Back in the UK! Happy New Year!

We're back! As a family, all together, in the UK, wonderful! The trip started with a 9 hour delay, although the airline called it an 8 hour and 55 minute delay. We asked around to learn that the delay was caused by a "curfew" that the UK has on flights. We were scheduled to land at 10pm but they needed about an hour for engine maintenance, which meant we would have landed past curfew, so they delayed us until morning. We found ways to entertain ourselves at the airport. The airline did give us several vouchers, so that's nice. 

We had 15 large suitcases, so it was quite a move. Upon arrival, our plan was to take a taxi AND pickup our rental car (hire car), so that all the bags would fit. Avis was so great, they gave us a huge discount on a massive van for one day so that we could all travel together. 

Jet lag is hitting us pretty hard since it was more time than we were mentally prepared for. After we put our suitcases away at the house, we drove around our new hometown together, so exciting! We thought places might be closed on New Years Eve, but actually the town was quite alive. We had a great dinner at a pub, even played some snooker, and bought groceries. 

New Years Eve is big here! From our house we could see at least 5, maybe 6, different displays of fireworks up in the sky. We appreciated such a welcome :)

Data Conservation

I've been back in the states for a week. So far, the most noticeable difference for me has been something very small. I've been very conscious of the amount for data I use on my phone(s). Before living in the UK, I always had unlimited data plans, so I didn't think twice about how much data I used. Now, I find myself checking data usage quite a bit even though I'm back on unlimited plans. 

I think this relates to an overall "consumption vs conservation" awareness that grows on you in the UK. It's interesting to be more aware of the footprint you leave and or take...

The journey of flying

Iceland Air provided the most cost effective way to go from London to DC, so I chose them. The flight had one layover in Iceland, so it was a 10-11 hour journey as opposed to a 7-8 hour journey. No problem because Iceland is beautiful, although I sure wanted to get to family as fast as possible. 

On the first flight I sat next to a young backpacker. She had just finished 3 months of backpacking across Europe. Her stories and experiences were great, her favorite moment was in Istanbul. She met people in youth hostels and would travel around with them a bit. In Istanbul, she hung out with many folks from many countries and on one day they celebrated  a birthday. They sang Happy Birthday in English because they all knew some English, but then, without preparation, they sang it 3 more times, each time in a different language. How great is that? She said it was a real moment of sharing and international peace for her.

I usually struggle to sleep on planes, but I did nod off for awhile on this one. I was kicked awake by the chair behind me literally being shoved full force forward. Startled, I looked behind me to see a guy jump up and yell Help! 

At least 3 stewardesses ran down the aisles. The lady behind me had passed out and was laying on the floor. I caught a glimpse of her eyes and the husbands eyes - they were chilling - absolute fear. I glanced at the on-screen map and we were over the ocean, just under an hour from Rekjyvavik. 

The lead stewardess somewhat pushed the husband into the aisle, she got on the floor with the lady and propped her head up. Seconds later an oxygen bag appeared and they gave her oxygen. The stewardess was saying "are you with us honey, are you with us". No response. Within about 15 seconds, which felt like an hour, the stewardess said "she's coming back!"

Then the gawking started, I was just as bad as everyone else, sitting there staring. The lady said "what's happening" as she was being propped up off the floor, clearly having no recllection that she passed out. The husband said in a London accent, "you got a bit weird", which I think means "you terrified me and the plane, glad you're back". She seemed to be just fine after that. The stewardesses really did a great job.

We landed one hour later than expected. So I walked very fast to catch my connecting flight, trying to read screens as I pulled 4 suitcases. Embarrassingly, but luckily, my gate was the same one I just left, so I had to turn around and take a bit of a walk of shame. My internet worked, so I texted a few folks, probably paying €1,000 per minute or something :) 

As I was texting and grabbing food, I clearly heard "John Hovell please report to customer service desk. John Hovell please report to customer service desk." I had two immediate thoughts and both were negative, I need to work on that. Why not default to positive thoughts?

I left my pizza and walked straight to the desk. The look on the lady's face was not positive, it was slightly concerned. So now I'm not thinking, I'm just feeling concern. She walks away saying "be right back", says something to her colleague in Icelandic, then grabs a key and says to me "you've been selected for random security screening". 

Now my international red flags go off. I smile and politely rattle off about 10 questions per minute as we walk up back stairs that clearly say "staff only". We get to a small room guarded by officers and she simply says "wait here", I was happy with her previous answers, so I wait.

Within minutes, I'm called into a separate room where someone is putting their coat back on with two guards. They look legitimate. They ask if they can look through my bags and scan my body. I look for cameras and say sure. It was quick and painless, seemed to be no problems at all, but I may have been visibly perturbed.

I left the room, said thank you and proceeded to buy a toy puffin for my youngest daughter and Icelandic chocolate for the rest of the girls. 

The second flight was full of good conversation and I tried their Icelandic non-alcoholic drink called Malt and Applesin. Forgot to mention, I tried it on the first flight as well. Really good! 

My wife picked me up at the airport and it was so great to be back together! Since I was a few hours late, one of our great neighbors stayed in the house while the girls slept. I shared all the stories with my wife and then fell right asleep as soon as got home. 

Heading to DC!

It's been so flattering to hear from many people wishing me well on the short trip back to DC. It's inspired me to write lots of personal well wishes too. Pay it forward, as they say, right? 

I slept in the new house for the first time last night. Seriously, the radiators are haunting. I woke up twice to howling or clunking. Maybe this is why it's called "bleeding" them, pretty sure a ghoul is gonna jump out and cause some real bleeding. 

The house only has beds and wifi so far. Other than a chair and a cup, what else do you really need? The bed worked fine as a chair, and you can drink straight out of a bottle, so actually, maybe we're all set :)

On a personal note, some recent leadership development has really been sticking with me. We learned a model with 6 personality types. Unfortunately, all 6 archetypes were negative, but the idea is to get you thinking. I came out as a "critic/doubter", probably very true. I'm now watching closely to see what words and behaviours I choose. My concern would be that my critic turns me into an "energy taker" as opposed to an "energy giver". I'll be watching for that. 

Birthplace of Programming

The main entrance to Lady Ada Lovelace's Mansion

The blurred corner of nostalgia and déjà vu is the feeling I often find in European villages. Especially on that first time in town, you can almost see a veiled mist of success as you walk each cobbled street of days gone by.

Today I visited the house where computer programming began. Lady Ada Lovelace. Such a beautiful name and such a beautiful contribution to what has now shifted the very civilization within which we live.

172 years ago, Lady Ada was a genius mathematician who happened to know a gentleman named Charles Babbage. Charles created an 'analytical engine', which was basically the first computer.  Lady Ada was able to write and process an algorithm through that machine, making her the first computer programmer. One of the programming languages created 135 years after her algorithm was named Ada in her honour.

There is a striking and memorable set of earth tones as you walk the halls of the mansion. Rich browns, reds tans and blacks light the stone based hallways. There's a stunning little chapel within the mansion that truly reminded me of the Vatican. The house is now used as a conference and training centre, often hosting weddings.

It's about a 20 minute walk from the train station. The walk takes you through the quaint town of Horsley. Apparently Horsley has the highest number of houses sold over £1 million in the past year. As my friend and I walked the narrow streets and walkways, he was actually struck by the side mirror of a passing car! Shockingly, he was perfectly fine and barely even felt it. Unbelievable.

We were much more careful on our walk back, walking single file. It was harder to continue our conversation that way, but we made it happen. Overall, if you have an interest in computer programming, I would see if its possible to visit Lady Ada's mansion, I think it puts things into perspective. Once you're in town, it's half a day well spent.

The hallways in the mansion

The Chapel

Hallways

Inside the Conference Center

The study

Near the front door

The Lovelace Medal

Outside the front door

Bleed a radiator

The radiators in our new house make some fairly loud noises. For a moment, I actually thought a small animal might be bouncing around in one of them. I started asking around and learned that you have to 'bleed radiators'. Who knew?! :) I guess air gets caught in there, which causes the noises. You simply take a 'radiator key' or a screwdriver if you're lucky, and turn the knob in the upper right. The air comes out, then some water, then you're supposedly all set. I watched a video on youtube and verified it with a couple people, guess I'll be trying that soon!

On a completely separate topic, I found hamburgers at a local grocery store. They sell four pre-made patties in a package. As I walked to find the buns, I was thinking to myself, if they sell four patties, I wonder how many buns are in a package. 3 would be mean and a strange number, I bet its 6, yeah, that sounds right. Would you believe they sell 4 buns in a package? Four patties and four buns - did they start with the customer in mind or what, nice!

Snooker UK Championships

I watched the semi-final results of X Factor on TV last night. Ahem, on the telly last night. After the show, the Snooker UK Champuonships were on. I think I had heard of snooker, but I probably couldn't have told you what it was. I was hooked in minutes and I ended up watching something crazy like 2 hours of it! The one guy was winning 5-1, then 9-4. Apparently they play to 10 and you have to win by 2. The guy that was down 9-4, brought it all the way back to tie it up 9-9, which took over an hour. The commentators were very excited about what a great match it was. In between each "frame", which is one point, the players walk off and the broadcast switches from a live view of the table, to a TV interview type of set where they interview other experts.

I learned a lot and really enjoyed it. It's similar to pool or billiards, but they've got extra balls on the table and a few tricky rules to explain. There is a great blend of strategy and tactics, not to mention skill and tension. 

Add it to the list, I like rugby and snooker. Still acquiring the taste for soccer and cricket. I'm alright with formula one racing too, which is pretty big here. Tennis and golf have always been great, and I did watch some professional darts at some point. Lawn bowling is the next one to find, at first I thought it was croquet, but now I think it's completely different. I've seen several nice fields for it, but pretty sure I've never watched a match (game?)...

"To be fair" means...

The phrase "to be fair" is used a lot here. At first, I thought it was just a bit of filler. I thought it meant "let's not forget". I think I'm learning that it actually comes with a fairly heavy condescending tone to it. That tone isn't always intended, but it's there. It seems to mean somewhere between "you're not looking at the bigger picture" and "you're an idiot" :) I'm going to choose to live in a bit of a positive bubble and continue thinking it comes with a positive tone, somewhere near "let's not forget" :)

Giving Back

My friend at work that has invited us over many times needed a ride home last night. She's been extremely thoughtful and generous for months and months, so it was such a nice opportunity to share the generosity. I drove her home, we had a great conversation and we even continued the conversation with her family at her house for awhile. I wish I were even better at predicting or noticising ways to help like that, its something I'm working on for sure. I think the trick is to always be helpful, as opposed to looking-for or waiting-for moments to be helpful.

In a related story, I was doing some Christmas shopping in Guildford today. The sights, sounds and smells of European villages around the holidays are special. The white tents are setup along the edges of the cobblestone streets, the live bands and choirs are performing, the smell of fresh roasted chestnuts in second to none.

As I walked up High Street, I saw a guy go flying over the handlebars of his motorcycle. He started to roll around in the street and I instantly realised that the car behind him had [somewhat gently] hit him. I walked straight into the street along with about 3 or 4 other people. I picked up his groceries and 3 of us worked together to pick up his bike. One guy helped the rider stand up since he didn't seem to have any major injuries. The people in the car were in complete shock so it took them a few minutes to even get out of the car. I didn't think to turn off the bike, nor did I know how to, but one of the other helpers did. I also didn't think to call 999 (the UK equivalent of 911) since we were busy helping him, but I saw two other people pretty clearly calling for help as I looked around. I handed him his groceries after the bike was safely to the side of the street and he was already starting to apologise to the folks in the car. I heard the sirens on their way so hopefully everything has worked out. I sure hope any injuries are minor, it was not a nice thing to see. The instant calm, collective help of the community sure was nice to see though.

Starting to be a local

On top of good progress at work today, I was able to get schools setup for the family, as well as international crates for shipping, and credit cards and mobile banking. 

At one point today I'm pretty sure I slipped into a British accent for the first time ever, without even thinking about it, crazy. Only a sentence or two, but I heard myself and then thought, wait, how did I just say that.

Words of the day are dodgy, rude and cheeky. I think I've mentioned cheeky before, it's somewhere between trying to be funny, sarcastic and rude. If I were using my English, I'd say it means impudent, or kinda bold.

Dodgy means dangerous or unreliable, or I'd say sketchy. 

Rude is interesting, it means inappropriate or provocative more than it means blunt or inconsiderate. 

I'm sure you realised that Thanksgiving isn't celebrated here, but did you know that turkey is the official Christmas meal? It's literally the exact same big meal as Thanksgiving but it's on Christmas. And it's so fascinating that people go out of their way to say Happy Thanksgiving to me, I wish I understood holidays of all other religions/regions as well as they do here. Chalk it up as always learning, every day...

Lucky to have dogs

We're going through the process of having our dogs shipped to the UK. Its quite expensive, and quite a process. The dogs need passports, special flights, clearances by vets on both sides, shots, etc. We took our dogs in for their shots today and nearly had a tragedy with our older dog. About 20 minutes after the shot, she collapsed. Luckily my wife had stayed at the vet to watch for a reaction and the vets literally ran to help the dog. My wife had also remembered to ask for Benedryl and steroids before the shot, which I think saved the life of our dog. The vets were noticeably shaken by the dogs reaction, they asked the family to go home, plan for the worst and call back in an hour - not the message you want to hear!

We called an hour later to receive the great news that she was breathing again and blood pressure had returned to normal. She's at home now doing very well.

Moving countries is not easy. And its easy to underestimate the power of each little step in the process. Please go play with your pets right now if you happen to have any.

Christmas fair

I attended my first ever Christmas Fair this weekend. I learned what a Tombola is, and how fun it is. Its basically a suspended box that holds numbered pieces of paper. You pay to reach in the box and grab a set number of papers. If the number on your paper ends in 'not' (eg. zero) or 5, then you win a prize! The prizes are all visible on the table, so you get an idea of how many prizes are left and which one you might like, but your number does have to exactly match the prize you win. They must have had 5-10 of these around the fair along with some great games, live music and food. I find that you mostly walk around, eat chocolate, look at crafts and chat with friends. Really nice. Two more highlights from this fair were the remote control cars and a wooden marble maze. The remote control cars were my personal favourite, you used a remote control to drive a fast little car around a tiny wooden maze. You could try to beat the best time of the day, or you could race your friends, I did both :) The wooden marble maze was fun too, it was like a hand made hanging labyrinth. One person had to stand on each side of the maze and each person had to pull down on ropes/pulleys to move the maze up and down - quite a challenge AND there was a time limit. Mesmerising to watch for a few minutes.

Here's a good phrase for you, I'm pretty sure its 'shed load', as in 'a lot', as in how much you stuff you can store in your shed. Now, in the British accent, it absolutely sounds like shitload, but its said in such a casual way, I really can't tell. I have to try so hard to not laugh because of the deadpan 'this is normal professional conversation' face, and I've heard it numerous times recently.

On a different topic, I'm making good progress moving into the new house. I setup an air mattress whilst we wait for the new one I just bought to arrive. We're so fortunate to be able to ship most of our belongings from the US to the UK, so those will arrive later as well. I'm bringing over one small car load at a time since we're in between two houses for a couple weeks. Haven't quite met the neighbours yet, but I'm sure that will come when the time is right.

One last topic is driving. I've noticed a whole new level of comfort in driving. I've memorised enough of the roads that I can almost start to guess how to get around to most places now. Its quite a strange feeling really, because it was only a few months ago that I barely knew how to drive on the left side of the road, let alone know where I'm going.