It Says Watt?

Some of the electrical things we brought with us from the UK will work here. Others won't. Quite why we brought things that we knew wouldn't work is a complex question. The answer mostly revolves around the amount of effort that would have been required to identify and dispose of things that won't work here, compared to the amount of effort required to ignore the problem and have the shipping company pack everything regardless. A lot of small electronic items run off separate power adaptors, and cheap replacements can be bought here (our ADSL modem/router is running like that right now, for instance). Other items already have dual 110/240 volt power supplies and can be used with just a plug adaptor or a new power cable (the portable disk drive that we brought all our personal data across on is working like that). Other low-power items can use a small, cheap voltage converter (like my electric toothbrush charger). Other things are too much bother to get working, and cheap to replace (hairdryers, for instance). There are a small number of major electrical items that need more care and forethought. Our TV, for instance, can take an NTSC signal (as used in the USA) from a DVD player or set-top box (like our new cable TV box). However, it only runs on the UK's 240V power, so can't be easily plugged in over here. The answer is a big transformer which can be bought at Fry's (is there anything they don't sell?!) which converts between 110v and 240v and can handle enough power for something as significant as a TV (compared to a toothbrush). The secret is to know how much power you need... which is handily printed on the back of most appliances and electrical equipment. The TV said it was 150W (Watts, like a lightbulb), so I thought the 500W transformer should do the job admirably. Quite why the fuse often blew in the transformer when I turned the TV on or off is a mystery (answers on a postcard, please). However, with a "bigger is better" frame of mind, the 1000W version seems to do the job. And it makes a satisfying 'clunk' noise when you turn it on, followed by a faint humming... as if there was some kind of big electromagnet inside or something. Funny, that. So now we get to watch 11-year old episodes of 'Whose Line Is It Anyway' (still funny after all this time) on BBC America with our UK TV.

The Storm Before The Calm

Our stuff arrived on Monday. At 9:00am a 40' sea container, which we'd last seen on the back of a lorry outside our house in the UK on 2nd August, arrived outside our rental house here. It was slightly odd to think that the same container had been floating across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, up the Pacific coast, and into the Port of Oakland. We watched as they broke the seal which had been installed in the UK. For the next half hour, I marked numbers off a tick-list as the 246 individually numbered and itemised cardboard boxes and other oddly shaped items were unloaded from the container onto our driveway (it's a good job it wasn't raining... but then, this is California). Then there was 3 hours of hard work, as the 6 people in the unpacking crew started unwrapping the furniture, bringing it into the house and (where necessary) rebuilding it. Before we knew it, legs were back on tables, feet were back on sofas, and two beds and a cot had been rebuilt from their temporary 'flat pack' existence. Becky and I pitched in where we could, but a lot of our effort was taken up looking after Lucy, and directing boxes and pieces of furniture into appropriate rooms. More than once, a question of 'Where shall I put this?' from the unpacking crew was greeted with a shrug and 'Wherever looks good to you.' from one of us. They thought this was funny. After a lunch break, boxes of what can only be described as 'stuff' started coming in, and the relative calm of a mostly empty house became a mini maze of a few clear walkways through piles of half organised collections of familiar things. By the end of Monday, everything had been unpacked - although almost nothing had been put away - and all the major pieces of furniture were in the right rooms, and mostly in their final positions. It's good to see a lot of our stuff again. Becky's mum and brother arrived later on Monday to help out. Throughout Tuesday, they've been hard at work making sense of the explosion of random belongings that had been cluttering every flat surface. When I got home from work this afternoon the house was unrecognisable from the mess that I'd left in the morning, but much more recognisable as our home. There's something very comforting in being surrounded by familiar things. It's amazing how much progress they made in so little time. Fantastic. So, in two days we've been rapidly transported from a feeling of temporary accommodation, to a genuine sense of being at home. It's quite a relief.

Wibble Wobble Side To Side

We've put on weight since we've been here, but that's not what this is about. Lucy is starting to categorize things as belonging to various people. It's a muddy set of concepts for her at the moment, but she is laying claim to some of our more major items. It started innocently enough when we first bought the new car and didn't know whether to refer to it as "Mummy's car" or "Daddy's car", which were concepts she was used to in the UK when we had two cars which a particular one of us generally tended to drive. So the 4x4 is "Lucy's Car". And a lot of what we listen to when we're in it is "Lucy's Music". The latter is actually only partially inaccurate. She has a limited but eclectic music taste. What she sometimes means by "Lucy's Music" is the CD-Single of "Monster" by "The Automatic" (I'm not quite sure how that became a favourite). This is not entirely appropriate for a 2-year old (I think the song has a relatively grown-up theme), but she seems to enjoy the repetitive chorus... and indearingly pronounces it "Ma'ha" rather than "Monster". She's not quite mastered T's yet - she refers to water as "wa'ha", too. What she usually means by "Lucy's Music" is a CD of Children's Songs, which includes gems like "She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain" and "One Man Went To Mow". One of my favourites is sung to the tune of Glory Glory Hallelujah, and contains some philosophical verses including:

Shakey, shakey, shakey shakey up and down. Shakey, shakey, shakey shakey up and down. Shakey, shakey, shakey shakey up and down. Clap your hands together, 1, 2, 3. Wibble, wobble, wibble wobble side to side. Wibble, wobble, wibble wobble side to side. Wibble, wobble, wibble wobble side to side. Clap your hands together, 1, 2, 3.

Deep stuff. Catchy, though.

Wide Open Spaces

Our household belongings have been picked up from the Port of Oakland. We had word from the shipping company that they picked up our container on Thursday. Their first slot for delivery is Monday, so we prepared ourselves for two days of camping and left our furnished apartment yesterday (Saturday). One of the aspects of apartment living that we really wouldn't get along with in the long term is the distance between the front door of the apartment and the car. The apartment was set in some quite lush surroundings with heavy planting, and the main living areas faced onto courtyards and walkways with trees and shrubs. Very nice... except when you have to carry a car-load of shopping from the allocated parking space behind the building. After six weeks, Becky was getting annoyed by this. So, the three full carloads that it took to get all of our stuff from the apartment to the house was a labor of love. We're getting less tolerant of inconvenience and difficulty... which I think is because we can see the end of it on the horizon. Still, by the end of Saturday, we'd moved everything from the apartment to the house, and drove away from the apartment complex for the last time. The immediate emotions on leaving the apartment were neither sadness nor relief. Of course, it's a step along the way, but the immediate concerns of moving ourselves from one place to another were the focus. We're sleeping on an airbed that Becky's mum bought for when she visited the apartment; Lucy has her travel cot - which she's always been very happy in; we've got a 13" portable TV which we bought for $80 so the Comcast engineer would have something to plug the cable TV equipment into, and Becky borrowed some kitchen equipment, cutlery and crockery from her grandma. So, we're all set. Today we did a bit of shopping for bits and bobs that we're going to need (like some two-pin to three-pin grounding adapters so that we can plug grounded equipment into some of the sockets. eek!), but other than that, we're just waiting for the container to arrive at 9:00am tomorrow. The main thing we're missing at the moment is a set of remote-control cars to race around the wide-open spaces that will soon fill with our furniture and clutter. Vroom!

When The Boat Comes In

The things that have tripped us up have been unexpected. For instance, the medical insurance fiasco was a surprise. The latest surprise is the delay between our household belongings clearing customs, and having them actually delivered to our house. We're currently waiting to hear when the delivery company has a slot in their schedule. Presumably our 40' container is sitting in a storage facility somewhere right now. In contrast, it was surprisingly easy to set up services at the new house. One phone call to the City of Sunnyvale had the billing for water supply and garbage collection sorted out. It took a trip down to the local PG&E office to get our gas and electric billing sorted out (they needed to confirm my identity before they could bill me, it seems). AT&T had our telephone service connected within a day, and our ADSL should be connected tomorrow. And Comcast installed our digital cable (complete with a DVR, just like Sky+) the day after we phoned them. We get to the end of the corporate housing on Sunday, so we have to leave the apartment. It would be possible to extend this, but it needs approval from several levels of management, and we might not be able to stay in the same apartment. By contrast, living in an unfurnished house with an airbed, a travel cot, a portable TV and some borrowed crockery and cutlery sounds appealing. At least it'll be our own place. The optimist in me thinks that we'll hear from the shipping company tomorrow that they can deliver on Friday. Realistically, it looks like we'll be enjoying a bit of a camping vibe for a few days (albeit with cable TV). Still, it makes for a more interesting story.

Lucy's New House

Lucy picked the keys up for her new house this morning. As you can see, it's well kept and has lovely Magnolia tree in the front garden. It's near the end of a small cul-de-sac, so she likes how it is quite safe to play out the front. There are two separate living areas at the back of the house, separated by a small kitchen. And there are four bedrooms down the left hand side towards the front. The two windows at the front are Lucy's bedroom and the master bedroom. Lucy also likes the back yard, which is quiet and not at all overlooked. There's a nice patio area, some planting and a small lawn. She's looking forward to moving in once our household belongings have cleared customs, which should be some time this week. In the meantime, the toaster and coffee maker, at least, have been installed. Lucy's quite happy about that.

Sacred Heart and a Toaster

Working with people in multiple timezones means that I'm often working from home on conference calls at 6:00am or in the evening. This goes with the territory, but it does mean that the 40+ hours in a normal work week can be made up in a variety of ways other than being in the office for eight hours a day. So on Friday afternoon the five of us (the whole team) left the office for something a little different. We had lunch at the Palace BBQ Buffet in Sunnyvale, which is a Korean barbeque. What this means is that once you've been seated, you go to a buffet counter and pick up some starters, vegetables, and a big pile of marinated raw meat, and take them back to your table. The center of the table is a mini gas barbeque, so someone takes 'Chef' duties and the meat gets cooked at the table. As with most barbeques, I ate a lot more meat than I should have. Very tasty, though. Then we went to the Sacred Heart community service to do some volunteer work, which is something that Mel had organized for us. I spent the first part of the afternoon sorting through food donations and shifting boxes around. Then most of my afternoon (along with two other adult volunteers and a couple of girls from a local high school) was spent sorting eggs. They get donations of boxes of eggs which supermarkets can't sell because one or more eggs has broken. We were taking all the good eggs and sorting them into half-dozen sets... although the boxes themselves didn't come in half-dozen sizes, so we were making half-dozen boxes out of the good parts of larger boxes, in a Blue Peter stylee. Much more enjoyable than I'd expected. The people - both volunteers and staff - were all really friendly and a lot of fun. In other news... we received our medical cards for the proper company medical scheme, so we can now come off the temporary cover we've been on for the last month. Also, I finally got paid. So five weeks of living on the money we transferred over from the UK has come to an end. This is fortunate, because we're only in the corporate housing (which is funded by the company) until the end of next week. So we'll be paying rent and utility bills soon. We pick up the keys to our rental house later this morning. In preparation for that, we went out yesterday to buy some things that have been provided in the corporate housing that we won't have in the rental - like a toaster and a coffee machine. The coffee machine is made by "Mr. Coffee" which just makes me smile. It seems like the response from a slightly indignant coffee machine if you didn't give it the respect it deserves. We can't be without toast and coffee.

Aitch Ess Bee See

The credit cards arrived. Hooray! I never thought I'd be quite so happy at something as mundane as a credit card arriving. But it's surprising how many things are made easier by having one. It's very common in the US to require the ZIP code of the credit card billing address for automated transactions (like paying for petrol at the pump), so having a UK credit card is quite limiting. Also, although online banking is a real boon (and you don't get to say 'boon' much these days), it's still a bit of a pain to remotely deal with UK banking. We'll start to build up a US credit history, too, which will make it easier for us to get access to (and a better choice of) financial services in a year or so. Onwards and upwards. By the way... HGTV rules! We're hooked on Design Star.

21 MPG (But The Gallons Are Smaller)

For some reason, long journeys always seem to take us significantly more time than friends and relatives tell us they take. This is saying nothing about the accuracy or good intentions of the people giving us travel advice. I think it is just because we are some kind of magnet for traffic delays. As we discovered on Friday, it was obviously a mistake to drive around the Bay Area on the Friday evening of Labor Day Weekend when the Eastbound Bay Bridge was closed (a well advertised source of snarl-ups for the holiday weekend). But the plan to drive home from Tahoe on Sunday afternoon, missing all the returning Monday traffic, was a good one. However, we weren't counting on a man threatening to throw himself off a bridge on in Sacramento on Sunday afternoon (sorry, link needs free registration). This ended up closing I-50 for about 4 hours... and we caught the last half hour of that. The news story of the incident also reports:

The hours-long traffic blockage possibly caused smaller crowds Sunday evening at large regional events such as the California State Fair.

"It's certainly very possible that it affected attendance," said Amber Bagwell, Cal Expo spokeswoman, noting that official attendance figures were to be calculated at midnight but that the crowd was noticeably thinner.

...so it's nice to see that people have kept a focus on the important issues. Today we drove over to Santa Cruz, which is our local coastal resort town. We have very pleasant memories of visiting with Becky's grandparents a few years ago, and we thought Lucy might like the beach. I think we must have previously visited slightly out of season, because this weekend it was very crowded, and the beach was full of beautiful people playing volleyball. Far too intimidating. So, instead we had a walk around downtown Santa Cruz, which really is very nice. They've managed to retain a cosy, old town feel but with a vibrant and friendly atmosphere. A definite addition to the list of "things to do without spending money on a Sunday afternoon"... and the little pizza place we found was excellent. Santa Cruz isn't very far to drive (it took us well under an hour, and Google Maps says it is about 40 miles), but it did underline the need to fill up with petrol quite regularly. This time we bit the bullet and calculated our fuel economy ("gas mileage"). It worked out to be 21mpg, but this is with US gallons, which are 4/5 the size of UK gallons (the difference coming from a US pint being 16 fluid ounces, and a UK pint being 20 fluid ounces). So, that's just over 26mpg in England. I don't suppose this is bad (compared to what we could/should be getting), especially considering we're driving a bit of a tank. Still, if we're going to get another car to drive around the Bay Area, it would be a good idea to get something a little smaller. Whether or not we get another car hinges around my daily commute. Hopefully I can cycle to work from our new house, but the jury is going to be out on that until we're living there... and my bike arrives off the boat. Come in London Express... Your time is up.

In Labor

Things are fitting slowly in to place. The owner of the house that we liked has signed the rental agreement, so now we just have to arrange to pick up the keys. According to a ship tracking site we found, our household belongings were a little off the west coast of Mexico and heading North a couple of days ago. They're due to arrive at Oakland today, and clear customs in around 10 days. Also, we both passed our driving test written exams and have temporary California driving licenses. So now we just need to arrange for a road test. We applied for a couple of US-based credit cards a little while ago (the more the merrier... and there were a couple of organisations involved in our relocation that have relationships with credit card companies to help recent immigrants). I heard late last week that HSBC had accepted our application, and we should have the cards in a few days. It's Labor Day weekend, so we've come up to Tahoe for a couple of days. It should have been a 3.5-4 hour drive, but the extra holiday traffic made it into a 5 hour drive. Still, it's straight-forward driving, and Lucy was (eventually) asleep in the back of the car for some of the journey. From driving licenses to credit cards, to getting stuck on holiday traffic, we're slowly getting more and more plugged in to various parts of normal day-to-day American society.