Where I Live

We live in London now. Here is a map of London. It's larger than I ever realized.

London is made up of twenty-one boroughs. We live in the borough called Richmond-Upon-Thames. Oddly, even though we live there, I've never heard anyone actually say “Richmond-Upon-Thames”. I don’t think even British people are comfortable sounding quite that British. Within the borough, we live in the town of Richmond. It’s a bit confusing because all these boroughs, towns and cities exist within London.

Several people I've met have told me that Richmond (the town) is the nicest place to live in London. I don’t have anywhere near enough context to agree or disagree with that assessment, so I just sort of nod my head and say, “Oh, we think it’s lovely.” I do know that it's very affluent. When I tell people where I live, they sort of give me the once-over as if to say, "Well, perhaps I've underestimated you." At least until they look at my shoes. It reminds me of when I lived in Mill Valley in the Bay Area - I'm definitely one of the poorer people on my block.

In the relocation division of labor, I was placed in charge of location scouting, school selection and flat acquisition. I turned for help to my friends Chis and his wife Katie. I've known Chris for a long time as a co-worker at Advent – he and his family relocated to London from the Bay Area a year ago. When I came out to London for a visit, they kindly agreed to take me around to see some different areas.

Unfortunately, I got really sick on that trip. I thought it was just a bad headache that wouldn't go away, but as the week wore on it kept getting worse and worse. Eventually I couldn't eat or drink because I was throwing up from the pain. A normal person would have gone to a doctor, but I kept assuming that it would get better. It was just a headache, after all. By the end of the week, I became so dehydrated and sick that I had to go to the emergency room in an ambulance. I was diagnosed with sinusitis. I've never had sinus problems before – I wasn't even stuffed up. They gave me some steroids and narcotics and I was back on my feet the next day. By the way, this was my first exposure to National Health. It rocked. The emergency room was pretty crowded but it was Friday night in a huge city and I was one of the few people there who had not been stabbed. All in all, it was very efficient and guess what it cost me? $0. Three cheers for civilization. More props for Chris and Katie - Chris actually came to the ER to keep me company and then they allowed me to recuperate at their place for the next two nights.

Thanks to this medical fiasco, I didn't get to scout too many parts of the city, and when I did I was mostly staggering around holding my head. (You don’t really stick out too much for staggering around London. There is a lot of staggering per capita here.) After my visit to the ER, Chris took me to see Richmond the next day. We walked up a hill along the side of a park that rolled down to the Thames. It was absurdly beautiful. 

So you can see, we really have Katie and Chris to thank for landing us in this gorgeous part of London. I must admit, however, that when Kathryn tells me what a great job I did finding a spot I've stopped protesting and just accept the credit. Good job, Jim.