Saturday yoga

In my month of being sporty, I am trying out a yoga class. Having never done it, a class is starting at the church hall literally one minute from my front door, so no excuses really. It's being done by a young lady who recently qualified as a yoga instructor, so at a substantial discount from other local options. As I'm only giving it a trial run, the bottom tier pricing structure works just fine for me. As well, I sometimes find that someone who is just starting to build up their business is more enthusiastic and committed than someone who is maybe tired and jaded of the work. So we'll see...

A week's worth of dancing

Sunday - an 'adult taster' day at a local dance school. 2.7 miles away, I walked there, not the nicest walk at it was leaving town along a main thoroughfare that runs out of sidewalks. Then it was 6 classes of 45 minutes each (broken up by breaks and lunch). Then I walked home the 2.7 miles. While two of the classes were ok, it doesn't suit my needs so well as the classes that interest me are on the weeknights when the walk is too dark and dangerous.

Tuesday - swing dance class here in Essex, a 10 minute walk away, through a well populated area and onto the university campus (read: safe). It's probably the most fun I've had at something where I went on my own no knowing anyone. Everyone was quite pleasant and it was some intense cardio at times, good fun. They go on Easter break next week and then the week after, classes start at the beginning for...the Charleston! I shall return.

On speaking multiple languages

Some interesting articles just out from the BBC, for the language wonks amongst us:

1. How do you become fluent in 11 languages? - A 20 year old who does quite a good job in the video; I appreciate his optimism about meeting new people.

2. The cult of the hyperpolyglot - About a fellow who speaks 18 languages.

'So what enables hyperpolyglots to seemingly pick up a new language at the push of a button?

Erard says it is hard to explain, but whatever an individual's biographical reasons are, he believes there is something that distinguishes hyperpolyglots neurologically.

"They have a neurological hardware that responds to the world, that's fed by the world, that is suited to a pattern that is recognition-heavy, sound-heavy and memory-heavy - that is very structured, and also very sociable.'

The article also includes this line, but I'm not sure I believe it: 'Easiest language for native English speakers to learn is said to be Dutch.'

Time for some language study

If you've read me the past few years, you know that language courses (and education in general) are my weakness areas. Even in Germany, where I didn't like the sound of the language, I still fell into the trap.

The past few years, I've been distracted with other things: the UK driver's test, law coursework, and my work permit paperwork. Finally, some free time, it's time for language study again!

I have an Excel with various options and my requirements to rate them against.
Here's my short list of languages:

german
dutch
spanish
portuguese
polish
lithuanian
french
british sign language
italian

You may notice, I'm taking it easy and aiming for the continent languages. I love my Asia colleagues to death but I'm awful at tonal languages like Chinese.

And my criteria for judging:

ability to find a native teacher in the UK
ability for native practice in the uk
future location for living
ability to move towards fluency
worth of learning, when locals can speak english instead
current knowledge level
enjoyment of the language

For background, my levels are the following:

-I've tested out at German B1

-I have an undergraduate degree in Spanish. My fluency 10+ years on? I can lead business meetings and fully get around as a tourist amidst local dialects. I'm not going to improve that one until I live there.

-Polish: A1

Thoughts? Anything I'm missing?

The snow in my corner of Essex

We had the most delightful snow, Sat night into Sunday. It started around 22.00 and continued on heavily into the morning. It was the first snow of winter in my region.

Slocombe the cat was curious but decided not to venture out onto the roof terrace:

I decided to venture to the park, with my snowshoes as we had 4-5 inches. The last time I had the opportunity to use my snowshoes was in Germany, in Feb 2008. We've had a few UK snowstorms since I've arrived, but never on a weekend. Fortunately the weather predictions were good so I had done all of my food shopping on Saturday so to be able to fully enjoy Sunday.

It was good packing snow on the roof terrace, so I made a snowman. We're supposed to have above freezing drizzle tomorrow, so we'll see how long he lasts.

I was a little surprised on Saturday night when I called home to the US; my relatives had not heard about our 'deep freeze' in Europe, or the snow that has been raging across the continent. Usually they keep an eye out for news over here, so it seems that it did not get much coverage over there on this go round.

Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK

Jan 27th marks the official commemoration, with activities being held across the country tonight on the 26th due to the Jewish Sabbath tomorrow.

I wrote about my experiences attending a similar event while in Germany a few years ago.

Tonight's programme was organised by a local council, together with the local Jewish council. It was two hours in length and reservations were required with a strict start time. It was not highly publicised around here, but I left a reservation request yesterday in the odd chance that I could get in, fortunately, as I was only one and there was a cancellation, I was accepted today.

It was a full programme with multiple speakers:

• an introduction and background on the formation of the event, with partnership between government and the local Jewish organisation
• a view of the world today, and where we've come since last year's event
• the main speaker: an Auschwitz survivor who came to the UK when he was 16, he was the only one left in his family. He mentioned, the children were being sent away at the end of the war, if they wanted to go, as he had no reason to go back to Romania, he left. Another boy in the village went to find his brother but came back too late and missed the ship to the UK. The next ship that left went to the US, so he finally caught up with the two brothers after 50 years.
• a musical selection, playing pieces written by Holocaust victims
• a candle lighting ceremony
• closing remarks

I found this evening interesting on a few points:

1. There were only a handful of teenagers, perhaps five. There were no young people like at the similar German event. The teenagers were obviously the grandchildren of someone who was attending. I was a bit out of place, there was no one from my age range (30-40). I'd estimate 90% of the people were late 60's-70's, with the remainder immediately above or below that range.

2. I found it interesting, there was a big mention of 'current day Holocausts', Rwanda was mentioned a few times, along with Sudan and there were some posters at the entrance on the same topic. Slightly different than similar events that I attended in the US or the one in Germany where modern day events maybe received a one line acknowledgement. Then tonight, I read this piece from a few years ago on the BBC, and it started to make more sense, this emphasis.

3. An older woman sat down next to me and starting chatting. During the conversation she starting asking me if there is a large Jewish population locally, then I realised, the assumption was that I was there because I was Jewish, not necessarily because it was a community event. I stopped on the way out to look at some of the items in the display cases (an American flag caught my eye), and a local councillor stopped to chat with me and I mentioned not previously having a chance to see all of these lovely items, and yes it was a wonderful programme, etc. and he offered that I'm always welcome to visit when council is in session although it can be quite dry. He then starts to tell me about some history show they had on last night in anticipation of the commemoration today and asks if I've seen it?

H: 'No sorry, I have no television.'

Councillor: Ah, of course you wouldn't, I should have known that!

H: (Puzzled. My American accent usually causes all sorts of cultural thoughts in the heads of others, so I usually just roll with it.)

Councillor: Growing up, we lived near a Jewish family, I always liked them, and on and on.

So I then made the connection that he's thinking because I don't watch TV I'm Jewish. I then immediately thought of the Amish who don't watch TV. Thankfully, someone came over to chat with him at that point, because I now had the Amish stuck in my head and was having information overload trying to sort out all of these thoughts.

All in all, it was a well run programme with around 100 in attendance.

Happy New Year

from my corner of Essex. Slocombe the cat and I are staying in tonight, while I wear off the jetlag of returning to the UK from the US.

My renewed passport

Like any other expat, I have a myriad of dates in my head and papers to keep and regulations to review. I mentioned previously that my first UK work permit is soon up for renewal. I need to get a new passport before renewing my work permit, else my work permit will then be limited by the passport expiration date in 2013.

To do for November: get a new passport (done)


As a UK resident, I was hoping to renew my US passport when I went home for the holidays or on one of my longer work trips to the US. However, the guidance says that one must renew a passport from one's residence, even if that is overseas. For me, that meant sending my documents to London, where they were then forwarded to the US.

I had been wondering about the new 'place of issue' in the passport. I was suspecting it would be Philly as a major passport processing hub and convenient for the shipment of documents from London. I guessed wrong, however:

How odd. I'll be curious to see if my pass now gets a second glance from US passport controls. My previous pass was issued in San Fran and prior to that, Philly.

Next up: Assembling the UK work permit paperwork for January.

Happy Halloween from Slocombe the Cat

From inside the expat suitcase - my US Goodwill frugal imports

On the recent US trip home, I mentioned about doing some shopping. First, for the expat food...

Here in the UK, we are not able to get so many options when it comes to Brownies or chocolate chip cookies. Even at the large Tesco supermarkets, there will usually only be one brownie mix (Betty Crocker, standard), and one type of chocolate chip for cookies in my corner of Essex.

If you've read me for a long while, you know that deserts are not my strong point; I don't really like sweets so I have a difficult time to put together something from scratch as I don't know how it's supposed to take at the end. I do know that my tolerance of sweet things is lower than most others, so something that I would enjoy at the end probably wouldn't generally be enjoyable to most. ;-)

New Friend Ian and I started a trend to take desert when we are invited to dinner. It's made even more special when the recipient finds out that the mix has been imported and is not available in the UK. As a result, we have the following from the supermarket:

I'm not much of a fan of eating our concoctions in the end, although I'll usually try them to have an idea of the taste. Therefore, I'm usually purchasing based on the photo on the box. Especially interesting to me are Betty's Supreme bars on the bottom right, sort of a combination of a chocolate chip cookie with a brownie.

On the top right are my Nature Valley Sweet and Salty Almond and Cashew bars. When I was in Dubai I tried these as I have never seen them before and found them to be quite pleasant. When I came back to the UK they were no where to be found. When I was last in the US I spotted them, however, and each time I bring back a few boxes. I find them useful to have in my backpack in the event that work unexpectedly goes late or I'm out and about.

And what caused all the weight in the suitcases?
--17 canning jars from Goodwill!
Those suckers are quite heavy. Last year, when I went to pickle my peppers, I was suprised by the lack of larger jars here in the UK. Then I figured out that the market is heavily geared toward smaller items like jams and chutneys. I had a few options such as importing them from France, but even used ones on ebay were pricey. Then I stumbled across the motherload at .49 and .99 US cents each, in America's heartland. Wrapped carefully in newspaper and clothing, every last one of them survived the journey. I also found lids at the Goodwill as well, but I'll need to get a few more of those next year. Now at least I'll have a good start for next year.

I also found this vintage American scale at Goodwill for a princely sum of 3.99. Slocombe insists on getting into most of my photos, here she is checking it out, along with some of the canning jars:


PS - to all the Germany bloggers enjoying the meetup in Cologne, hope it was a good trip.

From the United lounge in Chicago

After two weeks of work in the midwest, I'm on the way back. Fortunately, I'm flying business on the company's dime, so I get two free checked bags, up to 50 pounds each. My suitcases are not overly large, but they are stuffed to the gills, with one of them clocking in at 49.5 pounds and the other at 35.

While I'm winging my way back back over the ocean, you can ponder...
what did Heather buy to fill those suitcases?

Coming over, I was under 10 and 20 pounds on each, respectively, but a day of Sunday shopping caused this chaos.

A hint: my total spend was below 100 USD.

More from the apple winery

As mentioned yesterday, we went to an apple winery here in the Midwest. It was a great weekend to visit as the harvest was at its peak. At this particular small farm, we were able to walk amongst the trees to see it:

We were a diverse cultural group, one Canadian, one German, me from the US and one work colleague from Asia. The Asia colleague was taking an extensive number of close up photos of the apples on the trees, as opposed to the rest of us who were taking more landscape shots of all of the trees like above. He explained, in his highly urbanized 'concrete jungle' country, he's never seen an apple growing on a tree before:

The weekend in America's Heartland

Being from the East Coast and having lived on the West Coast, I'm now supplementing that geographic knowledge with occasional work trips to the Midwest (home of benevolent company J's headquarters). There is a large group of us in town for two weeks for a work project, which required us to be here for a weekend. Many groups are doing many different things; some are heading to the shopping malls, others are taking flights to cities such as New York City, but our small group of colleagues decided to stay local.

Our 'local' colleague (a Canadian who is based here full-time) put together an itinerary for us that included an 'art walk', a local diner, and apple picking. However, we quickly discovered that 80 degree temps on a weekend here brought out the entire state for apple picking, so we went off the beaten path. We looked for 'local attractions' in the GPS and found a winery 30 minutes away and off we went. It was the best decision as it was small and absolutely delightful:

It was a tiny place that specializes in apples, but they also had pumpkins for sale, along with plenty of apples. As we don't really have pumpkins in the UK (even though Halloween seems to be imported more heavily each year), I was most pleased to be able to take this photo.

As it was a working winery, they offered 5 free tastes of their wares, then it was possible to buy there the various local items then. They had all sorts of apple wines, liquers and ciders as well as different varieties of non-alcoholic apple juices for tasting. All in all a most pleasant Saturday.

Yep, back in the US

Behind this road (where I'm on the sidewalk), there are two highways in the background. Then again, I should be grateful for sidewalks, as much of middle America doesn't have them.

I did get some odd looks this AM when I went out of the hotel at 07.15. I knew there were stores, restaurants and such around a mile away, so I waited until it was clearly light outside and off I went. On the entire trip (with sidewalks), 1.1 mile out and then 1.1 back, I passed one other person on the sidewalk, and he was on a bicycle but avoiding the busy roads.

Because it's America though, there are plenty of Halloween decorations already out as well as for sale. I am pleased to give you an advance preview of Slocombe's Halloween costume this year:
I imagine she'll be as unimpressed with this one as she was with last year's. Currently, she's enjoying her vacation at the House of Treats in the UK where she gets freshly roasted chicken every night, while missing me immensely, of course.

Still here

Since fall ('autumn' in UK terminology) has come, I've been slightly swamped with activities, each of which probably deserves its own blog post. Some short highlights from the past weeks:

• I was in the US for work


• I foraged for berries, and then had to decide what to do with 10 pounds of them


• I foraged for acorns, chestnuts and walnuts


• I had 2 more sets of crashpadder guests


• I acknowledged 2.5 years in the UK

Today at the English seaside

One of the things I was looking forward to when moving to the UK from Germany was the ability to be able to easily take a day trip to somewhere along the sea. My former corner of NRW Germany was very convenient for the mountains, but hours away from the seaside.

It was predicted to be 25 today, and will probably be the hottest weekend day until next spring/summer. So I went out early and had time to enjoy the early sun before the masses arrived:

Essex has plenty of beaches and coastline, with much of it reachable by train, which is what I did today. This photo is of Clacton-on-Sea, it's a mere 90 minutes on a direct train line from London's Liverpool Street station.

More Germany: the Turkish market

A few years ago, I spoke about supermarket shopping in Germany, and mentioned that as a vegetarian, I did a lot of shopping at the two Turkish markets in the tiny town of B. While I was there last week, I took a photo of the only one still existing in B:

Now is such a great time to shop in DE as all the local produce is available, such as tomatoes from DE (rather than Holland!).

Above is the fruit side, and here is the vegetable section:

It was very warm in my corner of Germany last week, it felt more like Spain, so the umbrellas were all up to protect the produce from the sun.

Back from a week in Germany

I had a chance to travel to Germany this week for work. It's been announced that Benevolent company J will be moving from the Tiny town of B, so I brought along my camera this week, to capture some images of where I spent so many years.

First though, the trip out of Stansted (STN). I had heard that Airberlin is pulling out of Stansted and expanding at Gatwick. They have already cut down the Dusseldorf route from 3 times a day to 2, and now the only direct cities from STN are DUS, Stuttgart and Muenster Osnabruck. Back in the day when I first arrived, AB occupied 4 or 5 of these counters with a customer service team on-site and automated check-in machines.

Now, they've moved around the corner where they only have 2 counters that are only staffed when their infrequent flights are running and no automated machines or customer service. Of course, I can always switch to German Wings to Cologne, but Company J has a corporate deal with Airberlin; as well I prefer them anyway so I hope they do not disappear completely from STN as it's my closest airport to my corner of Essex.

In case you're wondering where else you can go from STN, here's a photo I took while waiting for the AB counter to open:

Unfortunately, there are no flights to the US, although they've broken into the Asia with budget airline Air Asia. However, from late October, Air Asia as well pulls out from STN and relocates to Gatwick.

Opening the pickled peppers

A while back, in October, I was awash with peppers and decided to jar them up. As the peppers are starting to appear on my plants this year, I'm reminded to eat them to clear out the jars. So how did it go?

Certainly looks ok...no major loss of colour:

Looks ok here too, smells ok:

On taste though, a little too heavy on the vinegar. So they preserved really well, better than Old El Paso version here in the UK that retails for 1.24 GBP a jar, but I need to use them in cooking, so on pizzas, in tomato sauces, etc. where the vinegar will burn off, rather than raw and in a salad. In the past weeks I've been through 4 jars already.

So last year was a learning year, this year will be better. :-)

From the garden this week

With guests coming next weekend, I'm trying to get organized.
Being 4 stories up from the ground, I'd love to know where these fellows originally came from...

And the way they eat my chilli pepper plants, if I could find someone who would eat them, I'd happily hand them over....