Living in London

Today we took our first ramble. In England, people who like to take long walks through the countryside (most of which is publicly accessible unlike the US) are called ramblers. We left the house at 8:15 am, and via the Tube and train, travelled northwest to Berkhamsted. When we alighted at the train station there, we wandered around the local area and found both some locks in the canal where the little houseboats move back and forth, as well as the ruins of a castle dating from the time of the Norman Conquest and ruined since about 1245.

We used our guidebook, and our compass, to travel up and down the picturesque English hills and fields, following hedgerows, and forest edges, and walking trails, in a large 6.5 mile loop. We encountered few other ramblers, but saw a herd of deer running across a golf course, shared a pasture with many cows and sheep grazing in the fields we crossed, and of course, rabbits! (Just kidding about the rabbits.) Along the way we learned what the ramblers version of a stile is (as in "turnstile" without the "turn"), complete with a dog door. We walked back through the door here at 4 Walnut Court at 3:15 pm and are happy to finally sit down!

Click here for a complete slide show of all the pictures linked above.

-LmG

The previous post about rabbits in the park is a joke dedicated to Steve Danziger. The rabbit photos are compliments of bunny-rabbits.com. Thanks Steve!

-HrH

p.s. there really are rabbits in the park.

Our friends Steve and Cynthia have been visiting for the weekend from San Francisco. We had a wonderful time walking in the park, visiting museums and enjoying fine meals together.

After bidding farewell to Steve and Cynthia yesterday Linda and I headed for an extended walk in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. It was a beautiful autumn day with hundreds of people and many happy dogs enjoying the sunshine. As we walked along the Serpentine Lake we were pleasantly surprised to find a nest of three young rabbits huddled together near the path. It was the perfect cap to a great weekend with good friends.

-HrH

On Sunday we took a delightful tour of the Royal Mews. In England, mews are where horses are kept so, of course, the Royal Mews is where the Queen's horses and carriages are housed. It was a wonderful glimpse into some of the old traditions of the British monarchy. A few highlights of the tour include:

• the gilded carriage weighs 6 tons and is only used for the most special occasions (such as the coronation of a new king or queen)
• it takes 8 Windsor Grey horses to pull the gilded carriage.
• it takes 10 men 1 1/2 days to remove the gilded carriage from its display room
• there is one groomsman for every two horses
• the horses are very well cared for (including six weeks of "vacation" a year where they have their shoes removed and are allowed to run free in a pasture)
• many of the uniforms worn by the horsemen and carriage drivers are the original garments that were made over 100 years ago

-HrH

On Friday we we went to Greenwich (pronounced Gren-ich), a delightful little village in Southeast London on the Thames. We took a guided tour that started at the Cutty Sark, and took us by some of the highlights of Greenwich. We saw the Old Royal Naval College, the Painted Hall and the National Maritime Museum. It was one of the most interesting sites we have visited.

The highlight of the day was visiting the Royal Observatory, where Greenwich Mean Time is marked. It turns out that, until the 1750's, navigation at sea was a problem. Navigators could determine their latitude (how for north or south) by measuring the angle of the sun in the sky. But they had no way to determine their longitude (how far east and west). In one incident in 1707, Admiral Cloudsley Shovel and his fleet were afloat in fog and thought they were in the middle of the ocean; they ran aground and over 2000 men died.


The first approach to address the problem was to create a detailed catalog of all the stars in the heavens including their precise locations at exact times. The idea was that ship captains would take measurements of stars in the night sky and determine their longitude from the star catalog. The Royal Observatory was commissioned 1n 1675 to create the catolog. Later, with success elusive, the British Government created the Longitude Prize in 1714 to encourage a solution.


Unfortunately, creating such a detailed account of the heavens turned out to be more difficult than expected. After nearly 100 years the catalog was still not ready, the Longitude prize was unclaimed, and sailers were still struggling to navigate the seas. John Harrison, an English clock maker, had a better idea. His plan was to make a chronometer that would be sufficiently accurate at sea. The clock would be set to a specific time in a specific location (say, Greenwich, for example). Using the sun, the sailor could determine high-noon by noting when the sun reached its highest point in the sky. The time difference between Greenwich and their current location would allow the sailor to determine their longitude.


[It works like this: there are 360 degrees of longitude in the globe. Since there are 24 hours in a day, each hour difference between two locations represents 15 degrees of longitude. By noting high-noon at their current location and calculating the difference in time between the ship and Greenwich, the sailor would have an accurate reading for longitude.]


However, creating a clock that would keep accurate time on a ship was not an easy task. Most clocks of the day were based on pendulums and these did not work will in the tossing seas. It took Harris more than 30 years to perfect the design that was finally adopted for wide use.


Accurate navigation made global seafaring possible. The rapid expansion of the British Empire quickly followed. Soon there would be British Colonies in so many parts of the word that it would be said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire." Learning how Britain conquered the world with their navy by figuring out how to measure longitude was fascinating. We were with our friends from California, Steve and Cynthia, and we will definitely revisit this site again.


-HrH

Although London is now home to more than 7 million people, it was once a collection of small towns and villages spread across the countryside. As each town grew towards the other they eventually joined to become one sprawling city.


Unfortunately, each town chose to keep the names of their streets. As a result, now that the city is one contiguous block, the same street will change names many different times. Today I have to walk about 500 yards from the Bond Street Underground station (bottom of picture) to a small café on the corner of Marylebone High Street and George Street. While walking north on the SAME STREET, the street will change names five times.

• Gilbert Street
• James Street
• Mandeville Place
• Thayer Street, and finally
• Marylebone High Street.

Thank goodness I have a actual size map!


-HrH

After my interviews with Netflix back in August and September, they offered to put me on their beta program to help test the new UK systems. It was wonderful to have a steady supply of DVDs again.


Today I received an email from Netflix saying that they had decided to delay their UK launch for another year. Current operations would be closed and I was welcome to keep the DVDs that I had at home.


This is a sad day. I was very excited that Netflix was coming to the UK. The only consolation is that we got a free copy of Monster and Secretary. We are nothing if we are not eclectic in our taste for movies.



-HrH

I had an excellent interview yesterday at a company called Servista. They provide billing and back end services for UK companies that want to enter into the newly deregulated energy and Telecom markets. Lloyds TSB, Tesco, and the Post Office are able to offer gas, electricity and/or telephone service with the help of Servista.

The position is for the head of the Programme Office. They have many programs that run multiple projects to manage the installation of new customer services. The company has about 140 employees and is at the stage of growth where they are realizing that they need to start building processes into their culture or they will not be able to scale. This is the perfect environment for me and one of the ideal scenarios that I have been trying to find.

They are interviewing other candidates and will not get back to me for a couple of weeks but I will keep my fingers crossed.

-HrH

I just purchased a round trip ticket from British Midland Airways from London to Brussels for a weekend trip in November. The fares are amazingly low. It was only £20 for a round trip ticket. This is wonderful! Only £20 for a round trip ticket from London Heathrow to Brussels. These low cost air fares are really amazing.

However, after completing the transaction, I was greeted with the following line item at the bottom of the statement:

Applicable taxes, passenger surcharge, and insurance surcharge £39.60

The total ticket was £59.60. The taxes and surcharges were 198% of the ticket charge.

£59.60 is about $107. That is still not a bad price for a round trip ticket on a 200 mile flight to another country. But it sure is a surprise when a £20 ticket is three times the price with all the surcharges and taxes.

-HrH

The Wall Street Journal recently posted an excellent article on the financial and tax implications for American citizens living outside of the United States.

The U.S. levies income taxes on its citizens regardless of where they live. (Generally, Americans working abroad are able to exclude up to $80,000 of earned income.) "One thing that's always a kind of a shock to our clients is when they discover that as U.S. citizens they still owe U.S. taxes, even though they live in another country," says Gavin Leckie, an international wealth advisor at JPMorgan Private Bank in New York. To stop paying the U.S. income tax, you must renounce your citizenship -- but even that drastic step may not be enough to keep the tax man at bay. The government presumes that wealthy Americans who renounce their citizenship are doing so to dodge taxes.

Under a 1996 law, anyone with annual income of $100,000 or more, or a net worth of $500,000 or more, who renounces citizenship must continue to pay taxes for 10 more years unless they can prove that they should be exempt from the law. (Those figures, indexed for inflation, rise to $124,000 and $622,000, respectively, for 2004.) And it's not just income tax, which nonresidents face, but also taxes on gains on the sale of certain foreign property, stocks, bonds and other investments that generally would not be taxed for nonresident citizens. What gets you an exemption? "You get can out of it if you're a dual citizen by birth, or if [the person is] going back to live in the country in which he or she, or the spouse, was born," says Mary Clarke, a private wealth-services attorney.

Where the Americans Are

An estimated 4.1 million Americans (excluding military) live abroad in more than 160 countries, with the greatest number residing in Mexico. Below is a list of the top 10 foreign countries where most Americans live:

Source: The Association of Americans Resident Overseas.

-HrH