The song obviously speaks to my wanderer inclinations. You could guess that even if your knowledge of French does not go far beyond the title…
 

 
Sergej Minaev (who was introduced in the Careless Whisper post) was sure to produce his own number to the same music, this time actually maintaining the theme.

During which she had to pass an exam.

A 200 meters medley: Backstroke, butterfly, breaststroke, free style, 50 meters each.

In one go!

She passed with flying colors. The swim was not timed, but according to eyewitnesses – Natasha – the kid was motoring pretty effortlessly on the finishing lap.

She’s 9. I’m speechless!

————–
The title refers to this post of a year and a half ago.

I always had a dedicated “home office” that I could work out of. First, it was just one of the upstairs bedrooms converted into a study; at some point, we built an extension room specifically for the purposes of having a study away from the sleeping quarters. In London, we had to do with a bedroom again, but you would not mistake it for anything but a study.

Everything in the house is packed now, including my desk, chair, PC with all the peripherals, filing cabinets, etc. The only remaining pieces of furniture are the beds and the living room set that came with the house, plus the big TV that the movers graciously decided to pack tomorrow right before loading the stuff onto their truck.

I’m working from home all these days because the packing had to be supervised, and my lovely wife would not be able to manage it all by herself.

The kids are in the living room watching TV.

I am sitting on a bed with the laptop in my, well, lap, dealing with various work issues and typing this little post in between.

Always wanted to do that: Work while in bed2. Never had a proper impetus for that. A dream fulfilled!

What, you thought I meant something grander than that in the title?

—————–
1 Then, of course, there are many people in technology – especially individual contributors, whose work revolves around phone conversations, – who telecommute full-time. I’ve recently been in a couple of roles that would allow for that, but I never thought of making it a norm for myself.

2 Fine, I’m not technically in bed, but I’m afraid it is as close as I’m ever gonna get to that.

Three guys showed up at our door this morning. I gave them a brief tour of the land and they went about their business. Just a few hours later, most of the rooms are already finished, and I’m starting to wonder if these guys plan for a nice day-off tomorrow under the pretenses of finishing up. On Thursday morning, they will load the lorry, and our household stuff will get a head start on its trip back to America. It’s not likely to arrive before the end of August under the best circumstances.

The car will be collected by the appropriate agency on that same Thursday, and we will have a few interesting days of living in a furnished, but empty-ish house and not having independent means of transport either.

Despite the fact that we do not have to pack anything ourselves, the task of sorting things between our stuff and that of the landlord’s, between air shipment, sea shipment and whatever we are keeping on us made for a few really tiring and frenetic days. All our best efforts aside, we already had to re-open one of the finished boxes to extract something that did not need to packed and also gave up on one other item that is not worth the effort of searching for.

Kids are gradually saying goodbye to their various activities. Kimmy’s had a tearful farewell with her skating coach. He was an excellent teacher and she enjoyed skating with him tremendously; he will be hard to replace, and it remains to be seen whether Kimmy will be up to continuing with figure skating when we get back.

She also had her final dancing school performance. She loves dancing (openly professing that when she’s dancing, she is happy), she moves very nicely, but she is not a very disciplined team performer. I suppose she gets immersed in the experience so much that she loses track of the synchrony required for the group dance. What set her apart from the other thirty-five girls (and two boys) during the performance was the smile. It must be the figure skating training: Hold your head high, look into the audience, smile. The rest of the girls danced with an expression of utmost concentration interrupted by grimaces of disgust when they felt they messed up. Even the most talented of them barely cracked a smile. Our favorite performer was like a ray of sunshine out there.

Not that it was not a great concert. It was, in fact, an outstanding one. The school is not very big, but they put on almost thirty numbers of ballet, jazz, tap and street-dance variety. Very nice choreography throughout, a pleasure to watch.

That was a nice diversion during an otherwise frenetic time. Only a few more days of this, though…

And it always makes me wonder: You guys realize independence from who is being celebrated in America on this day, right?

Maybe, all of those places that advertise their 4th of July deals are owned by expats, and I’m just not aware of it…

Anyone not interested in this bit of trivia is hereby excused from reading below the cut.

Actually, when I used the word “lease” to describe the financial arrangement I was seeking, every single dealer I spoke to disabused me of the notion that such an option existed. What we do here in England is called PHP, they said, “Purchase-Hire Plan”. When I inquired about specifics, the deal looked an amalgamation of plain financing and lease rolled into one.

You have a contract that stipulates X number of monthly payments, at the end of which the car has a residual value expressed in the form of a “final payment”. The total value of the car is whatever you agree on the price, plus various fees and the interest on the financed portion of it. When the financing period is up, your two basic choices are either to pay the final lump sum and gain continuous possession of the vehicle or to return the vehicle to whatever agency your financing company specifies.

That looks very much like a good old lease, except for the fact that nothing constrains you from selling the car, if you so wish, at any point during your agreement. You will, of course, have to pay off to close your financing deal upon such sale, but that will not be a straight “remaining balance” payment, but rather a pre-set sum specified in your contract, which gets reduced every quarter of the financed period (making it awfully uneconomical to pay the contract off towards the end of each quarter).

You can, of course, simply pay the same “early settlement” amount at any time during your financed period if you so choose, for whatever reason, and keep the car.

The most unusual feature of this type of contract is this: Once you paid off half of the contract value, you can voluntary terminate the contract and return the car with no additional money owed to the financing company. And if you choose to terminate the contract earlier than that, you have to pay whatever remains of your monthly payments up to the half of the value of the contract.

Which is a pretty good deal, whether you got tired of the car earlier than expected or, like us, have to give up the car for reasons of relocating abroad. We were three months short of the half-way point with our X3, but paying that off was less than I had had to pay some stranger to take over my lease in the US when I had been moving to England (and paying off the remaining contract amount to the financing company then was entirely out of the question).

One important note, though. It’s half of the contract value (including the final “residual value” payment), not half the duration of the contract. We were somewhat deceived into believing in the latter (in other words, that we could return the car with no financial obligations after 18 months of our 36-month contract) with the dealer repeatedly assuring us that “you can just return the car when half of the contract is up“, and did not read the fine print well enough to realize that the actual get-out-of-lease-free point came only after 28 months. I can’t imagine that it would change our decisions much if we were properly attuned to that, given that we did not have a specific time horizon for getting back to the States when we got this car, but it may make a difference in other situations. Unfortunately, I do not have any knowledge whether a shorter-term PHP is possible; 36 months was the standard offer on hand everywhere I looked.

The paperwork for early termination (a phone call to the company, a letter with directions they send you, a documentation pack you need to send back to them, including any money owed, another letter they send you advising that the contract is being terminated) can be initiated at any time during your monthly pay cycle, but needs to conclude prior to your next scheduled monthly payment. It takes five-to-seven business days, including the time for letters to travel through the Royal Mail system, after which you need to call the specified collection agency to arrange for the car being picked up literally from your driveway. On the following day, if you wish.

I completed all of the paperwork stuff last week, but since I consider the car paid through my next payment, I might as well keep it until the last possible moment. The collection is scheduled for the day prior to our departure for our last continental holidays.

The temperatures have been pretty high in London the last week or so. Not too hot. Warm-to-hot, cooling down nicely overnight. But in a house without any air conditioning, it gets quite noticeable in the afternoon, stuffy, especially on the upper floor. I seem to remember days like these here or there during summers past, but somehow not so many in a row. It must be the impending move to the States that has me pining for the wonders of A/C.

Becky, meanwhile, is out of the house one more time, this occasion being an immersion French study trip to, well, France. She already called us from there and left a message in French. So, I suppose I’m getting my money worth out of it…

We ascertained through various conversations with fellow parents that our daughter is likely the only student at the school to have participated in all various overseas trips this year: Iceland, China, France. Since all trips were at an additional cost to tuition, the misguided implication of our financial wealth available to be spent on our offspring gave us a definite boost in those parents’ eyes.

I suddenly stumbled upon a recently-added TV channel called “ESPN America” in my SkyTV lineup. It has Yankees on! I watched Mariano’s 500th save in a replay, and almost stayed up to watch the Mariners game last night… Common sense won, but I am cancelling the service in a week’s time, just when I discovered it… It would be a pity if not for the fact that there is much more Yankees where I’m going to. Not so much football, though.

A curious bit of British trivia that did not get much of direct mention in the past (although, I indirectly alluded to it in this old post). What happens when a police officer stops you and demands to see your documents, and you for some reason do not have either your license or your car registration, or both, on you? In the States, you’ll get an assortment of fines, if not arrested if the officer is too zealous. In England, as long as you have any form of identification on you – say, a credit card, – you are ok. The police officer will use any document that you can produce to check the database, verify that you are licensed to drive, verify your car ownership, and, of course, cite you for whenever offense you were stopped while committing. But you will not get separately fined for “driving without a license”.

On the one hand, such accommodation begets indiscipline. An acquaintance of ours was recently in a small car accident, and she had her purse with her, but neither her license nor the car registration paper. I am quite positive that she never bothers to check whether she has those documents with her.

On the other hand, a legislated fine for not carrying a specific document along in an age when your privilege to drive and your ownership of the specific vehicle can be easily verified on the fly is something that grates on my libertarian sensibilities. Or, maybe, having your information available for a police officer to check is a step towards complete control of the state over its citizens; Britain, with ubiquitous CCTV cameras and the national identity scheme, is quite far advanced on the path towards entrenched police state…

Finally, another acquaintance recently obtained a doctor’s recommendation to stay away from work because of fatigue. Four paid weeks of convalescence. The job will be his when he comes back. Can this ever happen in America? I’m sure a sabbatical can be arranged by a mutual agreement between a valued employee and an accommodating employer, but in general, I can’t imagine someone having the balls to unilaterally take time off for being fatigued and not paying some quick consequences with their job.

Maybe I’m a closet workaholic with little imagination.

Here is the lineup, with drive-by reviews as always below the cut (few spoilers cannot be avoided).

10,000 B.C.	2008
21	2008
Fool’s Gold	2008
Gran Torino	2008
sex, lies, and videotape	1989
Taken	2009
The Incredible Hulk	2008
The International	2009
Valkyrie	2008
Watchmen	2009
We Own the Night	2007

I probably liked 21 the most of the crop: It has a quasi-heist set-up, a sharp-minded card-playing plot, and the main characters are all really smart nerds. Brilliant! The events unfold crisply and, while I find some logical gaps in the setting, they are not glaring and little is left to be puzzled about. Kevin Spacey lends acting gravitas; I don’t particularly like Laurence Fishburne in general, but I cannot fault him much in this specific role; and Jim Burgess is quickly gaining traction as one of my favorite “young” actors.

Only one other movie from the list raised to the “definitely liked” level: Watchmen. I did not read the graphic novel on which it is based, but I quite enjoyed both the story and how it is brought to life on-screen. Flawed, complicated characters make this fantasy feel more realistic in its alternate-reality setting than other fantasies that are seemingly set directly in our reality but are invariably populated with one-dimensional villains and heroes. I especially liked how personal background flashbacks were incorporated into the narrative, even if they did not bother to explain to me how these superheroes came around to possess their super-skills (with the notable exception of Dr Manhattan). The plot resolution left me a bit cold – we first agree that killing millions of people is the right and only way to avert a global disaster, then we murder a friend who is not going to keep that a secret – but I’m willing to allow that I might see the point in that upon a repeat viewing.

I was lukewarm towards Gran Torino, but I give top marks to Clint Eastwood’s acting, having never been a fan of his thespian skills in the past. There is poignant personal interaction in a number of scenes, and the overall premise is definitely moving. But my usual pet peeve of illogical events occurring for the benefit of advancing towards a specific ending is on glaring display here in a couple of instances. And Walt is shown to be almost certainly dying of some serious disease that is not being treated, true, by he does not come across as a person who no longer cares to live; hastening his death for the sake of putting the vicious gang away seems an awfully irrational choice for such a hard nut.

Taken is fast-paced and reasonably absorbing; plus, Liam Neeson is one of those actors who make any movie they are in watchable. The plot is reasonably simple: A former super-agent’s daughter is kidnapped in Paris by a gang of women-traffickers and the dad goes on a mission to save her and kill everyone who stands in his way. Guess how that ends! There are car chases, gunfights, hand combat, etc. The number of fortuitous turns of events that allow the hero to stay his course is enough for three 007 movies, but, of course, we root for him, so that’s all right. People annoyed with the recent fad of nauseating quick-cut action sequences will find plenty of reasons to point out how, well, nauseating those are. On balance, though, it was a favorable viewing, not least because I want to have the skills and fortune of Brian if one of my daughters were in trouble.

I did not see the ending of Valkyrie on account of in-flight entertainment system being shut-down for landing, but I mostly felt it a solid movie. The actual historical event has always been of a considerable interest to me and, without passing any intelligent judgement on how close to the real turn of events this portrayal is, I think the movie is a reasonable effort. If anything, my biggest problem was with some sketchiness of the proceedings: Characters were brought in and out, their importance to the course of events was not always obvious (but often implied with somber-looking close-ups), and the conspiracy seemingly proceeded from one big occasion to another with little intervening preparatory work. Tom Cruise, like him or not, does quite well a noble and driven aristocrat with a purpose in mind. I’ll definitely watch the movie in its entirety at some point, which by itself means that it merits at least 3 stars in my book.

One other positive viewing experience was Fool’s Gold, the kind of silly and even cartoonish adventure that I always seem to enjoy. The locales were gorgeous, the action was mostly fun, there was enough of comic relief to maintain the light mood. Practically every character possessed uncanny ability to hold their breath under water for several minutes a pop and there were a couple of way-too-fortunate escapes from certain death, but those were small nitpicks for an otherwise enjoyable romp. Plus, Matthew McConaughey seems a perfect fit for the role of a single-minded good-guy surfer dude/daredevil. I never thought I’d be using his acting as one the things I especially liked in a movie.

All of the other watched movies were of the “meh” variety.

10,000 B.C. could have been interesting because of the setting, but the plot and the action were rather tedious on top of incongruous mish-mash of civilizations and extinct animals. I suppose if I view it as a non-technologically-advanced fantasy – just the kind that I normally like – I might have a warmer feeling towards it (as opposed to viewing it as historically-based), but the uninspiring plot would still tip the scales towards less than positive reception. Good rendering of mammoths, though.

We Own the Night had some things going for it as a period piece, but again, the plot left me unimpressed. The leads were not bad, the subject matter interesting, but the events felt too disjointed and not properly founded. Passable Russian speech in most cases, at least, with a small delight of seeing Yelena Solovey (I last saw her on-screen probably 20 years ago) in a small supporting role.

The International had locales of a number of gorgeous European destinations, but little else. I mistakenly thought that it was some kind of a spy thriller and found it really hard to get interested in a plot revolving around devious high commerce, albeit with assassinations and other assorted action. The hero, played by Clive Owen, possesses adequate action skills as well as survival fortune, but somehow I could not get to unquestionably root for him as I normally do for every other action hero. All of the lucky breaks get magnified in their “Really?” aspect when I am not very much invested in the hero.

The Incredible Hulk is like Transformers with a human back-story. Some interesting special effects, but a pretty dull story overall, with many predictable – and yet, logically unfounded or conveniently incidental, – turns. It’s a telling indicator that what I like the most about the movie is the early fly-over shot of a Rio favela. And the question that bothered me the most while watching it was whether this movie was meant to be a sequel to the Hulk of a few years ago, where Eric Bana played the lead; none of the main characters are played by the same actors in both movies, and I am pretty sure even the accident that causes Bruce Banner’s condition is not portrayed the same way in both movies. Which can only mean that this was another reboot…?

Finally, for the only entry of the “relative oldie” category, I watched sex, lies, and videotape because I heard of its independent-movie trail-blazer status. It bored the bejeesus out of me. Props to Andie McDowell and James Spader for excellent acting, but I should have known better.

Less than a week and a half left until the movers arrive and pack the TV, the PCs and the rest of stuff for shipment…

Oh, I might nod off here or there, but I’d invariably become disturbed by something that would wake me up in short order. I might persist with trying to get whatever sleep is possible, but would end up with a blinding headache and a no less debilitating neck pain after a few fitful hours. I long adopted a policy of not willfully attempting sleeping even on red-eye flights, especially when there is plenty of cinematic entertainment on hand.

The shortcomings of this policy became apparent on my return trip from New York last night. Corporate Travel agency procured a free First Class upgrade for me, and while British Airways’ First Class is not as posh as the Upper Class on Virgin Atlantic (described in the same article), it is still an exceptional way to fly, with seats morphing into flat beds, and bed spreads and even pyjamas available to whomever desires them. All of my fellow cabin-mates took advantage of it. Me, I did not even try, figuring that no matter how relatively comfortable I might get, sound sleep would still escape me. I reclined a little, put my feet up, and spent most of the flight watching movies. Kinda dumb, I know, I should’ve at least tried. (But the flicks were good – Watchmen, Taken, Valkyrie, none of which I disliked.)

It should work out as no more than a missed opportunity, hopefully. Upon getting home around 9 in the morning, I went to bed for a couple of hours, which, as usual, allowed me to more or less function normally through the rest of the workday. I’ll go to bed early tonight and, if the regular form holds, I’ll see no ill effects of the jet lag tomorrow.

During those two hours of sleep, I apparently became an Uncle once again. We are very excited for you, li’l brother and family!