The company I work for is quite an international one; we have offices in 18 countries, with the head office here in Bristol. We often have people from our other offices here visiting, and last week it was the turn of one of our guys from Beijing.
Now Bristol, Bath and the towns and villages in between all lie in the Avon valley. This valley is about five miles wide for most of the distance between Bath and Bristol, and fairly steep-sided. After a few warm, dry days, the air pollution starts to accumulate; for someone used to the fresh air of South Australia, it is not very pleasant.
Late last week I was walking from the office to the train station with our Chinese friend. We had walked a little way in silence, and I was about to comment on the poor air quality, when he had the same thought: he turned to me and said, "The air is so clean here! In Beijing it is terrible."
I guess these things are all relative.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Drool
Sugar-coated doughnuts with caramel filling. Seriously. Who thinks of such things? Whoever it is, someone give him a medal.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Moving On
Well, here we are, moved into our own house! We now live in a town called Keynsham, a bit out of Bristol.
This move means a few changes for us, most of them good:
This move means a few changes for us, most of them good:
- We now have a TV and a radio; these come with the house. Including quite a nice 66cm LCD TV.
- We have a nice garden.
- We no longer live on a major road. This is a mixed blessing; we don't have traffic or train noises, and we can cross our street without risk of death. But traffic is one of Elizabeth's favourite entertainments, and it is a nearly half-hour walk to the bus or train. Hmmm.
- The house comes with, basically, everything; we really don't need anything except clothes and food. And linen. Otherwise, everything.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Ching... erm... Gerl... erm... Britlish?
Those who follow The Newmans' blog will be familiar with their examples of Chinglish, signs improperly translated from <Chinese dialect of your choice> to English, to humorous effect.
I am, however, at something of a loss for what to call it when I find the same thing in England. So I am Christening it Britlish. It is perhaps less common than Chinglish is in China, and the humour is often slightly more subtle. The grammar is usually perfect, even elegant, but someone's attempt at elegance has resulted in a meaning quite different to what they intended.
I saw, on the bus this morning, a sign that said, "Avon Vale: Bristol's cemetary for History, Architecture, Landscape and Wildlife." This, of course, left me thinking, "You bury architecture here? Back in Oz, we just knock it down. And landscape? That must take some burying. How do you bury history, exactly? Historians, yes, granted, but history? Poor wildlife."
I am, however, at something of a loss for what to call it when I find the same thing in England. So I am Christening it Britlish. It is perhaps less common than Chinglish is in China, and the humour is often slightly more subtle. The grammar is usually perfect, even elegant, but someone's attempt at elegance has resulted in a meaning quite different to what they intended.
I saw, on the bus this morning, a sign that said, "Avon Vale: Bristol's cemetary for History, Architecture, Landscape and Wildlife." This, of course, left me thinking, "You bury architecture here? Back in Oz, we just knock it down. And landscape? That must take some burying. How do you bury history, exactly? Historians, yes, granted, but history? Poor wildlife."
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
[Updated] Europe is Too Small
[Update] After my snide remarks about how quiet Gutersloh is, Turkey went and won a soccer match last night. This is, apparently, the cue to get in your car, drive in circles and make lots of noise with your horn. For three hours. I didn't sleep until around 2AM. Petrol is around 1.6 euros per litre here; it can't be a cheap passtime.
The moral of the story is: Don't stay in Germany when Turkey are winning soccer matches.
A quick update on where I am up to:
I have now worked for Garrad Hassan and Partners for eight days. GH are a company in the renewable energy business, mostly to do with wind energy. My particular role is in writing controller software for wind turbines (and potentially marine turbines).
I am presently in a hotel in Gutersloh, Germany. I (and two others from GH) are here for a training course with a controller supplier. For some obscure reason, we got here by flying to Amsterdam last night and then driving for three hours this morning. I think it is because there are a lot of flights from Bristol to Amsterdam and not many flights from Bristol to anywhere else. Frankly I would rather the three hours it takes to get from Bristol to London and through security at Heathrow than the three hours driving, but there you go.
Actually the drive was sort of fun. I had to drive about half the way. This included a few firsts for me:
Germany, based on my unbiased observation so far, is covered in trees and cars. And lorries. Lots of trees, though.
There are also lots of wind turbines. You can't drive far on the autobahn without seeing a turbine.
Gutersloh is a pretty dead town; we walked out to a restaurant and back for dinner, and the streets were deserted.
Somehow, everywhere we go we end up eating Greek. We arrived in Amsterdam last night to find a beautiful early summer's evening, and decided we could head into the city for dinner. After wandering through an area basically populated with restaurants, we selected on at random and it was Greek. We arrived in Gutersloh this morning to find that our hosts had booked us into a Greek restaurant for the next three days for lunch. Oh well. We ate German tonight.
The scale of Europe is still taking a bit of getting used to. I still think of Great Britain as being about the same size as Australia, and the continent as being about as far away as China is from Australia. That would make Bristol to Amsterdam about the same distance as Adelaide to Hong Kong, a flight of around 11 hours; actually it takes about 55 minutes.
This is all turning very boring, so I will stop.
The moral of the story is: Don't stay in Germany when Turkey are winning soccer matches.
A quick update on where I am up to:
I have now worked for Garrad Hassan and Partners for eight days. GH are a company in the renewable energy business, mostly to do with wind energy. My particular role is in writing controller software for wind turbines (and potentially marine turbines).
I am presently in a hotel in Gutersloh, Germany. I (and two others from GH) are here for a training course with a controller supplier. For some obscure reason, we got here by flying to Amsterdam last night and then driving for three hours this morning. I think it is because there are a lot of flights from Bristol to Amsterdam and not many flights from Bristol to anywhere else. Frankly I would rather the three hours it takes to get from Bristol to London and through security at Heathrow than the three hours driving, but there you go.
Actually the drive was sort of fun. I had to drive about half the way. This included a few firsts for me:
- I have never driven on the right-hand side of the road before. This causes a number of problems, including passengers screaming, "No, right! Right!" and frequent digging in the driver's door for the gear stick.
- I have never driven on a road without a speed limit before. It is nice being able to go fast, but there are inevitably lots of lorries doing 80 km/h, and a few people doing 180 km/h. There are only so many lanes to spread this speed difference over. It is easy to check your mirrors, see an empty fast lane, move into it, then have someone angrily honking on your tail only a few seconds later.
- I have never driven across a border before. Doing this in Europe is now a total non-event; we went past a sign and one of the passengers said, "Oh, I think we're in Germany now." That was it.
Germany, based on my unbiased observation so far, is covered in trees and cars. And lorries. Lots of trees, though.
There are also lots of wind turbines. You can't drive far on the autobahn without seeing a turbine.
Gutersloh is a pretty dead town; we walked out to a restaurant and back for dinner, and the streets were deserted.
Somehow, everywhere we go we end up eating Greek. We arrived in Amsterdam last night to find a beautiful early summer's evening, and decided we could head into the city for dinner. After wandering through an area basically populated with restaurants, we selected on at random and it was Greek. We arrived in Gutersloh this morning to find that our hosts had booked us into a Greek restaurant for the next three days for lunch. Oh well. We ate German tonight.
The scale of Europe is still taking a bit of getting used to. I still think of Great Britain as being about the same size as Australia, and the continent as being about as far away as China is from Australia. That would make Bristol to Amsterdam about the same distance as Adelaide to Hong Kong, a flight of around 11 hours; actually it takes about 55 minutes.
This is all turning very boring, so I will stop.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Grammar Nazis
OK, OK, OK, so I used 'their' instead of 'there'. It seems all my friends are grammar nazis (and no, that shouldn't be Nazis; there was even an article in The Times last week that said so). It is now fixed.
On other matters, Richard rather excellently posted a comment to my last post quoting a bit of Yes, Prime Minister which I had forgotten. It concerns newspapers and their readers, and is worth quoting in full:
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers:
The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;
The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country;
The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
There you have it.
On other matters, Richard rather excellently posted a comment to my last post quoting a bit of Yes, Prime Minister which I had forgotten. It concerns newspapers and their readers, and is worth quoting in full:
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers:
The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;
The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country;
The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
There you have it.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
A Tale of Two Cities
We are currently living in a "small" English village of around 3000 people called Saltford, about half way between the cities of Bath and Bristol. It is a bit hard for Australians to get their heads around, but these two cities are only about 12 miles apart, centre to centre. They would both be easily contained within the limits of metropolitan Adelaide.
It is almost difficult to imagine two cities so close and yet so different. For a start, Bristol is much larger; around 500,000 people live there, compared to around 80,000 in Bath. But even if you only saw the city centres, you couldn't possibly miss the difference.
Bath is old. There are bits of Bath that you can wander around, on a grey day, and not really be aware that anything has changed in 150 years. A fair number of the streets in the city centre are too marrow for cars, so no-one has bothered to bitumise them; they are still cobbled / flagged. The buildings are still in pretty much the original 19th century condition. There are still street vendors in Union Street who sell clothing, jewellery, hot food and some quite good water-colours of the city from hand-carts.
On a slight digression, owning property in England is a bit of a mine-field. The reason is that if anyone happens to think your property represents anything at all about any age other than the immediate present, they will mention it to local government and your property will be listed. This is a bit like heritage listing in Australia, with one crucial difference; in Australia, perhaps one property in a thousand is heritage listed. In England, it seems that about two properties in three are. Once your house is listed, you must maintain it in the condition in which it was listed; there are hefty fines for failing to do so.
Now, you are probably thinking that sounds really nice; it means there are lots of period houses around and the feel of olde worlde England is preserved. That is true. But you really feel for some people. For instance, we have passed through a number of villages where a lot of the houses have thatched roofs. Real river-reed thatch. We saw this and thought, "Hey, how cute, they must be really old roofs!" Not so. Thatch roofs only last about 20 years, less if you happen to get some very wet years. These people have to have their roofs replaced every 20 years or so, and it ain't cheap to get a roof re-thatched. Fifty years ago, they could have just chucked it in and put a tile or even tin roof on, but they didn't, and now their houses are listed with thatched roofs. They have no choice but to keep on getting the roof re-thatched.
I mention this because the entire city centre of Bath is now listed. No property owner is allowed to change the (at least outward) aspect of the property they own. It means the Bath city centre is just beautiful, but I don't want to own property there.
It also means that a lot of the flats we looked at in Bath were in these stunning old Georgian townhouses that have been divided up in flats. They can be really, really attractive properties. They have lovely exteriors, all finished in Bath Stone, and are usually all nicely updated with all the mod cons inside.
Anyway, here are some pictures of lovely, olde worlde Bath, such as my poor camera is able to capture:
I have higher-resolution copies of these, if anyone wants to see detail.
In contrast, Bristol is big, and largely new. I think a lot of the difference is because Bristol was quite heavily bombed in WWII. This rather gave them a license to redevelop, since there wasn't a lot left to preserve. This is at least true of most of the bits I've seen; I am told there are some nicer, older bits that have been preserved, too. At least most of the city centre is new and shiny. I don't have a lot of pictures of it, because it's not all that interesting. The best I can come up with is this, which is on a footbridge over the central quay:
You just can't imagine seeing this in Bath; it really wouldn't work. It wouldn't fit with the city's character. In Bristol, it kind of fits. Bristol is, I think, the only city in England that I have seen which has roads of more than one lane in each direction near the city centre (out of London, Reading, Bath and Bristol). It has flashy, modern buildings with walls made out of glass. It has Tesco's. None of these are to be found in Bath, and on the whole it is probably a nicer city for it. At least nicer to visit; living there might be a pain.
Bristol does have some nice bits. Temple Meads railway station is a lovely old Victorian building, now largely taken up with the Empire and Commonwealth Museum (the new railway station is next door, and frankly looks to date from about the same period to me). The Cathedral (formerly Bristol Abbey) is also stunning; I will get some photos up once I finish stitching together some panoramas. A lot of the river-front is also very nice; lots of cobbled walk-says with old-fashioned cast-iron bollards. Lots of boats on the river, this far down, too; Bristol has a reasonable ferry service. On a side note, I discovered recently that the river Avon I can see from my front garden is, in fact, one of no fewer than seven rivers in England and Scotland to bear this name. *Shrug*
On reflection, I'm not really sure why anyone would want to live in either city. There are dozens of villages within half-hour drive of the centre of each city, all with nice little communities and stunning countryside. Village life for me!
It is almost difficult to imagine two cities so close and yet so different. For a start, Bristol is much larger; around 500,000 people live there, compared to around 80,000 in Bath. But even if you only saw the city centres, you couldn't possibly miss the difference.
Bath is old. There are bits of Bath that you can wander around, on a grey day, and not really be aware that anything has changed in 150 years. A fair number of the streets in the city centre are too marrow for cars, so no-one has bothered to bitumise them; they are still cobbled / flagged. The buildings are still in pretty much the original 19th century condition. There are still street vendors in Union Street who sell clothing, jewellery, hot food and some quite good water-colours of the city from hand-carts.
On a slight digression, owning property in England is a bit of a mine-field. The reason is that if anyone happens to think your property represents anything at all about any age other than the immediate present, they will mention it to local government and your property will be listed. This is a bit like heritage listing in Australia, with one crucial difference; in Australia, perhaps one property in a thousand is heritage listed. In England, it seems that about two properties in three are. Once your house is listed, you must maintain it in the condition in which it was listed; there are hefty fines for failing to do so.
Now, you are probably thinking that sounds really nice; it means there are lots of period houses around and the feel of olde worlde England is preserved. That is true. But you really feel for some people. For instance, we have passed through a number of villages where a lot of the houses have thatched roofs. Real river-reed thatch. We saw this and thought, "Hey, how cute, they must be really old roofs!" Not so. Thatch roofs only last about 20 years, less if you happen to get some very wet years. These people have to have their roofs replaced every 20 years or so, and it ain't cheap to get a roof re-thatched. Fifty years ago, they could have just chucked it in and put a tile or even tin roof on, but they didn't, and now their houses are listed with thatched roofs. They have no choice but to keep on getting the roof re-thatched.
I mention this because the entire city centre of Bath is now listed. No property owner is allowed to change the (at least outward) aspect of the property they own. It means the Bath city centre is just beautiful, but I don't want to own property there.
It also means that a lot of the flats we looked at in Bath were in these stunning old Georgian townhouses that have been divided up in flats. They can be really, really attractive properties. They have lovely exteriors, all finished in Bath Stone, and are usually all nicely updated with all the mod cons inside.
Anyway, here are some pictures of lovely, olde worlde Bath, such as my poor camera is able to capture:
I have higher-resolution copies of these, if anyone wants to see detail.
In contrast, Bristol is big, and largely new. I think a lot of the difference is because Bristol was quite heavily bombed in WWII. This rather gave them a license to redevelop, since there wasn't a lot left to preserve. This is at least true of most of the bits I've seen; I am told there are some nicer, older bits that have been preserved, too. At least most of the city centre is new and shiny. I don't have a lot of pictures of it, because it's not all that interesting. The best I can come up with is this, which is on a footbridge over the central quay:
You just can't imagine seeing this in Bath; it really wouldn't work. It wouldn't fit with the city's character. In Bristol, it kind of fits. Bristol is, I think, the only city in England that I have seen which has roads of more than one lane in each direction near the city centre (out of London, Reading, Bath and Bristol). It has flashy, modern buildings with walls made out of glass. It has Tesco's. None of these are to be found in Bath, and on the whole it is probably a nicer city for it. At least nicer to visit; living there might be a pain.Bristol does have some nice bits. Temple Meads railway station is a lovely old Victorian building, now largely taken up with the Empire and Commonwealth Museum (the new railway station is next door, and frankly looks to date from about the same period to me). The Cathedral (formerly Bristol Abbey) is also stunning; I will get some photos up once I finish stitching together some panoramas. A lot of the river-front is also very nice; lots of cobbled walk-says with old-fashioned cast-iron bollards. Lots of boats on the river, this far down, too; Bristol has a reasonable ferry service. On a side note, I discovered recently that the river Avon I can see from my front garden is, in fact, one of no fewer than seven rivers in England and Scotland to bear this name. *Shrug*
On reflection, I'm not really sure why anyone would want to live in either city. There are dozens of villages within half-hour drive of the centre of each city, all with nice little communities and stunning countryside. Village life for me!
Filling In
Sorry that I haven't posted much lately. This is for a few reasons:
Anyhow, I'll let you know how that ends up. In the meantime, I've got a couple of things to get off my chest.
Number one: I love Google, and want to have Larry Page's lovechild, or something. My new discovery today is Google Notebook. So, so cool. Make sure you install the Firefox extension.
Number two: Newspapers. Newspapers are a bit of a status symbol here. I guess they are everywhere, but particularly here, where there are so many to choose from. The spectrum basically has The Times at one end (for the Duke of York, Baroness Thatcher, David Cameron etc) and The Sun at the other (for the football hooligans of the world). The Sun is the newspaper that gave us Page Three Girls. WARNING: This page is very definitely Not Safe For Work. If you don't like pictures of ladies with no clothes on, don't click this link. An explanation without pictures can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_Three_girl. Anyway. What has me puzzled is that last night I saw an elderly lady, easily into her eighth decade of life, if not her ninth, leaving the village store with, tucked under her arm... The Sun. I am just puzzled. What did she think she would find to interest her therein? Oh well.
To quickly get you all up to speed on what has been happening: Weather has been fantastic except for the day we went on a bus tour to Stonehenge and Avebury. Sigh. Kylie and Elizabeth arrived safely, and seem to be over their jetlag. I am told Eliza behaved very well on the flight except for the takeoff from Singapore (at least, I think that is what she means; all she says is, 'A-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa.' Curiously, she has learnt to whisper this.) I start work in around twelve hours time in Bristol.
We have been looking into where to live next. We are very grateful to some good friends who have lent us a house for the first couple of months while we are here, but the time is coming when we will need to find our own place. We started looking in Bath, but quickly decided we could do better elsewhere. Bath was a fashionable place to live 150 years ago, and not a lot has changed; rents are very expensive. We could afford a flat, even a flat in a very desirable location, but we would be paying extra for a location we don't really want. So we are now looking at property in Keynsham. It is more reasonably priced, but in shorter supply. I am sure something will come up, and we are in no desperate rush yet.
- Kylie and Elizabeth (my wife and daughter, if anyone hasn't figured that out) arrived two weeks ago. Time has been very pleasantly spent with them seeing the sights and getting to know the area.
- I have been sick. Just a heavy cold, but it is no fun.
- My internet connection has continued to be dumb.
Anyhow, I'll let you know how that ends up. In the meantime, I've got a couple of things to get off my chest.
Number one: I love Google, and want to have Larry Page's lovechild, or something. My new discovery today is Google Notebook. So, so cool. Make sure you install the Firefox extension.
Number two: Newspapers. Newspapers are a bit of a status symbol here. I guess they are everywhere, but particularly here, where there are so many to choose from. The spectrum basically has The Times at one end (for the Duke of York, Baroness Thatcher, David Cameron etc) and The Sun at the other (for the football hooligans of the world). The Sun is the newspaper that gave us Page Three Girls. WARNING: This page is very definitely Not Safe For Work. If you don't like pictures of ladies with no clothes on, don't click this link. An explanation without pictures can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_Three_girl. Anyway. What has me puzzled is that last night I saw an elderly lady, easily into her eighth decade of life, if not her ninth, leaving the village store with, tucked under her arm... The Sun. I am just puzzled. What did she think she would find to interest her therein? Oh well.
To quickly get you all up to speed on what has been happening: Weather has been fantastic except for the day we went on a bus tour to Stonehenge and Avebury. Sigh. Kylie and Elizabeth arrived safely, and seem to be over their jetlag. I am told Eliza behaved very well on the flight except for the takeoff from Singapore (at least, I think that is what she means; all she says is, 'A-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa-baa.' Curiously, she has learnt to whisper this.) I start work in around twelve hours time in Bristol.
We have been looking into where to live next. We are very grateful to some good friends who have lent us a house for the first couple of months while we are here, but the time is coming when we will need to find our own place. We started looking in Bath, but quickly decided we could do better elsewhere. Bath was a fashionable place to live 150 years ago, and not a lot has changed; rents are very expensive. We could afford a flat, even a flat in a very desirable location, but we would be paying extra for a location we don't really want. So we are now looking at property in Keynsham. It is more reasonably priced, but in shorter supply. I am sure something will come up, and we are in no desperate rush yet.
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