So I leave tomorrow for my third consecutive week in Rome and while that sounds nice, I wouldn’t mind being home for a week or two. Unfortunately I have another project starting immediately after this one so it looks like it will be a busy first quarter. Rome looks like an amazing city. I really need to return when I have some time to explore as the history is apparent everywhere you look. The other day we were trying to find a pizzeria (not tough in Rome) and ended up driving right by the Vatican. Absolutely amazing!
Today I’m off to day 4 of my Day Skipper Theory course. You may recall I took the practical course last spring, but I thought I’d go back and actually learn a bit about navigation, weather, passage planning and the like. It’s been a good course and First Class Sailing has done a great job in putting it on.
I was reminded late last week of something on old boss of mine at GE used to say when approached by people asking for a pay raise. He’d say, “If you want to discuss your salary, I’m more than happy to, just realise the number can go both up and down”. This was usually enough to end most of the discussion fairly quickly and probably saved him a lot of time over the years.
While my recent experience wasn’t with my boss, it had a direct impact on my paycheck. Here’s what happened….
About two months ago, one of my colleagues was on the phone to the equivalent of the IRS in the UK, called the HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs). When she finished the discussion, she looked over at me and said, “You should really call this number”. She had just been in a discussion with the HMRC and had realised that she had overpaid taxes and was going to get a 500 GBP refund. As a bit of backround information, most people are not required to file a tax return in the UK, so I’m not exactly sure how one knows if they have paid too much or too little taxes. However, in your first year of employment, if you do not work a full year (as she hadn’t), you may be taxed as if you are going to earn your basic pay for 12 months, when in fact you earn it for something less than that and therefore, may pay too much tax. Since I started in July and the tax year runs April to March, I figured there was a chance that I too paid extra taxes. I was quite happy as I called the number and found a very friendly person. I gave them my details and they said they would be glad to send me the form to complete to evaluate my situation. Great I thought…a refund just in time for Christmas!
Well, I got busy before Christmas and didn’t get the form mailed until sometime after the first of the year. I didn’t think much of it until a few notices from the HMRC showed up last week. They were just basic information that provided a few codes that had changed given the updated information. It wasn’t until Friday, when I got my January paycheck that I noticed something was wrong. My paycheck was significantly lower than expected. Since I was on the road in Rome, I couldn’t investigate directly, but had our HR person start to look into it. The report back from her was that everything was calculated correctly and since she didn’t have access to my past pay stubs, she couldn’t do a comparison to see what had changed. I figured it had to be the tax line as everything else seemed to be correct. The mystery was quickly solved when I got home on Friday night and found another letter from the HMRC saying that I had underpaid in the previous tax year by almost 2,000 GBP and that they would be collecting this in the current tax year. Since there are only three paychecks left in the current tax year, they took the amount, divided by three and made the deduction…I guess next time I’ll heed my boss’ warning before going to speak with the tax man!
This summer will mark two years of life in the UK. One of the most painful things about living over here is how generally unaware American’s are about what is going on in the rest of the world (me included). Please not there are a significant number of Americans for which this does not apply, but as a generalisation, it holds pretty true. I can’t count the number of conversations I’ve been in over the past 18 months where I’ve been embarrassingly unable to contribute because I simply didn’t know. It’s worse when the discussion is about the history of the US or American politics. Since this year is an election year in the UK, I thought I’d take some time to learn about the political landscape over here and use the blog to share what I find out.
I started with the fundamentals to ensure I have a strong foundation to work from. Here are a few of the things that are important:
1) The UK has two dominant parties, the Conservative, also called the Tory Party and the Liberal or Labour Party. Currently the Labour Party is in power with Gordon Brown as the Prime Minister. David Cameron is the leader of the Labour Party and will face Gordon Brown in the election. A third party, the Liberal Democrats is led by Nick Clegg and will be important in the election as neither party is likely to have a significant majority in the legislative branch of government (House of Lords and House of Commons) and therefore, having an alliance or coalition with the Liberal Democrats will be very important to getting legislation passed.
2) I still don’t totally understand this part, but elections are not planned on a regular basis as they are in the US. As near as I can tell, the rule is that there must be an election every 5 years. I believe it is up to the Prime Minister to call the election, and it can be done at a time when it is to their party’s advantage. The election this year has to be on or before the 3rd of June as the last election was in 2005.
3) There is not a long campaign period as in the US. The leader of each party is generally (always?) the candidate that is put forward when the election is called and therefore there is no need for a primary. It sounds like as election time nears, the tone of speeches and the frequency of communication with the public increases to ensure that each candidate’s message gets out.
I’ll try to add a bit more each week as I learn more and as election time nears. I’ve also put in a link to an article that explains a bit more about this year’s election.
I guess it’s probably been almost a month since I sat down and wrote anything for the blog. It’s been a bit busy around here with holiday guests, work and trying to make good on one of my New Year’s Resolutions to work out more. Over Christmas we had a great time with G.R. and Sam as we toured around London (mostly pub to pub) doing some of our favourite thing, but also finding a few new things that we hadn’t done before. We hit a few of our usual haunts such as Borough Market, where we sample most anything anyone was selling, the British Museum, South Bank and Buckingham Palace. In addition to these tried and true favourites, Melisse also got us tickets to a play at the Almeida Theatre on Upper Streat and Sam found a Ghost Tour for us to go on. Both were a ton of fun, although the ghost tour was a bit cold!
New Year’s Eve was spent at the Angelic where we had some dinner, plenty of drinks and then toasted in the New Year with a few bottles of bubbly. G.R. left on the 2nd without incident, however Sam had a bit more trouble when she arrived at Heathrow a few days later. Apparently Heathrow is not set up to handle snow and cold and her flight on Monday the 4th, was canceled and she we re-booked on a flight a few days later. When she did get back to the U.S., it was without bags as they were lost someplace during the transfer in Chicago.
I had to get back to work pretty quickly and have already spent a day each in Cork and Rome. The trips were both quick, but it looks like I’ll be back in Rome a little more over the next few weeks. I need to find a weekend to stay there and check out the wonderful history of the city. January and February are already looking very busy with work, but we’re also going to be hosting Kyle next weekend as he’s coming over for a quick trip across the pond. After that, I have three straight weekends of Day Skipper Theory which should be both fun and educational. I was hoping to get on the race squad with the club this spring, but one of the training weekends is the weekend that I’m in Spokane right before Easter. Maybe I’ll be able to hop in as a sub for a weekend or two if someone cancels!
Oh yeah…we’ve booked a trip to go sailing in Greece in May! I can’t wait. I’m ready for some warm weather, the peace and quiet of a sailboat and the chance for a long weekend on the water!
Wow…I can’t believe it’s been a few weeks since I’ve put anything up. I guess I’ve been out of town a bit, busy with work and getting ready for the holidays. On the out of town and work bit, I spent the last two weeks in Cork, Ireland which appears to be a lovely place, however as usual, I got to see the hotel and the client’s office and little in between. To make it worse, we’re approaching the shortest day of the year and in Cork, this means it is definitely dark when you leave in the morning and dark when you return. The project is almost done other than a workshop the first week of January, so I’ll have to return in the summer months to really get to know the place.
On the getting ready for the holidays front, Melisse and I went out and found a tree yesterday to put up in our living room. The first notable thing about the tree is that it was sold as a 7 foot tree, which really means 4.5 ft tree with 2.5 feet of bare trunk extension with no branches anywhere near. The second thing about our tree is that it was very heavy and we decided to carry it home so we wouldn’t have to wait the 4 hours for it to be delivered. We only live a few blocks from the place we got it, but it took both of us to haul the thing home, get it through the front door and into the stand.
We haven’t had a tree since the Christmas we spent in Fort Collins in 2006 when we got all the snow. Last year we had a tiny apartment and were going to Barcelona for the week of Christmas anyway. The year before, we were in our place in Boulder and spent Christmas in Costa Rica. I’m feeling very good about being a bit more settled to the point where we could actually put up a tree and get a few decorations for it. Melisse’s brother G.R. and his girlfriend Samantha are joining us for the next few weeks and we’re excited to have some family around.
I had a very busy week this week that was a nice mix of social activities and work. Had Melisse not gotten tickets a month ago, I would have been very tempted for an early evening in on the couch. Instead, we enjoyed a fabulous evening at the Union Chapel and a heard an incredible concert by a passionate and talented musician! Don’t pass up an opportunity to see these guys perform!
