Law, Partially

Like Bobby careening deeper into a train museum, while Baba reads a wall display, family life has been running away. Our attempts to maintain order have sometimes felt like this traffic jam ("taf-fick jamp"), displayed here in an art installation constructed by our resident abstract expressionist, Bobby. This taf-fick jamp  looks orderly at first, but upon closer look, we have cars piggy backing, cars turned the wrong way, etc. Life has indeed been lived on the run amidst much family travel of late and more on the way. Nainai came to stay with us in London. Baba spent a few nights in Brussels and then returned home to take Bobby and Nainai to the Netherlands on the next day. After seeing Nainai off at Heathrow, the London Linges decamped to Singapore for two weeks with a few additional days in Malaysia. Bobby and Baba visited York, and then a few weeks later, Bobby, Baba, plus Mummy, went to Cardiff. On several of those trips, I was worried whether I'd be adm...

Already into November, London doesn't so much feel like summer. But we felt it in the streets, on a day like this (below), summertime. July 8, on the deck with his summer friend, Ee Ee. Within the month Bob would be saying good bye to his sweet toddler mullet. This post and the ones to follow narrate our summer in London. British people will remember the summer of 2018 as one of a remarkable and sustained heat wave and a surprising abundance of sun and lack of rain. British people like to say on sunny summer days that this will be the last one for the year, but that just kept being not true this summer. You can see in the chart below that while the winter was particularly cold (when compared to historical averages, called normal, below), the summer was particularly hot. My apologies that the data is in Celsius. The temperatures are also for the UK as a whole. Twenty degrees Celsius is sixty-eight Fahrenheit. In London it was hotter, up past 95°F in July. The below ...

Strutting into one of the first sunny days of the season, in the courtyard of our building, 10 May. Highbury Fields is a big park near our house. This curved street along the park's edge is called Highbury Crescent. We all like the stately old houses along the crescent. In this photo, Bob, sporting his jean jacket from his cousin-in-law Beth, is strutting toward the Highbury Fields playground, where we passed many a sunny (and not sunny) summer morning. 11 May. The FD Linges' ongoing European vacation, with this 26 May stop at the Colosseum. For Mum's and Baba's anniversary this year, 8 June, we ventured to the biggest grocery store in the neighborhood, Waitrose, where we had some coupons, and bought ingredients for a special family dinner. Bob was tearing through the store, filling his shopping basket with whatever the hell he felt like, Baba trailing behind and placing those items back on the shelf. The next day, we went to Lord'...

Eating french fries and watching England play Colombia, 3 July. The match ended in a draw with Harry Kane scoring England's only goal. England lived to play several more matches, eventually making it to the quarterfinals. It was a very fun time to be in London. Bobby would agree. He got to watch a lot of football and have a lot of fries and cheeseburgers  at Ley Ley's  over the summer. Too bad Ley Ley's closed at the end of August to seek a lease in a higher traffic spot. One way to beat the heat is to get wet. Here is Bobby in the fountains at Granary Square; he's dressed in high-tech sports clothes courtesy of his nainai. Granary Square is part of large urban redevelopment site near King's Cross station, where Victorian industrial buildings, having fallen into disuse, have been refurbished into a modern consumer playground with restaurants and shops. This big building was formerly a store for grain, and from here it could travel by barge (on the Re...

The FD Linges shared a few last hurrahs before Mum started school and Bob began going to nursery four days a week (up from his previous two). Having fun with soccer in Hyde Park, 1 September. September 1, we visited Hyde Park, in particular the Serpentine, in which sat this colorful pyramid made by the installation artist Christo . It was a fun day where we also played soccer in the park (see video above), and Bob got up close with some Serpentine swans. Sunday, 2 September, we spotted a sunny day and thought we better head straight for the shore before it's too late this year. Many, many others had a similar idea. Above, Bobby and I in Brighton Station just after we alighted from the Thameslink. We're both smiling in anticipation of the fun awaiting us on our day trip to Brighton. Brighton Beach has no sand, just rocks. I did wade into the English Channel; those rocks on the bare feet are uncomfortable, and the water is cold like the Pacific...

It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times. Ten years ago, Christine and I met at a Mumbai train station but were nearly thwarted that same day by a pack of aggressive monkeys. Now we have a little monkey of our own.  I documented our initial encounter on this blog  without a thought of what lay ahead. The comments to that blog entry are pretty funny : you should read them; my mom was worried I'd catch Bubonic Plaque from the monkeys that were hounding me that day. What Christine most remembers from that day is that I planned to jump from a train speeding into a station but was ultimately thwarted by my own ill-conceived plan. (For more info, click  here .) Nonetheless, we celebrated this fateful milestone in London yesterday with Indian food for lunch and wine and cheese for dinner. At a restaurant with white table cloths near our temporary apartment, Bobby tried dal and chicken tikka masala -- he seemed to like them! This kid won't be eating fish sti...

Before, when a long trip abroad has been imminent, I have taken whirlwind tours of the Midwest to say good bye. (See, e.g., here ) Now I'm doing it again, this time with a family. Friday, April 28, 2017, we packed up the pick-up one more time and unceremoniously drove away from Chicago on the Stevenson Expressway, bound for a tour of central Missouri. Christine had never visited the town where I spent four rambunctious years "studying" in central Missouri. We also managed to fit in visits with some disgruntled Army veterans, living happily with their four kids just on the outskirts of Fort Leonard Wood, and another disgruntled veteran of St. Charles County. One last breakfast at  3rd Coast  before saying good bye to North Dearborn Parkway. The drive to central Missouri was challenging. Maybe you noticed, but after the Midwest's warm winter, it has been a rainy spring. Maybe you also have noticed that Midwestern weather usually flows from west to east. We ha...