Islington quotidien

We are pretty much the stereotypical post-War American nuclear family. Except that we're of mixed races, and we don't live in the suburbs, or in the US at that. But Dad goes to work while Mum stays home with Babe. So let's just describe a bit the intersecting lives of our wholesome, transplanted, nuclear family.

The FD Linges on Fleet Street, near to Dad's main worktime Starbucks. Notice St. Paul's in the background. It's funny, when I was younger I thought I could one day work on Fleet Street since it is the historical center of the UK publishing industry. I didn't make it here as a journalist, though.

Mum's story

Mum, the Tiger Mum, is working with Bobby on building his problem solving, motor skills, patience while reading books (he doesn't have much patience yet...), bilingualism, and generally following some lessons written by Montessori teachers. We have a small selection of toys for Bobby to play with. And generally a large part of his day is filled with crawling back and forth on the carpeted floors. (We had hoped for a place with wooden floors, but unable to find suitable wooden-floored accommodations, the carpeting is actually great for a crawling baby learning to walk: it's easy on the knees, not to mention the head, which from time to time may of course make contact with the ground when one is unsteady on his feet.)

A caged baby is a baby not hurting himself in the kitchen.

We stay on the eighth floor, and from the window you can see a courtyard, toward which Bobby likes to gaze. He also likes holding spoons and spatulas.

Mum and Dad enjoying some wine on their apartment's little balcony after their little hell-raiser is away in bed sleeping soundly.

Mum can write her story better than Dad, so the author's apologies to her. We will see, over the next two years, Mum and Babe accomplish great things.

Dad's story

Dad works in the City of London. So I take the bus to work on a 45 minute door-to-door trip. I avoid taking the Tube -- although our flat is very near a station -- because it's too dirty and crowded. I've been working with multinational companies on building the economic models that explain their global tax structures to national tax authorities, and in the process (re-)learning all kinds of interesting things like pricing of options, risks, and assets.

At this point, I can't say whether there are marked differences between English and American working culture. It's also difficult to gauge what aspects of culture are unique to your own office and what aspects are unique to the country where you're working.

Chats centered around the ritual of buying coffee may be a spotted difference. In Chicago, colleagues would often head out together to get lunch and then, later, afternoon coffee, but we don't have that culture in London. Or, at least, with my two data points -- one Chicago office and one London office -- I have not observed it. At a client meeting recently, however, a Dutch man told me that in Amsterdam he and his colleagues routinely trudge from the office to coffee shops (not those coffee shops, I believe) during the workday to share a cup of coffee, but he observes the concept as foreign in London. Perhaps the British reserve compels office chaps to focus on their computers while on the clock and not bother with the topics that are discussed over coffee: office social relations, wider career ambitions, frustrations of all manner that afflict us white collar drudgery. My office may just be a unique data point because on my trip home, every night, I see the pubs spilling forth with patrons, while my colleagues do not routinely join in. Or maybe they're not inviting me. As for lunch, I don't see gangs heading out to the fast casual restaurants I see in Chicago.

For me, it's less important to understand the work culture. Working with these big companies, you end up working with people from all over the world, so the local culture in some way gets pulled toward diverse poles. Nevertheless, it has been my experience that the local culture is still the most powerful pole. And, alas, I will be foreign to any office except for those in the central Midwest. The trick for me is to just observe and adapt and try to avoid making too many unfunny faux-pas (some funny faux-pas, though, may endear the foreigner). And, ultimately, more important for me is to learn approaches of national regulators because hopefully such knowledge will be valuable internationally. Maybe not. Stay tuned.

I sit on the ninth floor (10th floor by US floor counting conventions). This isn't the view from my desk, but from this particular vantage point you can see the Eye and Big Ben himself (easy, Stillers fans). Love that grey London sky, huh?

This is the view from my desk. I do sit near a window, and from my window I can see across an alley to a staircase behind a glass wall.

This (locally-owned) coffee shop near my office is painfully hip. I visit here several mornings a week by myself. Like an ungrateful bastard, however, I often do not buy local. Several times a week I go to Starbucks because I get free coffee periodically through their loyalty program. Also, my walk to Starbucks takes me through several ancient alleys (the City is really, really old, even if several times it's been burned to the ground), and I find that walk a bit more fun than what I'm accustomed to (i.e., walking on S. Wacker to any of the several Starbucks nearby my former Chicago Loop office). (Sometimes the stories these places tell about their product is just so precious and ridiculous: homepage of Black Sheep Coffee.)

In this row of clean desks, we spot one outlier. That's where I sit.

Unfortunately, I am constantly in the process of "re-learning" the topics in graduate school I didn't learn very well the first time.

One of those old alleyways I walk through on my way from the office to the Fleet Street Starbucks.

After a meeting in the City near Leadenhall Market I snapped this photo of the Shard, framed by one of those narrow, old, and twisting alleys that you find off the City's main thoroughfares.

Time off

On the weekends, we hope to go on exciting adventures throughout London.

We don't need to travel far for pizza. Neapolitan-style pizza is popular in London, and we're lucky to have Terroni, which is such a pizzeria, just outside our apartment building's front door. Terroni is -- I am told -- slang for southern Italian people. Bobby is a popular guy in the pizzeria. The proprietors even gave him some dough to knead. Bob was a bit confused.

Bobby learning how to knead pizza dough.

One such adventure was to a Bastille Day celebration at Pop Brixton. Pop Brixton may be called a hipster London hawker center. It is a complex made of old shipping containers, inside housing diverse and international food stalls specializing in limited menus. In its way, Pop Brixton is very British -- making use of old shipping containers is a form of the post-industrial chic we see all over London, where former industrial sites are converted into service and recreation establishments. Brixton itself is one of those gentrifying neighborhoods where the young middle-class kids are shopping in the street market along brick viaduct columns that traditionally (or at least for the past several decades) specialized in serving the local Afro-Caribbean community. Inside Pop Brixton, while we chowed on tacos and Brixton Brewery craft beer, a band played some French songs that I guess you would categorize as nouvelle chanson, or French lyric driven music played with some acoustic instruments. Bobby liked the songs and was dancing in my arms while I held him.

The FD fam cheeses it up outside of Pop Brixton.

This little family plans to make many more adventures in Islington and beyond, so stay tuned.