Satnam and Susan's Website

My son Kavi, now 3, continues to be a savage beast, a wild animal, an unstoppable violent force with the charm of a tsunami and the promise of an earthquake. I am very proud of him and I am encouraging his thuggish tendencies in this dog eat dog world. Since he lives in a country entirely blanketed by video surveillance I fully expect his every encounter to be documented on YouTube so you can see for yourself (or perhaps he should have his own YouThug site?). I also expect Kavi to take out several policemen at the next G20 summit.  If he were a Muslim, al-Qaeda would already have recruited him.

I’ve not drunk any alcohol for four months now. A friend who I met at a conference recently remarked (with surprise) that my behaviour seems to be the same drunk as sober. Others have remarked that I have been more subdued of late. It’s true that I have lost the spring in my step and that glimmer in my eye about what could be and instead I stand still wondering about what was. I plan to start drinking again on April 17.

Cambridge continues to sap my spirit and I can almost feel my soul being sucked through my extremities into the grey Disneyland of spires. However, things are improving and we’ve recently met three couples here who share my unreasonable fixation with food and drink. The men in two of the couples are British-Indians like myself. Both have lovely partners: a white American and a Californian-Korean. Together we look like an Indian Public Service warning broadcast about what can go wrong when the parents fail to make the arranged marriage work out. The third couple comprises Indian-South African and a Scotsman with an excellent taste in traditional dress. My chain smoking friends Steve Hand and Rolf Neugebauer have done much to keep me sane.

I visited California recently for a conference and landing at San Francisco airport felt like coming home. My heart started to beat faster and my palms started to sweat from excitement. As soon as I stepped out of the aircraft I could smell the dry bay air and I got that spring back in my step and I felt that once again I had a discernable pulse. I felt the pores of my skin open up and draw in the ambient energy which swept through my body as if I were being resuscitated by electric shock. I was moving from a state of denial to the State of Denial where you can always check out but you can never leave.

Kiran, 6 in May, had an unhappy year in reception at a local state school (she started at 4 and reception is not a mandatory year in English elementary education). She did not take to her teachers and she did not have any friends in the playground. However, this year (primary 1) things have completely changed and she loves her teacher who is a very charismatic Irish woman who clearly has a gift for making each child feel special. Kiran attended a Montessori school last summer in Mountain View and this has distilled an insatiable appetite in Kiran for doing number and word puzzles and her primary teacher feeds the flames of this desire. She also has a couple of friends in her class and now it is amazing to see how happy and settled she is. However, the unfriendliness of the British has defeated me and after one and a half years of trying to engage with the parents at the school gate I have given up in disgust at their coldness and I no longer take Kiran to school most mornings (Susan, however, has been accepted by the schoolgate parents).

I was trying to buy some clothes from a store called Club Monaco in California but looking around at the other customers and staff I felt like an intruder or impostor who had accidentally wondered into this store thinking it was Burberry/M&S or some other stuffy 40-something store. I decided to check out the website of the store to see if I could identify with its image which seems to be about “updated modern classics for young urban professionals”. A quick self-check confirmed that I did not work for Google in Manhattan and live in a loft above an art gallery in Midtown and I did not drive a hybrid Toyota Prius or have iPod headphones permanently soldered into my ears and most devastatingly I was certainly not young. There were several other indicators that I did not belong in the store. Most clothes were not available in my size (i.e. Fat Bastard). The music in the store had been released in the last year or two and was made by teenagers who clearly did not have the appropriate level of deference to the classic masters (you know, Waters, et. al). The staff seemed to keep trying to subtly nudge me into a nearby GAP store. Perhaps I should just give into the reality of my advanced years and swap Radio 6 for Radio 2.

A recent highlight was the birthday dinner of my friend Katie (finishing her physics PhD at Harvard) hosted at the Campbell (Silicon Valley) house of Liesl (uber-physicist at Hitachi) and James (her man who designs golf courses). A group of about 14 of us arrived for the dinner.  Most of us had originally got to know each other through a hiking group that my friend Geoff instigated. I felt immense pleasure and comfort being surrounded by friends and associates that I have know for around ten years and each time we meet it is as if I have never left. Several of us automatically walked into the kitchen to produce a wonderful meal and I made up a cashew-chilli-cilantro-mint based sauce for a spicy chicken dish. As we sat at Liesl’s long dinner table with sunshine streaming in through her patio doors I basked in several superimposed conversations about what is happening in each person’s life and I felt a sense of belonging and acceptance that has eluded me since leaving the Bay Area. Even stone cold sober I felt drunk and elated and my soul felt nourished and I left that night feeling turbo-charged and ready to conquer the world. I live with a wonderful woman, two great kids, close to my family and I have a great job. However, I am a greedy man and this is not enough.

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of entertainment cooking in an attempt to try and break down the British reserve and I’ve also hosted a few “comfort food” parties where I invite a large number of people and cook large amounts of food. My cooking recently has adopted Japanese influences (e.g. I am working on a series of variants on Nobu black cod) and Indian-French fusion and Indian-Scottish fusion (I’ve been refining haggis samosas). However despite all the effort in the kitchen I find that we get very few return dinner invites or offers to take us out to restaurants and I am thinking of largely giving up entertaining cooking. Once again UK 1 Satnam 0.

I stood by the shore of the bay, high on the salty sea air and wafts of eucalyptus, and in one sweep I could see the beautiful red Golden Gate Bridge and the hulking great Bay Bridge which bracketed the breathtaking view of the city skyscrapers and the sparkling azure bay and the somewhat Tellytubbyland-esque rolling green hills. However, it took jut a slight turn of the head and the view changes to encompass  US-101 (the “road the hell” as I used to call it), the salt flats and then the ugly vista of Interstate I-80 along Berkeley and at once I could see simultaneously what I loved and what I hated about the Bay Area and why I wanted to leave and why I want to come back. Like many other aspects of my life I find that the same thing commands desire and repulsion in anti-phase which ebb and flow to leave debris of confusion. This results in a hair raising emotional rollercoaster, a rickety ride through the tunnel of love, and knocks and headfirst crashes on the bumper/dodge-em cars. It feels like a mixture of the film Track 29 and Simply Red’s Fairground Attraction.

Just before Thanksgiving Susan and I spent a week in Manhattan without the kids and we lived my dream life (i.e. reading restaurants reviews in The New Yorker and the New York Times and then eating in the restaurants with the best reviews (I want Frank Bruni’s job) whilst running an FPGA-based data centre during the daytime). Our Chelsea hotel was next to the apartment block where Debbie Harry lives and although I stalked the Starbucks between our buildings I never got a glimpse of her. However, we ate at some amazing restaurants and we also saw a fantastic production of All of Our Sons as well as catching up with Fergus and Rulande Ferguson (including a rather good lunch at Google) and we also visited friends at Columbia University. I also paid homage to one of my food meccas Dean and Deluca in SoHo. In my ideal life I would live half of the year in Yosemite and half of the year in Manhattan.

The abstinence was motivated by the need to lose weight to help reduce further damage to my knees (I was recently diagnosed with early stage arthritis). I analyzed my calorie intake and realized 75% of it was from alcohol so I decided to eliminate that component. However, I have actually gained weight as I comfort ate to offset the misery of being sober all the time. Nobody thought I would make it to four months with absolutely zero alcohol consumption. However I can be pretty bloody minded and determined and stubborn when required and I defeat most problems I care about enough. Love in a cold climate is next.

Another recent highlight was a 70s/80s disco birthday party for the afore-mentioned Indian-South African. Susan went as Madonna but got confused for Olivia Newton-John. I wanted to go as John Travolta but I was banned because I might have made sudden arm movements which would have maimed innocent bystanders. We also went to an excellent concert by the band Calexico in London and their American-folk-Mexican-fusion sound is one of my favourites right now. I now own about 1000 physical CDs and music continues to provide much needed nourishment and mental balance and is also a source of creativity.

My mother now lives alone because my younger sister has left home to take up a lectureship at a university near London. Overall she is doing quite well (she does not speak English so simple things like a phone bill are a challenge). She goes to a local community centre for Asian women which is an old elementary school (the one I went to) in the block next to her apartment and this is a valuable source of support. However, we’ve heard that she has developed cataracts so that is yet another thing to worry about (I heard the same news about another friend in Sweden). During a recent visit to see her and attend a funeral I ended up at the same crematorium I went to in 1988 when my father died. Standing in roughly the same spot it was hard not to reflect on the changes during the last 20 years and to this day I feel the same explosive cocktail of love-hate-anger towards him. My father’s ashes were scattered in Loch Lomond and I sometimes joke with Kiran that some of the black specs floating at the water’s edge could be her grandfather. She peers intently at each spec and asks if it is him and has never agreed to swim in the lake. If I follow in my father’s whisky-based alcoholic self-destruction I too will end up as just another spec in the lake.

I continue to live life in fear of the usual suspects: Guardian readers (the Guardian is a UK entertainment daily paper with a unsuccessful sideline in news reporting); invites to pot-luck dinners; having to eat lunch at West; flying Ryanair; children’s’ parties; guests bringing bad wine to dinner; cyclists; sanctimonious claptrap about how green everyone allegedly is; and Oasis lyrics.

Through all the turmoil the love of my life has remained a steady rock which has acted as a counterpoint to my chaotic energy and I still wonder why she has not walked and I can only put it down to a masochistic streak or lack of upgrade opportunities. We’ve been together for 19 years now. It’s been crashing AC/DC guitars, Elton John heavy chords, Motorhead thundering drums, Dido swooning violins, Lloyd Cole heartbreak lyrics, uplifting Horn synthesizers, Joy Division tragedy, Madness fanfare trumpets and Dylan mellow harmonicas.

I can no longer tell wrong from right, black from white, bitter from sweet, dark from light or pain from pleasure. If only I could install a religion service pack to help me know what I should think and feel. Until then I hope I can enjoy a glass of Lagavulin whisky with you as we drink our way through the night and discuss your demons and angels.

Yours conflicted,

Satnam

There are numerous indicators that point to my lack of re-integration into British society. In restaurants I insist on providing candid feedback on each course in the most polite manner I can muster with my best Colgate ultra-bright  smile with my now perfectly aligned teeth (thanks to American orthodontics, oral surgery and the US Microsoft health plan). My British colleagues cringle that the sight of someone causing such a scene in public.  However, I want to know why I have been charged £7.95 ($16.00)  for frozen scallops incompletely “seared” and then scattered in a haphazard manner over totally inappropriate Asian noodles.  People should go to prison for such war crimes. Where is my fellow Glaswegian Ramsay when you need him. When I moved to Cambridge I continued the custom of making eye contact with passers by in my neighbourhood and saying hello and beaming the best smile my UK programming could muster. In Seattle or California this protocol was always reciprocated in kind but in Cambridge people just pretend that I don’t exist, look past me as if I am invisible, cross the road when they see me coming or fumble in their pockets for the ‘9’ button on their mobile phone. At Kiran’s Seattle daycare I was on civil chit-chat terms with many of the parents. I have been taking  Kiran to her Cambridge  school every morning for a year now and I have yet to strike up a conversation with any of the other parents who do their best to avoid my gaze or any attempt at communication. For me, it is not just the weather that is cold in Cambridge.

It’s bit a long time since I have sent I news email. Perhaps this is because I did not want to write and send a negative depressing missive. Or perhaps it was because so many people have complained about getting such bulk junk email from me. But in reality it is probably because to all intents and purposes I have effectively been dead since arriving in Cambridge – at least as far as my heart and soul is concerned. It’s rather like being cast in the wrong part in play for which you auditioned by accident and somehow you got the part and now you have go through the motions without the emotions. I bought a heart rate monitor to make sure that I still have a pulse.

My daughter Kiran (five) now has an East Anglia accent despite our best efforts which have included taking her to a US air force base for a 4th of July celebration, far too many Disney DVDs, exposure to all the American friends we can muster here and two months in California this summer (after which she at least lost her ability to pronounce the letter ‘t’ which is at least some sort of progress – think “pary”). After Susan picked her up from her first session at day care in Cambridge the staff commented that they had never seen such a confident child that introduced herself to the other kids, integrated immediately and when one child bothered her she responded by holding our her hand and saying “give me space”. Moving Kiran from America where children are taught to express themselves and have respect for others to a country where the notion that children are to be seen but not heard is still deeply embedded in the firmware is one of the opportunity costs.

My son Kavi (almost three) is a savage beast – a wild animal. Characteristics which I think will serve him well in this dog eat dog world. I can’t say I recognize much of myself in Kiran and perhaps it is time for a DNA test. However, there is do doubt that Kavi is a chip off the old shoulder. He has boundless energy most of it directed towards violent and destructive means. With reckless abandon he will attempt to overcome any obstacle no matter how infeasible. Any problem can be solved with a push, a shove, a shout or a punch. Is it alive? Kill it and see. Have you gone too far? Just flash your best smile and set the dimples to 100% and set the big brown eyes to stun and you can expect to get off with just a caution.

Things are going well for my mother who has now had both knees replaced and she has regained some mobility. She can walk about half a mile and perform light sopping errands. My sister has just moved out from the family home and for the first time ever my mother is on her own in Glasgow. She would like to hold on her independence as long as she can but at some point the plan is for her to come and live with us. She speaks very little English and our kids speak no Punjabi and it is sad to see her at once happy to see her grandchildren but on the other hand unable to communicate with them. On the other hand, I speak the same language as most people around me yet I still can’t understand what is going on.

We spent two months this summer in California where I worked at Microsoft’s research laboratory in Mountain View and Susan worked at HP’s lab HQ in Palo Alto. We rented a house in Palo Alto and we found a Montessori daycare for the kids (my rants about Montessori daycares and schools would fill an entire news email). Kavi had at least one “time out” for violence every day (usually for trying to strangle his sister). Although I spent most of my waking hours working with a few weekend trips and some evening meals we made for friends I found it utterly liberating to be back in America. I felt “defrosted” and as if the pilot light had been lit and there was a spring my step and a smile on my face and simply walking down the street bathed in sun and warmth amongst palm tree lined streets was a sublime pleasure. Best of all was catching up with our friends in the Bay Area and after a glass or two of Napa chardonnay or Sonoma zinfandel it was as if we had never left. The smell of eucalyptus at Point Lobos State Park, the feeling of the surf in your hair at Boony Doon beach, the glittering San Francisco Bay, the azure sparkle of Lake Tahoe, the towering coastal redwoods, the stunning mountains in magical Yosemite valley… what kind of idiot leaves California?

I ordered three items from the Obama website: (a) a yard sign; (b) a T-shirt; (c) a “Republicans for Obama” car bumper sticker which was the only item that was stolen from the parcel which I think says a lot about my Palo Alto neighbours. I will vote for Obama but I expect the Republicans will win the election.

I have made myself rather unpopular at the local residents association. At the one meeting that Susan let me go to I suggested that we should not oppose the conversion of a hotel at the end of our street into apartments because there is a lack of housing in Cambridge and we should do our bit to help east the situation for people who are not as fortunate as us (I think I was branded a communist). I also opposed blocking our street to traffic pointing our that we don’t actually own Cambridge and people need to get from point A to point B and our street is the only viable means of doing this (for this I got silent condemnation and Susan has now banned me from going to further resident association meetings). To help counteract the damage we did invite our entire street to a party at our house where I served rather nice new world wine and Indian food. Many people came and someone remarked that the last time such a thing happened in the street was 1957.

We used to how two good restaurants in Cambridge and now we only have one. The second best was styled after Alice Water’s Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley (the original eat local restaurant). Alice Water stole our chef and now we are down to just one good restaurant (a two star Michelin restaurant that is typically $300 per head so not a place you order a carry from on a whim).

Family pictures on my Facebook site.

Cheers,

Satnam

Moving is supposed to be one of the most stressful experiences of your life which is probably why I passed out at work and found myself whisked in an ambulance to hospital. The ambulance ride was quite exciting and the route involved going close to Waitrose (UK supermarket which is somewhat Wholefoods-esque where people who are too posh for Sainsburys go) and I was wondering if the driver might stop to allow me to pick up some groceries. At the hospital there was some mutual incomprehension between myself and my real Punjabi doctor when he tried to talk to me in our native tongue but did not bargain for someone that spoke Punjabi with a Scottish accent.

We’ve found a house to rent for $4000 a month (plus local taxes) and for this we get a bit of a dump that this not large enough for our furniture so we have been living with sofas stacked on top of each other and we have lots of boxes we can’t unpack because there is nowhere to put the stuff. A friend who lives around the corner recently had his Audi stolen and torched so I expect our Audi will be next. Given the grief we’ve had trying to convert it for driving in the UK I would welcome the bonfire and use the insurance payment to buy a car that is built for the UK market. I can now bore anyone to death about UK regulations for car lights, their colours, their positions, the beam direction, etc. Summary: don’t even think about importing an electronics-heavy car to the UK from the USA. Although our house is pretty crap we do have wonderful direct neighbors (we share a wireless internet connection) and we’re lucky to have several other good friends in the hood. One of my friend’s daughter observed that I am a “good man but a bad boy” which I thought was uncannily observant for an eleven year old. I have been altered that we are likely to make a bad impressions on our neighbors for being decadent enough to own two cars (and consume precious parking real estate). I filled up our car with petrol (gas) and it cost $170. I suddenly felt the need to annex more countries in the Middle East. Shame I voted Democrat in the mid-term elections.

The kids are coping reasonably well with the move considering what we have subjected them too. Susan told me that Kiran refused to eat her dinner today because she wanted to eat it in the Seattle house and not in the Cambridge house which was rather heart-wrenching. Our Seattle house (which I visited yesterday) is still on the market and I think we are going to give up trying to sell it and rent it out instead. We have applied for Kiran to go to a state primary (elementary) school and she will start next September. Next month I will take Kiran to London to see a stage production of the Gruffalo and I suspect I am more excited about this adventure than she is. Susan has moved her HP job from Palo Alto in California to HP in Bristol and her maternity leave ends in mid-January. Our new mission is to find a house to buy. The sad state of the property market in the US and the dollar / pound exchange rate seem to be conspiring against us.

I’m suffering significant reverse culture shock. I’ve been away for about a decade and quite a few things have changed. There seems to be a programming error that has caused all of the music that should be on Radio 1 (state radio station with music for young people) to be broadcast by mistake on Radio 2 (state radio station catering for those who no longer young). For some inexplicable reason half the population is wearing North Face branded clothes (I stupidly bought some North Face clothes in the USA before moving back thinking no-one would have heard of this US brand). I’ve now learned to stop making direct eye contact with passers by and saying “hi” to strangers because my civility was flatly ignored. And I had forgotten how terrible it is to travel on Britian’s road system and I suddenly reacquainted myself with the term “contra-flow”. Cambridge is fiendishly constructed to make sure that no mater where you are actually going you will somehow end up on the A14 (the local Road to Hell) which I am convinced is some kind of punishment devised for motorists by militant cyclists.

On the plus side our local pub is very nice and if you are in the hood I will happily buy you a pint. However, if you bring kids the pint will have to be consumed before 7PM because kids are not allowed in the pub after seven (??!??!?).

Right now I am in Seattle (en route to California) where I’ve been stranded on Mercer Island due to snowfall and Microsoft has shut down its campus for the day and told everyone to stay home. I got a lot of work done in Erik Meijer’s kitchen!

Satnam

Now that the post-surgery codine haze has subsided, my head is clear enough to attempt a long overdue news email.

Since the last news email Susan and I have become US citizens. Susan’s process was rather smoother and quicker than mine which involved a much lengthier FBI check. I doubt I will ever lose my reputation with the authorities as a suspicious character (I look like a pretty convincing terrorist in my driving license and passport photographs). However, despite my trials and tribulations with various US immigration bodies they finally seem to have agreed to let me become one of them. Identity confusion has been a way of life for me as an Indian born in the Punjab, moving to the UK when I was one and a half, becoming naturalized as a UK citizen when I was seven and now also accruing US citizenship. Am I an Indian-Scottish-American? Or an Indian-American-Brit? Or an American-Indian-Scot? I don’t fancy my chances in any hostage situation. I’m doubly damned by the UK-US citizenship and my Sikh background also makes me a target for Muslim fanatics.

I am sure I will disgust many of my friends when I say that I am very proud to become an American. This is the first place I could feel anonymous and where my brown skin and accent does not bring with it huge baggage and prejudice. In the UK I had to endure verbal and physical racist attacks but my life in the US has been free of such worries. I just look like all the other Indian computer programmers in Silicon Valley or the Microsoft headquarters and no one bats an eyelid or takes any special notice. I am just like everyone else from somewhere else and this is a wonderful feeling. I would love to live here forever. We are going to leave the US to move to Cambridge, England. Well, my life has never been short of contradictions.

This summer we had to make the painful decision about whether we wanted to remain in the US or move back to the UK. We decided to move back. I will transfer to Microsoft’s research laboratory in Cambridge. This gives me a chance to move back closer to our friends and family in the UK and in particular my mother. In the end the need to be closer to our families and my mother in particular trumped the advantages of our comfortable life in the US and we decided to give Cambridge a go. I am bracing myself for reverse culture shock. We are certainly going to have to downgrade our quality of housing (Cambridge is significantly more expensive than Seattle). The thought of dealing with dodgy plumbing and having to pack my own bags at the supermarket are enough to make me tear up my one way ticket. And then there is the grey cold weather. Roll on global warming. I wonder if there is some kind of reverse carbon credit scheme where you can pay other people to pollute more? Several people have already asked how long we will be in Cambridge before we move again. My sister Parmjeet gave birth to twins recently (one boy, one girl). My brother’s partner is expecting in December. So my mother has suddenly built up a critical mass of grandchildren in the southeast of England. So perhaps this is the right time to move back. We will however sorely miss our friends in America.

I remember after 9/11 that I got very good service on planes. I just had to turn my head or raise an eyebrow and some member of cabin crew (sometimes more than one) would rush to my attention and I could get my glass of wine refilled rather quickly. I got a lot of attention from fellow passengers which I presume were for my chiseled good looks. I was often sat next to some well built guy with short hair who would engage me in conversation and somehow they would always come from a place like Fort Collins or some other military stronghold. They were always very polite (and boring conversationalists) but it was a bit obvious. I am looking forward to more splendid in-flight service (assuming I am allowed to board the plane which in my case can never be taken for granted). Up until recently the harsh stares I would sometimes get in the UK from strangers had the subtitle “Paki” along with the understanding that I should go back home to the jungle. Now the stares I get have the subtitle “terrorist”. It is too late for me to avoid the poison of racist suspicion but I was rather hoping my children could do without it.

Just yesterday I was involved in a bizarrely racist incident when I was crossing the road in Seattle with Kiran in one hand and a double latte in the other. As I made my way across the pedestrian cross-walk (in the United States cars are obliged to stop for pedestrians at “zebra” crossing) the impatient driver honked at me and starting shouting abuse relating to my desire to cross the road. I was rather taken aback at getting hassle for exercising my pedestrian rights and I was sufficiently enraged to turn around and lean into the window of the driver and tell her just what I thought of her (which involved shouting which was painful because right now my mouth is wired shut after my surgery and although I may not have been coherent I think she got the message). As I continued to walk across the road with Kiran I ignored the back talk. Then this white guy came up to me shaking his head and started to shout abuse at the driver (which somewhat amplified my sentiment but in even cruder terms). His rants included the phrase “go back to where you came from” directed at the black American driver. Since I am used to being on the receiving end of this racist slur it felt uncomfortable to be unwittingly co-opted onto the other side. The white man then proceeded to talk with me for a block and sympathize with me and my plight and suggested that I should have thrown my coffee into her face too. I was also wondering if he was aware of the irony of telling a fellow citizen to “go home” (which in her case probably involved driving around the block) and sympathizing with an incoherent Indian looking guy who presumably got off the boat not so long ago (how could he have known about my recent citizenship ceremony?).

Kiran has always been a small child for her age (in terms of weight). Kavi on the other hand is growing at some alarming rate and is quite a large baby for his age. Kiran adores Kavi (when she is not trying to poke his eye out in an affectionate kind of way). Kavi is a very smiley and happy baby and the thing that cracks him up the most is watching the exploits of his sister. Unlike his father, Kavi has not really taken to the bottle and we may have to skip past that phase and move straight onto sippy cups for him. In my younger naïver days I used to think boys and girls were much the same and everything was down to conditioning. Based on seven months of observation of Kavi and Kiran I now realize what utter rubbish that belief was. I took Kiran to our outdoor store REI to buy a sleeping bag for her. I tried to steer her in the direction of the red North Face child’s sleeping bag which had the best technical specifications. She however insisted on the pink REI sleeping bag and outright refused to entertain any other suggestion. We’ve gone out of our way to avoid giving girl-color things to Kiran but somehow she is magnetically drawn to pink. It’s exasperating. Kiran and I did have a wonderful night camping on Lopez Island (which involved a ferry trip too). Kiran could not really make the connection between “tent”, “sleeping bag”, “night time” and “sleep” but eventually (around 1AM) I threatened to feed her to the raccoons (which were in close proximity) and that finally convinced her to at least pretend to be asleep. I look forward to more father-daughter camping trips (in France or anywhere with raccoons).

In several ways now I feel like my life has become similar to Kavi’s. I can only spoon mushy food into my mouth during a short period when I am allowed to “unzip” my mouth (I am not allowed to chew for over a month). I can’t communicate by speaking and often utter grunts of frustration as I fail to make myself understood. And I take a lot of naps during the day. I have lost sensation along part of my bottom lip due to nerve damage so whenever I drink I end up drooling. I’ve had more time than usual to play with Kavi as I take time off from work to recuperate although Kavi keeps headbutting me on the jaw where I had the surgery (which involved embedded two sets of metal plates and screws into my jaw: fantastic for airport security).

Kiran is now very articulate and went through a verbal growth spurt this summer during our California vacation. For a few weeks she started to stutter and stammer which we had never seen her do before and this caused me some concern. However, she came through that phase and started to speak in almost perfect sentences using much more sophisticated constructs spoken more fluently. Verbal proficiency does have its downsides. Today in the foyer of a posh mountain lodge she loudly exclaimed “I’ve got a very small penis!”

I start in Cambridge on Monday 2 October. We are keeping a US phone number which we can answer in the UK: 206 219 9024 (it’s a Vonage number). My UK mobile number is +44 7979 648412. On Wed 6 and Thu 7 September we will be in Cambridge to look for a house to rent. If you know anyone in Cambridge who might want to rent out a nice house for six to twelve months please do let us know. You can see some of the places we are thinking of renting on this map: http://local.live.com/?v=2&cid=59ECCFD965B61401!216 If you click on “More information…” for each blue tab you will get photographs of the property. Number 1 is my top pick. Any advice welcome.

Cheers,

Satnam

At 1:30AM PST on Tuesday 3 January Susan gave birth to a boy weighing 6 pounds and 12 ounces.

Both mother and baby are doing very well and we expect Susan to return from hospital on Wednesday afternoon.

We don’t have a name yet for the wee boy ~ we’re looking for something Indian (and preferably Sikh).

We have to decide soon so I am open to suggestions.

There are a couple of pictures at this website:  http://raintown.org/pictures/2006_01_03%20Son%20born/index.htm

Cheers,

Satnam and Susan and Kiran and baby boy

I decided to dye my hair blue. Midnight blue to be precise. I had seen an Indian-American waitress at the Virginia Inn bar in Seattle who had some of her jet black hair dyed midnight blue and although I knew I could never reflect her beauty or youth I did think the hair was not out of the question. My previous attempts to lighten my hair with hydrogen peroxide and color with tangerine were miserable failures (my black hair stayed black and my gray hairs turned murky orange). So this time I decided to seek professional help. At the Le Pichet restaurant (two doors down from the Virginia Inn) I noticed our Tuesday waitress had dyed her hair red and I asked her where and it turned out to be the place two doors down from Le Pichet. She said that they definitely dealt with older clients (“older” is a euphemism for “old” in America). It was the first time that anyone had referred to me as “older” and I realized that I must have been in denial about my decrepit state for some time now.

One day soon afterwards I was walking past the hairdresser with Kiran and I saw that it was one of these very posh places with spartan trendy décor with sophisticated lighting and bright young shiny people at the reception. Very different from my usual hack and slash barber.  It was as if there was an invisible force field surrounding the saloon that would deflect anyone not suitably hip and fashion conscious. I changed my mind about making an appointment and carried on walking. But after a few steps I decided to muster up some courage and I turned around and fought my way through the force field to the reception desk. I did a quick self check: 38 (too old), I was wearing a Marks & Spencer (super-untrendy UK department store notorious as the place where Margaret Thatcher bought her underwear) sweater, M&S boring work shirt, M&S black trousers, M&S underwear and rather battered black Echo shoes still stained from glacier melt water from the previous weekend in the mountains, and finally I was carrying a 1.75 year old girl in my left arm. I was sure the guy at reception thought I had wondered in to ask directions or for the time or something and certainly not to make an appointment. I explained that I wanted to dye my hair and he said that was no problem and he made an appointment for the next day.

The next day I agonized about what to wear to my hairdresser appointment to make me fit in as much as possible. I rummaged through all my clothes to find something that did not look like it was out of a 1983 M&S catalogue and finally found one black shirt with thin white stripes (bought at Club Monaco a few months ago) and some black M&S jeans which did not look totally beyond the pale (according to my possibly very misguided judgment). The jeans are a few inches too short and the overhang around the waist can be quite unflattering and I have to regularly do up the zip but if I exhale I can (just about) do up the top button although I tend to more waddle than walk in them.

I turn up five minutes early for my appointment feeling as if I was on a nervous first date. Upon arrival I was asked to remove my shirt and jacket and put on something that looked like a much more trendy version of a hospital gown. So all that agonizing about attire was for nothing and I could have come in my clothes from two decades ago. The saloon had devised an ingenious scheme that abstracted most of one’s sartorial transgressions and leveled the playing field somewhat. However, it must be more than clothes because as I walked (perhaps waddled) to “the chair” I moved stiffly and self consciously, as the other clients, the hairdressers, the mirrors, the shampoo bottles and the hair gel all chanted “charlatan, you are not one of us”. My hairdresser, Carlo, asked me what I wanted and I said I wanted my hair dyed blue. He showed me some hair samples and recommended a dark blue that was so dark that it might as well be black. I explained that I wanted a brighter blue. He said that my gray hairs would not look good if they were that bright against the rest of my black hair. I said I did not care about my gray hairs: I wanted all my hair dyed blue. After a few iterations like this it became clear there was a basic misunderstanding. Carlo thought I had come in to have my gray hairs dyed whereas I had come in to have *all* my hair dyed blue. Carlo told me that to dye all my hair blue would require several iterations of hair lightening with bleach first, which would be painful and time consuming. Furthermore, he said he questioned whether my “lifestyle” was appropriate for blue hair.

I was astonished that my hairdresser was able to make judgments about my “lifestyle” even after I had donned the special saloon gown. Perhaps he was just going on the haggard complexion and semi-gray hair. It was as if every corner was full of some reminder that I am no longer young. But I don’t feel old enough to be having a mid-life crisis. Am I in the limbo between young and old? I wondered if the reason for wanting to have my hair dyed was anxiety about the passing of my youth. Or perhaps it was because I’ve become a father now and no longer feel like a man?

After being presented with the options I was guided down the path of dying the grey hairs. As Carlo applied the dye he asked the inevitable question: who did I work for. I told him I worked for the Evil Empire. He remarked that that must be nice and I retorted that it was not. He seemed surprised and I explained that I had joined to spread chaos and disorder in the organization but upon arrival I realized that someone had beaten me to it. I just assumed Carlo was gay since he was (a) a hairdresser and (b) male so (c) what more proof do you need but it turns out he is married (to a woman) and has three kids. There I go making rash assumptions about others when I have spent a life time riling against others that have made rash judgements about me based solely on my appearance.

The result of the hair dying was very disappointing with my hair looking a bit more black than it was before and there was maybe a slight glow of blue if you happened to be looking at the right angle on a sunny day (not many of those in Seattle). So I went into the den of the hairdresser to acquire trendy blue hair and I got chewed up and spat out onto the sidewalk (pavement) with a hair-dye job for “older clients”. With my courage transformed into humiliation I wondered what to do next. Do I have to be resigned to living the rest of my life as a loser?

The next day I returned to have my hair bleached. The plan was to go platinum white. As the new black hair grows out the idea was to look like a head of Guinness. I was warned that the process would be very painful for someone with black hair which is very hard to lift. I was asked about my pain threshold and told stories about others that screamed to have the bleach removed immediately after application. Some had bleeding scalps and others required multiple applications. I had the first round of bleach applied and then I had to don a wee plastic cap and sit under an over-the-head hair-dryer to help accelerate the bleaching process. As the heat intensified so did the pain. Every so often Carlo would come around and massage in the bleach further, resulting in even more excruciating pain. After about an hour of this, another iteration of bleach was applied but I was in too much pain to sit under the hair-dryer so I just sat it out in front of the mirror. Apparently at that stage my hair was orange. After over two hours of bleaches they tried to apply some hydrogen peroxide but I was in too much pain to go on and the mission had to be aborted. By this point I was light yellow and my scalp was shriveled up from the damage caused by the bleach. It was quite a shock to see myself in the window as a blonde and when I walked out into the street I felt very self conscious.  In Seattle, however, this counts as a very tame attempt at hair dying and nobody batted an eyelid. I arrived home to show Susan the result (she knew I was getting my hair dyed, but thought it would be blue) and Kiran did point at my head with a rather distressed expression on her face. Susan was rather surprised at the dramatic effect and said it would take her a while to get used to having a blonde husband.

I waited for four days for my scalp to recover a bit and then I went for my third visit to the hairdresser. Again, over a two hour period, multiple applications of bleach, followed by a successful application of hydrogen peroxide managed to get the hair close to completely white. The process was right at the limits of my pain threshold. I promised myself that I would never ever do this again.

The following week I was in Glasgow and my mother’s reaction was “not favorable”.  I was standing with my blonde hair at a platform at Glasgow Central train station when a wifey next to me remarked “there’s some pretty strange people about these days, don’t you think so?”. I was rather taken aback by the directness even of a Glasgow stranger, but it turned out that she was referring to a couple of junkies staggering about a few meters away. At a meeting in Portland a professor came up to me and said that he recalls my hair being quite grey last time he met me and that he notes the greying process seems to have completed now. Many people totally fail to recognize me and an old university friend walked straight past me in Edinburgh and I had to shout after him. Several people seem to have assumed that I have just suddenly gone grey, no doubt from the stress of working at Microsoft.

Many explanations have been offered for hair dying. The most common explanation usually has something to do with a mid-life crisis. I’ve felt that my life has always been in crisis and I don’t see what is any different right now. I don’t have a deep understanding of why I do what I do and I certainly don’t know why I dyed my hair. There are a few photographs of the white hair at http://homepage.mac.com/suspence1

Kiran is no longer a baby: she is definitely a little girl. I fall in love with her every day. Her cheeky grin, her requests for “buddies” (her name for Teletubbies), her kisses through the child gate at the top of the stairs, her look of glee as she runs towards me, and her gentle breathing as she sleeps slumped on me just before her I put her to bed all make me turn to mush. All these things and many others fill me with wonder and joy. I don’t have the vocabulary or skill to explain. It’s quite magical. I wish I could spend every day with her. I wish I will never have to let her go. Since her birth I have somehow given up on myself and my ambitions and desires (to some extent) and I feel that my life will be successful and happy if her life will be successful and happy. The rational part of me tells me that this is an unwise gamble.

Susan recently went away for a week to Colorado on a business trip and I got a chance to look after her on my own, which is something I enjoy very much (for short periods of time). When Kiran has the choice she often gravitates towards her mother for food, cuddles and comfort no matter how hard I try to get her attention. However, when Susan is out of the picture we interact much more intensely and even in a week the bond between us clearly gets stronger. When Susan returned Kiran sulked and ran to me to be held and gave her mum the cold shoulder! This lasted for all of about four minutes before she melted in her mum’s arms again.

Kiran’s technological prowess seems to know no bounds and she now enjoys playing children’s software on our new Mac mini. Another favorite is the Karaoke Flash animations on the CBeebies web site. She often climbs onto my chair in the office in front of the computer and asks for “song”.  Her appetite for Teletubbies is insatiable and she has also become fascinated by Finding Nemo which Susan thinks is too frightening for her. We often dance together in the front room, with Gloria Stefani’s “What are you waiting for” and Scissor Sister’s cover of “Comfortably Numb” being two of her favorites. She also takes much delight in playing with my full sized football, so Susan better get ready to become a “soccer mom”. This seems to involve driving your little girl in a ridiculously large SUV to some park where you have to compete with swarms of other SUVs to find a parking space. Then you jump up and down at the sidelines and aggressively cheer on your wee one at the top of your voice whilst screaming blue murder at the muppet of a referee and occasionally getting into fist fights with mothers from the competing team. The level of parent induced competition has got so out of control that some places now play “sensitive soccer” where each team takes a turn to score a goal and everyone is made to feel like a winner.

Seattle is growing on me. Here are some of my favorite things. I like taking Kiran to the REI mothership (a shop that sells outdoor gear for hiking etc.) where Kiran wonders through caves and throws herself down the slide with reckless abandon. I like walking in the market in downtown Seattle past the colorful vegetable stalls, the flying fish and golden pig. A carpese foccacia at the Italian deli where Kiran is a hit with the staff is a must, which is usually followed up by a coffee at Le Panier French bakery. On a sunny day the backdrop to the market is the glittering blue Puget Sound with the snow-capped Olympic mountains in the background. I like shopping at Wholefoods (also known as “Whole Pay Check”) where the perfectly arranged vegetables look like they’ve all had face lifts. Kiran goes bezerk at the cheese counter and typically reaches up to grab some radioactive yellow cheese which she bites into, through the plastic and all, obliging us to buy it for her. Kiran’s all consuming obsession with cheese is quite remarkable, although it might be soon overtaken by her fascination with buses. I like taking Kiran to Volunteer Park which is on a hill with views west to the Olympic mountains and east to the Cascade mountains. We usually walk up a beautiful water tower for a fantastic view of the city and the lake and the Sound. Kiran loves to climb on the stone camels in front of the Asian Art Museum and the ducks in the pond are excellent target practice. Kiran’s wanders through our garden smelling flowers and shaking bushes are delightful.  Seattle has an excellent collection of restaurants that Susan and I have been exploring on our weekly night off when a friend kindly baby-sits for us. Despite all this I simultaneously pine for California (friends, climate, nature, career) and the United Kingdom (family). Perhaps I will always want to be Somewhere Else (and perhaps Someone Else?).

Getting home from work is a nightmare due to the terrible traffic, especially on the bridge over Lake Washington I have to cross in order to get from the mothership in Redmond to our house in Seattle. There is a special lane for cars with three people in it and buses but single car occupants can take well over an hour to get over the bridge. I decided to try and use the carpool email list we have at work for the first time. People advertise lifts (looking for passengers to make up the three person limit) and I just needed one more because I was driving Simon Peyton-Jones to our house. We picked up a very attractive young lady from the MSN Search organization that was looking for a lift and as she got into the back seat she introduced herself and Simon introduced himself with his first name and English accent. She asked a few more questions and was able to quickly confirm her suspicion that this was *Simon* *Peyton*-*Jones* (world famous computer scientist). She exclaimed “Wow, no way, I can’t believe I am in the same car as Simon Peyton-Jones! I can’t wait to tell all my friends! You’re one of my greatest heroes! I joined Microsoft because people like you work here! Wow!” Etc. etc. In fact, quite a lot of etc. etc. because the traffic was very bad that night and I had to endure more than an hour of hero worship. I realized that all those years I was fantasizing about becoming a rock star so I can win lots of female admirers was misplaced. I should really have been putting my energy into becoming a world famous computer scientist. So much for all those evenings wasted wearing all-black at the Glasgow Film Theatre and pretending to like albums by The Smiths. I should have bought two pints of Irn Bru and settled down to a night of hacking on the Glasgow Haskell Compiler.

I met one of my ex-students recently who is now a minister in the Church of Scotland. I commiserated with him about the loss of his Main Man but apparently there was this thing called the “skis-ism” which means the Main Man in Rome thinks the Main Man in the Church of Scotland is just some bloke and the Main Man in England is just some dude wearing a frock. I thought all these Christian people were roughly the same but apparently not. It seems a bit like Windows and Linux all over again.

I am still teased about joining Microsoft. My usual reply is “I joined Microsoft to spread chaos and disorder from within but upon my arrival I realized that someone had beaten me to it”. The longer I work at Microsoft the more nostalgic I feel about Xilinx. The company culture in the two organizations is so different that I am almost compelled to write a book that compares the two (but I would probably get sued).

We’ve made some wonderful snowshoeing trips to the mountains. We hired a cabin at Mount Baker near the Canadian border and went snowshoeing around the mountain and we pulled Kiran along in her new bright yellow toboggan. At first she was a bit apprehensive about the snow but she seems to be getting used to it. Then we went on another mountain area trip to Winthrop in the Okanagen Valley also near the Canadian border which involved a spectacular drive through a snowy mountain pass road. We recently bought a new all-wheel drive car for such trips (an Audi A6 which has already had its engine control software updated once!). We’ve also made a couple of trips for hikes on Mount Hood which is a beautiful mountain near Portland in Oregon and Kiran managed to hike herself for over a mile up a gentle grade. She very carefully inspects objects along the hike like little sticks, plants, leaves, poisonous mushrooms and pats the bark of trees and points out birds. I’m quite determined for Kiran to grow up to be a hiking girl. I’m quite keen to take Kiran camping but Susan is not keen on roughing it and would prefer a four star hotel anytime.

I recently emerged from a four month spell of not drinking at all (except for a one week period during Christmas). I had a liver biopsy to see what’s wrong with it and the problem may be due to alcohol or too much fat in my diet. The biopsy went fine but I was struck down from an infection afterwards due to my immune system being weakened by the anesthetics which was not much fun. The good news is that it has nothing to do with alcohol. The bad news is that I need to moderate my diet to reduce fat! One of my main hobbies is cooking and I am not sure how to reduce the foie gras and butter and cream and cheese and red meat and goose fat and then make something that tastes half decent. So I have to warn those of you that regularly come for dinner that I may have to experiment with “low fat cooking” so I may have to start serving you tasteless food. I may have to increase my drinking to commiserate.

I thought that “magnolia” was a film but apparently it is a tree and we have one in our garden just in front of our living room window. It has come into full bloom recently and it is utterly astonishingly beautiful. Our living room walls are painted a lovely shade of lavender and I am wondering if that is by coincidence or design.  At work I noticed some hibiscus flowers and I have thought about stealing them to take to California so my friend Geoff can batter and fry them for a curry.

My heart is torn between two places where I no longer live: California and the United Kingdom (UK). I yearn for a bag of fish and chips from the Philadelphia chippy which taste exquisite consumed while standing on the adjoining bridge over the River Kelvin bathed in yellow from sodium street lights on a chilly Glasgow night as the murky brown riverwater swirls towards the Clyde. On the other hand hiking through Castle Rock state park in California to the viewpoint over Pacific Ocean with Kiran is a delight that I am unlikely to easily reproduce in Maryhill or Cambridge. A hike up to a waterfall in Yosemite Valley is one of the most stunningly beautiful hikes I have ever done. On the other hand, a sunny winter morning along the northwest coast of Scotland is utterly breathtaking. I even warmed a bit towards Edinburgh during a recent trip although I would never admit that in Glasgow.

So that’s my life right now. I slavishly follow the fashions of random waitresses. I toil away for the empire during most of my waking hours to the detriment of my family and friends. I may have to suffer the indignity of adopting a low fat diet. And I fall in love every day.

On the 4^th of January my mother, Susan, Kiran and I flew into San Francisco airport. The US had just started fingerprinting most visitors and although my mother did not require a visa for this trip I got her one anyway which with hindsight might have been a bad idea. She had to stagger out of her wheelchair so she could steady herself with her walking stick to be photographed and then fingerprinted. It’s hard to imagine my mother being a granny-bomber. The immigration official wanted to know why our daughter had a last name different from either my name or Susan’s. I started a long-winded explanation of how my actual family name “Mahn” got dropped and as I rambled on I could see the people in the line (queue) behind me thinking “why did we choose a line with this nutter in it?” as the immigration official was tapping his fingers trying to decide if we had to be sent to secondary immigration (which would be a Very Bad Thing and possibly lead to deportation). After getting quite agitated under the assumption that my name had been Mahn in the past but is not any longer he eventually relented and let us pass.

I have instigated a new house rule. All US citizens to my house will now be photographed and fingerprinted. They will have to tell me how many days it has been since their last visit to my house, whether they are visiting for business or pleasure and I shall confiscate any fruit or meat products.

Kiran now crawls at some amazing speed and goes directly for 110V and 240V wires which she likes to chew. She is quite an ambitious girl that knows no limits. She has recently tried to eat a voltage transformer, the dishwasher and the fridge freezer. I have been playing her songs about primal scream therapy and she seems quite receptive. She also watches what I consider to be far too much Zee TV (Indian TV channel) with her grandmother especially considering the ambient level of melodrama in our lives.

Susan has returned to work three days a week and my mother looks after Kiran. The problem is that Kiran can crawl faster than my poor mother can hobble. My mother is waiting for an NHS (UK state health service) appointment to have her arthritic knees looked at and downright refuses to let me book a private appointment for her. Why pay $150 when you can suffer in agonizing pain for two years and have it done for free? You can imagine the Goodness Gracious Me sketch.

We are swapping the sun for the rain and clear blue skies for clouds.

There are many things about California that we will miss immensely. First and foremost we will miss our very good friends here who we presume will not follow us into the drizzle. We hope they will forgive us for our betrayal and lunacy. We will also miss the perfect weather and jaw-droppingly beautiful countryside which help to significantly raise the escape velocity from the Bay Area. We will miss the politeness and civility of random strangers even towards someone who looks like he needs an extra level of security screening at airports. I will miss the elementary school where I do volunteer work and help to create a new wave of students with hybrid accents (namely Mexican-Scottish and Punjabi-Scottish). I will miss going into our garden and picking grapefruits, lemons and our fresh herbs.

We will not miss US-101 (the “road to hell” as I call it) or El Camino Real with its endless depressing strip malls (shopping centers). I will not miss living in suburbia far from a proper city center and decent pub. I will not miss the California DMV (DVLC). I will not miss Jacuzzi maintenance. I seem to be one of the few people here who holds the heretical belief that the average price/performance of high end Bay Area restaurants is very low. I hope to never see a badly grilled piece of meat covered with an Asian confusion cuisine sauce and served with the standard issue garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus which is guaranteed to clash with any wine known to mankind.

In February we move to our next raintown Seattle (not Redmond) where I shall start to work at Microsoft (not research: but please don’t ask me about the project). I am currently going through the very painful process of extricating myself from Xilinx. It is like going through a very bad breakup with a long term girlfriend. Susan will continue to work for HP Labs remotely from Seattle. Our plan is to stay another two years in the US to get citizenship and then move back to the UK. By then I shall have forgotten what shadows look like.

People keep mentioning the “evil empire” to me. I can only presume they are talking about Sun Microsystems

We have just returned from an all day child birth class. My state of denial about the pregnancy is becoming harder to

sustain. Susan has a lovely bumpy shape and all these child birth classes seem to be more than just academic (although I

am wondering just what I am going to do at next Wednesday’s breast feeding class). On the spectrum from sick as a parrot

to glowing mother-to-be Susan is fortunately closer towards the latter end (although she gets tired a lot of course). Due date:

15 May. Sex: F. So far my principle concern is that the SatSu (our working project name for her) might be too white.

The Old Satnam would have been somewhat sceptical about the thought of going to a child birth class but this New Satnam

has to admit that today’s class was very useful (self-check: how long have I been living in California? 5.5 years?). A very

entertaining American Woman gave the child birth class. I almost got off to a very bad start when I considered asking her

when she was due. Then I realised that she was not pregnant. She had a magic wand that she used during the class to

dispense rewards for people that gave answers (any answers) and she could have just as easily used it to turn me into a frog

– or even worse in California — a smoker. Although the class was very interesting, it was also quite scary — especially for

Susan. The teacher did make a jibe at the four British people in the class by quoting an article claiming that the British were

“too posh to push” which was resulting in a higher incidence of C-sections (in the US it is customary to abbreviate unsavoury

words down to one letter to reduce their impact).

I have discovered a new world of technology which has previously gone totally unnoticed by me. Forget “prams”; today’s

moms have “travel systems”. Styled more after sports cars than functional boxes on wheels these are complex

interconnecting components of prams, child seats, cup holder attachments (for child and driver) complete with shock

absorbers, tastefully designed in Italy and cost more than my first car. We’ve taken quite a few for test drives. We have even

managed to find one that fits our sports car (yes, we looked ridiculous outside Mothercare trying to fit car seats into an open

top Miata MX-5 during a freezing cold Scottish January morning).

Since research is in my veins I have decided to do a literature search not by reading the conventional books for parents to be

(except for a “Best Friend’s Guide to Pregnancy” which I like because it is written by someone that used to be a Playboy

centerfold and thus is not totally infused with political correctness which is pumped by the state into the air here anyway).

Instead I have decided to read about the life of working mothers e.g. “I Don’t Know How She Does It” by Allison Pearson

which I highly recommend as a very entertaining read. And I have decided to stock up on morality by reading books like “How

to be Good” by Nick Hornby which actually taught me more about how to be bad and the three books by Tony Parsons

(“Man and Boy”, “Man and Wife”, “One for my Baby”) which also give a pretty good checklist of things to do if you want to

totally ruin your life. I wonder if it is a coincidence that I used to regularly watch Allison Pearson and Tony Parsons on the

BBC2 “Late Show” back in the days when I was thin and wore all black. However, my favourite recent read is “Bel Canto” by

Ann Patchett which inspired me to go to my first opera this weekend (it could equally have inspired me to kidnap some state

head in a mansion somewhere). As far as I can tell opera (so far in my experience equivalent to Verdi’s “Il Travatore”) is just

like Indian Bollywood films but with far less colour, drama, hysteria and tragedy and a lot more high pitch notes.

My backup Plan B career is making slow progress. I can now play the chords A, Am, Am7, C, D, Dm, D7, E, Em, F, Fmaj7

and G which means that I can play a (massively) simplified version of “Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits on my acoustic

guitar. The piano has been quite neglected and Susan is refusing to give me singing lessons unless we are suitably isolated

from other humans e.g. select regions of the Antarctic. So don’t hold your breath for my 80s rock star career to get off the

ground any time soon. My current music obsession is Electric 6 with their song “Danger! High Voltage!” which

simulatenously appeals to my electrical engineering instinct and my disdain for American chain restaurants (one of the lines

is “Fire in the Taco Bell”) and it comes complete with an utterly absurd (disturbing?) video that is so terrible that it is good.

It’s hard to believe walking around the streets that this is a country about to go to war. It’s also hard to engage the Americans

that I know in conversations about such topics — a cultural difference I guess. Most of the foreigners I know are quite vocal in

their opposition. One American I know said he was against the war because it will make other countries hate America even

more but based on what I see on FOX news this is very much a minority opinion. The USA was put on “orange” terror alert

(the second highest, the top one is red) on Friday. Some Americans have been wondering when it is OK to remove the stars

and stripes from their cars but most seem to have erred on the side of caution. Even I have wondered about putting the US

flag on the back of our cars just to avoid abuse. I have already shaved off my goatee beard. When I had a full (well, as full as

it gets for me) beard I got stopped 100% of the time for the “random gate check”. When I shaved down to the level of a

goatee the random gate checks miraculously went down to 0%.  However other types of abuse have not abated so (despite

Susan’s protests) I am now clean shaven.

Susan’s parents are coming over for the birth from May 6 to June 3 so if any of you have a spare room during that period I

would be interested in staying. No, no, it’s not that bad. They are actually going to stay at a nearby hotel (don’t ask).

Meanwhile I have to wonder how many more of my words I am going to have eat. Take, for example, video cameras. Old

Satnam: “over my dead body”. New Satnam: “that could be useful for filming the birth and sending tapes of the sprog to

grandparents”. Old Satnam: “Walt Disney was a Nazi sympathiser and no child of mine will ever watch any of his terrible

films”. New Satnam: “It’s a girl so we should get Pocahontas — right?”. Old Satnam: “I’d much rather have a bus pass than a

people mover.” New Satnam: “Don’t you think a Toyota Previa will be handy?” Old Satnam: “I really wish people would not

keep showing me their ultrasounds”. New Satnam: “Shall we email everyone our ultrasounds, post them on our web page or

both?”

I am turning into an emotional wreck. Well, even more of an emotional wreck than I was before. The two ultrasounds have

made me feel like I am melting inside and filled me with unexplicable warmth. I have grown up with the time honoured West

of Scotland male tradition of ensuring it is a cold day in hell when you shed a tear. But now any random scene (in real life,

TV or books) involving young children or babies is enough to bring tears to my eyes and fill me with irrational emotions totally

beyond my comprehension. Tony Parson’s books’ were terribly bad for this as were the first four series of “Cold Feet” which I

have watched several times recently (see how sad our life is). I keep staring at other people’s chidren in public places (usual

reaction: mother picks up child to protect against mad staring possible child kidnapper with the superficial appearance of a

Muslim terrorist). At work my emotions have turned me into a paranoid wreck. A few twangs of the guitar by Lloyd Cole or

U2′s “One” and I am reaching for the Kleenex. I don’t even like U2. I wonder if I will ever get back my heart of stone and cold

calculating logical mind instead of being this warm mushy fuzzy thing.

We are swapping the sun for the rain and clear blue skies for clouds.

There are many things about California that we will miss immensely. First and foremost we will miss our very good friends here who we presume will not follow us into the drizzle. We hope they will forgive us for our betrayal and lunacy. We will also miss the perfect weather and jaw-droppingly beautiful countryside which help to significantly raise the escape velocity from the Bay Area. We will miss the politeness and civility of random strangers even towards someone who looks like he needs an extra level of security screening at airports. I will miss the elementary school where I do volunteer work and help to create a new wave of students with hybrid accents (namely Mexican-Scottish and Punjabi-Scottish).

We will not miss US-101 (the “road to hell” as I call it) or El Camino Real with its endless strip malls (shopping centers). I will not miss living in suburbia far from a proper city center and decent pub. I will not miss the California DMV (DVLC). I will not miss Jacuzzi maintenance. I seem to be one of the few people here who holds the heretical belief that the average price/performance of high end Bay Area is very low. I hope to never see a badly grilled piece of meat covered with an Asian confusion cuisine sauce and served with the standard issue garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus which is guaranteed to clash with any wine known to mankind.

I have decided resistance is futile. I shall be assimilated by The Borg. In February we move to our next raintown Seattle (not Redmond) where I shall start to work at Microsoft on a distributed programming language / operating system project.