Monthly Archives: September 2015

Abroad, Adventures Abroad

Steel horses and disappointments

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The Kelpies were recommended to me by a colleague as a ‘thing to see in Scotland’. And, I’m so glad we did, this was definitely a highlight of the trip for me. Created by Andy Scott, a pretty famous contemporary sculpture artist, the Kelpies are gigantic horse head sculptures emerging from turning pools along the Forth & Clyde canal. Here’s the fun bits I stole from the Kelpies visitor page (here):

Each of The Kelpies stands up to 30 metres tall and each one weighs over 300 tonnes.

From the artist:

“I wrote of working horses. Of their role in the progress of modern society, as the powerhouses of the early industrial revolution, the tractors of early agriculture and of course, the first source of locomotion for barges on the Forth & Clyde canal, which The Kelpies now inhabit.

…

“I see The Kelpies as a personification of local and national equine history, of the lost industries of Scotland. I also envisage them as a symbol of modern Scotland – proud and majestic, of the people and the land. They are the culmination of cutting edge technology and hand crafted artisanship, created by our country’s leading experts through international partnerships.

You walk up to the Kelpies from a parking lot a fair bit away, you know they’re going to be big, but they keep growing as you get closer until they tower over you in both beautiful and intimidating ways. The sky shows through the steel plates and depending on where you are to the sun you see it blazing through as well (assuming you’re there on a sunny day, which let’s be honest, Scotland isn’t known for).

Now, who isn’t a fan of civic art? I’m all for it, but these guys are just better, they’re about the heritage of their place and they’re beautiful ta’ boot. You can’t top that…

Unless you’re Arria.

Arria is my biggest disappointment of our Scotland trip (well, aside from trying proper haggis, which I really wanted to).

So Arria is another sculpture by the same artist and I hadn’t heard of her before our trip, then, as we’re driving into Scotland, the sun is setting and all of a sudden I look over and there is this gorgeous, graceful sculpture of a woman hands thrown out to her side and she is actually radiating light from the sun setting behind her. It was one of those images that just sticks with you, it, for lack of a cornier word, moves you.

But, we were speeding along a highway and she disappeared behind us way too quickly.

I really wanted to go back and see her up close. I really hope I get to someday.

Here’s a little more about Arria (stolen from here):  Arria “takes the form of a female figure, with two large swooping arcs from the upraised palms of her hands to the hem of her dress. The idea of the arcs comes from the Gaelic name for Cumbernauld, “comar nan allt”, which translates as “the meeting of the waters”.”

The town she is situated above once won an award for being the most dismal place to stay in Scotland, and a part of the idea in commissioning her was to give people some pride in their hometown (the above mentioned Cumbernauld).  Given her position on a hill above a major highway, something like 70,000 people will see her every single day. Not a bad perk for the cost of gas.

More to come.

– a

Abroad, Adventures Abroad

Stratford upon Avon or where Shakespeare may or may not have written some stuff, assuming he wasn’t actually a myth or monkey. Or something.

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I guess I should be more excited about Shakespeare’s home, but I’m not. Maybe because the whole place really does feel very touristy. We visited Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, which is where Shakespeare’s future wife grew up. Shakespeare grew up in a house somewhere a short walk away, he would have traipsed around the whole area laying woo on Ms. Hathaway. Or something like that.

This place was once a Tudor cottage, now it’s a bigger Tudor cottage, since I think the Hathaways’ came into some money after Shakespeare got famous (though maybe not for a related reason) and expanded the house quite a bit. To begin, the gardens were lovely; with an orchard, a small lavender maze, and these interesting sort of giant teepee shaped huts constructed out of vines (Is there a real name for this?). Inside one of them was a speaker system with celebrities reading you Shakespeare sonnets. That was pretty great.

Inside the cottage was kind of trippy. In that the floors and stairs were so uneven you were likely to trip. JK. JDespite being very well preserved, you could definitely tell this was a really old house and that was very cool. The rooms were tight and cramped and the windows were tiny with wavy glass, and yeah, the wood floors were old and way uneven. On the second floor you could see in between the cracks in the floorboards WAY more often than I was comfortable with.

I think my favorite part of the tour might have been finally learning about thatched roofs, which we see all over the place here, but I know nothing about. Here’s the parts I remember, most of them are probably around 5 or more feet thick and when they are replaced they usually only replace the top 2ish feet. Even at that it costs an actually fortune. Like £25,000. Seriously. But, you only have to do it about every 20 years depending on where in England you live. Other bits of note, the Tudor style houses were generally painted white all over, including the beams, unlike we usually think of them here with the white plaster and dark beams. Painting the beams dark is a decorative tradition that only dates back to the Victorian (?) era. Although, I read somewhere else that in parts of England they did paint the beams with tar to protect from the weather, so the black and white contrast may have been inspired by an actual historical precedent.  Although, I read somewhere else that in parts of England they did paint the beams with tar to protect from the weather, so the black and white contrast may have been inspired by an actual historical precedent. The walls in between the wooden frame would have been filled with clay, mud or plaster made with lime mixed with straw (this is called daub) and the tour guide claimed that the expression ‘here’s mud in your eye’ may have originated from the builders having to try not to fling dirt in each other’s faces as they put up the wall from opposing sides of it. Of course, I have no idea if it’s true and google claims a whole bunch of different things on the subject. Still, kind of a fun thought.

More to come.

– a

Adventures Abroad

Mini-England! It’s a miniature of a miniature! Of a miniature!

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Bourton-on-the-Water is in the Cotswolds, an historical and rural part of England that is just a bit North of us, I think. You know you’ve left Oxfordshire (our neck of the woods) when you start to see the golden-y stone buildings outnumbering the brick. It’s actually a really nice change of pace, because as an American, and recently a person trapped in LA, I really miss buildings that were not all the same color (ie. BRICK red).

Also in the Cotswolds: sheep. Sheep in fields. Fields surrounded by waist high stone pile fences. Fields on rolling hills. It’s so scenic, like right out of a BBC miniseries series (probably a few of them actually…) scenic. I’ve now gone through a few villages in the Cotswolds and, yeah, they are pretty much all ridiculously adorable and surrounded by equally charming landscape. Panoramas of idyllic countryside everywhere you look, living there I’m sure it would lose its charm and start reminding me of Tillamook way too quickly, but just visiting is pretty much the definition of delightful.

Bourton-on-the-Water is home to a tiny model village of Bourton-on-the-Water, which is in turn home of a tinier model village of the model village of Bourton-on-the-Water, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, etc. (Well, not really, but there are four layers to this, so yeah, pretty impressive.

We were the first people to arrive at the model village and after walking through a very tall and toothy turnstile (seriously, you’d think they were guarding the crown jewels or something), we came out of hall way to overlook a pretty sizeable village – in miniature! The village complex is pretty big, like about the size of almost a gymnasium and it features the stream which meanders through Bourton-on-the-Water. The individual buildings stand anywhere between waist and almost shoulder level. They are laid out just like the town (kind of the point, I know) and where possible they seem to feature the actual shops that are in the buildings. For instance, the tiny post office features the post office logo and poster about exchange rate prices and postage rates. The churches feature imitation stained glass windows and when you get down close enough to them you can hear the choral/organ music playing inside. Wandering around the little roads and peering into these tiny buildings is definitely a Gulliver’s Travels kind of giant stomping awesome feeling, and the fact that some of the little houses have furniture and curtains and people inside also makes it a tiny bit voyeuristic. I totally loved the whole package. But, most especially pretending the crush things, because who wouldn’t?

The other fantastic part about the model village was a set of mechanical miniature scenes. One of the circus and one of a mint. I loved them both, I love that they were designed and crafted and built and the technology to do so has nothing to do with digital. It’s kind of strange how rare that is in our daily lives and it’s nice every once and awhile to see it. I love my iPad, but this is a tiny working thing that a person built and all of its tiny moving parts make it a whole 3d multi sense perception-al thing. I’m not sure I’m saying that right, but whatever, I know what I mean.

More to come.

– a

everything

Moving to Europe, “oh, the lows, woes, and pros”

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This blog describes my process of moving to England. It is an “un-sugar coated” version including the lows and woes of moving to a foreign country as well as the pros of this marvelous adventure. In it I discuss my aspirations and excitement about moving here as well as describe some of the financial and planning mistakes made along the way – some of which could have been resolved with better knowledge and research. But as luck would have it the tide brought treasures that were received with great appreciation during this incredible journey.

It began as an ambition to see Europe. I visited Vienna a year ago to speak to scientists at the European Geophysical Union (EGU). While I probably should have spent more of my time at this conference I was captivated by the “old world.” I stepped off the underground train in the city center. I walked up to street above and looked around this impressive city center. I was in complete awe of my surroundings. The massive spiraling gothic cathedral was breath taking and in front of me was the main thoroughfare that was once marched by the knights of the crusade over 1000 years ago. My mind was blown, and I wanted more!

As Alaina shared a similar aspiration to travel the world and live in Europe I began applying for jobs in the summer of 2014. Initially, I was going to use my CSU position to work overseas. In hindsight this may have actually been the best option financially since CSU was paying me quite well. However, they were not willing to help me move overseas and I was not interested in having the same employer on my CV for too long.. So, I started applying for jobs overseas. I quickly realized that England would be the best option for work since I could actually read the application forms, IN ENGLISH. Furthermore, there were numerous opportunities in England with institutions leading the field of Atmospheric Science. After a second job interview I was offered a research scientist position at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) with a joint appointment at University of Oxford.  This exciting news made it possible to fulfill this dream!

The first “eye opening” fact to consider was the much smaller salary I would receive in a country with a considerable cost of living. This comparison holds up even compared to expensive LA! However, I was fortunate that RAL assisted us in our move and helped considerably with setting up my immigration process.

At this time, we were living in a tiny house in LA. The house was so small that it could almost fit inside our storage locker that contained all of our stuff. With an abundance of “stuff” the ambition arose to sell as much of it as we could before moving overseas.

The overseas move would involve three major movements with Christmas at the epicenter. Sell our stuff in LA, move to Oregon where I would work remotely to JPL and stay with family over Christmas and the month of January, move to the UK!

 

Phase 1: Getting out of LA!

The first phase involved selling our belongings. Craigslist and yard sales seemed to work well. Los Angeles is certainly a Mecca of yard sales and selling used crap! I am so very pleased with how well we did. I could put the list of sold items on here but it would be several pages long. Here is a taste (our cars, Wii, elliptical, couch, hot tub, PA system, dog trailer, air conditioner, sound bar, desk, reclining ergonomic chair, reel lawn mower, dresser, café lights, microwave, hobby airplane, etc.…). If you subtract the sale of our cars we made $2,540 from household items. If you include total sales, a whopping $10,040! (I kept a very accurate spreadsheet..).

One aspect that just kills me is that we paid our U-Haul storage locker $2,500 to store our crap during the two years we lived in LA. There is a lesson to be learned here, do not use storage lockers. Sell your crap instead before you store it somewhere to never been seen! Storage lockers are a rip-off and I will avoid using them again in the future. While we sold a lot of our belongings we still had an inordinate abundance of things, like, our king bed, book shelves, kitchen island, musical instruments, barbecue, tools, and boxes and boxes of miscellaneous items involving the kitchen, desk, books, and the like that we were either too attached to or unwilling to sell.

In preparing the move to Oregon, we thought the load was manageable. I called a moving company first and they quoted me $1,400 to transport our goods. This was far better than the standard U-Haul ($1,750 + $500 for gas). The optimist in me felt like it was advantageous to go with the movers and save a bunch of money. WRONG! The space they were quoting me was for 450 cubic feet. When they arrived at our house and looked at our stuff they told us we had more like 900 cubic feet. Part of this underestimation was the moving companies fault. They did not properly enquire with me over the phone. And part of it was my fault as I clearly underestimated the amount of boxes we had (20 vs. 80). When they requested $3000 for their services our jaws hit the floor. We had no time at this point to send them away and figure out the U-Haul business so we went with their services, which ended up being poor anyway as they broke some of our art pieces as well as lost parts of our furniture. This was a regrettable disappointment (and yet another lesson learned..) but we were in Oregon before Christmas and Phase 1 was complete. 

 

Phase 2: Enjoying Family Time and Surviving Dog Bites

We arrived in Oregon and had a little more than a month to make the big move. This time would be envisaged with great joy. Being with family and friends, working leisurely with no supervision, and preparing for the adventure of a lifetime! Well, some of these elements were joyous but I had no idea how stressful it would be. This part of the adventure would be more realistically played-out with constant worrying about dog attacks, immigration deadlines, and transportation arrangements for the dogs, and us.

The dog attack was awful. Ruffy got loose and sunk his teeth into (Donita’s Chihuahua) Coco’s neck. The wounds were not immediately obvious. Coco spent days hiding under a chair upstairs and only came out when he was forced – his scared response compounded the emotional distress occurring in the home. Upon washing the area, it became clear it was infected and he needed medical attention. This experience was horrific and I felt awful about what had happened. A part of me really wished we did not have to raise the awful aggressive little dog anymore. I don’t understand how Ruffy can be such a sweet loveable little dog one minute and an aggressive maniac the next.

The Visa application process was also a bit of a disaster. I made a mistake when filing. It turns out that you need to apply for each person separately and not assume that you are applying for a family. This mistake involved additional trips to Portland for fingerprints. As a consequence, we nearly failed to file them in time!

We also learned that Visas are expensive ($1950 per person for a 5 year term visa). While waiting for the Visa, we were getting antsy to buy airfare since we didn’t want to wait till the last second when prices were sky-high, no pun intended. Initially, the idea was for the two of us to fly over with the dogs caged underneath the same plane, stay in dog friendly hotels while we found a house in the UK to live in. This dream was not feasible so instead we decided the best method would be for me to fly over solo, and then Alaina shipped the dogs to me two weeks later after I had sufficient time to find a place to live, and then she flew over. Luckily, this plan worked and it was exactly how it went down.

Before leaving, I learned that you could not lease a place in the UK without seeing it first-hand. Also, you cannot open a bank account without being present. So, all of these things would have to wait until I arrived. With the dogs arriving two weeks after I would arrive the UK, I was presented with a scary deadline to find shelter!

But before we finished Phase 2, we also had a wonderful bon voyage party with our closest friends and family at my home up the Wilson River. My mom organized the whole thing and put up British decorations everywhere. A perfect way to go!

 

Phase 3: Arrived in England!

My first week here was spent in at a shared private residence (AirBnB) in a small village called Radley. My week stay was comfortable and  the woman whom I stayed with was quite helpful in a country that was completely foreign to me. I chose this location because it was right off the main railway heading into Oxford from London and had good bus links to the outside world, which was needed to go house hunting.

One of the first things I did was obtain a bank account. This was critical. Without the account you cannot secure a lease. The only branch that would actually take me was Lloyd’s bank. Other branches like NatWest, Barclays, and HSBC required a week to schedule an appointment and employment verification details. These were not valid options.

I started viewing houses although none were sufficient to house two dogs. I was getting desperate. Most landlords in the UK were not keen on having dogs in their properties. So, I did as anyone would do in times of sheer desperation; call landlords anyway and offer more money! Through a stroke of good fortune a nice lady agreed to allow us to rent her terrace house in a village called Wantage. She liked that I had a permanent position at RAL and requested only a slightly larger amount of quid for the move-in deposit.

The day I visited Wantage, I knew with every fiber in my body that I wanted to live here. I still feel this way after living here for several months. It is the most adorable English style town/village I have ever seen. The tutor style architecture buildings with numerous shops, open-air markets, and pubs make this place a lot of fun. Furthermore, our house is in close proximity to stores so we do not require a vehicle to obtain bare essentials and sustenance. We bought a trolley cart and take it to go grocery shopping twice a week at our local Sainsbury’s and that’s it!

Regarding the financials, the first thing you should know about moving to the UK is that it takes a lot of money. The move here was expensive and we needed every dime, or should I say “pence.” Even with agreed recompense from my employer (which took forever by the way) it required a significant amount of cash in hand to purchase Visas ($3900), plane tickets ($2000, with baggage), rent deposits ($3500), and general expenditures. The general expenditures bit turned out to cost a lot more than I ever expected. Transportation in England is pricey. I was shocked to learn that short bus rides tend to cost about £8 per trip and cross-country rail tickets are on the order of £30-£50 (e.g., a trip into London). This of course is put into perspective by comparing transportation to the cheap rates in LA, which are $3.50 for bus and $16.50 for super shuttle to the airport. God, I can’t believe I’m calling LA cheap! Bottom line is that this is an expensive country, far more than even when LA standards are concerned.

To pay for rent and the deposit we had to transfer money from our US bank account to the UK. Alaina came across a great service called Xoom. This service is better than the poor rates offered by bank wire transfers and other services like Western union. The commission they take on transfers is less than 0.5%. We had the money, as Alaina had just sold the car in the US when I arrived. We had the funds and were set to move in!

 

Phase 4: Living in the UK

After living here for several months I find that I am quite happy. While settling in was painful at times, it was totally worth it. My work environment is great. People are laid back and sociable. I’m connecting and collaborating on international projects. I’m learning more efficient ways to write programs and analyze the abundance of European satellite observation datasets. I have just started at Oxford and will be facilitating student projects and working with the climate modeling community to mesh our satellite observations with global climate models. I will also have numerous opportunities to visit Europe by attending conferences as they arise, like in Sweden (last month), Rome, and Berlin. I cannot express how exciting this is!

In Wantage, Alaina and I have recently discovered English folk music. Every Friday night local artists meet at the “Shoulder of Mutton” a local pub here to play traditional music. The combination of accordion, banjo, harmonica, recorder and Bodhran sounds awesome. I think I want to join in and play the recorder sometime! The people are quite friendly and interested in social engagement. Alaina and I sit in the “snook” as they call it. It is a room with a large table that some people sit in to engage in conversation. As we are the only Americans people are generally interested to strike a conversation with us. We find very few Americans in our area in general. In fact, I think I have only encountered two so far, and that includes Alaina! I can’t wait to see more Americans soon; these of course would be our family and friends. So come visit England and see us!

Abroad, Adventures Abroad, At Home Abroad, everything

Adventuring in our new neck of the woods

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Here are a few snapshots of the fantastic adventures that car having has opened up for us: the Blowing Stone, the Uffington White Horse and Wayland’s Smithy.

From Wikipedia, The Blowing Stone is a giant piece of perforated sandstone, and the legend is as follows:

The stone is capable of producing a booming sound, when anyone with the required skill blows into one of the perforations in a particular way. This was, according to legend, the means whereby King Alfred summoned his Saxon troops, in readiness for the nearby Battle of Ashdown, against the Vikings. This legend reputedly gives rise to the village’s name, ‘King’s stone’, the Lisle suffix being a later addition.

Also, according to legend, a person who is capable of making the blowing stone sound a note that is audible atop Uffington White Horse Hill (where Victorian antiquarians thought King Alfred’s troops had camped) will be a future King of England.

In reality, it is a giant rock in a little fenced outcove directly behind someone’s front garden. It is hilariously anti-climactic to go see, and exactly the kind of small-town tourist trap thing you could possibly want to find in rural England. Matt was brave enough to try blowing into a few of the perforations, but I saw spiders and pretty much decided I didn’t need to defeat the Vikings that badly.

I’ve mentioned the Uffington White Horse on here before (it’s the prehistoric hill figure, carved out of the hilltop to reveal the white chalk that runs under the soil here), but I can now finally say I’ve seen it much closer and, much more spectacularly, the view from around it. The horse is carved very high up on a hill, surrounded by pasture land that overlooks the whole shire, or area we live, or whatever you want to call it. We took the dogs up to see it and walked through the surrounding sheep fields to admire the lovely views. The sheep were super not okay with the dogs, staring at us fervently and even slowly stalking us until we’d look back at them/or face them head on, while the dogs were absolutely thrilled to see the sheep, so that was entertaining to say the least.

Wayland’s Smithy is a Neolithic long barrow and chamber tomb. It is just off the Ridgeway (the oldest road in the world (, I think?) and is a really neat little surprise in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a lot to see, just some stones and some tiny rooms where the bodies used to be, but it does have a feeling history about it, it doesn’t look like anything else I’ve ever seen.

(Also from Wikipedia,) here’s the legend:

Wayland’s Smithy is one of many prehistoric sites associated with Wayland or Wolund, a Germanic smith-god. According to legend, a traveller whose horse has lost a shoe can leave the animal and a silver coin on the capstone at Wayland’s Smithy. When he returns next morning he will find that his horse has been re-shod and the money gone. It is conjectured that the invisible smith may have been linked to this site for many centuries before the Saxons recognized him as Wayland. 

Alright, more to come when I’ve got more time to type, but a break in the rain is calling us to venture out to the market now before we have to walk home in the rain…
Yeah, that’s right. We’re still being good and trying not to drive to run our in town errands unless we must, what’s the point of being within walking distance, if you don’t walk? Go us!