expat

Things I Miss From America

by

Before moving I read a lot about people complaining about you cannot get XYZ in London.  Many others noted (I believe correctly) that you will adjust better if you do not get held up by something not being available.  You should flip things around and think of it as an adventure and try new stuff.  That is the attitude I am taking in the 6 months living here so far as of this writing.

When we first moved here and i had go shopping for household stuff i was overwhelmed.  I had no clue about more than half the brands I saw.  I used that as an opportunity to try to save money and went with the brands that were relatively cheap.  For most food and household items that worked fine.  Instead of

Feedback from others was that the two main things people miss out on are certain consumer products and foods. As products go there were a few things here and there that I prefer an American version of. Mainly some clothing brands. I don’t buy that many clothes and what I do by last a while. When I need something I either wait till we’re back in the states or order it online to pay the shipping. When people visit I sometimes send them stuff to. It’s generally been few and far between.

The same goes for some over-the-counter medicines. Most of the stuff we get is local however there are a few things that we simply prefer from the US. Apparently we are nowhere near as picky as many other people we read about. As time moves on we rely on less and less from the states and simply have been adapting to what’s available.

As for food goes there is definitely plenty of things that I like that is not quite the same with what you get in the United Kingdom. For example New York style pizza is pretty unique. A good bagel and locks is possible to get here however not everywhere. The bagals are ok just not the same as New York. Before we moved I was worried that both of those examples would be things I missed dearly. In practice I do not. Don’t get me wrong when we were visiting New York I went for a good slice of pizza. My mom took us to my favorite pizza place growing up. We also made it a point to go to our favorite bagel place when we were in Forest Hills as well. It was just as good as we remember it. We enjoyed both experiences a lot. The experiences in New York are definitely not the same as those in London however we can still get decent pizza and halfway decent bagels and smoke salmon. I don’t even eat bagels as much as I use to. We have different morning rituals now. If we go out I like a good full English breakfast.

All the things I mentioned having a different version of them or not having them at all has been relatively easy to adapt to in London. For me there was one thing that I missed that I did not realize how much I missed until I was back in the United States. I realized early on that most places in the United Kingdom did not prepare burgers the way I like them. I think it’s around the fact that they have to cook them a little bit more well done then I like here. I’m not really sure though. I just know that in most cases hamburgers aren’t as juicy and delicious as I am used to in the States. In fact my favorite hamburger in Europe actually was in Copenhagen. I still eat burgers all the time when we are out. It’s my go to food. Although depending on the place Fish & Chips is catching up as a good backup option. I have not been sorely missing a good burger.

When we were in Florida in February to go on our cruise we went to lunch with my in-laws. It wasn’t anything fancy. We just went to Chili’s. The juiciness of the hamburger reminded me how a really good burger should taste. It wasn’t until then I realized I missed that. Shake Shack and Gourmet Burger Kitchen are really good however I just don’t think any of those places got my burger as juicy as the one I had in Florida.

Some people would be upset by this. They may even stop ordering them when they go out. Not me. I’m on a mission to find good burgers in the UK. That means if I go somewhere and it looks good on the menu I’m still going to order it. If it turns out to be so so then I know what to expect. The turns out to be really good although where to go back to. That will hold me over until we’re back in New York and I can go to outback or chilis or any other mediocre chain restaurant that will grill me a juicy burger.

W Sisters & Swim Class

by
London Aquatics Center Pool

This term we sign the girls up for swim class. This was something we wanted to do for a while. They haven’t had proper swim lessons since camp in the summer of 2018. After doing some research M settled on a place. She settled on the London Aquatic Center. It is pretty spectacular that if the girls are going to have swim they have it at a pool that happens to be a former Olympic arena. It was physically further than multiple options for us. Yet without a car it was one of the most convinient to make regularly.

That means when it’s my week to take the girls swim I get to hang out in what was once the Olympic swimming stadium in London. The picture above says it all. If you want to inspire someone to swim somewhere this is the place. Full disclosure the girls are in training pool as 180° around from where I took this picture. Either way pretty impressive to come here as a regular thing. The girls think so also. After their sessions they like to sit on the ledge and have a snack and watch swimmers. Every so often it is very crowded with a tournament. It is pretty cool.

Two Years and Counting

by

It took me until around 7:30 PM to realise that today was our two year anniversary of being in England. We were out one of our neighbours for drinks and appetisers for the holiday. Somehow in the conversation the topic came up on how long we have been living here. I had to think about it for a few seconds before I realised it was almost down to the hour two years.

I thought about the anniversary coming up quickly earlier in the week however today it slipped my mind with all the people doing on our holiday.

In some ways it feels like no time is pastorale. In other ways our world is entirely different than it was two years ago. What hope we love the next two years here as much as we did the last two…

NOTE: I forgot to post this on the 29th so I am posting it in early Jan with a retroactive date stamp.)

The Full English vs Full Irish Breakfast

by

This post is topical since I have friends visiting for Thanksgiving and we had this discussion about breakfast. Their feedback was simply its all a lot of food.

Previously I have written about my picky eating habits. Specifically my lack of trying new foods until relatively recently.  I wrote “If The 12 Year Old Version of Me Could See Me Now” back in 2012. In that post I talked about how breakfast was transformed from me after I started eating eggs. Since then I have enjoyed going with M for diner breakfast.

When we moved to London we were no longer able to experience a good old-fashioned American diner. Thankfully there were lots of other options for us. I started ordering the full English breakfast. Mainly because it was an option available on most menus when we would go out for breakfast. I enjoyed it. My challenge was there were parts of it and I just didn’t like and would not eat. Mainly the baked beans, tomatoes, or mushrooms. If given the chance I would simply order eggs and some sides. The full English was typically enough if it was the only option.

We went to Ireland for a holiday in May. I was intrigued between the differences of the full English versus the full Irish breakfast. I was surprised to realize there were some distinct differences between them. Our first morning in Ireland I tried out my first full Irish. Instead of beans, tomatoes, mushrooms they added black pudding, white pudding and bacon. Since coming to England I have tried and liked the black pudding. I had never tried the white pudding,  however I give it a go. It turned out to be pretty good.

In the end the substitutions between the full English and the full Irish made it so I would eat the entire meal of a full Irish breakfast. I am going to say that is a good thing. Depending on how you look at it it could be a bad thing since probably not healthy for you. Every day of our trip I had one. Like the perfect lobster roll or piece of chocolate cake I am now on a mission to find the perfect full Irish breakfast. The catch is always even if I have the best one I’ve ever had a better one could still be out there so I have to keep trying…

I will still eat the full English. It just pales in comparison (for me) to its Irish cousin.

The 3,500 Mile Bagal Delivery

by

Even before we left for England we knew there would be things we would miss or could not get while there. From what we read lots of people struggle with missing certain kinds of food from home. We also had trouble with not being able to find certain brands or products in the stores.

There have definitely been types of food that just point the same here. Too much less to groupers been things you can buy here in the store that we could only get in America. We’ve had enough family visiting that they bring any odds and ends that we just cant get. Food on the other hand is hard just isn’t an option and must we find an equivalent here.

Most of the things in relation to food I don’t think it is the same here isn’t a major urge to walk all the time. For example a good slice of New York pizza is very different than what I can get here. It doesn’t drive me crazy enough that it really matters. I love good Southern barbecue. Even in New York I didn’t go that often so not having it is an a huge problem. Growing up in New York from the bagels anywhere else just aren’t the same.M and i used to get bagels at least once a weekend pretty regularly when we lived in New York. That was one thing that I thought I would really mess when we moved. When I think about it I miss it. I just don’t think about it too often.

In May M flew to Washington DC for the Early Bank Holiday weekend. She went to one of her best friends wedding. . When M got home Monday morning she surprised us with bagels from DC. I ran out to the local market and picked up some cream cheese and smoked salmon. We had a proper Biggles and smoked salmon.

It was delicious. Much better than anything we could get in London. It reminded me that as much as I love Bagal’s I just don’t miss it that much. Apparently M and her friends swung by a bagel store Sunday late afternoon on the way to the airport. By the time we got them they want exactly fresh however they were still better than anything I can get here. That will probably be the most longest bagal delivery I will ever have.

The Story of Wonky Weather

by

This is a post I wrote back in September.  The screen capture is from then also.  it wasn’t 20 C today.  I have had a huge backlog of things I wrote that I never posted.  Then I stopped writing a bit and have been slowly posting things.  Then I just forgot to post stuff.  I have come full circle and want to write again so the first thing I am doing is getting the backlog out.  I felt that this post was appropriate since its like 60 degrees Fahrenheit  in March right now.

I got the impression prior to my move to London that the city has a reputation for being cloudy and wet. After living here for a little while I realised that is a broadly accurate statement. The problem is it’s a wildly broad statement. What I’ve learned is that complaining about the weather almost national pastime in this city.  I was all but told that by more than 2 friends of mine. From their point of view I can understand some of the complaints. Coming from New York however where there is a significantly wider variance of whether you prefer a little bit more of the consistency of England. Even if that means less sun generally.

Everyone is pretty consistent in their assessment that things “get real”when it’s below zero (Celsius).  That is 32 F for Americans. They also comment about the fact that it usually doesn’t get over 25°C or about 77 F in the summer. I have also heard from many people that snow is virtually unheard of. Ironically all the statements I just made are not true this year.  We had a week of snow that basically shut down London even though from my perspective coming from NY it wasn’t much snow.  It was 25-32 C for probably around a month to 6 weeks in the summer.  And because of the heat there was tons of sun.

The rational side of me wants to believe everyone who made the original wild generalisations of the weather here and wonder why this year is different. The other less rational side of me is thinking why am I in the middle of a big deception around the weather in this country?.

Even with the two snowstorms. Well what they consider snowstorms. Even with the few days below zero. And even with 4-6 weeks of heatwave in late June and July I been very comforatable with the weather. The idea of a milder summer and a milder winter compared to what I am used to appeals to me. Problems start to arise when it gets over 25°C, somewhere in the 80s Fahrenheit. That is when air-conditioning would be required in New York. There simply is no air conditioning most places here.  To survive we bought two fans.  On most days we were ok.  Thankfully when I am writing this post in early September the weather has settled down to 20-25 C or mid 60’s to mid 70’s F.  That is kind of perfect.  The rain has come back too but not as bad as in the winter.  Lets face it our lawn needed the water since it was getting pretty brown for a while.

Tech Thursday: VOIP To Replace Our US Mobile Numbers

by

I wrote this months ago and haven’t gotten around to posting it.  I have a few more tech move discussions I would like to get to.  Hope to make time to write them.

As part of our planning to move to London we had to figure out how we were going to keep in touch with people in the States. That meant what level of the presence we were keeping in the United States while we were gone.

We didn’t have a home phone number that we shared with anyone so keeping that wasn’t an issue. It was really just for our intercom in our apartment. Once we moved we were able to grid it.

M and I used our mobile numbers for texting and calls so we wanted to keep them. We were going to push as many people to use Apple Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and similar apps however for those that do not have access to (or know how to use) those systems we wanted our old US mobiles.

M’s use case was really to keep her number only in case people wanted to call. For me I also wanted to be able to keep the accounts open that require a mobile phone for verification.

I spent a lot of time researching what the cheapest most reliable option for us to use to simply keep in touch with everyone in cases they do not have

For the simply keeping in touch with people after we leave I did a lot of research and ended up with a voice over IP service I’ve been using for years. I simply took both of our mobile numbers and ported them over to VOIP.MS. our quasi-home phone was a DID on the service for years. I also had other numbers for various things on the service. Sending and receiving calls have been pretty seamless over the years. Their price is also super cheap since you can get a pay-as-you-go plan. Each number is about one dollar per month plus usage.

The porting process to VOIP.MS took a few weeks. That is the porting system’s issue not theirs.  Other than how long it took the process was seamless for both numbers. I ported mine over in December right before we left. I kept using my work mobile during the few days there was a gap when my service ended and the number moved to VOIP.MS. for M since she did not have a work phone we ported her number in January. The hardest part about this whole process was porting her number since T-Mobile made us jump through hoops to unlock the number for porting. Even though we had paid off her iPhone a year ago they still kept phone locks and we didn’t figure that out until after we ported the number away from T-Mobile and tried to use a local Sim card in the UK.

The only challenging part of staying in touch using these US numbers is texting.  People that have iPhones can keep texting us if they know our email addresses.  Anyone who only had our number or use Android would have that message turned into an email now.  We don’t really see them so basically texting to those old numbers are useless. So basically we can receive phone calls. It’s been a minor annoyance every once in a while when someone tries to contact me hasn’t updated my contact details that I sent out listing my local number. For me that hasn’t been a major issue. For M I don’t think it has been a problem at all or she’s just not realizing people are trying to get her.

Slightly more complicated a problem is having a number that receives SMS short codes. This is required for services like Google or your bank to send you verification codes. What I learned is most voice over IP providers do not support them very well. After a lot of research I found one company Line2 who supported them. They published a list of all the codes they know to be working okay into their system. They also said they would work with you if you had a problem with another provider that’s not listed. A brief search of their list showed me that they covered most if not all of the companies that I would receive SMS’s from. Unlike VOIP.MS they are not cheap. One line costs $10 a month. With that plan however I did get unlimited calls and texts. Not that I use it. It feels expensive however in the end it was cheaper than buying the cheapest mobile phone plan and simply not use it except for verifications.

I kept two numbers for me. One for personal communication and one for the SMS short code verifications. That was deliberate. VOIP.MS is very flexible in how I can route calls so I keep my personal number with them. The client I use will allow me to do call recording, change my caller id, route to different places with a lot of granular control.  Line 2 the provider I use for SMS short codes only lets you use their client or a basic call forwarding.

Overall i am very pleased with both serviced. Line2 is relitivly expensive however it was cheaper than some other service providers i looked at. Their recievibg SMS Short codde options also seems better than most other solutions out there. i would (and have) reconend either provisers to anyone looking.

So You Want To Move To Another Country Part Whatever: You Need Credit

by

I have generally been pretty good with my credit. I pay all my balances off every month and my US credit has been excelent for years.

I knew when coming to the UK that my credit doesn’t carry over. I also learned that I might be in the lucky position to be using services from companies that would transfer my credit to their corresponding divisions in the UK.  That is a perk of working with a multi national organisation.

My usage of American Express cards is measured in decades. It makes me feel old. I also remember fondly that my dad thought it was amusing that I had an American Express Gold card in college. He gave me one on his account for any emergency purchases. Thinking about that, it might be its own post at some point. Needless to say after college an American Express card was one of the first cards I got. I was thankful to find out that American Express will issue me cards in the UK based off of my history with them in the US.

Process to get my American Express card in the UK was seamless. I filled out an online form and the cards arrived at our house in London. The cards were literally waiting for us when we got to our house. I cannot say enough nice things about the process from American Express to do this. In this situation membership does have its privileges. Pun intended. The only thing I would comment about my experience with American Express isn’t really a negative since I got something for free. I was going to downgrade one of my cards in the US however I got hard sold into not doing it. They basically gave it to me for free however it’s yet another conversation I  have to have with them later this year. I know they’re expecting me to forget and just pay for it. Be warned Annex I will not forget to call to downgrade that account.

The thing with American Express is even in the United States it’s not excepted everywhere. I heard mixed opinions from British friends on how widely accepted AMEX was. My experience is it is generally accepted the vast majority of the time we go to use it. Is it less widely accepted as in the states? I don’t know, maybe. Either way having it is your only card does limit you. Even in the US I would always have a backup just in case.

That leads me to trying to get a card from my bank. When it became pretty apparent we were going to move we opened an account with a multinational bank that was one of the few that have accommodations for people in my situation moving to new countries. I am writing about my experience in getting accounts created them in another post, so I won’t go into that here. I did sign up for a MasterCard in the United States specifically so I could build up credit history bank so I could transfer that history over to their UK division.

Once living in the UK I waited several months to apply for the credit card via my bank. I delayed partly because I wanted to see how far we can get with AMEX. I also was pretty lazy. I feel that all the forms to apply and then didn’t hear anything for several weeks. Then I get a letter saying I been declined. I was a little surprised. On one hand I do not keep very much money in the UK branch of this bank. I do my day-to-day banking with an online only bank. I didn’t think that would matter since I have a decent amount of funds in other locations with them. The way their whole system works is having funds at one location counts towards the other.

I was rather annoyed by being declined. I was also curious why. I called them to ask and got a bunch of runaround. Finally they filed an official appeal on my behalf. They told me that would be something like 6 to 8 weeks before they got back to me with an answer. Over a month later I got a letter telling me that three weeks after that they should have a response to me. When I finally got a written response all it said was I was declined and they couldn’t really say specifically why. But it may be one of many different factors. I get not having a lot of a credit history would prevent me from getting something from a service provider that I’ve never used before however these guys were supposed to be different. I should not be surprised since the general feedback about them in all of the expected some part of are negative.

The Story of My Complex Relationship With The Old Fashioned

by

There was a time long ago (2-3 years ago) when I did not like the taste of a good old fashioned  . Let’s call that time in my life BOF (Before Old Fashioned). I recall ordering one or two at bars and not really liking them. Then one January a few years ago on our anniversary M and I went to Jean George’s. I remember the night because I got there early or on time. M and I were both coming from work so we did not travel together. Side note the subway was messed up and M does not give herself any leeway in travel time.  Those factors and the fact that I generally am too early to things added up to me waiting about 20 to 30 minutes before M joined me.

While I was waiting at the bar I figured I was at a three-star Michelin rated restaurant so I assumed they can make pretty good cocktails. Up until that point I have had bad luck with old fashioned’s. They just didn’t taste quite right to me.  I did want to give it a few tries before I made my decision on if I like them or not. So I ordered one and drank it while waiting for M. The verdict was I still did not like it. At the time that last bad experience settled the drinks fate. It was off my list of things I would drink.  Or was it?

Flash forward a few years and I tried one again. My memory is fuzzy on the circumstances. I think it was we were at M’s friend Joe’s in Maine. The prior year he made me a fantastic Manhattan. So much so that I started making them myself the way he did it.  Wow those are strong but yummy.. The next time we saw him I believe he made an old-fashioned.  When he made it for me it was really good and I enjoyed it. So much so that when I was out with friends from work I started trying to order them again. It was still hit and miss in the beginning but after that I got really into them.

I started mixing them at home. The old fashioned are more complex and time-consuming to make than my favorite sidecar. I made them anyway. The first time I ran out of the ingredients to make the old-fashioned I forgot what it was that I originally had bought. I turned to the Internet to see what good bourbon to use for the drink. I found a couple of review sites that talked about the best bourbons to use in the drink. I then took the two top suggestions and went to the local liquor store to see if they had them. They had both options however for some reason I said I’m gonna buy the second best one. I can’t remember why.  I think the description better suited me.. It wasn’t like one was that much better than the other. They just had different reasons for liking one over the other. And that’s how I started mixing drinks with the Four Roses.

When I would be out and ordering an old-fashioned at a bar some of the better places would ask what I wanted it made with. It used to be I never knew a good answer for that.  Then I started asking what the suggested options were. That’s when I realized I had picked a delicious choice because many of the places I went to with good bars would have the four roses as a choice. After a while when asked what I wanted the drink made with I would specifically ask for that.  Then every so often i would get a “good choice” reply.  It was nice that something i liked made me sound like i knew what i was talking about.  I really do not know what I am talking about.

Somewhere along the way in my old-fashioned drinking experience I was introduced to the maple old-fashioned. It was super delicious. It basically replaces the simple syrup,  sugar, and water of a regular old-fashioned and replaces it with maple syrup. It was a simple Google search or in my case duck duck go search and I had the ingredients and how to make the drink. It was significantly easier to prepare and almost more delicious.

I thought I found a new goto drink that i could make at home.  Side Cars are good and easier than a regular old fashioned however if i do it the way i like it with the sugar on the glass it gets messy and takes a little longer.  To have an easier option would be great.  I made a few of the maple old fashioned at home. In the same general time frame I was waking up with migraines now and again. That’s rare for me. I was curious what the trigger was. After a little while I thought the trigger might have been the Maple old-fashioned. It is a lot of sugar. Some foods can be trigger so I got really scared.  Migraines are not something I mess around with so that stopped my buying or mixing this cocktail cold.

That didn’t stop me from making or buying regular old-fashioned. I just make them less often since they are a pain to do.  When we got to to London I didn’t have the same ingredients to make the original ones I liked the cube sugar that M had bought so I at the time thought stupidly to roll the dice and had M get some maple syrup. After the first attempt i was ok.  So i tried them again.  I was still ok.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could drink them and be okay. No trigger made me very happy so I was back on making these delicious beverages.

This brings me to what inspired me to write what turned into this very long post. I had a finite supply of Four Roses.  A big positive of London vs New York is you can go anywhere and get liquor.  The local market we use has.  Getting a good selection of higher end liquor is more of a challenge.  Some suggestions given to me did not pan out.  I turned to Amazon almost just to check for funzies.  Turned out they had what i wanted.  Amazon had a decent selection so I not only got the Four Roses I wanted I now have a new goto place to order any nicer stuff i may want to buy.

Next up for me is finding a new cocktail to master.

That Story Where I Write A lot About Tea Kettles

by

Since way before I met her M has had an old-school metal tea kettle. She uses it to heat up tea and hot water for her coffee funnel. It’s as basic a solution as you can get. It also works surprisingly well. In the past year or so I’ve started to use it to heat water for my French press.

The thing with boiling water on a stove is that it can take a few minutes. I never thought anything of it. It was just how long it took to heat water. When we got to England we needed to heat water for coffee. I can’t remember if we brought our kettle in our luggage and the stove didn’t work. Or we simply did not have our kettle. In any event our stove was not working when we first moved in. We needed coffee. That meant we needed to buy something.

I knew about existence of electric kettles. I even remember my friend “A” who came from England to the US talking about how bad they were in the states. At the time I didn’t quite understand what he was complaining about. American electric kettles if I recall take around the same amount of time to make hot water then boiling it on a stove. If I’m wrong on that that is my recollection. I don’t really have direct knowledge on it. Going into this situation however that was what I was thinking. Electric kettles are slow.

I made one of our several trips to the local Sainsbury’s those first few days and picked up a cheap electric kettle. Once I got home I set it up and started to make enough water for 2 cups of coffee. I remember turning on the kettle and preparing to go do something while it heated the water. I got distracted talking to M for a moment. By the time I got back to realizing what I wanted to do the kettle clicked off indicating the water was done. At the time I thought something was wrong with it because it took maybe 1 to 2 minutes at most. I poured the water into the filter and sure enough it was the perfect temperature.

For what I am told the high-power quick teakettle is thanks to a more powerful power grid in England. I know everyone talks about the fact that the US is 110v and England is 220v however to see it in action was pretty interesting.

The electric kettle was so effective that M even agreed to get rid of her vintage stovetop one. That was a major development in our house.

The lesson here (if there is a lesson to learn) is even if someone explain something to you sometimes it doesn’t fully click until you experience it yourself.