In The Market

This past Saturday morning we went to the Borough Market. This is an open air market located just south of London Bridge, which has food stalls featuring delights from around Europe. Our goal was to pick up various foodstuffs for dinner, and we made out like bandits. We started with prosciutto di Parma, which was actually di Parma! We also got a nice rustic loaf of bread, a beautifully creamy fresh mozzarella, a decent tomato (considering the season), some apricots, and some great olives from Turkey. We picked up wine on the way home and had dinner sorted.

This is the second time that we've gone, and both times it has been very crowded. It seems to have a mix of brits and foreigners, but I am not sure how often Londoners themselves go there. The fancier fare was priced high, though the produce stalls that fringe it are more reasonable. There are many smaller markets around the city as well, so as we are setting into our new neighborhood we'll have to seek some out.

In the afternoon, we made our way to Ikea for a very different experience. We were testing out and pricing beds, primarily. Since ours is over 15 years old, we thought we may take the move as a chance to get a new one. Sizes are all different here, of course, and I suspect that I will miss the three inches in length. We also took a look at some options for closets (our place has no built-in ones which is not uncommon here) and kitchen work stations/islands. Our kitchen is nice and open, but lacking a bit of counter space so this would give us a touch more storage and prep space.

While there, I also picked up a small knife set. Our good knives are on the boat and the ones at the temp place are so dull they cut by erosion. So dull, in fact, that a one pound fifty knife set is noticeably better. There were signs posted that you need to be 21 to buy knives at this store, presumably due to UK rules. Drink at 16, chop at 21. Whatever, UK.

Pipsqueak and Pipsqueak

This past Thursday we went out for dinner (as we do about half the time these days) for burgers. The burgers ended up being great, but the highlight was the beverage selection. I usually read the beer menu by the descriptions, so when Mary announced "Are you getting a dead pony?" I had to go back and check the names. She ultimately had to get a cider, because it was Pipsqueak brand (and that, if you didn't know, is the name of one of our cats.) Both beer and cider were very good.

The real pipsqueak, meanwhile, has little spells where he has some trouble adjusting. We think that his main issue is the lack of space. In our Chicago place, he was able to run around like a madman and could sprint from one end to the other and back. Because of the size and layout of the temp apartment, there really aren't long runways for him. Instead, he has taken to totally spazzing out on two square feet of space. Now in reality, he did this some in Chicago too, but in such tight quarters it's much more obvious. His newest behavior is hanging out in a pillow fortress of solitude. As part of our move to London, The Firm provided us with temporary housing. Finding a place that allowed our little darlings was a bit of a challenge. When they ultimately did, a rather large deposit was required. Having not rented for a while, having the place be furnished, and not knowing how anal UK landlords are we live in a state of constant pet-monitoring vigilance. Unless we are sitting on it, the sofa cushions are all up. Also, we cover all arms and attractively scratchable bits with throw pillows, sweatshirts, or less destructible blankets. It's not the most attractive setup, but such is the life of the pet owner. Recently, one of the cushions of the sofa shifted enough to allow pip to get behind. He then when through a spazmo stage where he jumped in and out of this space a dozen times in five minutes, and magically he had created a workable hiding space! He may be dumb, but he's dumb like a fox.

Strange Things Are Afoot At the Circle-K

One thing that we are working on adjusting to is the absence of large grocery stores in our area of London. The main chain in the city is Tesco, and they are everywhere, sort of. You see, there are tiers of Tesco.

Everywhere you go, you see a Tesco Express. These have a little bit more than what a 7-eleven might have in the US, though not by much. They have 1-2 brands of the basics, with a focus on convenience foods. They do have a surprisingly decent fresh bakery section, which I assume that is brought in throughout the day. They have a very small selection of produce. They have one brand of litter, non-clumping.

A step up from the express is the Tesco Metro. These are less common, and bigger. They have a larger produce area, which has what must be the basics for the area. We were surprised to find no cooking greens at all (no chard, no kale) at ours, but they did have some exotic-looking-to-me stuff (rapini, some Asian ingredients I did not recognize.) They also have more basic ingredients, though those are mixed in with a large number of convenience items still. More brand selection starts rearing its head here: There were two brands of litter, both non-clumping.

I am told that if you venture outside the city that you might encounter a vanilla Tesco, or even that mythical beast the Tesco Superstore. We have not been to either of these just yet, though we have gone to a Waitrose which seems to be larger than a metro but smaller than what I would expect from a full-sized store. The Waitrose is apparently both fancy and schmancy, based on people's reactions to my saying that we had shopped there. It did have much more of a selection than our local Tescos, and you could tell it was aiming for higher end. It has fancier convenience foods (frozen pizzas with all kinds of exotic ingredients, for example) and a decent brand selection. Waitrose, finally, had clumping litter (though only store brand.)

A curious side-effect of doing our shopping at this series of ever growing, but never large, stores is that we are having some troubles acclimating to the grocery culture. For example, we were at the Tesco Metro, looking for chicken stock. This is a pretty common ingredient in the US, and something that we use in many, many dishes (probably more than half.) We had looked at the express and had no luck. Then we went to the Metro and started searching through the aisles. We got well past where we would find it in the US, and still had no luck. I eventually went back and asked a worker, but it wasn't clear he knew what I was talking about. He pointed out some cans of chicken gravy, and I stumbled my way from there to bullion cubes, which were close enough. The real problem with being in these small stores though, is this central conundrum: Does this item not exist in the UK, or does this item not exist in this store? In a larger supermarket, I could more accurately make that judgement, but with this series of smaller stores it's much harder to know if I should hold on to hope or adjust my expectations from life.

Update! Since starting the draft of this post, we made it out to a Tesco Superstore. I have apparently become more acclimated to local custom than I realized, because when we walked in I actually gasped aloud, "So big! So much stuff!" This fella was larger than a normal US grocery, and had home and office goods as well. What was odd (and probably representative of the culture) is that while the store was much larger and had many more items, it didn't necessarily have more brand variety for each individual item. We did verify that they did not have cans of chicken stock, so that's just not a thing. Oddly they did not have clumping cat litter, so we apparently need to aim for a middle-sized store for that. Very odd.

Four Hundred and Thirty Four Square Feet of Love

We are pretty well settled into the temporary apartment now, and have even started to establish a workday routine. We knew when we decided to come here that we would be making do with less space, and this apartment is definitely testing the limits of that theory. It's four hundred and thirty four square feet, and we are attempting to make use of every inch. We actually do feel that were it not for the cats, we could probably be pretty comfortable here. With the cats, however, somebody is always stepping on somebody.

The unit is well laid out for its size. It has a decent-sized bedroom, surprisingly reasonably sized bathroom, and a small kitchen which is open to a small living room.

The bedroom has a double bed, a dresser, and a built-in closet. We have managed to fill every drawer and hanger quite easily. I do feel like it's enough space, though just enough. The bed is technically longer than I am tall, but more often than not I do find my feet hanging off. Such is the life of a tall person. The real challenge comes when both cats decide they want to be on the bed. They tend to prefer Mary's side, and when they are both there it leaves an absurdly small amount of room for her. Eventually they take the hint with all the kicking and make there way elsewhere.

The living room has a small couch, coffee table, and television. The TV has pretty limited choices, which is actually fine. We have been spending our time figuring out the new realities, so we're not wanting for things to do.

The kitchen is smallish, but well laid out and very modern. Using it is like cooking in a spaceship. All of the appliances use icons instead of words. This makes sense in Europe, since many languages need to be supported, but also makes doing anything in the kitchen an adventure. We also have an induction range ("cooker" or "hob" in the local lingo) which can burn stuff in record time. We are gradually getting used to it, and have actually cooked several meals at home since we have been here. We have also successfully run the dishwasher, cooked a frozen pizza in the oven, and mostly successfully ran the washer/dryer combo (we think we may have washed twice, then dried once, but whatever works.)

We are definitely aiming for a bit more space in the longer-term rental, though time will tell how much more we get -- we want a fairly short commute, and budget hangs over all. We are checking out a few more neighborhoods this weekend, and then next week hope to start the hunt in earnest.

The Adventure Begins

We have landed and are mostly settled into the temporary apartment!

The travel day went about as smoothly as can be expected. We were doing cleaning tasks and packing until about ten minutes before the taxi picked us up. I had thought that this might keep us from stressing about the travels, but it did backfire a bit and cause my wife to double stress. Live and learn.

Living Room Chicago

Over the weekend the cats started to notice that something serious was up, and that there may be more to the boxes than just a cat playground. As more and more things got packed up, they became increasingly suspicious. After the movers, things got serious. There is nothing quite as forlorn as an anxious cat sitting by the one thing left in the condo (in this case, a box of garbage bags.)

We arranged for a mini-van to pick us up and bring us to the airport, and even with that we were a bit tightly packed. In retrospect, we really should have pared things down a little more than we did for luggage. We ended up with five checked bags plus the two cats, and while some of what we brought was probably a bit extraneous we did want to make sure that the temp place felt to some extent like home.

The cat check-in process was easy, if lengthy. It took about 30 minutes (the cab meter running the entire time), mostly of waiting for stuff to happen. Because that process had been so ill-documented and our understanding of it had changed so many times, I was worried until the very end of it that they might find something off in the papers and send us packing. Thankfully they did not, and our darlings were off to their own big adventure.

The flight itself was smooth, and largely empty. We took a red-eye flight (the only one that cats are allowed on) so we were able to spread out a bit for napping. We never sleep overly well on planes, but we at least managed a bit of a doze. We also watched Pitch Perfect, the existence of which is a running gag with us for boring reasons. It was surprisingly decent. I have adopted Anna Kendrick, so I was happy it didn't stink.

Living Room London

From Heathrow, we arranged another mini-van to take us and our increasingly absurd-seeming amount of luggage to Animal Reception Centre (the spelling theirs, not mine.) This is where the cats cleared customs, and while still at Heathrow managed to be a fifteen minute ride. Big airport. The lobby at the Reception Centre had a half dozen couches and a few vending machines, which we grew to know quite well. The cats took about four and a half hours to clear, three and a half of which we spent in that room waiting. We struck up a conversation with a man waiting on his dog after a trip to Florida whose anger with American TV we are still joking about.

The cab ride into London was actually a bit sobering. Heathrow is well outside of the city, and on the opposite side from where our apartment is. Additionally there are many fewer highways than in the US, so much of the driving was local. The city isn't exactly on a grid system, so there were two or three dozen turns involved in getting from point A to B. This is actually true of most of the European cities we have come into by cab, but it never fails to terrify me with the prospect that we will eventually need to navigate them on our own. Add to that the fact that this is home for a bit, and I will admit to finally feeling a little bit of "What have we done?"

We arrived at the apartment in mid-afternoon and were met by the agent with keys. This is good, as I realized as we approached that we hadn't specifically arranged anything in advance. The place is a smallish one bedroom, but we have managed to get unpacked into the space. The cats are still a bit unsure of it, but seem to be slowly adjusting. Especially to the bit under the sofa. We've located a nearby grocery and done some dry-run walks to work, and are adjusting fairly well ourselves. We wanted adventure? We got it.

Lassie Goes to the Moon

When we tell people that we are moving to London, one of the first things they ask is, "What are you doing with the cats?" While there was a very brief time when we asked each other this same question, it soon became clear that we would be bringing them along. In part, they are part of our family and part of our life, and in part we wouldn't wish them on others. I am half kidding.

The process of getting them legal to travel is called the Pet Passport program. While it's theoretically less involved than the human process, the need for strict timing on certain things makes it seem more complex. It also seems to be poorly understood, certainly by us. Our understanding of the process has changed four times in the past two days.

The actual process is this:

1. You need to get a ISO compliant microchip implanted in each cat, turning them into unstoppable cyborg killing machines.
2. At least 22 days after the chip is implanted, the cats need to get rabies boosters.
3. No more than 10 days before the date of departure, you need to get normal checkups for each cat.
4. You now need to take the rabies forms, the forms from the checkups, and a special NEW form to the USDA Vet who is open from 8:00 am until 1:00 pm, weekdays only, 30 miles away from home.
5. Pack up the cats, we're moving!

This process in some ways highlights the weird possession/living being dichotomy of pets. There is nothing like having to document the "replacement value" of a loved one to make you feel like you have enslaved a race of (mostly) benevolent furry beings for your own amusement.

There are definitely a few absurdities in which our furry slaves are getting the last laugh. For starters, their plane tickets cost more than ours by a material amount. They are also going to take 3-4 hours to clear customs once we arrive, thus prolonging the process even more. Finally, the airlines have requirements on the style and size of the carrier. Those requirements are absurd. Our carriers are sized for medium-sized dogs and are 28" x 20.5" x 21.5". For reference, that's about 13 times the volume of the larger of the two cats. Prepare the villa indeed.

Math

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have re-discovered the joy of math. I have been using Project Euler to refresh and improve my Perl knowledge to help with my new role at work and have worked my way through a few dozen of the problems. I am not ashamed to admit that I am finding it quite fascinating, and very much enjoying it.

The problems cover a fairly wide range, from some combinatorics issues (counting paths in a grid, finding permutations) to number theory (factorization, many problems related to primes.) Thus far they have been fairly easily defined and haven't required any crazy math (i.e. calculus.) That said, as the problems have gotten more complex I have found myself doing some wikipedia research into the underlying concepts. This is great, since I have been interested in number theory (and numerical analysis) for a while but never actually found a reason to dig into it much. I am a huge nerd. He said in a post on a blog about programming about math.

As I have worked through these, I have definitely gotten better at Perl. I still don't love a lot of the choices they made but at least I am learning how to use the more advanced concepts. I've built complex data structures with references (god forbid a language provide multidimensional arrays without making you go through flaming hoops) and even built my first Perl object, which handles arithmetic on arbitrarily large integers. Perl's objects are weird, and carry through the general frat party abandon of the rest of the language. There are no access levels (private, protected) and a lot of the fundamentals of OO seem to exist purely by convention. It's very odd, and very Perl.

Once you solve a problem, a forum is unlocked in which you can discuss that problem. It's common for folks to post their solutions there, and looking over some of the designs can be very enlightening. For every awful brute force approach or esoteric language I have never hear of, there are some very clever analyses that can really expand your knowledge. It also strikes me how often folks 'cheat' in their implementations. For example, if a problem has you summing one hundred fifty-digit numbers and you use a library function that does it in one line, what's the point? Since I am in this at least in part to dig into the math, it just feels like cheating at solitaire to me. I suppose everyone is in it for something different.

While I may not make it through all 409 (and growing!) problems, I do think I will keep going for a bit. After all, I have to finish my sweet sieve of Eratosthenes that can dynamically grow when larger numbers are requested.