Happy New Year's Eve!
K and I are going to a small dinner party with some friend's in London. Our first New Year's celebration of such a kind. Should be cozy. See you all in the New Year!
Con mucho amor,
R and K
Saturday, December 31
Monday, December 26
Boxing Day
We're laying low today, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to tell a little about how we celebrated Christmas this year.
K's mom and step-dad (J-Mom and J-Dad) have come to Winchester for about a week. They arrived on Thursday morning; naturally, a bit jet-lagged after an 11-hour journey from eastern Oregon. That evening, we took them to the Christmas carol service at Winchester Cathedral. A nice service, but most of the carols were unfamiliar to us. K and I are non-religious, while J-Mom and J-Dad are Catholic. The Winchester Cathedral is "C of E" (Church of England). So, there you have it. Nonetheless, it was a great way to start Christmas.
I worked on Friday and our tired guests tried to overcome their jet-lag. On Saturday, J-Dad and I noticed that we were getting a cold or perhaps bird flu. The gals were out Christmas shopping, so we ate some raw garlic cloves to try to stave off the sickness. Anti-social, but quite effective usually. However, the sickness had already gotten a good hold on us.
That night, Christmas Eve, we went to Loch Fyne Restaurant for Christmas dinner. Fantastic meal! We were all very stuffed by the end of it. Then we whisked ourselves back home to make sure our colds did not get worse. Luckily, the gals have not gotten ill so far. It's just us men-folk that have been TKO'd.
By Christmas Day, I was feeling a bit better. Well enough to open presents and cook dinner, anyway! We all had a light breakfast. K and J-Mom baked some "Mexican Wedding Cakes" and then we adjourned to the living room to open our "prezies" (presents). A good little haul of gifts! Many thanks to our family members for that!
Then it was time to start on the turkey. Before the cookies were baked, I had injected the turkey with Lea & Perrins Coconut Lime Coriander 5-minute Marinade and then placed it back in the fridge to suck up that lovely goodness. Then it got stuffed with Paxo Sage & Onion stuffing, massaged with butter, and dusted with Adobo seasoning. I'm normally a big fan of deep-frying the turkey, but I don't have the capabilities of doing that here in England, so we cooked it the old-fashioned way: in the oven. While it was roasting, we watched the Queen's speech and then National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which was one of K's presents. For snacks, we had roasted chestnuts and caramelized onion, garlic, shallot spread on "croutes" -- I adapted this from Gordon Ramsay's "Aubergine Caviar" recipe which I had planned to make but was foiled by the lack of aubergines anywhere in town. Then as soon as the movie was over we sprung into action to finish cooking the Christmas dinner.
Christmas Dinner 2005:
- Coconut-Lime-Coriander Turkey with Sage & Onion stuffing- Parsnip-Potato mash
- Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts and Bacon
- Pork, Sage & Onion stuffing balls (from the supermarket)
- J-Mom's gravy
- Homemade cranberry sauce
- Dessert: Chocolate & Bailey's Irish Cream creme-brulee cheesecake (from Marks and Spencer)
Plenty of left-overs. Tonight I'm going to make a wholesome, nourishing soup to try to fight this cold. J-Dad and I will probably eat some more raw garlic to send in some reinforcements for our beleagured immune systems.
K and J-Mom have gone out for a walk around Winchester, while we sicklings have stayed at home. Seems like a good time to play a little X-Box!
-RP-
PS - More pictures HERE.
Sunday, December 25
...And to our friends & family practicing American Christmas:
Merry Christmas! and/or Happy Holidays!
Much love,
R & K
PS - For some Christmas laughs, an old classic: The Scared of Santa Gallery.
Saturday, December 24
Sunday, December 18
You're Quitting? Let's Celebrate!
In England it is customary to reward someone for quitting their job. The quitter's co-workers get together to buy a "farewell gift" and sometimes throw a "leaving do" (a party or night out) in their honor. This idea is absurd beyond my capacity to describe it. An example...
Someone at my current place of employment is leaving the project to start another job. He'll actually even be in the same building as us. The position he is leaving on our project still has another year (or more) of longevity. Now the project has to spend time finding someone to replace him and then train/brief them on everything that has been done to date. Despite this inconvenience, they feel compelled to reward him for leaving. We have been asked to donate money for his farewell present. K and I aren't even buying ourselves Christmas presents this year and now I'm expected to spend money on the guy that's quitting? He's a nice guy and I have no problems wishing him well in his new job, but I don't see the need to give him a gift. What is the point? It is politeness gone awry. I could see giving someone a gift if they had done something particularly great, were retiring, or perhaps become a parent or something. But a present for quitting a job?!
Furthermore, most of us are on a one year contract for this project. Does that mean we'll be buying presents for everyone when our contracts end and we all leave? Not bloody likely. So why are we rewarding someone who cuts out early? I can't find a reasonable answer to this question.
We also are in the pattern of celebrating people's birthday. Everyone chips in £2 and the birthday boy or girl gets some kind of present and a cake. I was being amicable when I went along with that and I must admit, I did get a present myself (an HMV gift card), but I'm not there to socialize. I'm there to work. Is that so wrong?
-RP-
PS- One of my coworkers agrees with me about this. However, we are the only two who feel that way. Everyone else thinks I'm some kind of asshole, I guess, for not wanting to chip in for this guy's gift. It's a hard life being a reasonable person!
In England it is customary to reward someone for quitting their job. The quitter's co-workers get together to buy a "farewell gift" and sometimes throw a "leaving do" (a party or night out) in their honor. This idea is absurd beyond my capacity to describe it. An example...
Someone at my current place of employment is leaving the project to start another job. He'll actually even be in the same building as us. The position he is leaving on our project still has another year (or more) of longevity. Now the project has to spend time finding someone to replace him and then train/brief them on everything that has been done to date. Despite this inconvenience, they feel compelled to reward him for leaving. We have been asked to donate money for his farewell present. K and I aren't even buying ourselves Christmas presents this year and now I'm expected to spend money on the guy that's quitting? He's a nice guy and I have no problems wishing him well in his new job, but I don't see the need to give him a gift. What is the point? It is politeness gone awry. I could see giving someone a gift if they had done something particularly great, were retiring, or perhaps become a parent or something. But a present for quitting a job?!
Furthermore, most of us are on a one year contract for this project. Does that mean we'll be buying presents for everyone when our contracts end and we all leave? Not bloody likely. So why are we rewarding someone who cuts out early? I can't find a reasonable answer to this question.
We also are in the pattern of celebrating people's birthday. Everyone chips in £2 and the birthday boy or girl gets some kind of present and a cake. I was being amicable when I went along with that and I must admit, I did get a present myself (an HMV gift card), but I'm not there to socialize. I'm there to work. Is that so wrong?
-RP-
PS- One of my coworkers agrees with me about this. However, we are the only two who feel that way. Everyone else thinks I'm some kind of asshole, I guess, for not wanting to chip in for this guy's gift. It's a hard life being a reasonable person!
Sunday, December 4
Blind-sided
One of the huge differences between the American and British societies is the crime and more specifically the police forces that work to combat this crime. Britain has long been proud of the fact that handguns are not legal here and that their police officers do not carry guns. The US is obviously very different on that score: guns galore... amongst its citizens and its "law enforcement community." Consequently, though the reason for this may lie elsewhere, gun fatalities in the US are much higher than in the UK -- according to this site, the figures in 1992 were 13, 429 handgun murders in the US and only 33 in the UK.
I think this policy in the UK has worked quite well, but it just seems like things have changed too much to keep upholding it. Crime in the UK has gotten more violent and there are more guns out there. The feeling I get is that they "don't know what hit them". Like all of a sudden the other team started playing a tackle football while they're still playing touch. "OK, that guy has a gun and all I have is this little stick and a can of mace... sod this!"
A couple of weeks ago, there was a high profile news story about a police officer, only three months on the force, being killed after arriving on the scene of an armed robbery (more about that below). Because of this, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not police in the UK should start carrying guns. Tough call. I'm not sure where I stand on that issue at the moment. However, there was an interesting article in The Sunday Times today. Since one of the purposes of this blog is to talk about the cultural differences between the US and whichever country we happen to be living in, I thought it appropriate to post it. It's an easy "cut and paste" commentary on cultural differences, so here you go (the points I found particularly interesting are in bold):
'US cop quits "too risky" UK force
A TEXAN patrol officer who became the first foreigner to join the British police is to resign after three years because he says policing is too dangerous here compared with America.
Ben Johnson, a 6ft 4in former paratrooper nicknamed Slim, has written to his chief constable asking to carry a Glock 17 handgun on his routine beat in Reading.
He said officers are dying unnecessarily because they are less well equipped and trained to protect themselves and the public than their American counterparts.
“The risks required to be taken by unarmed and poorly trained British police are too great for me to continue being a police officer and I will be resigning my commission in a few weeks,” said Johnson.
“I am tired of my colleagues dying when, if they were better trained and equipped, they would have a fighting chance of survival.”
Johnson’s decision was prompted by the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, a mother of three children and two step-children, who was shot during a robbery in Bradford last month. He said her death demonstrated the lack of training and equipment given to British police.
“Beshenivsky did the one thing that officers in America are trained not to do. She walked up to the front entrance of a business during an alarm call. If the incident had happened in America, she would never have done that. She would almost certainly have been alive today.”
Last week Johnson wrote to Sara Thornton, acting chief constable of Thames Valley police, asking to be armed on patrol. “If the chief authorises me to carry a pistol, then I will not be resigning,” he said. “But that is an impossibility. I now have the choice of continuing in a dangerous job, ill-trained and ill-equipped, or leaving the profession I have loved.”
Johnson, 34, served as a paratrooper in the American army before joining the police department in Garland, a Dallas suburb. Like other officers he carried a Glock 22 pistol as a sidearm, supported by a 12-bore shotgun and an AR15 semi-automatic rifle in his patrol car. In America he routinely confronted armed criminals and received 10 commendations for his bravery.
He came to Britain three years ago to live with his fiancée Louise, an IT consultant. He was able to join the Thames Valley force because of a change in regulations that lifted the bar on foreigners.
The couple are now married and Johnson has taken a short career break to look after their 18-month-old daughter Catherine. He said fatherhood had changed his perspective. “It would not be fair [to my family] to continue in a job that is being made more dangerous by a refusal to modernise,” he said.
It was an incident earlier this year that first caused Johnson to consider handing in his warrant card. He was on plainclothes CID duty when he was called to the Royal Berkshire hospital in Reading to interview a victim of domestic violence.
A woman had jumped out of a first-floor window to escape her violent boyfriend, paralysing her from the waist down. The boyfriend, a member of a drug gang, was already wanted by the police for attempted murder, after shooting someone in the back of the head in London.
Johnson and other plainclothes officers who went to the hospital were alerted that the boyfriend had telephoned to say he was coming to see her. They also received a warning that he might be armed.
According to Johnson, he wanted to arrest the man when he arrived, but was ordered by a senior officer not to do so because of the risk. The suspect escaped and it was two days before he was arrested.
“That was the first time I’d ever let someone wanted for attempted murder simply walk away from me,” said Johnson. “It went against everything I knew. I thought it was my duty to arrest these people.
“It seems that in Britain ordinary officers are instructed not to engage with dangerous criminals. But if police officers can’t engage with them, who can?” He is critical of Charles Clarke, the home secretary, who says he can see “no evidence” that arming officers would reduce the number of police fatalities. “With all respect to the home secretary, he has never answered a 999 call,” said Johnson.
Of Beshenivsky’s murder, he said: “I have been in exactly those situations on patrol in America and I have managed to arrest and disarm offenders without being harmed.”
In America, officers spend weeks learning how to cope with armed incidents. But in Britain, Johnson said, he was never shown how to handle or unload a firearm or told how to respond to an armed robbery. “Officers spend more time learning about how to process paperwork than dealing with violent situations. We are trained more like social workers than police officers.
“The training I received in Britain in dealing with armed incidents was virtually non-existent. It consisted of a 30-minute lecture from a firearms officer who said: ‘If you see the business end of a gun or anyone holding a gun . . . turn, run and get away as quickly as possible’.”
This apparent complacency was reinforced at his swearing-in ceremony when a senior Thames Valley officer told him and colleagues that they would not face the sort of dangerous incidents portrayed on The Bill, the television programme.
“I was surprised that he said we wouldn’t come into harm’s way. This went against everything I had learnt during my career,” said Johnson.
By contrast, the chief officer of Garland police department tells new recruits that it is his task to ensure they are prepared and equipped to face any threat.
Johnson accepted that America is more violent than Britain, with a gun culture contributing to a murder rate 17 times higher than here. He recognised, too, that many more police officers are murdered in America — 57 last year compared with just one here — proportionately about 11 times as many.
But he maintained that British police are far more exposed to danger when confronted with armed offenders than their US counterparts. He said he did not want all police armed — just the “first responders”, officers who, like Beshenivsky, are first on the scene of crimes. He believed this would mean arming about half of Britain’s 140,000 police.
A spokesman for Thames Valley police said: “PC Johnson is currently on a career break. These are his personal views and he did not discuss them with anyone before going to the press.”'
[from The Sunday Times, 4/12/05; by David Leppard]
-RP-
One of the huge differences between the American and British societies is the crime and more specifically the police forces that work to combat this crime. Britain has long been proud of the fact that handguns are not legal here and that their police officers do not carry guns. The US is obviously very different on that score: guns galore... amongst its citizens and its "law enforcement community." Consequently, though the reason for this may lie elsewhere, gun fatalities in the US are much higher than in the UK -- according to this site, the figures in 1992 were 13, 429 handgun murders in the US and only 33 in the UK.
I think this policy in the UK has worked quite well, but it just seems like things have changed too much to keep upholding it. Crime in the UK has gotten more violent and there are more guns out there. The feeling I get is that they "don't know what hit them". Like all of a sudden the other team started playing a tackle football while they're still playing touch. "OK, that guy has a gun and all I have is this little stick and a can of mace... sod this!"
A couple of weeks ago, there was a high profile news story about a police officer, only three months on the force, being killed after arriving on the scene of an armed robbery (more about that below). Because of this, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not police in the UK should start carrying guns. Tough call. I'm not sure where I stand on that issue at the moment. However, there was an interesting article in The Sunday Times today. Since one of the purposes of this blog is to talk about the cultural differences between the US and whichever country we happen to be living in, I thought it appropriate to post it. It's an easy "cut and paste" commentary on cultural differences, so here you go (the points I found particularly interesting are in bold):
'US cop quits "too risky" UK force
A TEXAN patrol officer who became the first foreigner to join the British police is to resign after three years because he says policing is too dangerous here compared with America.
Ben Johnson, a 6ft 4in former paratrooper nicknamed Slim, has written to his chief constable asking to carry a Glock 17 handgun on his routine beat in Reading.
He said officers are dying unnecessarily because they are less well equipped and trained to protect themselves and the public than their American counterparts.
“The risks required to be taken by unarmed and poorly trained British police are too great for me to continue being a police officer and I will be resigning my commission in a few weeks,” said Johnson.
“I am tired of my colleagues dying when, if they were better trained and equipped, they would have a fighting chance of survival.”
Johnson’s decision was prompted by the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, a mother of three children and two step-children, who was shot during a robbery in Bradford last month. He said her death demonstrated the lack of training and equipment given to British police.
“Beshenivsky did the one thing that officers in America are trained not to do. She walked up to the front entrance of a business during an alarm call. If the incident had happened in America, she would never have done that. She would almost certainly have been alive today.”
Last week Johnson wrote to Sara Thornton, acting chief constable of Thames Valley police, asking to be armed on patrol. “If the chief authorises me to carry a pistol, then I will not be resigning,” he said. “But that is an impossibility. I now have the choice of continuing in a dangerous job, ill-trained and ill-equipped, or leaving the profession I have loved.”
Johnson, 34, served as a paratrooper in the American army before joining the police department in Garland, a Dallas suburb. Like other officers he carried a Glock 22 pistol as a sidearm, supported by a 12-bore shotgun and an AR15 semi-automatic rifle in his patrol car. In America he routinely confronted armed criminals and received 10 commendations for his bravery.
He came to Britain three years ago to live with his fiancée Louise, an IT consultant. He was able to join the Thames Valley force because of a change in regulations that lifted the bar on foreigners.
The couple are now married and Johnson has taken a short career break to look after their 18-month-old daughter Catherine. He said fatherhood had changed his perspective. “It would not be fair [to my family] to continue in a job that is being made more dangerous by a refusal to modernise,” he said.
It was an incident earlier this year that first caused Johnson to consider handing in his warrant card. He was on plainclothes CID duty when he was called to the Royal Berkshire hospital in Reading to interview a victim of domestic violence.
A woman had jumped out of a first-floor window to escape her violent boyfriend, paralysing her from the waist down. The boyfriend, a member of a drug gang, was already wanted by the police for attempted murder, after shooting someone in the back of the head in London.
Johnson and other plainclothes officers who went to the hospital were alerted that the boyfriend had telephoned to say he was coming to see her. They also received a warning that he might be armed.
According to Johnson, he wanted to arrest the man when he arrived, but was ordered by a senior officer not to do so because of the risk. The suspect escaped and it was two days before he was arrested.
“That was the first time I’d ever let someone wanted for attempted murder simply walk away from me,” said Johnson. “It went against everything I knew. I thought it was my duty to arrest these people.
“It seems that in Britain ordinary officers are instructed not to engage with dangerous criminals. But if police officers can’t engage with them, who can?” He is critical of Charles Clarke, the home secretary, who says he can see “no evidence” that arming officers would reduce the number of police fatalities. “With all respect to the home secretary, he has never answered a 999 call,” said Johnson.
Of Beshenivsky’s murder, he said: “I have been in exactly those situations on patrol in America and I have managed to arrest and disarm offenders without being harmed.”
In America, officers spend weeks learning how to cope with armed incidents. But in Britain, Johnson said, he was never shown how to handle or unload a firearm or told how to respond to an armed robbery. “Officers spend more time learning about how to process paperwork than dealing with violent situations. We are trained more like social workers than police officers.
“The training I received in Britain in dealing with armed incidents was virtually non-existent. It consisted of a 30-minute lecture from a firearms officer who said: ‘If you see the business end of a gun or anyone holding a gun . . . turn, run and get away as quickly as possible’.”
This apparent complacency was reinforced at his swearing-in ceremony when a senior Thames Valley officer told him and colleagues that they would not face the sort of dangerous incidents portrayed on The Bill, the television programme.
“I was surprised that he said we wouldn’t come into harm’s way. This went against everything I had learnt during my career,” said Johnson.
By contrast, the chief officer of Garland police department tells new recruits that it is his task to ensure they are prepared and equipped to face any threat.
Johnson accepted that America is more violent than Britain, with a gun culture contributing to a murder rate 17 times higher than here. He recognised, too, that many more police officers are murdered in America — 57 last year compared with just one here — proportionately about 11 times as many.
But he maintained that British police are far more exposed to danger when confronted with armed offenders than their US counterparts. He said he did not want all police armed — just the “first responders”, officers who, like Beshenivsky, are first on the scene of crimes. He believed this would mean arming about half of Britain’s 140,000 police.
A spokesman for Thames Valley police said: “PC Johnson is currently on a career break. These are his personal views and he did not discuss them with anyone before going to the press.”'
[from The Sunday Times, 4/12/05; by David Leppard]
-RP-
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