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.

Car boot sale

Car boot sale is a US garage sale on steroids. There is one near our place every Saturday and Sunday, so let me explain what it is from what I have seen. There is a big school playground very near our place. During our first Saturday here, we saw quite a few cars and a lot of people on the field. We saw it from a distance and had something to do, so we did not bother checking it out. We were passing by the ground the next weekend too and decided to go in. It was like a small fair: there were quite a few people, professionals and amateurs, selling a variety of household goods (new and used) like books, clothes, CD's, small appliances etc, in addition to food stuff like cookies, fudge, ice cream etc. Apparently they bring the stuff in their car boot, so hence the name. Wife was all excited to check out the used books - she bought few books at 20 pence each. We found a booth selling fresh fruits and vegetables. It is very cheap compared to our local supermarkets - we spend about £5-7 and get our weekly fruits. It was all exciting the first couple of times and since then, we just go buy the fruits and get home. We don't need to carry it for a long distance, so it is an added incentive. I found a website with a directory of car boot sales, which will come handy when we move. http://carbootjunction.co.uk.

We have had some great weather the past week or so - sunny in the early 20's (about 70-80F). It is nice to go out in the mornings and evenings, but afternoons get a little too hot, especially without a car. It is hard to find AC here - our house does not have one, the long distance and underground trains do not have it either and neither do the malls, except for a few stores. One has to assume that this is as hot as it gets and doesn't last long, so there is no need for AC.

We have a washer-dryer combo appliance here. The very first time we used it, we were surprised to see that the cycle ran for four hours. Even though I do not require my clothes to be hot from the dryer (like Seinfeld's Kramer), I felt that the dryer did not do a great job. Apparently, combo washer-dryers dry the clothes with condensation rather than blowing hot air. So they take longer and the clothes are not dry enough. We are used to it now - we just let it run and once it is done, hang the clothes for a few hours to get it dry perfectly. At least with the combo, there is one less thing to do - no need to unload the washer and load the dryer.

A trip to Little India

As time passes, we are feeling more at home and get a "settled down" feeling. The day to day routine resembles life in US for the most part. Wife gets ready for work and kid gets ready for nursery. Wife takes the kid and drops off in the nursery. I work from home, so my work day starts early. I find some time in the afternoon to run a quick errand - a trip to the post office to apply for license or a bike ride to the Indian store. I leave around 5 to pick up the kid and wife joins me near the mall. We pop into a store often - interesting how many times we go to stores every week to buy necessities. Then we head home, wife cooks, I take care of the kid and watch football, then we eat dinner and call it a day.

We have been going somewhere every weekend. Last Saturday, we went to East Ham, a locality in East London. Our plan was to go to a south indian restaurant and visit a Hindu temple. When we got down, I was pleasantly surprised to see only Indian stores and surrounded by Indians - Tamils and other south indians to be precise. Indian restaurants, clothing stores, grocery stores, jewelry shops, roadside food stalls - you name it. Many of the stores displayed notices in Tamil as well. The south indian restaurant we were planning to go - a chain called Saravana Bhavan - was a 10 minute walk, but we must have crossed at least five other places where we could have happily eaten. The menu was like a small book - at least 15 pages long and we had a hard time trying to shortlist the items. The food was authentic, very tasty and not expensive either (we spent about £15 for 6 items. Not satisfied with the lunch, we bought some yummy snacks to take home.

Then we explored the area a little bit. Visited a clothing store and a video store. Then we went to the Hindu temple nearby. It had an authentic feel. There were a lot of people inside and food (free!) was being served in the top floor. We had planned to go to Greenwich park in London, but the weather was a little chilly and the boy was a little cranky, so we headed home. It was a very satisfying day. I felt we got what we came for in the UK.

We can drive with the US license for a year. We have started the process to get a license here. Looks like we have to apply for a provisional license first, then write a theory exam and then take a road test (apparently, there is a 40% chance of clearing it in the first try). We were seriously doing research to buy a car. That is put on hold for now, since all the walking we do everyday do not bother us as much. The cars are fairly small and much more fuel efficient (40 mpg is common). That does not help much with the fuel cost with a liter of petrol costing £1.17, which works out to $6.50 per gallon at the current exchange rate, more than twice the price in US. I see many cars that I did not see in US - Vauxhall, Peugeot, Citroen, Renault. Hondas and Toyotas are around, but not that many. Car insurance seems to be very expensive. From a comparison shopping site (www.moneysupermarket.com), we got a quote of about £600 per year for the two of us for a 5 year old car. Maybe it will improve with more driving history here. In US, we were paying about $1100 per year for two cars - a brand new minivan and 5 year old Corolla. I should remember to stop comparing UK with US, especially with cars.