that any room as sufficient electrical outlets that there is always one at arms reach, at a known height and rhythmically spaced on the walls; this seems not to be the case here and even modern buildings seem to have dearth of outlets and often they are hidden in panels in the floor, etc.  I am slowly learning to pull the chains, push the levers and turn the operating wheels of this country.

Experiencing London: 

The native sound of London is the sound of a cell phone ringing.  Cell phone use is ubiquitous, rampant, and bordering on epidemic.  It is impossible to be in any moderately dense crowd without hearing a continual symphony of beeps, electronic whistles and catchy little ditties signaling the arrival of a message or an incoming phone call.  Commuter trains in particular fall victim to this.  You may think you hear a lot of this in North America, but it is of a different order here.  Quickly you start tuning it out but I have mostly set my phone to vibrate as a silent form of protest. 

The city itself is built for adventure and exploration.  On weekend days we have often picked an area of the city and simply explored it by walking for most of the day.  Inexpiably an entire day is easily consumed waling around one park or neighborhood.  Walking in London neighborhoods is a pure joy and something I doubt I will become tired of.  There is simply so much to see and houses and streets tend to be very aesthetic; each neighbourhood having its own distinct groove to it.

We have been hard at it these past three weeks and I doubt we have even touched on 15% of the things we would like to see in greater London so far, let alone experienced them in any depth.

Some areas and sites we have covered so far: Hyde Park, Marylebone, Nodding Hill, Regents Park, Kensington, Holland Park, Westminster, Chelsea, Portobello Road, Bayswater, the Tate Modern.  More and more I find myself ignoring the “main downtown” and exploring the neighborhoods west of central.  Presently we are living in Bayswater, it is likely we will find ourselves living in Marylebone by Regents Park.  The London underground spans six concentric zones; we have barely made it out of “Zone 1” and never been outside “Zone 2”; we have a lot to see.  I have also been keeping a keen eye on the bicyclers in this city to see how and where they are travelling.  It does look like there is some decent bicycle riding to be done in London though I suspect I will be very cautious at first in trying to get used to the left hand traffic.  My bike should be arriving in a week or so and I am eager to take it into the parks and start educating myself on the cities road-rules.

The weather has been fairly good so far.  London is more temperate than I thought it would be, making the days usually a cool mild temperature.  Balancing this however is the fact that London is far damper than I would have expected, significantly damper than Seattle (which says a lot).  This means that in cool weather the damp air will quickly exhaust you with mildly hypothermic conditions.  Often after walking around for a day I find myself absolutely exhausted.  The weather is also more transient than Seattle (another hard to believe) and it is not uncommon to see rain/sun/rain/sun cycle though several times a day.  The weather can best be described as “interesting,” which is not bad.

Another thing I did not realize is how far north London it.  It is significantly north of Seattle and Vancouver, to say nothing of New York, its latitude sitting in between Calgary’s and Edmonton’s.  The result in early January when I arrived here was very short days.  Already the days seem significantly longer and I look forward to summer with its long sunlight hours.

Orientation:

London is reasonably flat and full of 3-4 story buildings, making it difficult to spot tall landmarks outside of the Westminster/Thames area, where things like the London Eye (a giant Ferris-wheel with school-bus sized carriages on it) offer good visual sighting.  That said, London is not terribly difficult to orientate in.  Often I find myself guestimating direction using the sun and hour of day; which sounds McGyver geeky but is surprisingly easy and effective and is pretty much necessary given the fact that the road you are currently walking on is unlikely to proceed in a straight line for any length of time.  I end up doing a lot of dead-reckoning and double checking against parks/landmarks/streets to make corrections.  After wandering around for a few days you quickly start drawing a mental map of how it all fits together.

Equally important is gaining an understanding of London’s Underground (subway).  Travelling on the London Underground  is a lot like riding on a fast sailboat in rough seas, high winds and challenging geography; sometimes you make great progress, not always in the right direction.  Things often break and courses and plans must constantly be revisited and adjusted.  You will get to where you want to go, but often not according you your original plan.  Station and line closures are common and unpredictable.  The Underground is the temperamental but brilliant conductor that drives the orchestra of the city.  Sometimes it is magic and sometimes its absolute chaos, but you will not get by without it.  Taken with a sense of adventure and humour; there is no better way to get around the city.

Prices:

True to its reputation, London is an expensive city to live in.  Common rumour here has it that it is 3^rd in the world behind Tokyo and Hong Kong; I have no idea if this is true.  It is unfair to make a direct comparison to life in Seattle from a cost/standard of living perspective.  To live an equivalent lifestyle (size of residence, car, dining habits) would doubtless be a much more expensive that Seattle, but this is not necessarily a fair comparison.  London provides an environment in which it is easy to spend a lot of money, but it also offers some fantastic low-cost opportunities that are not present on Seattle.  The city itself is enormous and has generally excellent (if chaotic) means of public transportation to explore it.  Parks are abundant.  Museums are free (with reasonable suggested donations), food-stuffs while moderately more expensive in Seattle are not unreasonable.  Eating out can be done reasonably at smaller cafes or at extreme expense at upscale restaurants.  Rents in reasonable neighbourhoods range from fairly expensive to absolutely outrageous at the high end.  You will doubtless end up with a smaller flat on London that you would in Seattle, and you will pay a bit more for it, but you are essentially paying for the environment, neighbourhood and much bigger city playground.  It is interesting to note that we have arrived in London at a bit of a slump in the real-estate market; I can only imagine how expensive things were a year ago.

Much of the joy of London is in walking though the almost countless neighbourhoods and this is pretty much free, excepting the cost of stopping for a bite to eat or a snack – which you will almost certainly do. 

In the final analysis, there are common Seattle things you do less of but many more opportunities to do different things.  Fixed costs of living are fairly high, but are also highly variable depending on your choice of apartment lifestyle.  We have drawn up a rough budget using conservative auxiliary expense, and reserve/travel fund goals to determine what we can reasonably afford to pay for an apartment here and still have disposable income to travel and enjoy London.  It will be interesting to see how we do vs. these estimates.

Work:

Work is going fairly well.  I feel like I am one of those National Geographic reporters who goes to live in the wild and gets taken in by a family of the indigenous inhabitants; people have been very nice and welcoming.  Thus far, I have spent all but one of my work days out in Reading.  Getting to Reading takes a little over an hour door to door; the trip consists of a double-decker bus ride to Paddington Station (7 min), a (generally) high speed commuter train (35 min) to Reading, and a shuttle bus ride from Reading Station of the Microsoft offices in Thames Valley Park (7 min), along with transition times in between.  In all its not too bad; I do not miss driving at all.  Work is surprisingly busy and finds me running around a great deal of the day talking to people (this part of my job has not changed).  The first week I felt underwater, the second treading hard to stay afloat and presently I feel like I am starting to swim in a chosen direction, making progress against a steady current.  I now feel I have a decent idea of what I am supposed to do and ways to go about doing it.  I did spend one day working in our downtown London office and I will say that this was fantastic; it was very quick to get to work and the freedom to walk out the door and be in the middle of a big city was fantastic; additionally the environment while “open concept cubicles” seemed to offer good opportunities for concentration.  As I get settled in and comfortable I will try to work downtown one day a week.   We shall see how this goes.  I won’t bore you with additional details of work, send me mail and ask if you are interested.  Suffice it to say that I am enjoying work and feel like I am picking up speed.  I now find myself often waking up in the mornings thinking about specific work problems and what needs to be done to resolve them; I take this as a positive sign that I am figuring out what the job is about but am slightly wistful for the days when all was up in the air and everything was brand new and incomprehensible ;-).  Krista is presently looking for work and it looks like there are good opportunities for her in London.  In all, things are good!

Summing it all up:

London is good.  I am getting comfortable with my surroundings and aside from moments of nostalgia, wistfulness, and quiet but short-lived panic, I am very much enjoying the experience.  It looks like its going to be a fun ride.  I miss all of you and hope to see you out here and get chance to play tour-guide sometime in the near future!

                                                                        Cheers! –ivo