A year of adventure

We are completing an important personal milestone - one year in this country. The clock has been ticking fast and we have settled down pretty well. It's time to pause and take stock of the year.

We have come a long way from the day we decided to move out of Boston. We adopted a new country as our home, encountered a new culture, found new jobs, travelled a bit, bought cars, bought a house. Along the way we learnt valuable lessons in life, a few of which I am listing below:

• A return ticket can be cheaper than a one way ticket.
• Comprehensive car insurance can be cheaper than simple third party (collision) insurance.
• Costco is not necessarily the cheapest place around.
• Six inches of snow can bring down a country for six days.
• You can be driving for ten years, but can still fail a driving test.
• And finally my personal favorite: You can qualify for a mortgage, but you can still be a credit risk for a bank current (checking) account.

As you grow older, you tend to cling on to familiar things. You are surprised less often and tend to stop processing information. This whole moving experience has been one big adventure with lots of little surprises in store. Here is to more of these surprises!

The first vote

I follow politics quite religiously just like any average desi guy. I have lived in three different countries - India, US and now UK - but I have never voted in an election (school and college elections do not count). Until today that is.

This unique record of not voting is purely due to my nomadic lifestyle. I went to college in India at age 17, away from home. I think there was one national election and one state election in those four years. I had to go home to vote and since I did not take this right seriously, I must have skipped the travel.

Then I ended up in US for eleven years. I was on a visa there, so I could not vote. Quite a few number of elections were conducted in India. But it is just hard to include elections into the twenty other criteria used to time a trip to India. So I kept following Indian (and US) politics, but never voted in those prime youth years.

When we moved to UK last year, I learnt to my pleasant surprise that wife and I eligible to vote in UK parliamentary and council elections - by virtue of us being on a valid visa in UK and being citizens of a Commonwealth country (I should admit that this is the first time that being part of the Commonwealth turned out to be useful). This allowance seems rather generous - after all no other Commonwealth country, not the least India, would let UK citizens living there to vote. But who am I question this?

So wife and I filled out a form to register to vote in January. There happens to be an additional benefit to being in the electoral register - apparently it improves your credit history. Since we moved here just after the parliamentary elections in 2010, we have to wait five years to cast the big vote.

Fortunately, we get a chance today. In addition to the not-so-interesting council elections, we get to participate in the big referendum - the first one in UK since 1945 - the Alternative Vote referendum. In a nutshell, this is a referendum about whether to let people specify their preferences among all the candidates and use it to choose someone with at least 50% preference. The "No to AV" campaign, lead by the PM, has cleverly turned this into a referendum on the unpopular deputy PM, who is being blamed for everything from high petrol prices to the bad British weather. So going by the opinion polls, it looks like the current system is going to continue.

Never mind I am not electing a PM today. Never mind this is a one sided election. Nothing will stop me from heading to the polling booth tonight. I am sure you won't find someone walking out of the polling booth with a smile bigger than mine.

A licence to drive

I still can't believe it. I laugh to myself and sometimes aloud, out of sheer happiness that I passed my driving test and got my driving licence here. Let me tell you the story.

With a US (or any foreign) driving licence, you can drive in UK for upto a year. If you have a licence from a EU country, you can simply exchange it for a UK one, without needing to take the test. Since we moved here in the end of May 2010, wife and I should get our licenses before end of May. Since we both drive to work and my wife needs to drop off our son to the nursery, not getting it in time will just complicate our lives.

So we started our quest to obtain driving privileges in earnest last July. The first step is to apply for a provisional licence. The next step is to pass the written test, which was a cakewalk. The last step is to take the driving test. We took our time and started with driving lessons in January. After an initial assessment, my driving instructor told me to take 10 1-hour classes before I can take the test. Wife was given the same number from her instructor. That may seem like a lot of lessons for someone who has driven more than ten years in US. Believe me, it is not. To understand that, you need to understand the driving test here and some road rules peculiar to UK.

I vaguely remember my driving test in California in 2000. I didn't have any car driving experience before, but still passed it in my first attempt after taking a few driving lessons. I found the UK one much much tougher. The test is for about 40 minutes and consists of one of four manoeuvres (parallel parking, reversing into a parking spot, three point turn and reverse around a corner), possibly an emergency stop and 10 minutes of independent driving (where you have to follow a series of directions given in advance). 40 minutes itself is a long time for a test, considering you will be just driving around the town and no motorway (highway) driving. One serious mistake or three minor mistakes of the same kind will result in a fail. It is just a long and tough test, that feels like it was designed to make people fail. No wonder the pass rate for the test is just 44%.

Just take one of the manoeuvres - parallel parking. In the US, if you manage to park your car behind another one without hitting a curb, you are fine. Even hitting the curb may not mean you failed. Here, you have to do all these:

• Carefully pull over next to the other car.
• Check your blind spots, your rear and side mirrors and sidewalks around you. If you miss any spot, you fail.
• If you see any car or pedestrian anywhere near you, just wait. If you move, you fail
• Reverse slowly straight back.
• Before you turn into the curb, stop and check your right blindspot. if you don't do this, you fail.
• Now turn into the curb and straighten, without hitting the curb.
• You don't need to park directly behind the other car. You could leave one or two car lengths, but the examiner may not like this.
• At any point during this, if a car or pedestrian shows up on the road, stop and allow them to pass before continuing. If you don't stop, it's a fail.

This just feels a lot, but wife and I mastered all these after few lessons. But we could be plain unlucky and end up on a busy road during the test and fail to stop for someone. For a new driver, this is going to be much harder. Mind you, we haven't even gotten to roundabouts, the cornerstone of UK driving pleasure. For regular turns, you have to follow a MSM (check your Mirrors, Signal, Manoeuvre) routine. For roundabouts, you have to follow a MSPSL (check your Mirrors, Signal, Position the car on the correct lane, adjust Speed, Look for traffic on the roundabout). You should neither be too fast nor should you be too slow and hesitant in the roundabouts. I have to admit that till I started taking the driving lessons, I happily drove for six months without knowing the roundabout rules and getting honked one too many times.

Coming back to my driving test, I failed the first time. I drove confidently, made only a few minor mistakes. But I turned into a road which felt wide and was not sure whether it was the normal 30 mph zone or 40. I drove hesitantly and saw a 40 signboard at some distance and started accelerating to 40. Apparently it was 30 zone and the 40 zone started only after the signboard. So, I failed. Wife took the test a week after. I wasn't sure what to wish for - if she passes, I am going to hear it for the rest of my life. She wasn't very confident before the test, but somehow got her confidence as soon as the test started and passed it making very few minor mistakes. I have been getting valuable driving advice since then and don't think it's going to stop anytime soon.

I had to wait for a month to get another appointment. This time it was on a Saturday at 8.40AM, which is good since the traffic is light. I wasn't very confident, made more minor mistakes. It did not help that the examiner kept leaning and staring at my dash more than five times and then marked something on his sheet. When he had me drive into the test centre in about 32 minutes, which is less than the usual test time, I thought I was done for. Fortunately, I had not done a major mistake and he announced that I passed. Much to my relief.

To round off the story, we hear our insurance premiums are going up BECAUSE we have gotten UK licence. Insurance companies conveniently forget our long foreign driving history once we get a UK licence. We are treated just like any new UK driver. So much for being a better driver.

The new Odyssey

I have been largely silent for the past month. It doesn't help if we take turns falling sick. Our boy first got chicken pox, wife got it a week later and then I got it two days after that. It's kind of surprising that kids and adults get chicken pox in the UK. It is common in India and rare in US. Wife and I both got chicken pox as kids in India, but still we got it here - maybe a different kind of virus here. Anyways, we are all fine now.

I briefly mentioned in one of my posts before that I will be taking up a new job in February. I found a job in Reading. At 17 miles drive from home, which should be much better than the 1.5 hour one way commute to London I was doing before. My initial plan was to take public transportation for the first month or so, see how it goes and maybe then get a car. The public transportation option turned out to be a bad idea - I had a 10 minute walk to the train station, take a 24 minute train to Reading, then take a 15-20 minute bus to the business park where my office is located. My commute ended up being at least one hour each way, which is not terrible by UK standards, but worse than I had anticipated. At £180 a month for the train season ticket and bus pass, this was not cheap either. Getting a car was the highest priority.

Then we had to decide what car to get. Initially I was thinking that we would get a small four door car (superminis as they are called here). Having a Ford car already and being happy with it, I had settled on a new Ford Fiesta (a bit smaller than Corolla in the US), which has got great reviews. But then wife came up with the argument that the family car - Ford Fusion - is already five years old and will need to be replaced in 2-3 years time since it is too old for a family car. So why not buy a bigger family car now and I drive the Fusion we have? This way we can get away with buying just one car. That sounded like a good idea and we started researching for a big car, which would have a third row and seat seven people if required. We then embarked on looking first-hand at our various options.

Car dealerships must be the most customer-unfriendly business in the UK. They close at 6 on a weekday. Saturdays are better, but are open practically only for a few hours on Sundays. Plus, they don't seem to be interested in selling cars, since they don't show any interest in the customer.

• We first called a Vauxhall dealer to see a Vauxhall Zafira who asked us to come down immediately. After going there, we were asked whether we have an appointment. Since we did not have one, we were asked to come back later for a test drive. After some talking, we were reluctantly shown a car which I took for a drive. The Zafira was cheap, but the reliability ratings were bad, so we moved on.
• We took a look at a Volkswagen Touran. The salesman had a showroom model only and asked us to come back later to test drive another car. He did not show much enthusiasm and the Touran seemed to more expensive than others, so we moved on.
• Peugeot 5008 was another option. The salesman was really nice and we drove an almost new car, which we liked. But Citroen's Grand C4 Picasso, our last candidate, was very much like this and was little cheaper with better financing options, so we moved on.
• Citroen Grand C4 Picasso was our last option. Initially, we could not find a dealer nearby who had a car for test drive. One of them asked to come after few days and when I went, I was given a three year old car to drive, which was not very pleasant. Another dealership, which was 40 miles away, said he had what we are looking for. He asked us to come down so that he can give us a really good deal. When we went there, he had no clue what we wanted, did not even have a showroom model, and gave a really old car to test drive. This topped everything else! On top of it, he was so rude and did not even looked like he was sorry. We finally found some other dealer in the same group, test drove a car and thought we liked it.

I called around a few Citroen dealers to get a price quote and they all ended up being about the same. We decided to buy from the dealer who showed us the car, paid a deposit and waited for a couple of weeks for the delivery.

I find it hard to not compare our car buying experience in US. When we bought our Odyssey minivan there, I got an email quote through Edmunds.com from all the dealers around. With this we got a fair idea of the prices and called the biggest dealer nearby who gave us a quote which was $1200 cheaper than the next best. Without even setting a foot out, we knew where we were going to buy. We went to the dealership lot, picked out a colour from there and got the car in less than a week. US dealers are supposed to be aggressive, but our experience was different. UK dealers seem to be exactly the opposite.

Wife has been driving the new car. With narrow streets and tiny parking spots, it is not exactly a great experience, but the car itself is great. Somehow wife handles it better than I do with regards to parking. It is smaller than the Odyssey we had, but seems as good.

The vacation that was

As we were home on Saturday watching and digesting all the news about Egypt, we realized we were safe, but won't be going anywhere for our fifth anniversary. I took a picture of the suitcases that were packed before unpacking them. I was starting a new job after a week, so I did not have anything to do. It was a little depressing.

Wife joked that there were only three countries we could go to - India, Egypt and UK. But we had visited India just two months ago, Egypt is ruled out and there is nowhere to go in UK at this time of year. If only UK was part of the Schengen agreement. Then, without us realizing it, we were trying to find a place to go at short notice. There were three conditions to be met:

• It has to be a warm place, since we had packed for warm weather.
• The vacation should cost approximately what our Egypt trip would have cost.
• They should let us in without requiring a visa.

I stumbled on a site http://www.visahq.co.uk/visas.php where I could check at the visa requirements for all the countries for an Indian national residing in UK.
There were a few islands in the Caribbean, Maldives, Mauritius and then there was Thailand.

We went to local branches of two tour companies and asked them to prepare a package for us with these constraints. Apparently, it was an unusual request, but the lady at one of the places put together a 6 day tour package for Thailand, with two nights in Hua Hin, a beach resort and three nights in Bangkok. We will leave Monday and come back Sunday. We were a little hesitant about it because of the long flight (10 hours onward and 13 hours return) even though they were direct flights, but nothing was coming up for Caribbean. So we decided to book it.

We picked up a couple of travel books on Bangkok from the library and headed home. The package included flight, hotel stay and transfers between airport and hotels. We had to plan our activities there. Wife spent an hour reading those books and came up with an approximate itinerary. The next day we stopped at the tour company to pick up the tickets, bought a couple of things and we were all set.


Thailand turned out to be a great vacation - with a good mix of relaxing at the beach and visiting tourist attractions in Bangkok. The highlights included:

• Stay at Hyatt Regency Hua Hin, with its ultra friendly staff, picturesque location and relaxed people.
• A drive through the Thai countryside and a short hike by a waterfall.
• A visit to an animal park and a short trek on elephant.
• Visits to Bangkok's famous Buddhist temples and the royal palace.
• A trip to floating market near Bangkok where you are taken on a boat in a canal with shops lined up on both sides.
• Tasting Thai street food, jackfruit, papaya and drinking lots of coconut water.

We were back to London by Sunday evening and were greeted with cold and light drizzle. Felt a little happy that we did not spend an entire week complaining how it could have been.

The vacation that wasn't

Political turmoil in Egypt has finally come to an end. Hundreds of thousands of people on the street. Situation was very volatile. The president has finally resigned and the army has taken over. We could have been right there in the middle of it all. Thankfully we were not.

Of all the places we could have gone to for our fifth anniversary, we had picked Egypt. We were supposed to land on Cairo exactly four days after it all started, when you don't know how it will all pan out. Of course we did not know this two months ago when we actually planned the trip. Dreaming of the pyramids, the mummies, the old temples, a cruise in the Nile, delicious middle eastern food and warm weather, we had booked an eight day vacation in Egypt through a tour company. Borrowed the Lonely Planet Guide on Egypt from the library and read all about the places we were going to see. Packed all our clothes and ready to leave on Saturday 29 Jan.

Then the reports started trickling in. The demonstrations started on Tuesday. "Not a big deal, these things happen all the time" I thought. They continued on Wednesday. A friend texted me to enquire if we are still going. "Yes, of course" I thought. Feeling a little bit queasy, called the tour company, who assured me things are just fine in Egypt. I blamed it all on the 24 hour news channels and their sensationalism and went on with my life.

Thursday was relatively calm, but on Friday all hell broke loose. Things looked rather bleak on TV. The tour company still planned to go ahead with it. Wife was not very sure. I called our bank with whom we had the travel insurance to find out if there is any way to get the money back. Unsurprisingly political turmoil is not covered by the insurance. If the tour company cancels the tour, they are liable to give us the money back. "That explains it all" I thought. But still the British Foreign Office's travel advisory did not stop travel to Egypt. For me, that's a strong enough reason to go. If the Americans and Brits are so cool, why does a desi bother?

The few friends we talked to all were against us going ahead. Family was worried and they were calling and texting us. Wife and I had a long discussion on Friday night. Wife argued that if things take a turn for the worse, we will be stuck in the hotel for days or weeks before we can get out. Plus there will be thugs on the street trying to make the most of the situation and foreigners are an easy target. There is a slim chance that it will all die down and things will be back to normal in a couple of days and we will look like idiots with all our packed suitcases laughing at us. But that ain't going to happen. She convinced me and we made the call not to go.

As we were watching TV, curfew was announced all over Egypt and the Foreign office announced not to travel to Egypt. That's great news! There is no way the tour company can go ahead with the tour. We talked to them the next day and they offered to refund our money, which we gladly accepted.

It's been two weeks since and things have just calmed down. The protesters have won and there is a new government out there. In hindsight, I think I should have been more ready to swallow the loss and decide not to go much much earlier. That's fine - it's just one more lesson learnt. Dumb as I am, I've got friends and family who care and a wise, far sighted wife who will not let it happen. As for Egypt, that has to wait for another anniversary.

Money matters

When I meet someone new here in a social setting and tell them that I moved to England recently after living in US for more than ten years, here is how the typical conversation goes:

New person: (puzzled expression)
New person: (pauses for a few seconds)
New person: So... hmmmm.... how do you like it here compared to US?
I: Oh.. it's very much like US. Except for the bad weather and things being more expensive here.

Then we get stuck in the standard ritual of comparing the cost of living in both the countries. It's funny how once we start talking about money matters, we don't go back to the general comparison. Yes, I truly believe our life has not changed much. Yes, the weather is bad here. Yes, things are more expensive.

It should be a well-known fact that UK, being a tiny country and thickly populated, is a more a expensive place to live than US - even for someone who lived in the expensive north east (Boston suburb). I can quote a ton of stuff that cost more in one breath: clothes, furniture, houses, train tickets, hotel rooms, petrol, cars, car insurance, toys, electronics, restaurants, movie tickets. A general rule of UK pricing seems to be to find the price in US in $s and replace it with £s. So, a $9 movie ticket costs £9. This applies to most of the things in my list above except fuel, which costs $3 per gallon in US and £4.75 here. If only they did the salaries this way!

No, this blog entry is not dedicated to (just) complaining about the cost of living here. Instead, I wanted to draw up a list of things that cost less in UK (however small the list may be). Just like most information on this blog, this is highly unscientific since I am making this list from my own experiences and household expenses, so it may not apply to everyone. OK, here we go:

Nursery (daycare): We pay about £900 a month for our son for a full time nursery (that is five days a week, upto 10 hours a day). He is typically there for 8.5 hours and during this time he gets breakfast, a snack, lunch and tea. Nappies and wipes are taken care of. The nursery has got excellent facilities like toys and playground. The student - teacher ratio is about 3:1 most of the days. Sometimes there are as many teachers as children. The teachers are very friendly and don't seem to be in a hurry to head home at 5. He loves it so much that he refuses to leave in the evening when his mommy picks him up in the evening. This is part of Bright Horizons chain in US. He just happened to go to one in US and had very similar experience, where we paid about $2200 per month. That's a huge difference!

Utilities: I have talked about this here and here but let me say it again. Mobile phone plans are cheap - I pay £15 a month for 600 minutes and unlimited landline calls for my SIM-only plan, when something similar would cost me at least $40 a month in US. Broadband, TV and phone costs me a total of £70 here, when it would cost about $120 in US. If I had just broadband and phone, the savings will be even better - £22 against $70. Gas and electricity comes to £80 a month on average whereas we used to pay close to $200 a month for an almost similar sized home in US. Calls to India cost 1p a minute through Lycatalk, where we paid 2¢ a minute through Reliance in US.

Groceries: When we lived in US, we used to buy our groceries from Shaw's and Stop and Shop, till we discovered Costco. Costco was much cheaper than those stores, but you tend to buy in bulk and things you may not need. To make a reasonable comparison, you need to compare a supermarket like Tesco here with Shaw's. I logged onto peapod.com, Shaw's online groceries site and compared the prices with Tesco.com. A gallon of whole milk costs about £1.66 (after a discount, which they seem to have always), compared to about $3.50. One banana is £0.16, compared to $0.49. 1 kg of Gala apples is £1.71, compared to $2.9 (need to buy a 3lb bag for this cheap price). And so on. I understand there are certain grocery stuff can be cheaper in US, but overall, our monthly grocery bill used to be $600-$700 (blame Costco), now it is about £300.

Car maintenance: We used to have a 2005 Toyota Corolla which required oil change every 3-4 months or so. We used to take it to a Toyota dealer for service and ended up spending about $300-$400 at least twice a year - most of it on Toyota recommended service. For someone with limited knowledge on car maintenance, I used to simply pay up. We have a 2006 Ford Fusion here. Service intervals are yearly here and the last owner seems to have spent about £200 on his last service. The key difference is the less number of trips to the dealer, which reflects on the final bill.

There are few other minor things that are cheaper here. Books in amazon.co.uk definitely belong there. New hardcover fiction releases can be had for £5-7 when it would cost $12-15 in US. Driving lessons are £21 here and costs about $45 there.

As I digest everything I have written, I realize that it is not uniformly bad here. As with many things in life, you win some and you lose some. That's the way it has been for us with this move too!