P-adics

When I was young, learning math(s), I would often wonder what more "advanced" mathematics (like my older brother and sister were taking) could be about.  At a young age, I remember actually coming to the conclusion that you learn to add, subtract, and multiply, with really big numbers!  I had no clue there could be so much more to it.

Maybe because of those early imaginings, some years ago I started playing around with a mathematical idea that's not dissimilar to doing basic operations with big numbers.  (Maths are great for thinking about when you're drifting off to sleep, since they can consume your whole brain and there's no room for the troubles of the day.)  I got pretty far with it, I think, and told a few people that I thought I discovered something, before coming to the conclusion that nah, it was all bunkum.  Here's a social media post I had started composing to talk about it (never posted), right after I gave up on it:

Disclaimer: I’m not a mathematician, but I’ve been playing with some back-of-the-envelope sort of stuff (actually done mostly while lying in bed at night, drifting off to sleep) and have made a tiny bit of progress on some (I’m sure) unprofound mathematics that probably wouldn’t have been a challenge for most of you.  But it’s been a lot of fun!  So I thought I’d write it up here.  And it all started with a misconception…

I began considering digit sequences where you know the low-order digits but not the high order digits -- for example, “...20445089241” is just some number that ends with those digits, but the “...” means that we don’t know how the number begins.  The misconception was, I began to consider these numbers as infinite -- that is, the “...” goes on forever.  So these numbers are all effectively infinity, but they just… end differently.  Knowing the final digits was enough to give them different properties -- for instance, divisibility.  For example, a number could be infinite but still may or may not be divisible by 5, depending on whether the last digit was a 0 or a 5.

(I’m sure you can all see the fallacy here, that any such infinite digit sequence is equal to any other, and there’s no divisibility difference between them, but pondering the possibility was enough to keep me going.)

So, treating them as a class of numbers, I began to ask the obvious next questions about operations and closures.  Adding two such numbers is trivial -- e.g. “...1230734 + ...6534221 = ...7764955”.  Subtracting two such numbers was doable, but not knowing which was “larger” meant it yielded two answers (A-B and -(B-A)).  Multiplying was trickier, but I managed to figure out the algorithm for generating the result starting with the least significant digit.  Division was a bit trickier still but I was still able to figure it out eventually (requiring an assumption that it divides evenly -- you don’t really know unless you know the higher order digits).  From the division algorithm I devised a way to figure out the square root of one of these numbers (again starting from least significant digits).

Then I had the odd thought, since these numbers were infinite, but I could still apply math operations to them, then could I find a number A that is its own square root (i.e. A*A=A, excluding 0 and 1)?  Turns out I could!  For instance, “...141376 * ...141376 = ...141376”.  This got me excited.  But a later Google search revealed that I had just rediscovered automorphic numbers!

It wasn’t until I started trying to devise a way to convert these numbers into different bases that it fully dawned on me that my premise was flawed -- all these infinite numbers were equivalent and didn’t have any unique properties; they’re just different representations of the same thing.  But all the methods for basic operations still work for finite numbers where you just don’t know the high-order digits of the number, so that’s pretty cool, to me at least.  Thanks for reading!

It was years ago that I basically stopped thinking about the idea.  But then recently, I saw a passing mention that p-adic numbers were numbers that go off infinitely to the left, and my ears pricked up.  So I went off and watched this video and it immediately clicked.  It really feels like I was close to (RE)discovering them!  I was wrong in dismissing them as "just" infinite numbers, and I shouldn't have just given up.  There were still a few places where I would have had to make a logical leap that I don't think I could have.

It turns out p-adic numbers were discovered in the late 18th century, and have been expanded by some top minds ever since, so I won't ever feel bad that I didn't flush out the whole system.  On the contrary, I feel quite exhilarated at the discovery and will do a bit of further play with them.  And I'll be putting p-adic numbers into my personal keep chest of things I (re)discovered, along with chart parsing and cyclical cellular automata.  Even if I blundered on to familiar territory, it still makes part of wish I had pursued mathematics more academically -- I would have had no chance at greatness I think, but there's millions of mathematicians who pursue it out of love and curiosity, and just to be part of the search for fundamental truths, which I think is noble.

This horrible year

2024 is drawing to a close, and good riddance.  We lost my dad in February; my mom, a month later in March; and Marjorie's mom just three days after that.  Needless to say we were in shock for a long while afterwards, but I wanted to include some things here for posterity.

Dad's obituary, from this site...

John Philip Schnitzius passed away on February 10th, 2024 in Cocoa Beach, FL, just shy of his 87th birthday.

John was born on 02/14/1937, the son of John Alphonse Schnitzius and Frances Rose (Szymanski), and grew up in Mount Ephraim, New Jersey. He acquired his associate degree from Temple University and his BS in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University. He met his life partner Loretta at the Dancette Ballroom in Oakland, NJ, and they were married on 02/24/1962. John worked as an electrical engineer for many years, for NCR, Harris Corporation, and NASA among others, living in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Florida before retiring in Cocoa Beach.

John was an active boater and sailor for many years, and was a member of the Grumpy Ole Sailors and the East Coast Sailing Association. Whenever he wasn't on a camping trip with Loretta, he was planning his next trip. He loved adventure, fishing, hiking, camping and traveling. He was an amazing husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather, and always had many friends, old and new. John has been described as wise and kind and humble, always willing to give advice or help with a lending hand.

John was a eucharistic minister and longtime member of the Church of Our Savior in Cocoa Beach.

He is survived by his wife, Loretta of nearly 62 years, his three children, Kevin Schnitzius and his wife, Kim, Danielle Schnitzius Norwood and her husband, Charlie, and Mark Schnitzius and his wife, Marjorie; his five grandchildren, Abi Schnitzius, Livia Schnitzius, Bryce Schnitzius, Chaeli Norwood Harden (Kevin), and Chase Norwood, and by his great grandson, Kix Harden. He is preceded in death by his parents, John and Frances, and by his sister, Clare, and brother-in-law, Bill Leap.

Services will be held Friday, February 23rd at 10:30 a.m. at the Church of Our Saviour in Cocoa Beach. Burial will follow at 12:30 p.m. at Florida Memorial Gardens in Rockledge. In lieu of flowers his family asks that donations be made in John’s name to the Cancer Center of Merritt Island.

The text of my Facebook post about Dad...

Dad was really into boats and fishing, which never really rubbed off on me. Even still, I have lots of great memories of family trips in the boat out on along the New Jersey coast. We also took a long driving trip down to Florida every year for quite a few years in a row. It was a happy childhood for me. He loved an adventure, which certainly *did* rub off on me, but only in retrospect do I think his main motivator was making his kids happy.

Dad always, always had time for my questions, and I had a lot of questions. Sometimes when I only wanted a quick answer it became an hour of writing things out on graph paper or looking things up in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He taught me about math and chess and computers, and from him I credit that part of me that takes problems aside that initially seem to be a complete mystery and sit with them until I figure them out.

Going into computers was an effortless career choice for me, and so it was no real coincidence we both ended up working at the same huge area employer of technical people of all sorts: Kennedy Space Center.  We worked for different companies there, but we ended up working in the same building (among many) for a year, maybe two?  On the father-son relationship timeline, this had to be a peak.  

He loved his music, but had no real ability, and I think deep down he would have loved it if one of us became a concert pianist. He loved a good joke, too, but had no real ability to tell one. He would sometimes try, then get to the punchline and say something like “Wait, I want to make sure I get this right. [pause] So, the *banker* says...”.  And where a lot of people say they use profanity to blow off steam, my dad did it better than anybody -- he hardly ever swore, but sometimes he would mess something up, flash with anger shortly, saying "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh..." and end it with a quiet "shit" before breaking into laughter.

When one of his early jobs wanted him to start clocking in and out, he refused, and quit. But later on he took on a few jobs that had him commuting some really long distances so us kids could stay in our same schools with our same friends. I remember him as anxious frequently during these times, but as the years went on he came to realise his kids were turning out happy and successful, and he seemed to relax a lot. He of course wasn’t happy when I moved away, then further away, then even further away, but us kids were always free to set our own course.

Human lives can’t be summed up in a few paragraphs, so any obituary or eulogy is going to come up short. But I want to share a few little things that have come up in my memory this week that might give some glimpse into how *nice* of a man he was.

One time my parents came to visit while we were living in Singapore, and while they were there we took a slightly nutty side trip into Malaysia. On the long bus ride back I sat a few rows behind my father, and sat fascinated as he chatted with the tour guide across the aisle. The guide was Malaysian, Muslim, and probably 30 years my dad’s junior, and having nothing in common and without artifice, my dad just kind of effortlessly befriended him, across the cultural gap, and they shook hands warmly and said goodbye at the end of the trip.

Another time I came home for a visit, my dad mentioned to me how he had sold the old electric guitar we had in the attic at a garage sale, for like $5. It came to light that he had told the person who bought it that it worked; I told him though that it was actually broken. I started to make a joke about it, but then I saw how crestfallen he was – it wasn’t enough that he thought he was telling the truth at the time, it had to actually *be* the truth. And so we sat there a while brainstorming ways to get back in contact with the person.

I could go on. But it’s inevitable that most of my personal memories of my dad will die with me, as the memories of his dad died with him. Every morning since his passing I’ve woken up to thought, wow, it’s really real, Dad is no longer in the world. I have a lot of friends who have known grief in their lives, some all too recently, who must know how this is. I just really, *really* would like to talk to him again, and not even about anything.

Mom's obituary, from here...

Loretta Eleanor Schnitzius passed away on March 12, 2024, in Cocoa Beach, FL, just a month after her husband John of 62 years.

Loretta was born on October 28, 1937, the daughter of Felix Michael Thompson and Helen (Gąsior), and grew up in Camden, New Jersey. She met her life partner John at the Dancette Ballroom in Oaklyn, NJ, and they were married February 24, 1962.

Loretta was an award-winning artist specializing in watercolor painting. She received recognition as the poster artist for the Space Coast Art Festival and received awards in numerous shows and exhibitions in and around Brevard County, New Jersey, and the Rehoboth, Lewes, and Cape Henlopen, Delaware area. She was active in the Florida Watercolor Society, the Brevard Arts Council, and numerous other artist groups and galleries. Her skills live on in the students she taught in classes down the years and inherently through her children and grandchildren.

She was an active boater and sailor for many years, and was active with the Grumpy Ole Sailors and the East Coast Sailing Association with her husband, John. As a pair, they took numerous camping trips all around Florida, the United States, and internationally. Despite her desire to always run off and have the next adventure, she was the steadying influence in her household for her whole life. For many years she attended mass and was active in the church and organizations at Our Savior Catholic Church in Cocoa Beach, and was an amazing wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and friend.

She is survived by her three children, Kevin Schnitzius and his wife Kim, Danielle Schnitzius Norwood and her husband Charlie, and Mark Schnitzius and his wife Marjorie; her five grandchildren, Abi Schnitzius, Livia Schnitzius, Bryce Schnitzius, Chaeli Norwood Harden (Kevin), and Chase Norwood, and by her great grandson, Kix Harden. She is preceded in death by her husband, John Schnitzius, her parents, Felix and Helen, and by her brother, Tom Thompson.

Services will be held graveside at 2pm on Tuesday, March 19th at Florida Memorial Gardens in Rockledge. In lieu of flowers her family asks that donations be made in Loretta’s name to the Cancer Center of Merritt Island.

And my Facebook post about Mom.  

I owe her a longer post but I couldn't find the words at the time.  So this was all:

And now, Mom.  Just a month and two days after Dad.  We're sad, but they would have chosen to go even closer together if they could.

 

I'll leave Marjorie to decide whether and what she wants to post here about her mother.  I'm at least glad I got to be with her at the end, and to be there for Marjorie.  Those were some awful days.

Menorca

 

We've just returned from a 6 night trip in Menorca (Santo Tomas). The weather was lovely, and we experienced the best snorkelling we've done in Europe, but the trip was still only almost relaxing due to the pandemic. 

Starting from the beginning there were a number of additional stressors which I'll outline below (for the fun of reliving!) which took away from a fully relaxing holiday: 

1.   Mark had issues logging onto the NHS Covid Pass website, which said it needed to verify his identity the day before our trip (and this could take up to 7 days) even though he'd logged in the week prior with no issues. In the end he had his information confirmed in a few hours, but it was a stressful few hours. 
2. The train to the airport was sold out - this has never been an issue, and I didn't think to worry about it (silly me!). We booked a taxi to take us to the airport instead, and realised at pick up time that the booking was for the wrong day! Luckily the taxi company was able to send a cab within 10 minutes anyway, but again it was really stressful. I'm sure Mark provided the correct details when he made the booking. 
3. There was a car wreck (and delay) on the way to the airport. Luckily this didn't slow us down too much in the end, but was another 'oh shit' moment, and it felt like we were not going to be able to go on this trip. 
4. People are assholes! Nothing new here, but on full display at the airport via the number of people who didn't wear their masks correctly or at all. We were in FP2 masks and face shields and using copious hand gel in response, but feeling the need to be so vigilant was not relaxing.

I felt pretty frazzled by the time we got there and am happy to report that once we arrived to Menorca things went pretty smoothly. Menorca is beautiful and the weather was great. If we did it again, we'd stay somewhere different, where we could self-cater as the hotel buffet was pretty mediocre. But our room was nice and we had a gorgeous view of the sea. The hotel pool was pretty great, and we were right on the beach. Also, there were no children at the hotel which was a big perk. 

The snorkelling was the best we've experienced in Europe so far. I saw two eels, no other 'big ticket' animals, but plenty of fish and lots of varieties. The visibility was amazing, the water was clear at 30+feet, and the island off the shore (near Es Bruc- restaurant) was easy to circumnavigate and provided really excellent snorkelling conditions. 

Es Bruc was the best restaurant in the area by far, but we didn't have any meals on this trip that I'd call 'gourmet'. If we go again we'll rent a car as well as there may have been better options a bit further afield. 

On the whole I think Menorca was doing pretty well with Covid safety compliance. Most people were good about wearing their masks and we were mostly outside which made things feel much safer, but there were unavoidable covid stressors due to UK precautions before returning including a covid test (not fun, but understand the reasons) and a four page document to complete 2 days before returning. We did manage to let down our guards enough to book massages, which we've not done since covid and that was really nice. 

Ultimately I'm glad we were able to go and glad to have had a week of real summer (and the suntans to show for it). 

Hamish also seemed to have a nice time with the dog sitter which was a real plus. He apparently liked them so much he was sleeping with the youngest son of the family by the last night. Little bugger. 

Parkrant

Parkrun was my soccer replacement after blowing out my knee. A weekly timed 5K run that promised to be forever free, tracked your statistics for you, and was a worldwide phenomenon, it scratched a lot of my itches, and was this shiny awesome thing. Of course it had to shut down for the pandemic like every other mass gathering, but they soon worked out a system (NotParkrun) whereby you could just do your own socially-distanced run during the week on the honor system and they'd still track it for you.

A lot of the shine has gone off it for me though. Not the running -- I'm still doing NotParkruns more than twice a week on average. Rather, I'm not keen on how both Parkrun and my fellow parkrunners are handling the proposed restart.

It's partly a victim of its own popularity. I hadn't anticipated this happening at all, but for Parkrun to restart, a significant number of parkruns have to restart simultaneously. Why? Because if only a few restart, they will be flooded by parkrunners from neighboring runs that are shut down, creating unsafe conditions. So Parkrun had to get agreements from a lot of landowners, who have responded to the restart plan with varying degrees of enthusiam, for a variety of reasons. This is where Parkrun really seemed to screw up their response: unbelievably, they got pissy with the landowners and invalidated their concerns.

Worse, Parkrun's stance seems to have been restart, restart, restart. While they've been compliant with government mandates, I get the sense that they'd definitely restart if government said it was okay but the scientists said it wasn't. So I'll be having a careful look at things before I ever run one again.

They seem to have worked it out with enough of the landowners now, but a lot of the agreements were contingent on the government proceeding with the last stage of lockdown easing, and that's just been put off until 19 July. So Parkrun has made the announcement that they have to delay the restart, and now it's the other parkrunners that have irked me. They have the same restart, restart, restart mentality, and are claiming the delay has no basis in science (spoiler: it does). They're blaming the landowners as well. There's even a group that are proudly meeting at the usual parkrun time in our local park and running in defiance of the national organisation's request that people not do this. Jerks.

I'll still log my runs, and I'll go back (eventually) if they restart, but I'm really hoping things improve.

I can blog too!

I still wish we had kept blogging, as it still makes a much better record of our life than Facebook messages. I still use the blog as a memory assist way more than FB and their crappy search.

I didn't leave the village (even to go into Cambridge) for the whole month of February. We're doing our level best to keep our lives entertaining, but we've missed out on a year of exploring the UK and Europe now. I have a big London map that I stare at wistfully -- it's only an hour away and we haven't been in the past year. We're optimistic that things will improve, though. Marjorie's had her first vaccination, and will have her second next month. And me, I just the NHS text message on Friday, and will be getting my first shot on Thursday. That's the best news I've had in a while!

It's certainly been a memorable year, but because of the lack of variety, I'm worried that I'm going to remember it down the years as a single event, like you remember a concert. We stopped getting takeaway even, though we are trying something novel this month -- going meatless. My brother commented on Facebook that we would be surprised by how many options we'll have, and that's definitely been true. It hasn't been a struggle AT ALL. In fact, I've barely noticed that we're doing it, except for the novelty in dishes that Marjorie has been whipping up. I think it would be a lot harder if we were going out to eat more, and having to choose less tastier-sounding options on the menu. I don't think we'll be permanently meatless but it will certainly effect some sort of permanent change in how much meat we eat.

A year of Covid-19

A year ago today the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, we had just returned from Belgium and planned to go to Florida the following week for Mark's nephew's wedding but our travel plans were cancelled (obviously). At the time it was exciting but abstract, the actual threat didn't seem real, and I suppose we thought it would be like our SARs experience in Singapore and that life would largely go on as usual, and it would all blow over in a few months. 

Now, a year later I'm wondering if we'll every fully return to normal. We've been extremely fortunate throughout this, but it's still been hard. I'm so ready to get back into the world, but know it's likely to feel strange, and scary. I've had my first vaccination (Astra Zeneca) and have the 2nd scheduled for early April. Mark hasn't had his yet (hopefully he'll get a call this month), and we will feel much better 14 days post his first vaccination. I hope we'll be able to travel this summer! It's nice here, but it feels like a tease having the rest of Europe on our doorstep but not being able to go there. 

We've taken lock-down very seriously and haven't gone anywhere in months (including grocery stores - deliveries and click and collect almost exclusively). I miss restaurants/pubs, but, I've definitely become a better cook this year. I was an okay cook pre-pandemic, but as we haven't even had take away in months I've become more adventurous and tried more laborious recipes that I would have previously not felt I had time for. Can't use that excuse now :^)! This month we're having a 'meat-free' March, if only to do something different. It's going well, and I don't think either of us have missed meat as much as we thought we would (but still 20 days to go). Vegan would be hard though, don't think we're ready to give up eggs or milk anytime soon. 

In other news, I finish my current job in two weeks and start a new job in April. The new role is better paying and a permanent position, and hopefully a role I'll enjoy. It's taken 4 years to get back to a position and wage that feels more commiserate with my work experience - the real downside of having to start over again (at least partly) every time we move. 

Sick puppy

Hamish celebrated his ~11th birthday last Sunday. We spoiled him all week beforehand, making him better meals than usual (which is saying something because I cook for him anyway). On the actual day we took him on a long walk to Fen Ditton and gave him a lamb casserole dinner. He was smiley all day and seemed to be loving life. 

The next day however, he was very, very unwell. I woke up before 5am to the noise of Mark escorting Hamish outside after he'd already vomited repeatedly in the house. I was initially worried he might have an abdominal blockage because he ate an entire beef rib on Saturday (it was thinly cut, but I would normally not allow him to have the whole thing in one sitting and he ate the thing in less than 3 minutes so couldn't have chewed it much). I made an emergency vet appt for him and he spent the next 36 hours at the vet having blood tests and x-rays to try to figure out what was making him so unwell. Luckily he didn't have a blockage, and didn't require surgery, but his liver enzymes were elevated, and he was clearly very unwell. Best guess is that he ate something that made him unwell (he eats random crap when we go out on walkies so who knows what it was). The whole situation was incredibly upsetting and I spent most of Monday ugly crying in between work calls. 

He's home now and seems to be improving but he's still very picky about what he eats, which is not normal for our boy (he's a pig). The vet sent him home with sensitive stomach canned food, but he won't touch it so I've been making chicken rice for him. He's eating the chicken and keeping it down, which is reassuring. Day by day he seems to be improving and slowly getting back to his normal self. 

Long way to say it's been a stressful week, but things seem to be mostly okay now. 

Springwatch aka things we love about the UK

One of the things we love the most about living in the UK is the national love of nature, including birdwatching. When we lived in Australia, a nation full of parrots and other amazing wildlife, we were gently ridiculed for being 'twitchers' and didn't know many people who shared our enthusiasm. Here everyone we know is a bird watcher. It's a national obsession - Britons spend more money (per population) on bird feed than any other nation. There is also a quarterly BBC TV program to celebrate British wildlife (especially birds) called Springwatch (Winterwatch, Summerwatch, Autumnwatch) that runs for a few weeks every season. The show is an hour of footage from hidden cameras into nests and woodlands. It's fab and one of the primary reasons we're very happy to pay our TV license fee. Australia needs a Springwatch. 

Four Years Already

As of 18 January we've lived in Cambridge for four years! It's incredible that it's gone so fast. 

Even with the awfulness of the pandemic, and acknowledging that Melbourne might be a better/safer place to be right now,  we're both happy we made the move. England is interesting, and while we loved and still love Melbourne, we were in a bit of rut and it's been good to shake things up again. 

Speaking of which, I have a new job offer. I won't say too much about it until it's official, but it's been interesting proving my right to work when all our bills/bank correspondence are received electronically (like most people in this century). A friend of ours rightly pointed out that this difficulty is part of the Home Office Hostile Environment Policy to make it difficult for people without the legal right to remain in the UK. It also makes it difficult for those with the right to remain, but it would definitely make things nigh impossible if you weren't here legally (or being supported by someone who is). 

Onto other subjects - this time of year the (very short) days start getting longer dramatically and from here to March we gain 3 to 4+ minutes of light every day (compare this to Atlanta where the biggest change is an increase of 2 mins a day). It's quite dramatic and by the end of March it feels very much like the sky lights have been fully turned on. Of course in October/November you have the reverse and the feeling of the light being turned off  and being plunged into darkness for several months. In the dark of December all the Christmas lights/food/festivity feel very necessary (and much more connected to winter solstice than anything religious). I do enjoy a winter Christmas and this was something that I missed every year in Singapore and Melbourne. And it's great to be back to a country that enjoys Christmas music, and not just the same Michael Bublé songs every year . The primary reason I made an Xmas mix every year we were in Melbs is that Australia does not embrace Christmas music (and fair enough - the songs don't really work in summer), but that is definitely not the case in the UK. I may stop putting the mixes together - the only friends that seem particularly grateful for the mixes are our friends in Oz (unsurprisingly really).

The pic attached was taken on one of early morning walks - the sun is finally starting to rise before 8am and the sunrise was gorgeous this day. 

Christmas update

We are trying to enjoy the holiday season in spite of the pandemic, and are doing well enough. Our neighbours have definitely put up more Christmas lights/decorations this year which makes evening walkies more enjoyable. There are a few areas that are almost up to American levels of festive. 

And like every year, I've made another xmas music mix to share: 2020 Xmas mix

We're eating well too. No reason not to make multiple festive meals so we're having another turkey dinner this weekend and will do more baking. It's amazing we haven't gained weight but fast days are working for me, and Mark seems to get away with just running every once in a while. Hamish eats well too, but also gets 3 walks a day on average at the moment so.....

Nothing exciting to report. We're fine, but bored. Vaccines coming and we intend to shelter until we have it. It would be foolish to risk catching the virus now. 

I'm back bitches!

I forgot my password (and login) a long while back and then just didn't have any real interest in blogging. It now seems more and more necessary to quit facebook though, so I've spent the last 10 days in a security spiral with Google trying to get this account reopened as it was linked to my Australian (now defunct) phone number. 

Nothing much to blog about though - other than dystopian elections and pandemics. The UK is about to go back into a second national lockdown starting this Thursday. Hopefully there will be good news from the US by then. I fear for the world if the fascist is re-elected. 

Pandemic 2

Thought I would expand on the whole coping with the pandemic thing.  Plus, I'm pondering doing a move back here and dropping Facebook.  FB has given me contact with many long lost friends but they have been sh*tty lately about facilitating propaganda, and I just don't feel like I'm keeping a record of my life there.

We really we could be back in the US to help and support and hell, just see family.  But family members who are in the States can't do much to support each other these days anyway, so the times are what they are.

Our work situations settled really quickly -- Marjorie was already working from home for much of the time when the call to settle in place came down, and my company, while they had been resistant to the idea of people working from home during the previous year I've worked there, were able to adapt quickly to everyone WFH.  Since we do a massively multiplayer online game, business has been booming since the lockdown, and having everyone work from home hasn't been much of an impact at all.  I do miss working in our nice office, but working at home has its perks too.

Marjorie has taken over the upstairs bedroom that we converted into an office, and is on video conference calls much of the day, doing admin work for the NHS.  I'm downstairs at the dining room table, where I have my work MacBook (gah) and monitor set up, and spend a lot of time conference calling as well.  This lets me man the back door so Hamish can come and go as he pleases, between his morning and evening walks.  He doesn't quite get everything that's going on, but he's mostly happy to have us home.  He doesn't quite understand why we aren't going to the pub anymore though.

Thursday evenings at 8 pm is the Clap For Carers time, when everyone goes out and applauds for a few moments, then basically catches up with each other (from an appropriate distance).  Hamish thinks it's Clap For Hamish.  We let him come out with us without a lead, perhaps foolhardily, but the clapping probably scares off the cats, and he always just ends up sitting on the end of the driveway and sniffing the air.

Weekends we've been trying to do a bigger family outing.  We've gone through town a couple of times, once on bike and once with the dog on foot, but mostly stay confined to our village.

I have a new hobby!  I had dabbled in it before, but probably thanks to the lockdown, now it's serious.  I've started using my exercise outings to visit area cemeteries (we have a dozen or so easily reachable) to take pictures, which I then upload to findagrave.com and transcribe, for the benefit of genealogists and historians around the world.  I've done 217 graves as of now, and it feels like I'm just getting started.  It's a perfect mixture of intellectual and aesthetic stimulation for me -- the churchyards and cemeteries are historically interesting, but I think consistently beautiful as well.  The graves are of course poignant reminders of mortality, but I'm also learning so many random things about British history, and from the ground up.  There are historical records for some of these sites already, but they are grossly incomplete and spotty, and almost no pictures.  So it feels like any effort that's made helps.  So much of this history is just fading before our eyes, and I mean that literally -- many graves feel like they are on the brink of readability, and to record them now is to rescue them from obscurity!

Pandemic

Reading the memoirs of others is always best when they are talking about historical events that the author lived through.  The current coronavirus pandemic certainly seems to qualify, so here I am back blogging again.  (I also hope to be able to look back and remind myself what it was like, many years down the line.)

Marjorie and I have now been working from home for about six weeks, and are (for the most part) following social distancing guidelines laid down by the scientists (which is a much sounder way to go than the ones laid down by the government).  Local businesses are mostly shut down, except for groceries, food deliveries, and the post office.  Currently we're allowed an outing per day, for exercise, and as Hamish gets two walks a day, that means we walk him in shifts.  As I also want to go for runs, I grab him at the end of my runs for a cool down walk (he's too slow and distracted to take with me).  We have a beautiful local park (Milton Country Park) that we frequent, though we try to time it to avoid the crowds.  Most people are good about using it, but there are still too many people wanting to picnic, socialize, linger on park benches, etc., and there is little enforcement of the lockdown rules.

We're trying to do just a big grocery shop every couple of weeks to minimize exposure, and have only gotten food delivered a couple of times (leaving good tips).  We're probably doing a bit much online shopping, but we're at least trying to buy from independent businesses and put a little something back into the economy.  We know we're lucky that we could both keep our jobs and work from home.

So trips and plans have all been put on hold, but things are fine mostly -- just a bit boring, at least as long as we're not thinking about what could happen.  We're worried about everybody we know and love, and how tragic things could become.  We're worried about getting it ourselves -- it's such a weird virus and no one seems safe from it.

It's kind of hard to imagine how we're going to come out of this, barring some sort of vaccine.  Things will open up again at some point but Marjorie and I and most people we talk to have no plans to go rushing back to the pub the day the government says we can.  We at least aren't seeing the sort of idiotic protests that are happening in the States about it all being a hoax or conspiracy to take away rights.  And we're happy to have a national health service and coordinated response from the government, even if they've been bled dry in recent years.  We're just hoping we won't need it.

Brexit

"May you live in interesting times" goes the old curse, but man, it is fascinating having a front row seat to the whole Brexit thing.  I was reading today's development (Boris losing his majority in parliament after another Conservative defection) at work and had a thought that I would be remiss to not blog about this all while I'm living through it.

Knowing little about parliamentary procedure, it's been highly educational, but still a lot of the big events just blindside me (the PM can dissolve parliament?  Really?) and can only fully admit that I have no idea how it's all going to play out.

Obviously I'm on the Remain side, even more so than Marjorie who still wants to give Brexit supporters a fair shake.  I think even a "soft" Brexit (i.e. with a deal) would be painful for so many in Britain and add fuel to the whole sickening anti-immigrant crusade.  A hard Brexit could be devastating.  And I'm sick of speciousness of the Brexit arguments, which argue that the referendum (where the people voted for what was sold to them (dishonestly) as a soft Brexit, in a non-binding vote) now three years later means that the people want Brexit by any means.  Brexit supporters (we do know a few, though most friends and coworkers here are Remainers) seem to take every occasion to casually refer to Brexit as "the will of the people" based on this at every opportunity; this is the point where I've taken to stopping and correcting them before they have a chance to move on.

Our visa, by the way, is in no danger that I can see.  As we aren't here as EU citizens, we won't be kicked out as a result of any form of Brexit.  There is some danger that if the economy tanks, companies might leave the UK -- some already have, but it's not at all likely for my company, and if they did there should still be plenty of other jobs that I could probably land, as a result of shortages of skilled labor.  (The real effect on us here, though, will probably be because of the pound taking a beating.)

We watched some of the debate this evening in the House of Commons(?), which was fascinating.  Most American politicians wouldn't last a minute in this forum, as politicians on all sides engaged in a battle of wits, trying to rhetorically pin their opponents; failing in large degree, but even Jacob Rees-Mogg (the key Brexit supporting MP) responded directly and eloquently to questions that were coming thick and fast.  He was oily and evasive, but his answers at least sounded like they were formed in response to the questions put to him, and not just the prepared statements American politicians regurgitate when a particular subject is touched on.

Boris's losses today seem like the first good news in a long while, and I'm hoping for more in the coming days.  There's no denying it's history in the making, and it will be fascinating to watch.

Parkrun

After blowing out my knee almost two years ago, I've taken up parkruns as my soccer substitute.  It's probably one of those things like Crossfit that should have the same first two rules as Fight Club.  I've already talked about it enough on Facebook, but as no one reads this blog anyway, I'm free to ramble on!

On my occasional jogs previously, I thought I was running about as fast as I was capable of, but I surprised myself on my first parkrun with how well I did on a 5K run.  Now, only twelve runs into it, I've managed to knock another three whole minutes off that first timed run!  I don't know what it is about these things, but it's clear they push me to try harder.  My rebuilt knee doesn't seem to be an issue whatsoever.

I look forward to them every week beforehand, and am proud of myself afterwards... it's just the "during" that I hate life.  Strangely, it doesn't feel like I'm running any faster -- it's just that my times have been dropping.  If I have any reputation on the course, it's probably as a loud breather.  This is probably because I'm always trying to stay focused and push myself, so I'm always at the brink of what feels possible for me.  The other thing I do is to pick out one of the other runners as my pacesetter, and try to keep up with them.  I almost always have to change pacesetters at some point, either when I pass them or (more likely) they pull away and I can't keep up.  It's supposed to be a non-competitive sport (or at least, you're only competing against yourself), but I just have to pretend that everyone around me is my competitor.  This especially applies at the finish, where I always hope I have something left to either pass one more person or hold off someone trying to pass me.  Only on maybe one run in four do I feel like I have anything left to give towards the end though, so I'm almost always the one getting passed.

My local parkrun, Cambridge (technically in Milton, my home village) I think is one of the larger ones in the country, with over 500 runners at the last race I did, and is very well organised (I have yet to volunteer, but I owe them a time or two).  But I like that they have them worldwide.  As you are registered internationally when you sign up, you can track all your runs on their website.  And they have stupid little challenges you can try for -- I'm accidentally well on my way to completing the Pirate challenge: run seven parkruns starting with a C ("seven seas") and one starting with an R ("Arrrr...").  So far the three I've done (Cambridge, Coldham's Common, and Canterbury) are all Cs!  This extension is recommended for tracking these things.

Dogs aren't allowed at my local parkrun, but I did take Hamish once to the other one in town at Coldham's Common...  He enjoyed it I think, but he's nine years old now, so I had drag him pretty much the whole way, and it certainly didn't help my time.

On today's parkrun I pushed on through a stitch (note to self: no more bananas beforehand) and the results are in -- I knocked two seconds off my best!  I think I'm probably in the zone where future gains will be modest like this.  Would love to get my time under twenty minutes, but that will be a ways off I think.  But there's always some new target that seems in reach...  I'm very close to beating a seven-minute mile average, and a 70% age grading appears to be in reach.

Vintage game

Right back into it, as if I haven't been away from it for almost two years.

Previously I think I talked about vintage games I remember from my youth.  But this evening while watching a show featuring a guy traveling through various locations on England's southern coast, I was reminded of a sailing game that I hadn't thought about in decades, that I remember playing a lot.  It wasn't hard to track down the name (Regatta) via Google, and this video review was immediately and deeply evocative.  Amazing that these things stay stored in our brains.

Euro check-in

So much has happened.  Still, I'm posting here more for the sake of historical record than because I'm inspired to write.  You take what you can get I guess.

• We've found a house (in Milton) and moved in, and are mostly settled.  We have a car (Volkswagen Golf) and have taken a few excursions in it.
• We've already had two getaways by plane -- to Toulouse in France, and to Tenerife.  Both were lovely.
• We've been going to international meetups -- and just out to the pubs with the dog -- and have made some tentative friends already, much quicker than we did in Australia.
• All three of us seem to really like it here.  Hamish likes all the animals (horses, cows, sheep, rabbits, cats...  Even a hedgehog and a stoat).  Plus he can go in taxis, on buses, and into pubs.  He's even been in Oliver Cromwell's house in Ely (they said it was okay) and inside the nearby historical site Denny Abbey (rather against the rules).  We don't have to leave him at home for much at all.  However, our summer plan for long country walks with him is out, because...
• Mark went to play soccer (football) for the first time ever in the UK -- just a meetup.com five-a-side pickup game -- and blew out his knee twenty minutes in.  Ruptured patella tendon, which required surgery.  Recovery will be long and slow.  And it might be a soccer career-ender.  Which I'm sad about, but I'm fifty, and had a pretty good run.
• Marjorie has a job lined up but is waiting for final approval.
• The weather has been unseasonably warm but we've been really enjoying the changing of seasons.  New kinds of blooming flowers seem to pop up every other week.

See you again in... six months?  Who knows.

Settling in

So much to report.

• We've arrived -- all of us, including Hamish.  As we hoped, and maybe expected, but were apprehensive about, Hamish got off the flight with an attitude like "That was weird.  Oh, hey guys!"  He seems to like it here; he's a bit hyper-vigilant on walks, I assume because the sights and smells are all new, but he's started giving us "zingers" (smiling looks at us, like "isn't this great?") during walks again.  And he's seen his first squirrel!  It was exciting for him, definitely, but I was a little worried that he'd become obsessed.  Luckily he was interested, but it was not much more of a reaction than he'd have for an Australian possum.
• Job is going well so far, despite a bit of drifting since my boss being sick the last couple of days.  A lot less rigorous as far as process, which means we'll be getting a lot more done than my last job I think.  My second day there started with a new-starters breakfast with the CEO (some of the other "new-starters" have been waiting a year for this, so good timing for me).  He's an impressive guy -- Rhodes Scholar at Oxford with a PhD in physics, Canadian, but speaks fluent French and conversational Czech.
• We're getting on fine in our furnished apartment; Marjorie's been taking care of all the financials and logistics, which is pretty much a full time job.  She deserves a break but feels the pressure of things that need to be done: primarily, now, finding us a place to live.  We need a car too.
• Cambridge is really nice.  We're still trying to figure out neighborhoods neighbourhoods, but the one we're in (Chesterton) is very nice with a couple of nice pubs.  There doesn't seem to be a concentration of anything, anywhere though -- just random stores and restaurants stuck randomly in the middle of rows of homes.  It's like, houses, houses, houses, dry cleaner; houses, houses, houses, Bangladeshi restaurant.  You have to walk most places, which is okay (even in the cold) because it's charming and pretty.  We are gradually figuring out the buses and such though.

Last day

Our last day in Melbourne and we are strangely subdued.  Last night we went out to our favorite dumpling place (Hu Tong) and tooled around the city a bit.  Today we went to our favorite lunch place and all around favorite restaurant, Moroccan Deli-cacy.  Both were good, but we're not feeling as anxious, upset, or sentimental as I was expecting.  I guess it must be time to leave.

The whole thing has been such a slow burn that maybe it still hasn't sunk in.  We got everything done rather efficiently, on time, and mostly without incident.  Even now, we're sitting around with not much to do, and we're (surreally) two days into a work week that will have us in England by the end of it.  Is this all real?

I also got my (hopefully) last call from a Melbourne recruiter.  This is the second one who heard it through the grapevine that the company I just quit has been laying people off.  I've yet to hear it first hand though.  What's going on over there?

Home stretch

When we first decided to do this UK move last 30th of January, we anticipated it would take a year.  Looks like we'll be coming in just under the wire.  We're now in the home stretch.

The car's been sold.  That's a HUGE relief -- when time is running out, it's tempting to take a lousy offer just to be done, but we stuck it out and got a decent offer just before it started getting seriously time-critical.  Nerve-wracking to be sure.

Today the movers came and packed all our things (at least, the things we have left after four carloads taken to the tip, multiple items sold on eBay, and lots of other stuff freecycled or given away to friends or passing strangers) into 112 boxes.  That still feels like too much stuff, and there's every chance our UK home will be smaller.  We did a lot of the house cleaning after the movers left, and tomorrow we go back and hopefully finish the job.

After that, there's a bunch of small tasks to take care of (it never stops), plus we'll be trying to meet up with friends to say our goodbyes.

We're now staying at a friend's place; it's our friend that we trade dog-sitting duties with, and she's out of town, so it works out well.  Getting on a plane in a week's time.  We've been so busy that I've hardly had time to fret about life and work on the other side.  Guess I can start that now!