London

The Story of Wonky Weather

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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.

London Mug Mark II is Dead

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On my first trip to London for work in 2012 I was on a mission to get M the one thing she wanted. A mug. The specifications were such that I actually couldn’t find one that meet the criteria until I was at Heathrow on my way home.

About a year or so later T broke that mug after M left it where a toddler could easily grab it. And T totally grabbed it and broke it.

On my next trip to London I went in search for the same mug. I couldn’t find it until I was again at the same cheesy gift shop at Heathrow on the way home. That is how the mug mark II came into our house.

Flash forward to today. M texted me this photo of the broken mug. She wasn’t sure what she did but the mug fell off the table and is now destroyed.

I am torn. I would like to replace the mug (again). I also don’t know if getting a mug like that of NYC instead of London is appropriate now that we live in London and not NY. Either way I am going to have to ask anyone we know visiting to check out the gift shops in Heathrow for this mug.

Underground vs Subway Showdown Finale Etiquette

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London Underground

In the final post about the Underground vs Subway Showdown I compare the people when I look at etiquette on both systems.

I probably have written about this before when living in New York. People can be rude on the subway. Well, maybe not rude but self-centered. It’s easy to say that in any densely populated area you get some percentage of clowns. In New York I would constantly have to walk around someone sitting on stairways. Tying their shoes on a busy stairway. Walking against crowds on stairways or hallways. Then there are the people who walk into a relatively empty train and stop right at the door. The door huggers are likely the same people that won’t move into the middle of the car when it’s super crowded and there’s plenty of room in the middle. It feels like mad Max underground sometimes.

In London I was surprised that people do walk the wrong way and a hallway or on the stairwell. I thought that was a big no-no here. Just like cutting the queu is. Some people do it however it’s not terrible. I will say that in all the stations there are signs and barricades to herd the people in a much better way than I’ve seen in New York. Generally people follow the signs. The only exception is the overpass at the station by my house. For some reason people do not read what it says keep left.

In London pregnant women can get buttons so people know to stand up and give them a seat. I have seen strangers tap people sitting down to make room for ladies with the button. That is a stark contrast to New York when my wife was pregnant she would have to rub her belly or just tell people they needed to get up from the handicap seats because otherwise many people wouldn’t get up.

When I go anywhere with the kids even if my wife and the kids get seats people offer to get up for me to. I almost feel awkward to take it but everyone is pretty friendly. When it is just me in New York everyone was generally equally very friendly. Yet if it was a crowded train the kids would typically get seats only. I am generally impressed with the level of effort people goto to help a family out.

After I wrote this post I came back and had to make updates to it. I  taking the escalator down the platform in Canary wharf to catch the Jubilee line. It was rush-hour and it was crowded. And I saw a large amount of people standing on the platform. Always interesting to me was that everyone was standing in a line by where the door for the train would open. This station is relatively new so there were glass doors between the platform and tracks so you know where the doors will open. People line up on either side of those doors and wait in queue for a train to arrive. I remembered I’ve seen that before at rush hour in that station. That visual alone in my opinion gets London the win. I cannot remember ever seeing such an orderly display of waiting in New York.

As you might’ve guessed the winner here London, easily. I still think New York gets a bad reputation for people being not nice. On the subway there is some validity to that.

Winner

If you’ve read this far you can tell that there’s no contest for me here. My unscientific rating system is the London mass transit system (Tube & DLR for me) is just better. There are some aspects of the New York city transit system that I miss. They just aren’t that compelling enough to come anywhere near swaying the decision. For example I irrationally miss a good express train. Even when the Tube trains I take generally feel like (and i have been told they actually do) they move faster than an express or a local in New York.

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.

Finally Cooling Down

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Sidecar

It was hot (hot for England) at like 27 Celsius today. That is like 80 something in that Fahrenheit system that I used in the US. After the kids were in bed M and i decided to go out to our garden and relax. It was nice i whipped up some cocktails and we read. It was a nice relaxing end to the week.As we were sipping our drinks it started to get windy and cool. We both looked at each other and said it might be time to go inside. Then i looked at my watch and realised it was 9:40 PM. It wasn’t daylight but it isn’t dark. I am still fascinated at how different enough the weather and day/night times are here than NY. By 9:40 PM in NY during any day of the year it would be dark and cold. Here it is light enough that you can still read and it is still cool but not cold outside.

Underground vs Subway Showdown Part 2: Reliability

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I am a tech guy so of course in part one of my Tube vs Subway showdown i was going to talk about Payment systems. In Part 2 I focus on reliability or how bad can a system get. Let’s find out.

The New York City subway is not what most people would call reliable. I remember countless mornings where I would take the local train after dropping the kids at school because the express train was taking as long or longer. On the local I would at least get a seat. Other times I would count 5 to 7 trains in one direction before the train I needed showed up. This was in Penn Station and not some remote location mind you. In many other cases sitting in a tunnel for 30 to 45 minutes with no explanation as to why. Then doing that again the next day. And again a few days later. This was a regular thing when living in Forest Hills. Hopefully for those not living in New York you get the point. The subway is slow, and prone to incidents. How can anyone explain to me why an express train regularly is slower or maybe equal to a local when the express skips 5 stops?

Besides the delays there was the construction. When I lived in Long Island city for 8 to 12 weeks of winter I wouldn’t have a train on the weekend direction. That might not fall under reliability category however it wasn’t available when I wanted it so….. I also know that the underground may be similar in that there are sections that get shutdown for construction. Thankfully for now i have not experienced this.

Local friends in London have said I should be wary of the underground with regards to service and reliability. We were looking for a house in November we had to radically change our plans to get to the airport because one of the underground lines was down. Besides that incident and a few other minor ones I have not had as many issues as in NY. I cannot stress enough how regular the issues were in NY. In London so far the train arrival time boards seem relatively accurate. I just don’t feel like I’m stuck in a tunnel as much on the underground.

One area unreliability that I do have an issue with the underground is strikes. For this arbitrary comparison i will put strikes in the reliability category. Twice so far I’ve been living here.DLR has not been running for a few days due to strikes. I’ve also experienced an underground strike when I was here for business a few years ago. I will say this that the strikes are relatively orderly. They are pretty frequent compared to the New York City subway. The subway on the other hand does not strike very often. When it does it’s terrible. You also don’t know when it will end.

Score another one for the underground. It’s just more reliable. This isn’t even a close one.

That is it for Part 2 of my Underground vs Subway showdown. In Part 3 I talk about all of you people when I complain, um I mean compare the crowds in each system.

Underground vs Subway Showdown Part 1: Take My Money

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While I am still settling into writing routine I figured I would start off with some comparison posts. I know its a bit cliche to do comparisons. I also know people who have moved countries say you shouldn’t really do it if you want to enjoy your new home better however with some things my mind just goes to comparisons. And no comparison between New York and London would be complete I feel without talking about the subway and the Underground. FYI I refer to the Underground a lot in this post. I do that instead of saying the Tube mainly because my Dragon Anywhere dictation had trouble getting Tube correct in all the different contexts I was using. I really mean the Tube and the DLR in my comparison since I use both systems daily.

Payments

The Underground and the subway are in some ways similar and yet are so starkly different. First difference between the systems that stands out for me how you pay. In New York the subway is a flat rate to go anywhere. You can also purchase a daily, weekly, monthly unlimited card. The flat rate of the unlimited cards were pretty awesome. That is where the awesome ends with the Metro Card. You see for those of you that do not live in NY the Metro Card requires you to use a magnetic strip reader that was semi new and cool when introduced in the mid 1990’s. Ah the aggravating memories of having to stand at a turnstile swiping my card 15-20 times before it would work. Or swiping it 15-20 times only to have it say just used when you did not just use it because you were standing there for 5 minutes trying to get the dam card to work. Wow, I just had bad flashbacks about that. That is just two typical issues I had with my Metro Card.. I sum up the Metro Card experience by saying it is 1990s technology that has not aged well. At present there’s only a rough roadmap to replace the system.

The underground on the other hand you pay based on where you are and where you’re going to. I get the reasons for this however in practice it costs me more. Payments on the underground are contactless. I had the oyster card when I visited for moving here. On the last trip or two visiting I realized I could use my iPhone with Apple pay to tap into and out of the system. Since I’ve been living in London I have an Apple watch series 3 and now am able to make payments via my watch.

Head-to-head contactless payments for the Underground wins. Even if it costs a bit more money the Metro card is crap. I had countless issues with it. The simple fact that I can pay for my trip using my watch will win anytime.

In Part 2 of The Underground vs Subway I will ponder why in the world stuff breaks so much on 100+ year old infrastructure.

Always Blame The Tools, OK Seriously Do Not Do That

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I wrote previously about my motivations or lack of motivations on writing.  With all that I wrote being true an added issue was recently writing was just harder to do.  I do a lot of my writing by dictating to Siri.  Previously to that i was using Dragon Anywhere and Dragon Dictate by Nuance to dictate.

Since I write when i have a spare moment that often is when i am away from my computer.  That means I leveraged Siri a lot.  I wrote about why I went with Siri vs Dragon Anywhere.  For a while before i wrote that post I was really not using Dragon on my phone.  Siri was working great so I couldn’t justify the costs.  I am not sure if it is my location (London wireless is as good or better than NY) or issues with the newer IOS versions however Siri isn’t as good as it was when I wrote that post.

Around mid May I decided to sign up for the Dragon Anywhere trial again.  I was able to blast out the bulk of what would be my first blog post really quick.  I was also able to write a detailed journal entry for the day I downloaded the app.  That was enough for me to be happy to pick up the subscription again (for now).  In the end i could have just used the dam dictation software I pay for on my Mac.  It is much less convinenentq than having it on my phone.  It happens to be better to use.  Just not that much better to make me sit down at a computer worth my while.

With the real or perceived obstacle of not being able to dictate out and about removed I am hopeful I can continue my fledgling writing/dictating streak.

A Good Old Fashioned American Diner

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The other day I wrote about “American Food” and trying to get the girls into eating some American staples so they at least have a memory of it as we move to the UK. That topic brought up a few other things I started to wonder about. Most importantly is were can I find or even is it possible to find some foods we love and take for granted in the US? My friend A (lets call him A since he is a security minded person) is from the UK and lives in NY. He has been a huge source of information. Other friends from work who live in the UK have been other sources of info. A has said that there is at least one place i can get a decent bagel. I think he also mentioned a BBQ place too. The Expat group i joined did also discuss good Souther BBQ and what options there were.

But what about the other foods? I am not a huge Indian food fan but I know getting good food in London is no problem. Sushi, sure should be ok. Thai, I am not a huge Thai fan but I have eaten good Thai food in london already so no problem. So what local American items are going to be an issue.

Pizza for sure will be a problem. I am pretty positive i can get Pizza. The issue is how good is it? Lets face it I live in NYC. When i goto my in-laws in the Hudson Valley i am always surprised their pizza is good since its not NYC. When we go to their place in Tampa the pizza not so good. I always heard its the water but who knows. I do know that good Pizza will be a challenge.

Then there is a good old fashioned American Diner. MC and I both love them. Were the menu is a book. The portions are huge. If you order pretty much any mainstay item it will be greasy delicious. I typically get the same thing (most of the time but not always). Some sort of burger and onion rings. I just don’t think we are going to be getting that in London. I envision getting off the plane when we come to America to visit and stopping by somewhere on the way to wherever we are staying in NY. Just to get our grease fix. I may not be far from the truth on that. I hope I am wrong.

Those are the main food genre’s i can think of now. I am sure i will think of more or someone will sadly remind me of one. When i do i will add it to my list. For no particular reason and not for keeping score i plan on periodically writing pro or con posts on life in London. I guess you can consider this a potential entry in the con category however I have to get on the ground and explore first to be sure.

The W Sisters and the Story of The Promised Pony

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When we talk to people about our move many of them ask how we told the girls? Or what do the girls think about the move? The answer is they are super excited. Why you might ask? Because to sweeten the deal on our international move we promised the girls we would get them a pony. We figured we could live on a nice British farm near a village and we could have a pony they could use on the weekends. Not really sure how we can figure that out logistically but we both agreed that the best way to convince them this move was good would be to promise them a pony.

So maybe some of that first paragraph isn’t true. I hope people realize that. That is either my version of click bait or I just thought it was pretty funny. Yeah, I just thought it was pretty funny. What is true about that paragraph is that people ask us those questions. They’re valid very good questions to ask.

I was probably pretty bad parent during this planning of the move in the early stages. I would talk openly to MC about things in front of the girls. They are old enough and they did understand a lot of it. We realize we needed to tell them what was going on when T got upset and thought we were giving away our apartment. We had to explain that we were selling it and that we would be getting a house when we got to London with a backyard. That was something that MC had wanted for years no matter where we lived. The girls were definitely excited to hear that. An added benefit of the house was that we would not need to continue to yell at them all the time when they ran around. Nowadays we do that since our neighbor downstairs does complain now and again if the girls do that.

We did promise the girls other stuff however. Just nothing as crazy as a pony. For almost what feels like two years the girls have been asking for bunkbeds. For most of that time however they’ve been crazy lunatics at bedtime. That means we did not want to get them any sort of vehicle to be able to jump off of when they’re in the room by themselves at night. Since the beginning of the summer I think they’ve been going to bed most nights without any problems so they’ve grown up enough that bunkbeds are a viable option for them. The added benefit of that is we can get a bunk bed and not bring the two top their beds that were once their cribs with us when we move. Both girls are extremely excited over that. The challenge they have is they both want to be on the top bunk. We agreed that they would rotate innate to be determined rotation schedule.

Other things the girls are excited about are the castles that we told them are all over England and Ireland. They are very curious about the princesses that may live in those castles and tried to explain to them that there probably aren’t any. That not change the fact that T will likely look for or ask for them when we go on trips.

For the girls this move is just an idea. When we first told them we said it was a long way away. We didn’t want them to get scared or apprehensive about it. We told him they have Christmas and Hanukkah and A’s birthday to go through before we move. I don’t think the reality is going to start setting in for them until either we start packing the apartment or we actually get to our new house in London.