Tomorrow will be the Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere. One of the things that means everywhere North of the equator is longer days. But here in England, the days are longer than one might think. For example, as I’m writing this, the time is 10:10pm and the sky is still light. Below is a picture I took last week with my camera phone at 10:10pm.
Look at that! Incredible the amount of light on the horizon. Tomorrow it will be even more so.
Oh, in addition to staying light longer, the sun also rises earlier. I’d have to look it up, but we sunrise has to be about 5am this time of year. Now, one disadvantage is it gets dark sooner in the winter. For example, it is full dark (no light visible in the sky) by 4pm in the winter time and it doesn’t get light until about 8am. Oh, in case you are wondering, we live at 51 degrees north. That is 10 degrees shy of the 61 for Anchorage, Alaska but 13 higher than Washington DC and 4 higher than Seattle’s 47.
Ok…this might not be a big deal to any of you out there, but I wanted to write about it.
Have a look at this graph:
What is it? That is a screenshot of the WAN bandwidth going through our strongvpn router set-up. What does this let us do? It makes any device connected to this router look like it is in the US. But, for the past few months, we’ve been fighting slow speeds…really slow speeds. HOWEVER, yesterday, I made some changes and, once the internet settled down, it looks like the problem is resolved. We went from getting < 1Mbit/sec to this. And look how constant it is….no big bursts…no slowdowns…just plain old good data transfer. Now this is pretty good considering that we get about 8Mbit/sec off the VPN.
What’s the big deal you ask? Well, we went with Virgin Media (and are paying them 30 quid per month instead of 7.50 with Sky) because they were the only ones who would offer us unlimited unshaped internet where we live. This is what I’m paying for…not the performance we were getting. Hopefully it stays!
[Update 2012-06-19 19:08:27] Ran a speed test this evening. Here are the results:
After Cyndi’s trip to the Phantom of the Opera, I took her to dinner. She wanted to go somewhere different and local. I suggested this BBQ place I had eaten at before. She was up for it so we started walking. After some confusion where it was (and some wandering), we found it. Here it is: Bodean’s BBQ in SOHO (on Google +)
Cyndi wanted to go see The Phantom of the Opera in London. I told her to get the tickets and we’d go. Well, we went and she had a great time. I had an ok time…there were holes in the play that I wish would have been filled in. I liked Wicked better….. After, we had dinner at the best BBQ in London.
[Updated 2012-12-26 14:34:31] Some of the links didn’t work. I updated them.
I’ve been places where water restrictions were put in place in the US. I’ve lived places with limited fresh water. I understand that a 10 inch deficit of rain can’t get made up for in a single 10 inch deluge. But this is the wettest drought I have ever been in.
A hosepipe ban went into effect back in March. You can find another article on the 2012 drought here. We had 2 really dry hot weeks around then, but it has rained a good 75% of the days since those two weeks. Here is a picture of some street flooding:
Well, if you are American, you’ll say it is “My Country Tis of Thee.” If you are British (or Canadian, Australian, etc…) you’ll say it is “God save the Queen“. Oh, and if you are English, it is your national anthem. I hadn’t thought much of it (because you don’t hear it all that often) but we’ve heard it quite often recently with the kickoff of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.
Over the weekend, I had some work to do in Germany. I decided to drive so that Cyndi and the kids could come with me. But, one advantage to driving was getting to drive on the autobahn. I’ve always wanted to do it…man, it was great. Here’s a few pictures related to that:
Entering Germany
End of the 130 kph speed limit. Unlimited allowed!
Spring has Sprung….finally. Back in March, the weather got really nice for about 2 weeks but then it turned cold and rainy. But yesterday, it started to warm up. I think that today it will continue.
Yesterday, I opened a can of Skyline Chili, made spaghetti, sliced an onion, and had skyline. It was good. Not quite as good as being there, but it was good.
If you’ve never been to one, you should–can’t believe I’m saying this–head to Ohio and have some. I’d recommend the 4 way with onions (and don’t forget the hot sauce).
This morning, while on the way to work, I saw a truck. Not just any truck mind you, but a truck that looked like it carried fuel. As I got closer, I saw it was a fire truck. I snapped this picture with the intent of blogging about this later today.
In my mind, this truck epitomises what I’m going to write about. Look at the truck and imagine seeing it from a distance. What is the job of the truck? By its general shape, I first guessed that it was a fuel truck (don’t ask me why I thought a fuel truck would be parked along the road in a residential section of town). But then as I got closer, I saw the words FIRE on the front. Obviously, the truck is meant to carry water so a fire can be put out. But it doesn’t look like it. It looks like a truck one might use to start a fire. :^)
This is where much of the stress of living overseas–or for that matter just moving to a different town–comes from. Things that look like one thing turn out to be something different. And if you go looking for something, you may not find it because it doesn’t look like you expect.
This brings me to something important: after moving over 21 times and living overseas for more than 5 years (as of 2012), moving is moving is moving. Within the US you move and have to learn things: where the hospital is, where the store is, what place has the cheapest gas, how to live without Skyline Chilli in a place where they’ve never heard of it (I know…can you imagine a place like that). You just simply have to adjust. Moving overseas is the same.
Before you say something like”but you live in a country where they speak English” let me remind you that we spend 2.5 years in Serbia where they didn’t. Sure, that added a bit of stress, but, in general, the skills I learned moving 21+ times in the US helped me. They also helped me help Cyndi.
This leads me to the best book I’ve ever read about moving abroad: The Art of Crossing Cultures by Craig Storti. In this book, Storti points out several things….my point being one of them. Sure, there will be some extra stress brought on by what I mentioned above; however, once I remind myself that this isn’t America and things will be different, I’m good to go.
Storti also talks about other things. I may write about that in the future. If I do, this post will have a link to the new article.
