My 221st Day in London Update

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Many of my British friends or people we meet out and about ask me how do I like it in London? They may instead ask what’s the biggest difference between England and America? I feel the answer to both of those questions are kind of related. They are also not really answerable in sentence or two unless I want to wildly generalize. As I start to write this entry a British friend of mine who I’ve known for years asked me how I was liking the country while we were at a pub the other night after work. That question turned into a 15 to 30 minute conversation about it. It also inspired me to want to write and address the question. It may be a complex answer however it’s a great question to address.

At the time of this being published we have officially been living in England for 221 days. I’ve said it a few times to multiple people that either we are still in our honeymoon phase of adjustment or we are already adjusted to life here. The reason is I haven’t really felt a huge amount of stress over adjusting.  It feels like it is a short amount of time to be adjusted already after everything I’ve read. That is why I sometimes think were still stuck in the honeymoon phase however there were rough patches early on so maybe we are adjusted already.  I bring all this up since my answer to this question may obviously change over time especially if we aren’t fully adjusted.

The short answer to the question how do we like it is we’re loving it (so far). The longer answer is that we are generally loving it, however it’s different. It is hard not to compare everything you experience with your prior experiences. That means everything I do I end up comparing it to New York.  In reading about adjusting to a new country they tell you not to do that. I am not saying that’s a good thing to do however it’s what generally happens. When I do that comparison some things are better here.  Some things are not.  Most are just different.

A good example of what is better is our house.  We have a garden with lots of space for the kid.  We are on a good tube line very close to the station. My commute is about the same from New York.  We loved our neighborhood in NY.  Were we are in London is much more suburban feel yet it is basically the same type of area. The house and neighborhood wins out in London over NY.  In general the work life balance in London seems much more relaxed.

There are things that were better in New York.  For us we had a lot of family and friends that we just can’t see anymore. My mom saw the kids twice a week.  We spent a weekend or so a month with M’s parents, etc. We will always have more family in the states however over time we are making friends here.

Then there are things that are just simply different. Maybe marginally better or worse.  They are really just different. Those are the hard ones to explain since my mind immediately tries to rate if it’s better or not to New York or the United States. The reality is it’s all about personal preference. I might love something that someone else might not. For example I’m a relatively fast-paced person. When I lived in Louisiana and I would get behind someone who is writing a check to pay for their groceries I would have no patience when they  stood there for five minutes writing it. London is definitely much more laid-back than New York. It’s still a global city however things are not as fast-paced. Younger version of me who had to deal with the slow of Louisiana likely would be very frustrated by London. Me today however is enjoying that slowdown.

When I think about that abstract that things are slower and more relaxed it is hard to describe. What pop’s into my head is sitting in a café in a museum.  The kids eating scones while drinking coffee on real China. In New York everything would be so rushed and everything would be disposable paper.  In London over the winter we went to the museums a bunch of times and relived that scene I described.  M more than I. Everything is all about the context. The subtle differences would have annoyed me in the past and I actually enjoy them today. That doesn’t mean there better or worse. It’s the differences that were trying to experience and enjoy.  Thankfully for now those differences are favorable to us.  In a year, or 5 years in the context of the example I gave will I return to my old impatient self?  Who knows. I hope not but you never know.

I can write so much more on this topic.  It is likely best to pick up at another point in time.  I will say for all of our friends in the States curious about how we are doing we are having a great experience.  It is harder than it looks however the rewards are totally worth it. It boils down to a Simpsons quote I like to use.  If you ask me am I enjoying life in England.  The yes or no answer is “Yes with an if, no with a but. Leaning towards yes…

The Story Of How I Found My Why

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As the division I work in is going through its own branding exercise as it prepares to be spun off from the rest of the company. I thought it was a good idea to work on my personal branding. Last October I wrote about the book Start With Why. As I mentioned at the time my initial reasons for reading it was to come up with my personal brand. That morphed into writing out what my “why” was. I given it a little bit of thought on and off since then. I was frustrated that I couldn’t come up with something that truly explained me.  So I parked the objective while I gave it further thought.

If you’ve read this blog you can tell that this year’s been very transformative for me. I moved across the world. My dad passed. You know lots of life stuff happened. Along the way it dawned on me that I want to focus more of my career on information security. It has always been a big part of my work however never a direct focus. For the past few years I have been focusing on growing SRE teams and cloud technology. Information security and cloud technology go hand-in-hand. I found myself wanting to be more directly involved in the security aspects of work than anything else. It’s what I find myself most interested in outside of work. So why not be my focus for my career.

I think that was the bit of information that I needed to click in my head to come up with my wife statement. Surprisingly after I had that clarity of focus on why I was motivated writing out the “what” and “how” of what I do came very easily. I have asked a few friends in the industry for feedback.  I liked the idea of my own personal board of directors after reading a few articles on the topic.  With some trusted friends advise I only had some minor tweaks. I felt like it was time to post to LinkedIn.  Then I felt like writing about it here.

This doesn’t necessarily mean I’m shopping around for new job. I’ve worked enough in incident preparedness to know that you need to be ready for the unexpected. That means having my public profile to date.  It is also always a good idea to keep my options open.  Sometimes the best things come out of the blue.  That is how I ended up at my interview at my current job in the first place!

Without further ado my personal why statement (aka personal brand) is:

I want people to feel safe using technology. People are not able to truly feel secure using technology if they fear they are being watched.

I manage teams that build, maintain and support secure fault tolerant applications and infrastructure be it on premises or in the public cloud. I do this by hiring engineers who believe DevSecOps is more than a buzz word. I grow high performance teams that believe those who do the work should have a say in how the work is done.

I build world class tools and procedures to empower operations teams to provide high level of availability to whatever they build and maintain.

What can I build for you?

A Regular

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I achieved a major milestone today. I officially became a regular at the Canary Wharf Starbucks I goto when going to the office in Canary Wharf. The lady taking orders remembered my name. You could see her struggle a bit trying to guess my order but then she knew my name. Another lady taking orders has been almost remembering for a week or two. You could tell by her facial expressions that she is trying and then is like a ha when i tell her what i want to order.

I guess we have been here long enough that I earned this nonsensical milestone. I am still proud.

Underground vs Subway Showdown Part 3: Crowds

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This is part 3 of my super scientific comparison and contrasting of the NYC Subway and the London Underground. In this part I tak about crowds and why I do not love them so much.

Rush hour in New York can be interesting. When I lived on the upper East side I would have to wait pretty often for five trains before I could even get on one. I lived at the 96th St stop on the Lexington Ave line. at 96th. As Upper East side goes that is pretty north and it was still horrible at rush hour. When I lived in Long Island city if there was any problem with the 7 train I would have to wait. You paid the price for being at the last stop in Queens. One time had to wait about seven trains to get on. Typically 2-3 would be a regular occurrence.

In more recent years when I lived in Forest Hills the crowds in the morning haven’t been as bad since I was at a stop that had 2 Locals & 2 Express trains and I could take any of them to work. Getting home however I would have to pick what line to goto and it could get pretty interesting if it got backed up at all.

In London depending on the time of day there are crowds. Going to work even at the night of rush hour in the 5 months I have been here I only once couldn’t get on a train and had to wait for another one. It can get pretty crowded in some stations though. I had to go to bank during rush hour a few nights. There was a line from getting into the station through until you got onto the platform. Unlike New York the line moved so was a crowd of people actually moving together. Once on the platform I had to wait several trains to get onto one. It seems like that’s normal at rush-hour for that station.

Luckily for me my daily commute is crowded however not ridiculously so. My biggest challenge is the last transfer on the way home. It’s at a major station in the line I take to go home. The line splits before I get off the train. That means I cannot just get on any train for that line. Side story i have only once got on the wrong train and had to turn around and go back. To make matters worse the other side of the line that I do not take has more trains than the one I do take. On the plus side I have gotten into a good commute rhythm and I haven’t had much of a crowd issue in a while.

The winter here is a tough one. It’s probably New York, however I am calling it a draw. My day-to-day experience in London has been pretty good so far. I see how the crowds could be consistently worse here in busy stations. I have heard they have had to close stations to new passingers when it gets really bad. I haven’t experienced it however I cannot recall that every happening in NY.

In the 4th and final segment I will cover etiquette. That one is more a commentary on the people rather than the system. That being said there are a few nifty things that systematically are done here that help etiquette.

It Is Late July And Summer Vacation Starts Now

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Today is the first day of the girls summer vacation/holiday. They get seven weeks off until school starts again in September.

This is one of those little things that are just a bit off in my universe and need adjustment. It’s late July and my kids were still in school until last Friday. Growing up for me school ended in June. The girls spent the Fourth of July at school. My memories of the Fourth of July is visions of watching fireworks at camp when i was old enough to goto sleep away canp or when i was working at one.

There’s arguments to be made for either system. I do not feel one is better or worse than the other. It’s just different enough that it takes getting use to. So here I am on 23rd of July and it’s the first day of my girls summer vacation.

My “Real” News Cleanse

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Recently I have started to look at things that I spend time on that don’t make me happy.  The first thing I gravitated towards was social media. I recently wrote about that in my detox plan for it. The next thing that ended up on my very short list was the news.

Over the years I have written several times about my love hate relationship with the news.  These two entries from August & September 2005 one from 2005.  Another one from 2012. As a young kid I used to watch it and be fascinated by it. By my late 20s I was jaded by the 24-hour news cycle. I spent the better part of the last 20 years avoiding and then binging on the news. The only exception is tech news. I’ve been pretty consistently reading that. Tech news usually doesn’t depress me and it helps me stay current in my profession.

With all that’s going on in the world today I’m not getting very much positive out of reading the news every day. I have kept doing it because I want to stay informed. When I read several different sources talking about how I statistically would be happier not reading it I thought about ignorance is bliss. It is. In this case there’s really not much I can do when I read headlines.  So what do I get out of it? I want to be informed however is being informed worth being miserable? I’ve tried being miserably informed for a while and it does not feel like working so I will try ignorant happiness.

Practically speaking when I have a coffee or eat lunch or commute I browse headlines via RSS feeds. I also read a few key websites.  Even after curating down what sources I look at each day I am still depressed by what I read on general news sites.

The habit I plan to change is to stop looking at news sites altogether. As a start I will also cut out the vast majority of the RSS feeds I read. I will still look at some technology, productivity, mindfulness, and entertainment (Sci-Fi) sites. It’s hard to go cold turkey so I will keep looking at those since I find them interesting. The technology sites also help in staying current with the industry or so I keep telling myself.

I know that simply browsing articles even if they’re not stress inducing news articles is not good for me. I figure that what I proposed to do is a good transition. With the time I free up white like to spend it reading more books. I have a queue of them lined up. All I have to do is start reading them. The hardest part I think is building that new routine that doesn’t include looking at new sites & feeds. I almost by muscle memory will type in theguardian.co.uk when I have a spare minute. It is hard to stop myself. Instead I want to start taking spare time I have and use it to update my journal in Day One. Or something else more productive than reading news.  Once I get started I hope to cut down on the other things I plan to keep reading at first.  Over time I hope to transition those interests into books of the same topic instead of 2-5 minute articles.

As with my attempt to cut out social media or drastically reduce it only time will tell how successful I am. By the time this is posted I should hopefully have a routine down. Successful or not I hope to touch back on this topic in a few months to see how I did.

Boobytrapped

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I should either feel that i have failed as a parent that my kids are boobytrapping the house, or i should be proud of their skills at home security. Who am I kidding I am so proud.