Author: dberger

I started writing this thinking it would be about the ongoing goat rodeo around the impeachment trial, and the disfunction in both American politics and media it highlights – but that’s not what ended up coming out…

Distance is a funny thing.  Sometimes it makes things harder to see.  And sometimes it draws things into painfully clear focus.

I work for a large international tech company – and my colleagues here in London are a pretty diverse bunch, hailing from nearly everywhere.  That diversity brings challenges – not everyone is equally proficient in English, for instance. Combine that with different backgrounds, cultural norms, experience levels, and clear communication gets tricky.

But some things span those chasms.  Those moments seize my attention.

The reaction in the office to the recent Seattle shootings, for instance.

Watching my colleagues react to that event – each of them being at least loosely connected to Seattle by nature of their employer having its headquarters there – was a pointed reminder of how much America has normalized gun violence.  Some of my colleagues come from countries that America would generally consider part of the ‘second’ world – and they recognize, sometimes from personal experience, that normalizing these sorts of acts of violence is a destabilizing force in society.

Some of those colleagues are traveling to Seattle this week for a work event to be held not far from the shootings, and they wonder about their personal safety.  If you’re American your instinct might be to dismiss that as over reaction.  Before you do, take a moment and ask yourself:  Is it?  

Seattle has had multiple shootings over the past weeks.  And more broadly America experiences a nearly constant barrage of gun violence in its major cities.

If you were being asked by your employer to travel to such a place, can you really say you wouldn’t be a bit concerned?

If you’re an America you’re likely tired of the gun control debate.  It flares up around these events, gets the left and right wing press into a lather, and then goes away. It’s been this way for most or all of your life.  That’s just the way it is. Like a Star Trek episode, the universe is the same at the end of the episode as it was at the beginning.

It won’t change anything for me, as a gun-owning American, to reiterate that America has a problem that desperately needs attention.

So I won’t.

‘Cause we can’t fix a problem until we recognize that we have one.
And it seems pretty clear that as a whole we aren’t there yet.

So for the moment it seems I’m stuck trying to stay out of harms’ way. 

And grieving for the people who didn’t.

My sister, brother-in-law, and niece left for Heathrow moments ago – ending a 10 day visit.  

It went well, aside from Dawnise being under the weather for much of it.  

We and they wandered around London – Dawnise managed to rally for a couple Christmas markets, a walk down Regent street, and a trip to Fortnum and Mason to see their famous Christmas windows. I even dragged them to Greenwitch to stand on the prime meridian.

We cooked (and ate) Christmas dinner, had Sunday Roast, had tea and home-made scones, ate a bunch of mince pies, panettone, stollen, and drank gluhwein.

When they weren’t touristing we hung out here, played games and watched some Christmas movies.  

They’ll arrive back in Seattle mid-day, in time to get home and keep their dogs calm during the evening festivities.  

Our plan for this evening is to stay home, maybe have a couple friends over, and – assuming we stay up late enough – hopefully get a glimpse of the fireworks display over the Thames from our balcony.

Whatever you have planned for New Years Eve, and Dawnise and I wish you a safe and joyous one, and hope your 2020 gets off to a fantastic start.

Last Friday, December 20th, marked half a year in the UK.  And the next day marked our 23 wedding anniversary.  We marked our anniversary on Friday evening with the always-excellent Beef Wellington for two in the dining room of the Goring hotel.  It was a brief moment of calm in an otherwise hectic December, and the evening before my sister, brother-in-law, and niece arrived for the holiday.

The balance of December has been chocked full of stuff.  We even managed to squeeze in Christmas Tea at the Ritz – something Dawnise has literally wanted to do for years.

To rewind a bit… Just after Alfred & Jodie left London for New Zealand, some friends from Luxembourg arrived in London.  We used their five year old daughter as a good reason to experience the particularly British Christmas tradition of Pantomime before they left for the continent and Dawnise and I headed to NY for a weekend.

A weekend in NY?  Who’s crazy idea was that?

It all started ‘cause ‘Nise was going to end the year just shy of status next year, and we were talking about where we could go to get her the last couple thousand miles she needed.  I’d been saying for some years that Dawnise needed to visit NY around Christmas, but since we’ve been “over here” around the holidays for the past several years we hadn’t ever made it happen.  When to my surprise I found inexpensive tickets from London to JFK we overlooked – as in failed to even consider – the duration of the flights (aside: it’s nearly as long from London to NY as it is from London to Seattle – spherical distance is weird) and booked tickets and a hotel in midtown.

We arrived mid-day on Friday and spent the weekend walking around NY.  Christmas markets, Central Park, Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center, shop windows on 5th Ave – and even managed to meet up with friends for lunch.  Our Sunday afternoon departure got us back to London early Monday, and I was only slightly later than normal arriving at work.

If that seems a bit mad, well, it was – and at some point during the weekend we started toasting to “crazy schemes and questionable decisions.”  Once said, it stuck, and we invoked it frequently while wandering the length and width of Manhattan in freezing cold (but dry) temperatures.
It was exhausting.

And really good fun.

Before we had cooked up the idea for the NY trip, we had planned a weekend Christmas market getaway to Belgium (Bruges and Ghent) with good friends.  When the French rail strike caused Eurostar to cancel our train two days before the trip, we manage to redirect to a weekend in Bath and Oxford.  Props to Airbnb for graciously handling the refund, and to the grumpy but efficient woman at the national rail counter who got us confusing group rates tickets from London to Bath to Oxford to London.  The Bath downtown was Christmas market-tastic, and we did our best to drink enough gluhwein to pretend we were on the contingent.  The Oxford market was smaller but it, and the city, were lovely – and we got incredibly lucky with the weather – a cold dry weekend.

The weather continued to cooperate, and Monday evening – far later than we would have normally – we had the experience of buying a Christmas tree and walking it home, over my shoulder, through central London.  The kilted fellow who sold it to us gave Dawnise a discount for taking a tree that had lost a bit of its crown in transit.  He likely thinks he got rid of an unwanted tree – Dawnise saw it as a way to get the charlie brown tree she wanted at a discount.

I love win-win situations.

That just about catches us up.  My sister, brother-in-law and niece arrived on Saturday, and we spent the first couple days wandering around the city.  Unfortunately the cold Dawnise had been trying to fight got the better of her, and much to her chagrin and frustration we skipped our traditional Christmas eve cocktails at the Ritz.  It was really only through the miracle of modern medicine (Dayquil) that Dawnise managed to help cook a proper Christmas lunch for 7.

Boxing day has been punctuated by bouts of heavy wind and rain, but that didn’t stop our guests from wandering out in the mid afternoon to see more sights.  I imagine when they return it’ll be time for a bit of tea and a reprise of Christmas dinner.  They head back to the states the morning of New Years eve – plans between now and then are sketchy, but I’m confident a good time will be had.

To everyone reading this – we hope your holidays are full of cheer and laughter, and we wish you the very best in the start of the new year.

Cheers. 

In August of 2005 I got an email that would turn out to change everything.

It was from a recruiter, who’d found my resume online, asking if I was interested in talking to a small game company.  Nine months later began what would turn out to be over a decade of working with a remarkable group of people.  But that’s a story some of you already know, and for those that don’t it’ll be a story for another time.

I don’t remember first meeting Alfred, but I do remember meeting his wife, Jodie and their newborn daughter when she was brought into the office for a first visit.  I had no idea in those early days that Dawnise and I would become so close to them.

Alfred and I found working together to be fun and effective – his optimism and willingness to “just try it” being a great counter-balance to my skepticism and desire to understand “the whole journey” before setting course.  I could tell you all the reasons it wouldn’t work, and Alfred would start doing it anyway.

We and our spouses found mutual interests outside work, and started spending evenings together for dinner and games.  Dawnise babysat their daughter while they were at hospital having their second, and again when they had their second son.  We started traditions – like the annual bacon party that started when Dawnise and Alfred mused over burgers made entirely of bacon, which lead to the purchase of a meat grinder, and to bacon burgers so good we tried for years to improve on them, or even reproduce the first years’ success.

When my sister moved to Seattle, we dragged her with us to meet them, and it wasn’t long before her then-boyfriend-then-fiance-now-husband got roped in as well.  Alfred likes to cook, and we love to eat – it was a perfect match.

When Dawnise and I moved to Luxembourg, we visited with them when we were back in Seattle.  And in the years after we moved back and downsized into an urban dwelling Alfred & Jodie hosted our annual ice cream social in their kid-friendly backyard in the Seattle suburbs.

They were undoubtedly our closest friends in Seattle over those 15 years.

It could just be me, but I’ve found making friends as an adult is tricky.  And making close friends… Well, tricky doesn’t even start to cover it.

When Dawnise and I were readying to move to London we figured we’d visit while we were here, and then we’d pick up where we left off when we were back in Seattle.  

Turns out we were half right.

As we were prepping for the move to London, Alfred and Jodie let us in on the secret that they’d decided to leave Seattle and move back to the other side of the world.  Having come to Seattle from Australia, they’d decided to move to New Zealand, and planned to leave Seattle before the end of the year.

So a month or so back the family packed up and left for a multi-week “farewell to America” tour. Dawnise joined them in Florida for a week at Disney World and came home just before the entire clan landed in the UK for a two week stay.

While they were in London we met up for dinner, hung out with the kids, and hosted them at our flat for American Thanksgiving.  (Side note: Dawnise absolutely nailed cooking for 10 people out of that shoe-box sized oven.). The next day we met for dinner at a pub near their Airbnb, went back to their place to chat, and say farewell.  The following day they were flying to Auckland via Hong Kong.

As we left, and Dawnise and I walked back to the tube, we tried to focus on being excited for them, on their new adventure, and ignore the feelings of loss tugging at us.

Make no mistake, we are excited for them.  And despite the utterly ridiculous time in transit, we’ll go visit once they’re settled.

But being excited doesn’t mean for a second we’re going to miss them any less.

I just found a cookie in our oven.

Well, it was a cookie once, or since it’s a UK oven, maybe it was a biscuit.  Either way, by the time I found it, it was a cookie-shaped lump of carbon.

You might not think it terribly odd for a cookie to go rogue – make a daring escape off the back of the baking tray and land in the back of the oven.  Out of the proverbial pan and into the, um, convection wind tunnel.

In general I’d agree with you.  What makes this ex-cookie interesting is that we haven’t made cookies in the 5 months we’ve lived here.

We use the oven pretty frequently, and it’s never smelled like burning cookie, so I guess this cookie was missed in the so-called professional deep clean of the kitchen before we took residence.

The cookie discovery was prompted by an inventory of our cooking supplies in advance of (American) Thanksgiving.  We’re going to attempt to feed 9 people out of an oven the size of a shoe box and a 24” wide four element cook top.

To be fair, the kitchen fixtures in our flat are fairly “bog standard” – and in many London flats they’re all you could squeeze in.  But our kitchen is actually surprisingly large.  It’s (much) bigger than the kitchen in our Seattle townhouse, and actually larger than the kitchen in our previous house, in the Seattle suburbs.  So I figure the kitchen has standard fittings because it’s a rental, and the owner has little incentive to spend money on nice things their tenants are unlikely to take care of.

So normal fixtures, but still, 9 people…

It promises to be entertaining.

Once Thanksgiving is in the rear view, we’ll start to figure out Christmas.  This will be the first year since 2012 (our first year in Luxembourg) that we’ve been “home” for Christmas, since then we’ve been in Europe for markets and spent the holiday with good friends (and incredibly accommodating hosts) in south east London.  This year my sister, brother-in-law and niece are coming to London.  High on the list of questions will be “how does one get a Christmas Tree home on the tube?”

Stay tuned.

But for now, to all the American recipients of this message, here’s wishing you a very happy thanksgiving.

Cheers.

As I type I’m sitting on a flight back from Atlanta to London.  I was in Seattle last week for business, then took a side-trip to Florida to visit my parents “on the way” back.  It was a good visit, and I’m glad we could arrange it.  

We kept our townhouse in Seattle.  Partially because we weren’t sure when we were going to move, which complicated the logistics of renting it out, and partially because I planned to be back in Seattle regularly, and my employer prides itself on being frugal (read; frustratingly cheap) and I figured our place would be more comfortable than any Seattle hotel offered in its place.

So when I landed in Seattle last Sunday I took a Lyft to “our place,” let myself in, and stood there in the doorway for a few minutes – trying to put a name on my confusion.

“The cats aren’t here to meet me at the door, that’s probably it.”

That wasn’t it.

“It’s cold in here – and too quiet – that must be it.”

Nope, still not right.

I latched the door – irritated that I couldn’t put my finger on the wrong – grabbed my phone, turned off the cameras and vacation mode on the thermostat, before bringing my bag upstairs.
I unpacked a bit, and my sister and brother-in-law arrived – visiting with them made me forget about the whole damn thing.

For a while.

For a while.

The rest of the week was early starts, late returns, stolen moments with missed friends, and each time a feeling of not-quite-right-ness when letting myself in.

I don’t remember feeling the same when I was back a few months ago.  Maybe I won’t feel it when I’m back early next year.  We’ll see.

But sitting on the plane, knowing I should try to get some sleep but not feeling ready, I can’t help but think about it.

It was still our place.  It felt familiar.  It had a bunch of our stuff in. It had a washer and dryer that can wash and dry clothes in a reasonable amount of time (a rant for another time).  But it wasn’t home.

Dawnise was missing.  The cats didn’t greet me at the door.  It felt like “our other place.”  I suppose it’s like going to a vacation house – but having never had a vacation house, I can’t really say.

So I’m on my way back to London – where the cats will undoubtedly berate me for the couple days they’ve spent alone* – remembering the feeling, first had when we were living in Luxembourg, of not quite knowing where home is.  It’s not our place, and the stuff in it is new and not all ours… Never the less, its home.

At least for now.

 * Dawnise, amusingly, arrived in a different part of Florida yesterday to join good friends at Disneyworld on their ‘farewell to ‘merica’ tour and won’t be back until the weekend.

I was late leaving work the other day, and the graveyard gates were locked when I arrived.
We don’t live in a graveyard, of course.  That’s ridiculous. I walk through one on my route to work.

The Bunhill Fields Burial Ground [1] – last resting place of, well, a bunch of people, including Defoe and Blake, and a bunch of Cromwells – but not that Cromwell.

The stone path through is worn and uneven – collecting deep and barely avoidable puddles in the rain – and the iron fence edging the path has been built around tree roots and trunks.
The headstones visible from the path are hundreds of years old.

People sit on the benches taking their coffee or tea in the morning, squirrels scamper amongst the headstones and up the tree trunks.

In the morning commuters rushing to work dodge around people out for a stroll. On nice evenings crowds gather at the pub at the far end.

Occasionally the caretaker is seen about, doing whatever one does to care for a field of grave markers.

Even in the wet, dodging puddles underfoot and fat drops from the trees above, it’s become the favorite bit of my commute.

Anyway, they lock the graveyard gates at dusk – so as the days get shorter, I’ll have to find a different route home.

I’ll let you know what I find.

[1] https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/green-spaces/city-gardens/Documents/bunhill-leaflet-map.pdf