September 30, 2010

After a good nights sleep (some slept more than others) we had breakfast at the Novotel at Heathrow just before they closed the buffet at 10am local, 11am Oslo time. The kids slept from 1 am until 9:15am UK time. We had managed to adjust half the time difference before boarding in London. Not bad.

The big attraction at breakfast was the the toasting machine with a conveyor belt

After breakfast Hélène and I spent some time reading email and paying some bills we didn’t get time to pay before leaving. To my horror I realized that I had forgotten to bring one of our bank-ID security devices. M*rde! I quickly called my sister to ask her if she could fedex it to us in the states. She laughed and reminded me that she was on vacation in Spain. Grumble, you can’t argue with that excuse. I finally managed to get hold of my niece who heads over to our place.

In the meantime Hélène discovered an email from the city of Oslo concerning the building permit of our garage. Something was wrong with a drawing so they refused to accept our application for changing the originally accepted application. The drawings that need to be redone were in our office at home. I get hold of my niece again and she was able to kill two birds with one stone by picking up the device and the drawings.

We got so occupied with fixing things that we went over the time we had decided to leave the hotel to go back to terminal 5. As is quite common for us we ended up eating up our entire planned time margin and then some. The shuttle from the hotel was very slow stopping at every hotel you can imagine, Tension rises, but we manage to check in in time, stressed but with high spirits.

OK, Marius, here is the next plane. A classic, a Boeing 747-400:

The kids were fantastic during the entire flight. The three of them got seats next to each other while Hélène and I sat in the row in front of them.

They basically tended to themselves during the entire 10 hour flight! We didn’t even have to follow Iseline to the bathroom, just help her get out into the aisle. The kids loved the British Airways entertainment system and also had fun with their iPod touches. They managed to stay awake during the entire flight. Frankly, it couldn’t have gone better. No crying, no arguing, no loud noises, no vomiting, no fights. Just peace, harmony and smiles. This is very promising for the rest of the trip.

i knew that Adrian was good in English (his school came in 2nd place of all schools in Oslo during national testing of English proficiency 2 years ago), but I hadn’t realized just how good. He handled all interaction with the flight attendants like it was his mother tongue.

I have made a point of telling the kids from very early on that it is extremely important to learn English. It’s a risky strategy, I know. Sometimes a kid will do the opposite of what you want if you try to drive a point through too hard. I have told the kids  that English is the key to the world (sorry France) and that dad never could have done many of the things he has done at work and met many of the people he knows around the world if he hadn’t been good at English. I’m not going to take the credit for all the hard work Adrian and his teachers have put down, but it does warm a father’s heart and make me proud when I hear Adrian speak English.

Adrian was also helping his siblings all the time and making sure they were fine. He did a great job. Kudos to the big brother!

Once we arrived in San Francisco

Iseline started to get a little tired and grumpy. Luckily it often doesn’t take much to turn her around again. The pole inside the shuttle train to the rental car area did the trick. This young lady has just flown for over 10 hours and it’s 2am in her home time zone:

We got our car, stopped to get some groceries and found the house we had rented in Menlo Park without a problem. I had bought a Tom Tom iPhone car kit before leaving and we put it to the test for the first time. I had chosen Navigon as the GPS-application on the iPhone. For some strange reason they have decided to try to pronounce place names in the style of the language you have chosen.  My phone is set to French and we all got a good laugh when the program told us to drive in the direction of “Sehn Frenseusio” Apart from that it worked like a charm. Yet another part of my grand master plan for travel gadgets worked out.

The house we are renting is fantastic. I’m now sitting in a large living room in a beautiful house instead of in a miniscule hotel room at twice the price. The best thing is that there is a large swimming pool in the garden. We are going to enjoy staying here.

Eirik

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P.S. The title of this entry comes from an almost forgotten ingenious Norwegian comedy/music group called “Prima Vera”. On one of their great albums (called “Ha ha he he ho! (De gærne har’e godt)” ) their rendtion of “I left my heart in San Francisco” is introduced with: “Johnny Pacemaker will never do this mistake again”. The song is quite short. After singing the opening line which is identical to the name of the song you can hear Johnny groan in pain before he falls to the floor. Go here, scroll down to the song and press the little play button.

Later in the album “Johnny Pacemaker makes the same mistake again” with his interpretation of “My heart goes boom bang a bang”. You can hear it on the same page above.