Lazy Saturday

Well today was a pretty lazy day. Partly we were up very late last night working on the blog…then I had so much energy I read more of Clinton's book.

Then I did some research on web hosting and things we should do while we're here—Laurie did some calling around to the Embassy to see if there were any 4th festivities—no luck there. They weren't working on the weekend, can you imagine?

We have been trying to meet with the downstairs neighbors for a drink the last few days but we keep missing each other. Today was no exception. At Archie's suggestion, we did go across to meet another neighbor who has a very new baby and a cute 4-5 year old daughter. Very cute. They gave us some suggestions of places for dinner and we headed out to grab a bite. They told us it might be hard to find a place because Saturdays are the night to go out to dinner around here. They invited us to come by soon just to chat.

This was my first time driving on the right side of the road so I figured this might be interesting. Armed with my iPAQ GPS, we were set. We made it out of the very narrow street we are living on just fine and followed the GPS' directions easily to our destination. Parking was a bit hard to find, but we lucked out and found street parking in a very trendy part of downtown Glasgow. Parallel parking from the right was really fun! (Later I got to park in the road where we live which is just big enough for one car to pass in one direction!)

We found the restaurant just fine too. The food was the best we've had since we arrived. I had a steak and “fresh cut potatoes” with baked tomato. Laurie had some delicious salmon. We had a good time and toward the end we got to talking with people at the next table over. Three pretty Sottish women and a Scotsman. My guess is he was gay or just a very lucky guy.

Anyway, when Laurie went to the bathroom they asked me to take a photo and when she got back, we all started talking. They gave us some helpful travel tips about places to see and when to see them. They were really very nice. Turns out two of the women were sisters, the guy and other woman were friends. Before they left the offered us the rest of their bottle of wine, but as we had finished dessert and tea, we thanked them for the offer. I should note that the Scots we've met have been boisterous and these were no exception. They were off to go to clubs and bade us a good time with lots of Scots as kind as them.

We wandered around the pedestrian area near by after dinner and found that Glasgow is quite the party town! There were plenty of dance clubs and people just walking around enjoying the evening. We saw a street performer playing bagpipes which I thought was quite nice. They have a primal tone like a shofar, which is hard to resist.

Glasgow calls itself, Scotland with Style. The people are generally attractive, and there is indeed a lot of style around in everything from buildings to clothing. Nothing is ostentatious or overdone. Like the people, the style is fairly simple, friendly, and practical. By the way, Glasgow is filled with beautiful ironwork throughout the city. No doubt a benefit of their history in such crafts.

Around 12:30 we decided to head back so we can try to get to bed at more or less a reasonable time and not waste the day tomorrow. On the way back we saw more drunk people out having a good time. No one seemed to be particularly bothering anyone else—simply having a good time.

At one point, we saw a couple of girls dressed for clubbing. Somehow they had found a street broom and dust pan and had decided to clean the streets of Glasgow—which they promptly did right in the middle of traffic that was stopped at a red light. That was all in good fun until a bus came by and nearly hit one of them. “All in a good days fun until you get hit by a bus” I always say.

Notable driving tips:

• the lights go from red->yellow->green as well as from green->yellow->red.
• the road markers don't really differentiate lanes going in the same direction from those in the opposite direction. I haven't gained the wisdom of this yet.
• I entered my first roundabout tonight. This takes some getting used to but I can see them as useful.

Old Glasgow

We got up late again today. I assume we'll adjust to the time sometime before we leave. We decided to go back downtown and do a walking tour that we learned about from the tourist office.

But first food. We found a good Indian buffet for lunch before we got started. Glasgow is a very metropolitan city with people from all over the world. This is not a new phenomenon. Scotland has a long history of mixing peoples from all over: the Picts and Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Irish, and Vikings all settled here at one time or another. That mixture seems evident in everything from the names of places to architecture.

The tourist office is a busy place which both provides information on transport of all kinds and sells useful items for visitors like maps and tour books as well as Glasgow/Scottish keepsakes.

The tour included much of the oldest parts of Glasgow



It was a cassette based tour that gave us a nice lay of the land so to speak. It took us to the oldest house in Scotland, several churches, art galleries, "the tech" university, and so on.

We spent almost four hours doing the tour including stopping for a pint at a bar. We got a little lost a few times because the tour tape and accompanying map weren't as clear as we required. For example, several times were meant to retrace our steps back to a previous point before continuing. A couple of times we had to rewind the tape and review the map. Once or twice we must have appeared very lost because a couple of people asked if we needed help and provided us some excellent direction to get us back on course.

My iPAQ's GPS system seems good for driving around, but not as good for walking for two reasons. First, getting signal when on the sidewalk between tall buildings is a challenge. Standing in the street solves that but has its own problems. The second problem is that I don't think the software I have answers the "where is the closest X from where I am now" very well. If you know where you want to go, it will tell you how to get there, but it seems you can't just turn on categories of things (ATMs, restaurants, etc.) which is unfortunate.

After finishing the tour and returning the tapes we went back to Safeway to get some more supplies. Then we took the bus back to the house.

TV

TV here is interesting. Not a lot of Scottish TV--much of it is BBC produced. Random observations:

• Wife Swap is an interesting show. I guess there is already an American version in the works. Funny how there are few BBC channels yet the manage to export so many shows to the US.
  
• How Clean is Your House is also interesting. Two women, Kim and Aggie, come in and, like Queer Eye For the Straight Guy they make comments about how disgusting and silly things are in the victim's&emdash;I mean star's house. We're not just talking about cosmetics. These ladies take samples from the kitchen and toilet and send it to the lap to find out what bacteria and viruses might have moved in. They also give some good cleaning tips and
  
• More American brands advertised on TV than I expected. Breakfast cereals surprised me another was Dannon yogurt. Also, some commercials are for different products, but almost the same script as the US equivalent. Churchil Insurance for example, very similar to Geiko.
  
• Big Brother Also has a US version I think but it is on for hours a day here. You don't just see highlights of their day--you can pretty much watch them sleep. About as interesting as watching paint dry mostly. Amazingly, these people seem confined to the house like prisoners. Seems like cruel and unusual punishment, but they don't seem to mind.
  
• Closed captioning: doesn't seem to exist here. I noticed in several places like the news and on the safety film on the plane they use the old fashion method of having an interpreter in the corner of the screen. American TV hasn't done much of that in 20 years.
  
• I miss TiVo®!
  

On the subject of TV, I saw a BBC report that talked about Britain's Terrorism Act which seems to be very similar in nature to our Patriot Act. A recent study showed that police are generally stopping everyone more often, but particularly blacks and Asians.

‘‘stop and search’’ operations under the anti-terrorism law have dramatically increased, with searches on Asians witnessing a massive rise of 302 per cent. ‘‘stop and searches’’ under the terror legislation more than doubled in 2002-03 compared to the previous year. A racial breakdown showed the number of such checks on ethnic minorities increased significantly more than those on White people, the report said. Overall, Black people were six times more likely to be stopped and searched than Whites,

In the previous year, they were five times more likely to be stopped and searched. Asians suffered the highest increases in stop and searches under the terrorism act powers, rising 302 per cent, from 744 in 2001-02 to 2,989 in 2002-03.

In the same period, stop and searches under the terrorism act rose 118 per cent, from 6,629 to 14,429 for white people, and by 230 per cent, from 529 to 1,745 for black people. According to the report, police in some areas had reduced their use of the tactic in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence report, which claimed the operation was being used disproportionately against ethnic minorities.

Blair's press secretary, in response to the report said, "Our commitment to race equality was as strong as ever. The imbalance illustrated by the figures today was unacceptable. That was why the Home Office had decided to set up a new unit - the Stop and Search Action Team - which would look at how the powers were used. It would also work with police forces to address the concerns around this policy."

The issues here are the same problems we face at home. What fantastic opportunities for finding common solutions to these problems.

I started reading Clinton's book today. It is interesting so far, and an easy read.

We should so something!

We got up late since we haven't adjusted to the time difference. Okay, I would stay up late anyway so that's no excuse.

Did I mention the house we are in is quirky? A few random examples.

• Many doors have no knobs
  
• For the first day we couldn't figure out how to get hot water or heat. They work just fine, but you have to turn them on manually.
  
• The house is under some construction. Archie is adding living space in what was an attic. Very neat! But it is a work in progress.
  
• There is a washer, but no dryer so things dry on a clothesline in the kitchen (too wet outside to rely on outdoor drying)
  
• We couldn't find the kitchen light for the first day and a half.
  
• The shower next to the master bedroom doesn't seem to work (but the bath works just fine.)
  
• The new upstairs shower works fine, but you have to pull a string on a switch to turn on the heater installed in the shower. (Think of a closet light-switch). The good thing is this provides really good hot water! But only if you know to turn on the switch first. :)
  
• The floors are rustic wood. Very nice, but have a somewhat more unfinished feeling than I'm used to being a spoiled American. They have charm though. The exception is the kitchen--which has the same Pergo flooring we have at home! talk about mixing old and new.
  
• No closets--everything is in freestanding in the kitchen there are really no cabinets or shelves on the walls.
  

Note that in many cases, we are just adjusting and learning how things are done here—the house is really nice and very large.

Even though I intend to get work done while here, we should do something other than sit in the house all day. So we got cleaned up and went downtown via the bus and found a little cafe called, "The Social". Watching people go by was fun. After that, we went to the visitor's bureau and got some brochures and a few books including a couple of brief historical overviews of Scotland. We decided to map out what to do with ourselves a bit so we went to—dare I say, Starbucks. We had a coffee and made some plans. Then, we saw a Borders and picked up some reading for later in the trip. Before we went home, we saw a really big Safeway and we had to get some more food since we had not found a good store near where we are staying. Mind you, we are only about 10 minutes drive from downtown, but still. This was similar to our own Safeway, albeit smaller. Of course some of the brands are different and containers are different. But many are not. Heinz is big here in both restaurants and supermarkets. So are American cereals like Cheerios. It is quite amazing, really. But on the other hand, ever other care in the US is made outsisde of our country. And so it goes. Hard to tell sometimes who influences who.

We were right next to Central Station so we wandered through it a bit. While we were there we got info on how to take the train to Prestwick Airport when we leave to London at the end of the month. Note to self…this is Europe, carry change for bathrooms. :)

With some effort, we found a bus that would take us back home and it dropped us of right at the corner. Yippie!

Spent some time catching up on email and having dinner...also watching British TV. Insights on that tomorrow. ;)

There was no rain today. There were even patches of blue sky.

First day “in country”

We got some much needed sleep. When we got up we had a bite to eat and then went to Queens Park just around the corner. It is fairly big and we enjoyed a fast walk/jog around there. We saw the "Glass House" which featured an arboretum with cactus and a Japanese garden. The whole complex was heated with 6" galvanized pipe which created a giant radiator. Very cool and very hot. The outside temperature was like 55 but inside it was like a desert.

After the park, I started to try to get the computer stuff set up. That turned out to be quite the challenge because the Laceys have a USB DSL modem. So I had to connect the modem to Laurie's laptop because mine has a bad USB port and then her laptop to a router to which, my laptop and the Vonage box are connected. With a little Internet Connection Sharing and Whew! we are all on the same DSL line. What could be easier? (Note, I don't recommend this unless you like significant dorking around. :) FYI for the geeks...it took many hours because of some old software drivers on the USB modem. Once that was fixed and we got the password from the Laceys we were set.

<insert picture>

After that we got some mediocre Afghani food around the corner. Nice looking place, but the food was so-so.

It rained on and off today. The weather is cool and moist. Kind of like Seattle.

Travel Day (continued)

We laded a tad early in London, Heathrow. Just prior to landing, we were told that if we were going on an international flight and your bags were checked through, you didn't have to fill out the form. Since Scotland is another country, we assumed that we didn't need the form.

The signage was odd in several places. For example, we were routed quite a long way around the jet way to a couple of hallways and finally to a courtyard sort of area. Below us were shops, restaurants, etc. and that sounded good since we had time to kill. However getting there was no easy task and there were no signs. We went down an escalator two levels to the wrong area. We had to take stairs back up. I didn't mind too much because we'd been so inactive for 10 hours, but this was kind of silly. Ultimately we found our way to a security check…even though we just came from a plane and weren't leaving the terminal or the secure area. The line was very long, but luckily we weren't in a rush. After security, guess what? We had to go through customs and had to fill out that little form. (Not even as a family—but individually!) Ah the joys of travel. Finally we found our way to the gate and waited. Turns out that just before our scheduled departure, they posted a delay so we grabbed some panini sandwiches in the little restaurant near by. They had mayonnaise, but were amazingly good actually!

Anyway, our flight to Glasgow was about an hour late, but otherwise no problems. When we arrived our bags weren't on the beltway—no worries there was another area for bags that came internationally. Mind you, they hadn't been through customs with us yet. So we found them on the belt and piled them on one of the complimentary carts. (Europe is very civilized about travel carts.) We walked right by three or four people that looked like customs folks but no one wanted to ask us anything or check the bags or match the tags on the bags!

We stopped at the travel desk and got directions from the nice woman there. We bought tickets to the Central Station in Glasgow and took a short cab ride to the house we're staying in near Queens Park just south of downtown on the opposite side of the River Clyde. We were very tied and after we got a tour from our host family's oldest daughter, Marie-Claire. She's delightful and the house is very big and well, quirky in a pleasant way. More on that tomorrow.

Before we settled in, we walked down the road to the Safeway. Yes, Safeway with a twist. It is in a BP gas station. A small market to get some essentials. We wouldn't have known about it, but the cab driver took pitty on us and probably figured we needed some guidance for "emergency" rations. The choices in the market were limited—we got some eggs, juice, milk, fruit, and stuff. Then, back home and got some sleep.

Travel Day!

Well, our travel day has finally arrived. We got up around 9am.  Michael went over to Safeway to get some laundry detergent, batteries for the smoke alarm, a filter for the laundry machine—which Safeway didn’t have.  Well no matter—we had one last filter to put on the machine before we left.

There were lots of other last minute things to do to prepare the house—put the recycles out, and empty the trash in house or at least the third “last time”.  There are perhaps an endless number of things we could have done to prepare that I’m sure we could have filled almost any amount of time doing them.  Not just for the things we’d take with us, or choose to leave behind, but preparing the house and our lives in the US on hold while we are gone as well.

But thankfully there isn’t infinite time to prepare and before we knew it was 12 and Susan was at our place to provide us a ride to SFO for our flight.  First thing is first though, we had time for lunch at Max’s—the same Max’s we went to after our wedding.  We actually hadn’t been back since so this was a nice memory.  We had a nice lunch and good conversation.  We talked about “Fahrenheit 9/11” and Presidential trivia like Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd, then Secretary of War was present at Garfield’s assassination.  Susan and Michael enjoy Presidential trivia and often quiz each other on the Presidents.  (So far we can’t do better than remember about 32 of the 43 through—we’re working on it.

Susan dropped us at the airport and we were off! We had plenty of time which was a good thing because the check-in line was long.  Lucky for us they didn’t seem to check the weight on the bags.  It could be because the guy helping us just got new glasses and he had a hard enough time handling the tickets much less watching the scale. Not to worry, I glanced at the baggage tags and they were addressed correctly. Thankfully our bags made it to Glasgow without incident. That was good as I had brought a bunch of cables, my router, Vonage, some CDs, etc. so I would have been pretty upset if they didn’t make it!

After check in, we went through security. Other than a long line, no problems. We had about 30 minutes before boarding began so we grabbed some water for the flight. (Good advice from my Mother-in-Law about keeping hydrated on long flights!) The guy behind the counter was actually quite nice and told us that our trnasfer flight would be in Terminal 1 same as our SF-> London flight and that we would not go through customers in London. This was different than my recent experience in Amsterdam — but hey, what do I know? ;)

Our seats were good—we had no one behind us and Laurie appreciated being close to the bathroom. Every seatback has its own screen with the usual flight info (outside temperature, speed, estimated arrival time, etc.) Impressive that it was -76F during part of the flight over Greenland! Even though I don’t usually watch movies on planes, I watched Along Came Polly which was kind of cute.

I had also brought my iPAQ along loaded with 450 Mb or so of music which is nice. (It can make a cross-atlantic flight without charging the batteries.)

Final preparations (T minus 12 hours give or take)

We dropped Ben off at his ““spa””. He should have a fantastic time—he has a big yard, a swimming pool, and 5 playmates (not including the two large, amazing parrots.) He’s going to have such a good time; we’re worried he will be disappointed when we come home.

We were up until about 3 am finishing our packing. We had a hard time whittling down our packing. There was also a lot of preparation for our guests, the Lacey family. Since Ben was off on holiday, we had Max there to welcome them.

<insert picture>

Laurie put together a welcome basket for the Laceys as well.

<insert picture>

We set up the exercise room with our Aerobed, there is our room of course, Laurie’s office with a double bed, and the sleeper couch.

With packing complete, time to grab some sleep!