This was the trip which almost didn’t happen.
We booked it a few weeks back, thinking it would be a nice getaway before Monki and I had our birthdays. The financial logic here was that before her second birthday, Monki flies for the infant rate of very little, as opposed to after her second birthday, in which case her fare rises dramatically. And that happens if her birthday falls within the travel period, so our hands were a bit tied as to timing. Continue reading “Like 4th of July in England – July 4, 2018”

Monki is now 23 months old. Leave aside the standard “oh my god look how quickly time goes by” stuff and there’s some really interesting things going on. As you know, we’re a divided family. I’ve talked about this
Many a year ago, I subscribed to a film service called 



Several years ago, back when I was regularly attending pub quiz, I met a woman who was the head of a primary school. Being a native English speaker, she had asked me if I could possibly come and be part of a jury for an annual English/speech competition the school hosted. Naturally, I said yes and have been doing it now for several years. In addition, I’ve also done some recording for her as the voice on the audio portions for grammar school English books (and, I was just informed, the English teacher in the books was named for me!) 


Holy crap! I just tried a virtual reality rig for the first time. My friend Simonas has a complete set up and has been asking me to come try to out for a while. He’s been telling me about VR truck driving and air traffic controlling but honestly, I didn’t really get what all the fuss was about.
There’s an interesting things that’s been happening as Monki is getting older. She’s developing a personality. Okay, that’s not the interesting part – well, it is, but not really relevant to what I want to talk about. See… along with the personality, you can see certain traits form and develop like eddies and whirlpools in a tidal inlet. 