Back by popular demand!

Now that my writer brethren have reached agreement with Worldwide Pants, I can now return to work and once again contribute to the hueyuk blog. Thanks to Tiff for tracking our adventures over the past couple of months and supporting my decision to back the Hollywood writers. Anyway, Tiff has captured the salient events, but I did want to codify some memorable moments with a few vignettes.

Basketball
As I’ve written before, it’s been interesting to track/view life from a foreign perspective. The Internet allows me to stay pretty plugged-in (for example I did know that Taurean Green was sent down to the Idaho Stampede while my supposed Blazer Buddy DWT thought he saw him playing on a televised game), but at the same time I mainly rely on written or audio (podcast) updates versus watching games myself and forming my own opinions which are then augmented by media commentary. In particular, it is a bit surreal to follow basketball here because it gets approximately zero coverage in the UK – I had to go to Tel Aviv to see some games (more on that later). So, it seems I chose an extraordinary year to be out of the country as both of my basketball teams are having exceptional years – Georgetown is a Final Four favorite (despite a lackluster loss at Memphis and current ranking behind the WSU Cougs) with every game on ESPN while the Blazers first lost Greg Oden to knee surgery but have remarkably won 13 straight games with only one loss so far in the month of December – and this is the first year that Comcast is broadcasting nearly all their games in HD. They did have one preseason NBA game here in London where Boston played Minnesota. I actually think that Danny Ainge agreed to pay for Kevin McHale’s European vacation as part of the KG giveaway. Anyway, the announcers for the game were quite entertaining as the main guy spent most of the time explaining the rules and some of the strategy. He also announced the game in a soccer-like manner where his voice would get loud and excitable every time someone would score or shoot – this works in soccer when there are less than 20 shots on goal in a game, but it’s a bit much in basketball when there are more than 150 shots per game. The funnier aspect was that the color guy was DJ Jazzy Jeff. I have no idea how he got the gig, but let’s just say he was no Bill Schonely or Steve “Snapper” Jones. I think they were just looking for an American “celebrity” to do the color commentary because it was a celebrity filled event with numerous interviews taking place in the crowd of Formula One drivers, cricket players and footballers.

Celebrity Sighting
Speaking of celebrities, Tiff and I frequently comment that we are amazed that we haven’t seen more celebs in our hood. Our flat isn’t much to blog about, but the location is prime as we’re a few blocks from Selfridges, Claridges, Nobu and Cipriani – all places where the paparazzi loiter at all hours to get a shot of Sienna Miller, Kate Moss or Beyonce. Anyway, my guess is that I’m just oblivious and would only know a celebrity if I ran into one. Well, it turns out I did recognize someone and it wasn’t me, but rather The Doodle, that almost ran into him. Morgan and I were leaving in the middle of the day to go for a run and she almost ran into a guy walking by himself coming out of the door. He was wearing a long overcoat, worn corduroy pants, Sony headphones, and a Nike sweatshirt and trainers. I recognized him immediately, but couldn’t think of his name (I could only think Dudley Moore) but after following him for block or so it finally hit me – Rainman! – aka Dustin Hoffman. He was just strolling around taking in the sights and no one else seemed to notice him. Also, that is one short dude. He was significantly shorter than me, and I haven't done any growing on this side of the Atlantic.

Drama in Grosvenor Square
The Huey’s can now take credit for adding to the excitement of Grosvenor Square. First, on a nice Saturday morning we took the dog to the park and Tiff was going to head to the gym afterward so we had her gym bag as well as a water bottle for the dog. After about 15 minutes, Tiff was tired of carrying her bag and the water so she put them on one of the park benches. After more playing, we were taking a break and giving the dog some water when we saw a motorcycle policeman entering the park. Since the square is adjacent to the U.S. Embassy I thought that he was just doing some sort of routine check, but he pulls up right next to us while one of his colleagues entered the square from another entrance. Turns out someone at Embassy security saw the bag and water bottle on the bench, thought it might be a bomb and called the police. Not so comforting to live close to the U.S. Embassy, but it doesn’t stop me from going to that square every morning.
And, on one of those mornings I was walking The Doodle when I noticed an old lady walking her small dog. She looked nice enough and her dog wanted to play with Morgan, but she wouldn’t let her dog off the leash. Then I saw her fail to pick up after her dog. I verified the offense and picked up the droppings with one of my extra bags. Morgan decided she wanted to play with the small dog and the lady started freaking out, even though her dog was totally fine and trying to engage. This got me a little riled up so I then (politely I swear) asked her if she needed one of my extra bags to pick up after her dog. Her response in a northern England accent (sounds slightly Scottish), “Why don’t you F&@K OFF! Go back to your country and F%@K OFF!” She kept repeating this, probably along with some other colourful comments as I walked away. Lovely.
The final piece of drama once again involves the police. Grosvenor Square is one of the few (if not the only) square in London where you can take your dog “off lead”. The big parks like Hyde Park or Regents Park don’t require a leash, but most of the squares are small, crowded and not well protected from traffic. That’s why we were so excited to find Grosvenor Square as I last wrote about a couple of months ago. Anyway, The Doodle and I arrived at the square one morning and I threw the ball. She took off after it and then decided to “eliminate”. As she was doing that, a policeman/community watch guy walks up to me all worked up. At first I thought he was going to remind me to clean up after my dog, but instead he starts yelling to get Morgan back on the lead. I think he didn’t know that Grosvenor Square is an off-leash square, so I started to explain that the sign says off lead when Morgan decides to jump up on the guy’s back. Great. Now he’s really fired up and so is the dog. He says he doesn’t care what the sign says since in any case the dog needs to be “under control”. I’m now trying to corral Morgan, but she’s full of energy and thinks we’re playing. The police dude then starts threatening me, “You have 5 seconds!” At this point, I’m finding the entire sequence of events to be quite humorous. The dog is running in circles, I have a bag of dog droppings and a leash and the police guy is yelling over and over “5 seconds!” I finally corral her and get home but for the next couple of days I’m a little freaked out that this same guy will be in the square and arrest me or something. So, the next day I spot a couple of his police cohorts, explain the situation to them, and their answer - “some people can be a bit arsy”.

Tel Aviv
In addition to my strong support for those poor Hollywood writers, I also haven’t been contributing to the blog because I’ve been a little busy at work. It basically started when I got a phone call from Palo Alto when we were on the tube back to our flat from our trip to Italy and it finally ended on December 10 when HP announced it was buying a printer company based in Tel Aviv, Israel. This amounted to a fairly brutal 2 months for me since I had to coordinate with people time zones ahead and behind me which translated into me working from early in the morning until late at night with barely room for a couple dog walks/runs in the middle of the day. I flew to Tel Aviv for final negotiations for what was supposed to be 3 days. Turned into a week (Camp David lasted 2 weeks) of me staying in a kosher hotel, which means from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday that, among other things, there is no laundry service, resulting in me washing my clothes in the bathroom sink. Talk about glamorous. In addition to eating kosher food and doing my laundry John Candy style from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, I was stuck in Tel Aviv. I really didn’t know what to expect but after spending significant time there I can say that religious reasons aside – there is very little reason to visit Tel Aviv. It’s basically a run-down Miami with many buildings that are stalled and half built and the vast majority of the others falling apart due to shoddy construction. Having said all that, it was a great learning experience for me – negotiating with Israelis, bridging cultural differences, managing a team of ~100 people across 10 hours of time zone differences and managing the politics of a large corporation. And, the timing was good as I was able to make it back to see Donna and Kate and Tiff and I were able to have a relaxing holidays.

Sticker Shock
We’ve written many times about the unfathomable costs of living in London. I’ve become somewhat numb to it as I just don’t think about £ versus $ anymore, but I was stunned by one particular purchase. I always notice a shoe repair guy in our tube station that also advertises “keys while you wait”, we needed to have a couple of keys made for guests so I figured in the U.S. that would cost me $1-2 / key so in London I’d pay £1-2 / key so I took £5 just to be safe. I gave the guy my two keys, it took him 3 minutes to perform the work, he rang up my bill and I saw £5.50 and then I saw him ring in another £7 for a total of £12.50 ($25). I was so stunned I didn’t have the wherewithal to say ‘no thanks, go ahead and keep the keys’ I just started groping for my credit card. Then I did the math his hourly rate to make keys amounted to $500/hour which is more than partners charge at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Unreal.

A Magical Christmas in North Wales

After three trips back to the States this summer for various reasons, early on we decided we would spend Christmas here in the UK. While we knew we would miss spending time with friends and family, I have always wanted a romantic Christmas with just the two of us someplace interesting.

So several months ago we started the hunt for the perfect spot - I wanted something right out of the move "Holiday". My friend Claire suggested we check out a site called Rural Retreats. They have a number of great little cottages available to rent, and even better, many of them allow dogs. We found a great little stone cottage called Ty Ucha'r Ffordde in North Wales in a little town called Conwy.

So we rented a car and set out for our first adventure driving on the other side of the road. Greg did a great job and the drive was nearly incident free. It was great to get out of the city and be on the open road. Traffic wasn't great so our 4.5 hour drive was closer to 6 hours. Despite arriving in the dark, we miraculously found our cozy cottage which exceeded our expectations. They had set up a small Christmas tree and has a bottle of champagne out for us.

We spent the next six days reading by the fire, cooking lots of tasty meals and Christmas cookies, and I did a bit of knitting. A couple of days we went out on hikes in the countryside and only got truly lost once. Morgan had a tremendous time chasing pheasants and trying to communicate with the sheep that were on every hillside. We to town for one brief trip to see the castle. It's a tiny but cute town.

Christmas dinner was a great success with my first attempt at a lamb crown roast which I've always wanted to try, but was too intimidated to tackle until now. It turned out really well and I think it might be a permanent addition to my Christmas menu. We also had mashed potatoes, green beans with shallots, steamed veggies, and Greg tackled the buttermilk biscuits and made a fabulous lemon tart for dessert. It was delicious.

It is a Christmas we will always look back on fondly.

Kate and Donna come to London

I was honored to have my friends Donna and Kate come all the way form Seattle for a long weekend in London during the hectic holiday season. We managed to talk nearly non-stop for something like 72 solid waking hours (I know this doesn’t come as much of a surprise to those of you who know us) and I think we could have managed another 72 hours had we had the chance! It was a really fun weekend full of memories that I will always treasure.

The girls arrived mid afternoon and after a Starbucks snack from downstairs (and the kick off of the chatting) we headed to Grosvenor Square for a quick Morgan walk followed by more great conversation over wine and cheese at La Fromagerie. The girls were understandably pretty tired so we called it an early night.


















The next day we head out to lunch and then to Hyde Park by way of Green Park and Buckingham Palace to the German Christmas Fair. Despite the pouring rain we had gluvine to keep us warm as we pursed the stalls full of handicrafts. We checked out the Duke of Wellington for dinner so the girls could enjoy a proper gastropub meal, which was delicious. We worked off our dinner with a fun bit of ice skating at Somerset House which couldn’t have been more picturesque.

On Sunday we checked out the London Eye and followed that with English tea at The Woolseley. Which was fun followed by sushi and a late night out in Soho. We all suffered a bit the next day, but it was well worth it.



I feel so lucky to have friends where I can pick up where we left off six months ago like we’ve never been apart.

Moroccan Adventures

When Nicole planned her trip to London, we agreed we would head somewhere outside of London for a few days. After much consternation, we decided a little exotic adventure was what we were after, and so we set off to Marrakech, Morocco for four days…and adventure was had!

Our taxi ride from the airport to the hotel was just the beginning. We were immediately hit with all the color, sights, sounds and smells of Marrakech as we rounded the corner and we smelled the coriander, cumin, curry and saw the women in veils and donkey carts on the small cobblestone roads. The roads were so small in fact, that our cab driver could only take us far. He pulled over and got us our own donkey cart where he placed our luggage and we all walked the ¼ mile to our Hotel.

We loved out hotel, the Dar El Souk. It is run by a charming English lady and her daughters. We had our first cup of mint tea while she gave us restaurant and sightseeing recommendations. After getting unpacked, we set out to explore the city. First stop was to grab some lunch. The woman at the hotel told us to visit Stall 1 at the outdoor market in the main plaza for delicious and inexpensive food. After wandering for about an hour without finding it, we gave up and headed back towards the hotel and ended up at Kozybar. It was passed 2pm, so they weren’t serving lunch anymore (when will I ever learn this trick) so we just had a glass of wine on their rooftop terrace and watched the giant storks on the castle walls. It was lovely.

We then headed back to the main plaza, Jemaa El Fna, and took it all in – snake charmers, watermen, henna artists and so much more. We headed to the Terraces de l’Alhambra (wouldn’t recommend as it wasn’t very clean) for some mint tea and to look out over the plaza.

That night we had our best meal of the trip at Le Tanjia. We had a delicious Moroccan meal of tangine, couscous and pastille (a filo like pastry filled with chicken, cinnamon, almonds and sugar). Dinner was followed by entertainment - two belly dancers one of which had a tray with several candles balanced on her head. It was a great first day.

The next morning we slept in after waking to hear the call for prayer at sunrise (they pray five times a day) – it was really beautiful. Then we had our daily breakfast out on the patio of our room. Fruit salad made of yogurt, pomegranate and apple, several types of bread, fresh squeezed oj and tea was delicious and great way to fuel up each morning. After a relaxing morning we set out to explore. We headed to out to case out our purchases. We were a bit caught off guard by all the attention we were received. Mainly it was just shop keepers trying to get us to come into their shops, but some of it was unnerving. All the souks were very colorful, leather, eggs, spices, fruits and nuts, lamps, it was all interesting. It was a bit chaotic for my taste. It is also a bit of sensory overload in terms sights, sounds, smells. You are constantly in the way of mopeds, donkeys, carts, bikes, etc there. It kind of reminds me of Tokyo but in a 3rd world sort of way.

After a bit so shopping we headed to Badii Palace which truthfully wasn’t all that interesting. After that we went to Saadian Tombs which had some really amazing architecture and mosaic work. We took a long walk back to the hotel and finished the day with a nap. That evening we headed back to Jamaa El Fna for dinner at Stall 1 (turns out its only there at night which was why we couldn’t find it before). We felt pretty cool sitting with the locals enjoying our kebabs, calamari and fries. It was cheep and so so in taste, but we were there for the experience. We took in a bit more of the plaza scene which gets even more interesting at night with story tellers, acrobats and child boxing matches (kidsplotation as Nicole described it). It was all a bit too much so we headed back to the hotel only to have a bit of a spooky run in with a local. Lucky for us we found a very nice set of French couples who kindly escorted us back to our hotel and scolded us for coming to Marrakech without a man.

That night at around midnight, we awoke to hear someone trying to get into our room! The doors didn't really have very sturdy locks and anyone could have easy gotten in. We were half asleep and I was a bit paralyzed with fear, but Nicole finally yelled out, "Who is there?!". A man with an English accent said "Oh, sorry, wrong floor". We weren't sure what to do at this point...the hotel only had eight rooms, so it seemed unlikely someone could actually get lost. We went back to sleep but tossed and turned all night. The next morning at breakfast we observed a gentleman with an English accent get lost going back to his room. I went up to him and motioned the scare we had in the middle of the night. He fell all over himself apologizing, but were were just relieved to know it was a genuine mistake!

The next day we went to the spa which was also an interesting experience. Neither Nicole nor I had been to this style of spa (Turkish?) before and we were definitely fish out of water. We also couldn’t really understand what the women were telling us to do so it wasn’t as relaxing as we had hoped.

All in all, I didn’t love Marrakech. It was great to get some sunshine and warm air. It was cool to experience a totally different culture and I brought home a few great finds. I would recommend going as part of a larger trip to Spain or Portugal for a day or two or maybe if you were headed outside the city to some of the resorts that I’ve heard are nice. I am glad went, but it was definitely more adventure than either of us had expected.

Also, you'll note our frumpy attire...that is because we were told to cover ourselves from ankle to wrists despite the 80 degree weather. Neither of us really had any great warm weather attire that covered everything, so it was a bit of a challenge.

One last bit of adventure was a gentleman went a bit ballistic on the plane with a nice couple with a baby - something about their seats reclining? Anyway, after the plane landed we were all instructed to stay in our seats while this gentleman and his colleagues escorted the guy off the plane. We tried to find out a bit more of the details, but with no luck.