Thanksgiving in London

Good morning, and Happy Thanksgiving! It's just an ordinary Thursday here in England, but I've got my out of office auto-reply on for the next 2 days. It doesn't feel quite right, though, and I think a big part of it has to do with yesterday. Jason observed that even stranger than how much it doesn't feel like Thanksgiving time, it definitely didn't feel like the day before Thanksgiving yesterday! On that Wednesday, we're always home, or traveling with the crowds, or if we're in the office there's a sense of anticipation of a long weekend and the real start of the Christmas season.

Well, since we can't find all that here, we might as well go somewhere else where it won't be either, so this afternoon we're taking off for Lisbon. However, since Thanksgiving is Jason's favourite holiday (and I'm a sucker for tradition), we made our Thanksgiving meal on Sunday.

Menu, Mini-Thanksgiving at the Willeys'

- Whole roasted chicken

- Bread stuffing

- Half-skins on mashed potatoes

- Orange-cranberry sauce

- Maple roasted butternut squash

- Green beans with mushrooms + shallots

- Gravy

- Apple pie

All home-made! We had the leftovers Tuesday, and I polished off the leftover leftovers in a sandwich yesterday (oh, and we finished the pie last night too!).

We hope everyone back home is enjoying time spent with family and friends, and eating a feast at least as tasty as ours!!

Gobble gobble gobble...

Brand new U

I've got last weekend's Dublin trip to write about, but more a current topic is my first day in my bright spankin' new office today. Unilever is gathering its Foods and HPC (home + personal care) groups under common roofs (why isn't it rooves?) around the world. Therefore, I'm in my 4th office building in 2008. In February, my NJ office moved across the office park into a gutted + renovated (+ asbestos laden) building. The in July, of course, I moved to the Crawley UK office, mere feet from Gatwick airport. Today, I moved to Leatherhead. Check out how it all lays out here.

What's really notable about this move is not so much that it's a new commute (10 mins longer train ride but less stressful without a trip through the South terminal of Gatwick bi-daily), or cheaper commute (9£ vs 12.3£, but no chance to cheat the system). What's notable is that Unilever is leading the way of 21st century office life.

• My team is now comprised 90% of "flexible home workers", meaning we're encouraged - no, expected - to work from home or a remote location 2 out of 5 days/week. We're being provided with office furniture for our "home offices" as needed.
• They're serious about it, too: if you drive to work, you're not allowed to book a parking spot through the online parking spot reservation system for more days per week than you've been allotted. Yep, you read that right: online parking spot reservation system.
• As "flexible home workers," we're also "hot-deskers", which means no one's got a place to leave a can of pencils overnight. I now have a small locking cubby for belongings, a 1m long filed drawer, and the freedom to pick any desk I like each morning. And, since we're not expected to be there every day, there are about 75% as many desks as "flexible home workers" in my group's area.
• I have a dedicated non-mobile work phone number, but I have "global mobility". I log in to the phone at my chosen desk every morning, and log out at night. On the road/at home, I can get on the phone from my computer with a nifty headset.
• Much to my chagrin this morning, I learned I can't use cash to buy breakfast or lunch. Fortunately I could buy coffee, and by the time lunch rolled around I figured out how to load money on to my employee ID, which I can use at the coffee bar, the cafeteria, the company store, and the bar. That's right. Because in addition to all these new fangled ways of working we also have...

- A gym - free!

- A Ben & Jerry's scoop shop - free! (to counteract any good that comes from the gym).

- A company store that sells grocery staples (read: bread, milk, wine, beer) in addition to the stuff my company makes).

- A dental surgery. I'm a bit apprehensive about this.

- Free decent-quality coffee machines throughout the building.

- A bar, open 5-9pm Thursdays & Fridays (payable only through the ID card method, of course)

So, essentially, drag in a sleeping bag and you never need to go home. Or just keep drinking the coffee! Oh, and they gave iPod shuffles as welcome gifts... claimed to be for the gym or train ride (and please, use your home computer for loading music), but I'm guessing it's so when people start complaining about the close, *very* open environment, the can say, "we gave you an iPod, use it!"

Coincidentally, I finally got my new UK laptop today. It's slick because there are keys for £ and €. No more Insert-Symbol for me! But the " and @ are mixed up on my keyboard. That's confusing. And the £ is where the # should be. Oddly enough, while we call # "pound", that word is already in use so they call the # symbol "hash" or "square". As in, "Welcome to Unilever Conferencing. Please enter you passcode, followed by hash".

Two Last Thoughts

I have enjoyed having a forum to share musings on the election the past week or so. I have only 2 more thoughts and then I think I'll move back to sharing the details of my life, which is OBVIOUSLY much more interesting.

These 2 images underscore what I've been thinking about the election so I wanted to share!

The first is from someecards.com (for when you care enough to hit 'send'). My dad, who definitely did not vote for Obama, sent this to me last night and I laughed for about an hour.

And today, I picked up today's copy of the commuter mag, Metro. Look, the re-branding is working already!

Jason & I are off to Ireland this weekend. Slainte!

Catching Up Early

Good morning. It's 6:30 AM, about the time the first alarm usually goes off. Due to my schedule today I thought about sleeping in but instead set the alarm 30 mins earlier than normal to see what's going on in the world. Needless to say, I was feeling a bit left out last night when I went to bed before any State had announced a result, so I thought I'd forgo some sleep on the other side of things, so that I actually got some zzzs.

Weird to think that many friends are probably up partying in NYC still, and I'm hanging out in my robe trying to get the Slingbox to work so I can catch snippets of speeches. AND the BBC isn't fully showing coverage (the nerve! Premier League football is NOT more important!).

I wanted to see it from American TV, but resorted to the BBC and saw a map tracing how the results came in through the night before reading any headlines on CNN, or status updates on Facebook.

[As an aside, they pronounce his name oddly as "ba-rack" (equal emphasis on each syllable, with the "a" sounding as in "map", not "far", not bah-RAHK. It's odd.]

Here's what I saw. A very odd distortion of our country.




You can't hear the guy, but he's distorted the map to show voting power, not geographical size, of each State. He also goes on to say that it was a "filthy" win (i.e. huge). Ah, funny Brits.

So, with the bits & pieces I've been able to capture, I've so far figured out:

- Obama was elected in an electoral college was a landslide.

- The popular vote was only 52% Obama, 47% McCain (does this mean many of the undecideds from the polls went Republican?).

- Obama gave a very short speech that mostly uplifting but started warning people about false starts and setbacks.

- Only 2 people I know on Facebook are admitting disappointment in the result (though I know there are others). Hi ladies, I know you're reading! :-)

Given my moderate indecision casting my ballot, I have a pretty lukewarm feeling about the result. I'm excited about the historic nature of the moment. It's amazing to bear witness to it. But he's not a miracle-worker, which is fine, because I don't agree with most of the "miracles" he'd work if it were possible.

So, we've got ourselves a reformulation, a packaging redesign, and a sparkly "new & improved" burst to show off to the world. Let's find out if the Change is positive, real & sustainable, or just a quick uplift we'll feel warm + fuzzy about in the near term.

Absentee Voting

This morning, Jason & I filled in a couple ovals, walked to the Post Office in the rain, and mailed away our ballots to be counted in New York State. Even though, let's face it, 2 votes in New York is going to matter zilch, both of us believed we absolutely had to do it. After all, the Board of Elections spent $52 of your taxes to get the ballots to us. Although, I wonder, if they give that money to the USPS, does it really count as spending, or just re-shuffling?

I've been really nervous about voting in this election, and even though I've cast my ballot I still feel uncertain. But a lot of media and a bit of research and discussion with my hubby and I managed to make a decision I feel adequate about.

I have never been very politically-minded, or interested in political discussion, or extremely passionate about my views, but I usually have a decent idea of where I stand. This probably makes me similar to most American voters. But this year, it wasn't so clear. I laughed at Tina Fey but cringed at the truth in the portrayal. I admired the Democrat's marketing team but as a voter found some of their tactics cowardly and infuriating. Here are some other things that figured into my decision... some to a greater or lesser extent than others:

• I believe we need change, and could do with a bit of hope.
• I want the US to be more sustainably economically competitive globally.
• I took economics, and I understand that while fair trade policies may disadvantage a few, it's best for the many.
• I disagree with the government redistributing private wealth.
• I believe the USA is founded on making the most of your opportunity. It may not be "fair" that not everyone gets the same opportunity, but that is not necessarily the idea.
• I believe as a country we have a serious branding problem externally, and a growning one internally.
• I like listening to Obama speak. He's confident and engaging, which is refreshing. I get nervous watching McCain, and although I firmly believe he is not Bush incarnate as Obama's camp would have you believe, I think 8 years of watching Bush has conditioned me to feel anxious.
• I am not sure how severe the negative ramifications of not dealing with our declining brand equity would be.

There are a million other issues: healthcare, abortion, housing, borders. I don't purport to be an expert on any. But I believe my choice came down to:

- Stage-setting for a more sound economic future for the country, while extending the outsiders' view that we are backwards and shouldn't be allowed to run our own country,* to unknown detriment.

- A dramatic turn-around of the country's image, while using an imbalanced government to implement policies that could have damaging long-term effects.

So I made a choice. And I feel okay.

* On more than one occasion, I have had a European tell me that they think the international community should have a vote in our elections. They were being quite serious.