England

The girls and I recently jetted over to jolly ol' England to attend the storybook wedding of my college friend Patrick and his lovely bride Elizabeth. The event was held at spectacular Bovey Castle in Devon, about 150 miles southwest of London, and was a top shelf affair all the way. It was truly special to be a part of such a incredible event, and it was great to spend time around old friends. And after a week of such extreme up/down emotional swings, it was extremely redeeming to bear witness to the nuptials of one of the more quality people I'll ever know, and to see the 150+ other people collected into a room who felt the same.

My viewpoint of life in the country outside of London has always been drawn from the BBC's 6-tape VHS version of Pride & Prejudice where the behavior of the characters was so classically refined in its manner. And as Obama says, you can put lipstick on a pig.......well, let's not get political but just say that you put my fraternity buddies in a very refined environment like an English castle but they are still my fraternity buddies. You would never have caught a sweaty Mr. Darcy spasmodically jumping around the dance floor to his alma mater's fight song like my Stanford cronies and I did to the Dark Blues' cover of "All Right Now." Nor would Jane Austen's novels include a shocking reference to 'eye watering flatulence' as did one of my friend's rehearsal dinner speeches. But there we were, rewriting history.
The tranquility of the setting was not to be believed. Lizzie and I rolled Ingrid thru the castle grounds and along the hedgerows and actually began to rationalize how we could give up the urban struggle of HK and live a life of peace and quiet in the countryside. We wouldn't even have to be proper aristocrats we figured, we could just live humbly in one of the many thatched roofed cottages that dotted the horizon. I'd tend the farm, Lizzie would prepare the chips and mushy peas. We were fully sold on the idea. Then a bumblebee landed on my shoulder and I spazzed out like I'd been shot.....perhaps we not yet ready for such agrarian lifestylings.

Another upshot of the trip is that Ingrid got a rare glimpse of grass, that mythical substance that is such a precious and scarce commodity in Hong Kong. She's just recently getting up and around on her feet so it was nice not to have to be her training wheels for fear she'd bonk her head on the granite of a shopping mall floor or the corner of a coffee table in our cramped HK apartment. She could just roam free and roll around in the grass like all kids should be allowed to do.

We set aside an extra day after the wedding to explore London, taking in Hyde Park, Harrod's department store, the spectacular V&A Museum, stroll along the Thames, play some billiards and take in a couple of the city's better Indian restaurants. Our hotel looked out over Paddington Station (see the jellyroll photo of Ingrid on the sill). Our little garden gnome Ingrid has been quite the traveler. I didn't see a non-North American country until I was in my late 20's, but Ingrid's nearing 10 before her first BDay (Sept 16!). The Heathrow customs officer flipped through the many stamped pages on Ingrid's passport and looked up at me as though I was abusively dragging this poor child through way too much travel. I don't disagree. She'll have put in 30K miles in the past month which is tough on her and even tougher on Lizzie who shares a seat with her.

I'm settled back now into the concrete jungle of Hong Kong where my social circle is limited and nature is an afterthought, but my trip to England is something from which to draw strength.