A busy weekend

Last weekend was a long weekend here - Monday was bank holiday. We had initially decided to drive down somewhere and stay for the weekend. We decided against it and made plans to go to places nearby all the days.

Saturday: I lived in US for 11 years, but still follow cricket online. One main attraction for us in UK is the chance to watch cricket at a stadium. Pakistan is touring England and there was a test match (5 day) going on at Lord's cricket ground, the home of cricket. A friend and I got tickets for the third day through the website Seatwave. It is a fan to fan exchange, so the tickets were a little cheaper - we paid close to £50 per ticket, while Lord's website was selling similar tickets for £80.
It turned out to be a great experience. The ground was full and we had a great view from our seats. It was an interesting day of cricket with Pakistan losing 15 wickets within the day. We experienced English weather in full glory that day. It was nice and sunny in the morning and got a little too warm. Then it got cloudy and little chilly in the afternoon. In the evening there were few showers. After reaching home, I read the story about match fixing.

Wife took the boy and went to a maize maze nearby, along with some colleagues. The maze was a little small - completed in one hour - but she had a good time there.

Sunday: We went to Windsor castle, an official residence of the queen. It is the largest inhabited castle in the world and the oldest in continuous occupation.
The town of Windsor is nice little town and there were some great views from the castle. We saw a doll house and some art collection in the castle. It was an hour drive from our place and we spent close to couple of hours there.

Monday: We went to Cotswolds and then Oxford. Cotswolds area is west of London and has a lot of small villages that still resemble they way they were 500 years ago. We went to Burford, a small town near Oxford, walked around and took pictures. Then we spent some time in Oxford. We visited Christ Church College, one of the oldest and most prestigious colleges in England. We visited its Great Hall (where the Hogwarts dining scenes in Harry Potter movies were shot), a quadrangle and an old cathedral inside the college.

As we do daytime trips, I realize how expensive it is to eat out. On Monday, we got two burgers and onion rings from Burger King and paid £8.50 for that. This was not in an airport or a mall, just a normal place somewhere near a town centre. I think we would have spent less than $8.50 in US for such a meal. We have made it a point to pack some lunch during our day trips. It costs much less and is so much faster. On the contrary, we have noticed that there are more veggie options in the restaurants here than in the US.

Some updates

Driving: I am still getting used to driving, but feeling much more comfortable. Wife drives the car everyday to the nursery and work and she has gotten used to it too. Navigating the roundabouts is still a pain. I am the proud owner of a certificate confirming I passed the theory test for driving licence in UK! It took about two weeks of preparation - reading the "highway code", reading through practice questions, taking a mock online test and finally the test. The interesting part in the test is a "hazard perception" section, which is quite unique to UK. I had to watch a video of real driving conditions, watch out for hazards like a car turning in from a side street or a cyclist cutting in and click on the screen confirming that I perceived the hazard in advance. It seemed a novel idea, but I am not sure whether it tests anything useful in real life.

Grocery shopping experience: One major advantage of a car is the pleasure of buying one week worth of groceries and stuffing it in car trunk without worrying about carrying the bags home. We were previously restricted to a small Sainsbury's nearby and an Indian store accessible through bike. With a car, we could drive couple of miles and go to many different stores. We have tried Tesco, a bigger Sainsbury's and Morrisons. Wife likes Tesco more since she thinks they have a better availability of fruits and veggies. We both agree that the fruits and veggies are better in any of these stores than one can find in US supermarkets like Shaw's or Stop & Shop. We used to frequent a local market called Russo's in the Boston area and loved it. The supermarkets here are almost to that level. We have stopped going to the Car boot sale.

Cycling: With a 2.5 hour commute every day, I hardly get time to workout (don't ask me if I did any better with my 10 minute commute in US). The City of London has recently started a cycle rental scheme where you can rent bicycles from one of their many docking stations, ride around and return to another station anywhere in London. It is a pleasure to ride from Waterloo station to work - I pass through London Eye, cross Westminster Bridge, Big Ben, Parliament house, Buckingham Palace and St. James Park - tourist spots that I myself spent a whole day visiting not too long ago. The hire scheme works out pretty well for short journeys - rentals for 30 minute and less are free. You only have to pay an access fee - either a weekly fee of £5 or a yearly fee of £45. I tried it for a week and realized it took me the same time from London Waterloo station to reach work by cycle as it did through the tube. I would get the workout, however small it is, plus save £60 a month on Tube season ticket. There are some issues with the cycle hire scheme though: sometimes it is hard to find a cycle in Waterloo station and you have to wait for few minutes till someone returns one. Worse, the docking station closest to my work is usually full in the morning. I would have to ride around and find a station with a free slot, drop it there and walk to work, which is not very efficient. The scheme is just two weeks old and I am sure they will address this, but I am considering buying a commuter bike and using that every day.

Mobile phone: I finally ditched my prepaid phone and got a contract phone. I have a 12 month contract with O2 and pay £15 a month (including VAT) for 600 minutes of talk time and unlimited land line calls. Incoming calls are free. Wife has a mobile phone with unlimited O2 to O2 calls, so we use that for our communication. The rate is so cheap because I am on a SIM-only plan and use my own handset (the cheapest Nokia I could find). Compared to $40 + taxes and other charges in US, this sounds like a bargain. I don't even need the 600 minutes - 300 should be enough, but that was the cheapest I could find. As you may expect, there are some twists with the mobile phone rates here: calls to toll free numbers - 0800, 0845 and 0870 numbers, like 1-800 numbers in US - do not use the included minutes, but are charged at an exorbitant rates of 10-20 pence a minute. This is true with all the carriers here and makes no sense. I end up needing to call customer service from my mobile for something all the time and all I have is the "toll free" numbers. Fortunately, I was referred to a website called www.saynoto0870.com that lists the landline numbers for the toll free numbers of many companies and it has proved very useful.

Since my last post, our boy has turned one! He has come a long way and is walking and exploring all around the house. It's a pleasure to play with him and watch him giggle. Time flies!

Sunglasses

I have been asking the husband to write a post on this subject, but for reasons that will become obvious, he has been resisting this. So here we go.

He is addicted to sunglasses. He wears one all the time, even if the day is cloudy. Lo and behold, if he forgot to bring one, he will be squinting his eyes all the time outdoors. Nothing wrong with this, but he has this horrible habit of misplacing and losing sunglasses (he can usually be trusted with other things). I have lost count of how many times this has happened in all the four years we have been married. Let me try to list what comes to mind. He rode back seat on a friend's car one day, dropped it there and kept looking for it everywhere. Our friend gave it back in few days. The next time he left it inside a car we were selling, kept looking for it and found it just before emptying the car before handing off the keys. He was not very lucky the next time - no idea how he lost it.

This habit was proving to be costly - these Rayban sunglasses cost at least $150. So we turned to Costco. They were selling similar Raybans for $80! Their Kirkland brand sunglasses looked pretty much like a Rayban, polarized and made in Italy. They were even cheaper - about $30! That was pretty good, especially for someone who tends to lose them. So I bought one for him and he was happy.

Just before we moved to UK, I came up with the idea of stocking up on the sunglasses, in case he loses his. So I bought two of them just in case - they are so cheap! We packed the new ones and shipped them with the other boxes (we have not received them yet). Sadly, he has not changed a bit here. He went to London for an interview one day and left the sunglass at the company. Fortunately, he went for the second round and they graciously have it back to him. On the way back, he left it in the train. Just two weeks ago,we were all travelling together by train to London. The boy was a little cranky and kept pulling my sunglass. I gave it to the husband to keep it (safely). When we got down, I asked for it back and got a blank look.

Why would anyone in their right mind entrust him with a sunglass (of all things)? That's not the point. We have lost both our sunglasses. We are waiting for our boxes - they have arrived, but we have asked them to be stored till we move to our own place. And we don't have any safety cushion anymore - no more spare sunglasses. We miss our Costco.

I have been asking him to write about this for all these days. His excuse was that these encounters are not related to our move or life here, so he cannot write about it. Here is the link: he has filed an inquiry with London Tube Department's Lost Property Office. He is eagerly waiting for an answer. There you go, husband!

Car

We have been considering buying a car for some time and going back and forth about it. We can manage without a car, since I take a train to work, wife can walk to work and the shops are walking/biking distance from our house. The only hitch is that it does not feel right to take the boy out on a buggy (stroller) to the nursery when the weather is bad. Also, we can use the car for weekend trips - car rentals are not a great option since we will be forced to rent a car for the whole weekend. So we decided to buy a car.

What car to buy? We were set on buying a used car till to get familiar with the driving conditions here. We thought of buying a really cheap car - something between £1-2K, so that the running expenses will be minimal. Or is it? Consider the major expenses - insurance, road tax, maintenance and fuel. Trust the system here to defy all conventional wisdom.

• I got insurance quotes for the same model of a car of different ages from www.moneysupermarket.com. Believe it or not, the older a car gets, the more expensive it is to insure it (for example, a brand new Ford Focus would cost about £600 per year, 3 year old would cost £700 and 8 year old about £850). Also, comprehensive insurance is cheaper than third party (collision). It did not make any sense, but that's the way it is.


• Road tax is not based on the value of the car (as it is in the US), but on the CO2 emissions. There is not much variation here between old and new cars, but new cars will be slightly cheaper (£150 as opposed to say £200 per year)


• In general, car maintenance bill should be cheaper than US. Manufacturers recommend one service per year here. For Ford models, one of the cheaper and reliable brands, it would work out to £150-200 per year. As you can expect, newer cars have the edge here too.


• Fuel: nothing much to choose here. In general, cars are smaller, less powerful and more fuel efficient than US.

So we decided to look for newer cars. We found many 3-4 year old cars at a Ford dealership nearby - about 10 minute walk from our house. Wife liked Ford Focus hatchbacks since they look very roomy but not too big. I saw a 2006 Ford Fusion with 28000 miles with a price of £5000. It looked smaller than a Focus, but the salesman convinced us that the leg and trunk space are the same in both the cars. It was a little cheaper, so we put a deposit for it. We took a one year insurance through Post Office. With a £100 excess (deductible), breakdown cover and legal cover, the annual premium for the two of us is £627. We had gotten letters from our insurers in US with our claim history, which needs to be sent to them - the quote includes a No Claims Discount for four years. The car feels very smooth, does not have too much power (probably about 110 hp) and has great mileage (55mpg on highway and 45 on local + highway).

I drove the car for shopping on Sunday and wife has been using the car for the last two days. It is a manual, of course, but it not too hard, since we are both used to it. The roundabouts are a pain to navigate. I thought I would do better since there are roundabouts in Boston, but these are not trivial. There are many lanes and I invariably end up in the wrong lane every time. It looks like people are much more courteous here - no honking when you make a mistake. We took a driving lesson each and feel more comfortable. We should seriously work towards getting a UK license.

New job

I started a new job this Monday. It is with a startup based in Central London, at a great location (a few blocks from Piccadilly Circus). It takes me about 1 hr 15 mins door to door, which comprises of a 15 minute walk to the train station, a 45 minute train ride to London Waterloo station, a 5 minute walk to the tube station, 5 minute train ride on the tube and a 5 minute walk to the office. Compared to my commute in US, this is a royal pain - I had a 5 minute drive to work there. The train fare is not cheap either - it comes to a total of £380 a month. The largest component of the travel is a single train ride of 45 minutes and I get a seat always, so the commute is not too bad. I can do something productive - like reading a book or catching some sleep during this ride. I should get used to this pretty soon.

Last Saturday, we visited Stonehenge and a nearby medieval city called Salisbury. Visiting Stonehenge is a dream come true - I have read about that since childhood and it turned out to be a great experience. There was a huge crowd out there. We were allowed to catch a glimpse of it from 100 feet away, but it still was worth it. There is something mysterious about 5000 year old stones arranged in a mysterious formation. It was supposed to be a little hot that day (close to 30C), but thankfully, it was cloudy, so it did not feel that hot.

Salisbury is a really old city built around 1200 AD. There is an even older city in ruins a few miles from Salisbury called Old Sarum. It is a hill fort and is few thousand years old. We spent some time there and got some gorgeous views of the English countryside. We then went to the town centre of Salisbury and visited a farmer's market. Then we visited the Salisbury Cathedral. At 404 ft in height, it is the tallest medieval cathedral in England and is 750 years old. It also has England's oldest working clock and a copy of Magna Carta. Then we took a train back home. It was a very satisfying day.

India trip

We celebrate our boy's first birthday in Indian calendar with a traditional Indian function in India and invite friends and family. His birthday is in August this year. Since we just moved to the UK, it is not feasible to take vacation right away. So we cut some slack and are celebrating it in November (as weird as it may sound, this is not unusual). We picked that month because the tickets should be cheaper and Deepavali (the biggest and grandest Indian festival) falls in the same month too. So we can celebrate his birthday and Deepavali in a single trip.

We have been looking for tickets to India for a week now. I finally booked it today in Oman Air. The travel involves a stopover in Muscat. British Airways is the only airlines which flies to Chennai direct from Heathrow. It costs £150 more in total, but they did not have flights for the days we wanted to fly. Also who knows what will happen to BA and their strikes in November. So we decided to play it safe and went with Oman. It costs £780 (about $1200) for the three of us, a great deal since we spent at least $1200 per ticket when we lived in US. The journey would be 12 hours for the onward flight and 17 hours for the return flight, about 8 hours shorter than if we had flown from US.

I noticed that for the last two or three trips to India, we have been booking the tickets through the Internet (either through a travel website or the airlines directly), without using a travel agent. Every time we call travel agents and get a quote, but we book it ourselves. The tickets are either the same price or a little cheaper this way. Also, we find a lot of options and sort through them easily in the Internet. Anybody out there still using travel agents? If so, do you find it better?

Amazon

Did I tell you I love Amazon's UK site - amazon.co.uk? Just like its US version, it has a great selection of products at great prices - no surprises there. What sets it apart is that there is no minimum purchase required ($25 in US) for free super saver shipping. Isn't that great? Think of the possibilities - you need AAA batteries, you go to amazon.co.uk, place an order for £1.50 and it gets delivered in a couple of days, with free shipping. No fiddling around the site to figure out what fillers you need to get to $25 (of course you can get Amazon Prime in US, but I am cheap). Wife thinks books are really cheap in Amazon - you can find a lot of paperbacks for £3-5 and has resolved to build a book collection.

Packages are delivered in amazingly short time. The whole country is smaller than the state of New York, so no surprises there either. Royal Mail's first class postage costs 41 pence and they guarantee next-day delivery within UK. I have not figured out what is the difference between Royal Mail and Post Office, that may be another topic for a blog.