Clueless in the UK

Jason wow’d us with his hidden talents. The piano is playing the accompaniment so Jason can learn his part of a duet. But how did he manage to play the piece backwards!?!?!?

Well because the new star trek movie promises to be a blockbuster we decided to rush to the theater to beat the crowds of like-minded Brits who know a great movie when they see one! I was urgently urging everyone to get their butts in gear to beat the crowds an get a good spot in the long lines …

Jason’s school had their annual prose and poetry contest again. Jason one third place in his grade (we think he deserved second place ;-).

Many of the Americans in the audience had tears in their eyes …

Due to a camera misconfiguration the last section got cut off. It was the part about how many years ago George Mallory was asked why he climbed Everest and he replied “Because it is there.” Then JFK said, “Well space is there, and we’re going to climb it!”

Awesome speech. Well done by Jason who was one of the few who memorized the whole thing.

Sing it with me: Proud to be an American!

In all seriousness, putting a man on the moon is still one of the greatest accomplishments of man kind, and I really REALLY doubt such a project could be completed today without worrying about one or two of the 400 thousand people involved in the apollo project suing for millions after dropping a wrench on their foot.

Well after 2 1/2 years here we decided to give the old Alps a go. Heard about them my whole life, found them to be a little intimidating leading up to the trip, the usual pre-trip anxieties. For some reason with me, everything seems much worse and scary right before I do something than I ever actually feel when I am doing it. Is that normal?

Anyway, I have fond memories of some home movies from when I was 6 years old in England and my parents went off with one Mom’s sister and husband to do some camping in France while ditching us with the grandparents. Anyway, they went to Chamonix or perhaps whatever it’s called on the other side, and in the middle of the summer they went up to the top of Mont Blanc and got caught in a mid-July blizzard up there. There are scenes of my mother running across a bridge up in the mountains, not a bridge, a … what is it called … a platform … whatever … she was running across with her hands covering her head as it was snowing. Meanwhile it was sunny and warm down at the bottom.

In the picture below are all of us skiing (except me) and that’s Mont Blanc in the upper left hand corner. It’s more than 1000 meters (or was it feet) taller than the surrounding mountains, but it was impossible to tell from this side.

We did the catered chalet deal with two other families, something we’ve never done before. We planned (Sue, that is) the trip almost a year prior and had we known we were going to be about 50% poorer now than we were then, we probably wouldn’t have done it.

However, now that we have, there’s no going back!!!!!!!!!!

Here we are being waited on after a rough day on the slopes.

Here are the kids being fed food while we sit on our asses:

Here’s some more pictures of how we got into the condition that required being waited on:

Jason had had enough on that hill:

More Mont Blanc just to the right of center of this photo:

And here’s a view of Argentiere below, underneath the mist, while we’re at the top waiting for the cable car to take us down.

My impression of the skiing where we went was, There was some great opportunities to do some radical off-piste skiing if you’re really good, which I am not. If you’re a normal skier who prefers no-avalanche zones, largely groomed stuff, moguls OK but not necessarily preferred, then these places did not have a lot to offer. Didn’t stop me personally from having a great time, and I think same with everyone else. We knew one of the families who invited us and another family, and the three familes hit it off great from the outset. Awesome time.

Jason Needs Glasses

Well we started to get an inkling that Jason was having trouble seeing distances and then we basically confirmed it walking down the street one day, so off Sue went to the eye-doctor for our free-for-children, socialist country, this-could-never-happen-in-America eye appointment. He has a minor correction and seemed very sad about it, but he picked up his glasses today and seems quite happy with them. So that’s a good thing.

Wrote an Article About my Dad

My father had an article in the local paper where he lived for 40+ years. He was well known by his column and I probably mentioned all this in the last post. Anyway, I decided I wasn’t really happy with the kinds of articles I was seeing coming out of the paper since my dad stopped writing and I decided I could do a decent job myself. So I fired it off and the editor liked it, and they published it in yesterday’s paper.

It’s not much but I am still pleased to have had the opportunity:

http://www.wickedlocal.com/sudbury/news/lifestyle/columnists/x1992966271/Payne-Reflections-on-the-death-of-my-father

I’ve Never Been More Proud

OK, so back to the catered chalet experience for a moment: most of the meals were three course meals with hors d’oeuvres and wine for a couple of hours before dinner each night, but one night the staff gets the night off. So we went out to a nice restaurant that one night, the night before New Year’s Eve actually, a nice French restaurant. A young waitress took our orders of beers and other ice cold drinks and came back with them on the tray, and then proceeded to dump the entire thing on Madeline’s head and down her neck. Madeline screamed and the whole restaurant looked. Yelped is more like it. It was shocking and she was trying not to cry at first, with her cute little lip quivering a little, but she reacted well to our telling her that it was OK and not to worry. Anyway, three seconds after she was dumped on and was just starting to calm down a little bit she screamed again: “Quick! Save my iPod!”

Yes! Covered in cold beer and other alcoholic beverages after a hard day of skiing, but my daughter snaps out of it in time to rescue her beloved technology: her brand new iPod Touch that she bought with a chunk of her own money. I have never been so proud of my daughter, never felt that her priorities were so well-aligned with mine, I have taught her well: water and hi-tech toys do not mix and nothing is more precious than iPod-like devices.

That’s what being a parent is all about ;-)

Hi everyone,

I realize that 7 months is a long time to go without writing anything. It wasn’t for a lack of things to write about: I just couldn’t figure out how to upload images into the blog! It was driving me crazy! I seem to have solved that problem now, though, so I am hopeful to get something going again.

Meanwhile, here are some extremely brief highlights of the last 7 months.

Some of the biggest stuff going on can be summed up by these two screenshots from my iPhone. Easy come, easy go, there’s probably lots of money to be made with daily swings like the ones seen below:

The whole thing has had a huge impact on us and where it all pans out remains to be seen.

Summer Break

We spent the summer in CA followed by 2 weeks in Greece with my sister Gill’s family. We spent the summer in our house trying to decide whether to sell the thing or not. We may have waited too long but we’ll see. We’ve prettied it up on the outside quite a bit, and can recommend some really awesome house painters for the Bay Area, bids at less than 50% of other bids, outstanding work.

In Greece we stayed in Athens and then in the southern coast of Crete near a town called Plakias. There we all are on Crete at a WWII War Memorial if I remember correctly:

We stayed in a place with a bunch of nice rooms, lovely hosts, and a beautiful pool. The only serious issue was the wind, but it wasn’t too windy every day, and it was kinda nice having a strong breeze a lot of the time:

While we were there Jason read Harry Potter 5. Not bad for a just-turned-8-year-old kid. When I was 8 years old (or maybe older) my parents decided that I was in trouble in the reading department and started insisting that I read. My father read me the first couple of chapters of certain books and sent me on my way. Phew! Sue keeps Jason and Madeline (and me) in a constant stream of good books to read, and it is a delight. Jason has since finished the whole series:

Athens in August is hot but we had to go in August. However, it was great in its own way. Gill’s husband is Greek and was able to give us a bit of a special explanation on lots of things, plus he interacted well with the locals and helped us order all the right food.

This was the best way to deal with the heat: a cool mist shower while eating popsicles on the roof of the hotel:

We arrived in Athens on a lunar eclipse, nearly total I think. That was such a great way to start the vacation. A day or so later we made the startling realization that cousins Alex and Jason have the exact same birth mark on their hands. Freaky!

In the museums in Greece you are not allowed to pose with the statues or artwork in any way. They take it very seriously. However, I was able to take this picture of father and son:

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: it’s great being around family. Everyone gets along quite nicely, see what I mean?

School

Obviously it’s a new school year, or at least it was 4 months ago. Things are different this year because Madeline and Jason are in different schools. Madeline’s new school is the best thing that ever happened to her, in my opinion. She is really growing up quite nicely with the occasional relapse ;-) I think the British school system has been good for her and she is just an ideal student.

She hit the ground running at her new school, having memorized the map of the buildings and the grounds before she got there. She would be the first to her new classes because she was motivated to get there before all the big girls came out (apparently she was being jostled around too much between classes). She had a problem, she came up with a plan, we didn’t hear about it until later and she figured it all out on her own.

Jason continues to do well, in school and in chess. His English skills are quite advanced, which is amazing considering how behind he was when we got here. It’s all the reading, obviously. He barely studies for his spelling tests. Jason, too, is growing up, but more steadily, and more like a boy. He continues to do well in chess although his interest wanes from time to time. He fairly effortless beats me on a regular basis except that he gets careless and I luck out sometimes.

West Coast (of England, that is)

This could be a picture of the Monterey coast in California, or at least so I thought at the time I took this. This is fact Cornwall in south western England. We went there 7 months or so ago!

This is St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall: a castle on an island with a pathway you can walk (and drive) on during low tide two times a day/night. This is before the low tide ;-)

And you cannot visit the west coast of England without hitting Land’s End:

Music

Both kids are continuing to play their piano and they are moving right along despite not practicing more than 30 minutes a day for Madeline and more like 15 for Jason. Jason especially complains, pointing out that so many other people don’t have to do piano and learn Chinese, and I just tried to tell him that it’s good for him :-) Which it is. But even he seems to like it when he can look back and see what he can now play. The cycle is, New piece to learn means hellish piano practices, and then when perfecting the pieces (finishing learning them) the practice is easy and fun. It’s a good thing to learn at an early age. I tell them that if it were easy every one would do it and there’s nothing special about that!

Madeline’s school is full of amazingly gifted young ladies many of whom are very advanced musicians or just good ones playing multiple instruments. That might be why Madeline is doing so well lately. She has a beautiful sound on the piano; a recent Bach piece that transformed overnight while I was in California on business a few weeks ago really blew my mind. She has a feel for it I think.

She also has a feel for singing singing singing. The control over her voice has gotten better over the past 3 or 4 years of constant singing, so who knows what she is going to do with that! No we just need her to spend more time doing Norah Jones than Mariah Carey and Leona Lewis. I hate show-off pop singers - no substitute for a nice voice.

My father

Well, in some depressing news, my father died a few weeks ago. I don’t recommend allowing your parents to die… When it happens things start moving out of your control and I think it’s all part of a plan to force/allow you not to spend too much time thinking about the reality of it in the first few days, just little bits and spurts, and then snap out of it to get what needs to be done, done!

My dad had a column in his local area, a town of 15 thousand people or so. It was a very popular column we are finding out, although I suppose we already knew. My father had a command of the written word that is out of the ordinary and wrote very interesting articles on town matters of the day or of major events going on in the world, or just on history in general. People who were often on the other side of the issues my father raised came to pay their respects to us, saying he always made them think and it was never anything personal, it was just good old fashioned, honest discourse.

I gave the eulogy at the funeral. My sisters performed music with some of their professional musician friends which was also amazing. Music was one of the most important parts of my father’s life and he once said the following to me about music:

It’s really a spiritual experience in a materialistic and crass world and an antidote to it.

I am inclined to agree.

Anyway, the whole experience has left me with the follow impressions on life and death which I touched upon in the eulogy, namely that every death is a tragedy for at least some person in the world, that every death matters no matter if it’s my family or yours, an American or non-American, rich or poor, a young child or my 73 year old father who recently said “I’ve lived a good life.” Every death matters.