The Master of Business

Anyone who knew Adam during his time at ACU (or Sabino or Coppell High School or even Mary Immaculate) probably fell out of their chair when they heard that he was voluntarily going back to school.

No?  It was just me?

There is absolutely no way that I can put into words how proud I am of his accomplishments.  He was accepted to an MBA program in a foreign country only weeks after arriving and while still searching for a house for us to live in.  He wrote essays for scholarship applications which helped us pay for the degree without having to take out student loans.  He rode his bicycle 4 miles each way on a daily basis (in the UK wind, rain & blistering cold weather) to go to class.  He spent countless hours at the library, in study groups, reading, researching and revising.  He sacrificed more hours of sleep than I can count to ensure he was prepared for the next lecture, assignment or exam.  He approached his dissertation internship with professionalism, polish, and a bit of humor – we are British now, after all.  When all of this was said & done, he graduated summa cum laude.  And I think he is amazing.

Enjoy some of my favorite pictures of the day.

Talking with Mom & Dad

Under the sea

It’s raining in England.

Again.

We actually don’t mind it all that much except that it makes finding entertaining things to do on the weekends a bit difficult. This past weekend we decided to fill our time by visiting the Bristol Aquarium. I’ve always felt like Aquariums are a bit like Rolo’s, always good but often overshadowed by some other candy. Don’t get me wrong, I love Rolo’s but somehow I never buy them because there are two or three other candies I like just a bit more.  In the same fashion I thoroughly enjoy aquariums but somehow they never end up in my top list of things to do on a weekend.

However we have now been in Bristol long enough to cycle through most of the other entertainment options. And seeing as Mother Nature is trying to submerge all of Southwest England in the span of a few days we decided it was a good time to see what it might be like to live with the fishes.

When we first arrived we were greeted by Santa’s pet shark Leopold who stands guard over the exhibits to make sure visitors don’t tap the glass, reach into the tanks or use flash photography, which is why this post will be light on photos.

Of the few photo’s we attempted these are three of the better ones.

Unfortunately, all the pictures of the Octopus feeding we witnessed were to blurry to include. That certainly doesn’t diminish how fascinating it was to watch the Octopus as it meandered around its tank searching for tasty treats and attempting to crawl out of the tank as the handler answered questions and let the Octopus wrap its tentacles around her arms as she fed him. It was one of the neatest things I’ve seen.

Amanda was so impressed with the Octopus that as we were walking to the next set of exhibits she nearly walked right past this tank of fluorescent fish swimming frantically for some attention.

She also had to look twice at this display because she thought she recognized a familiar species.

We finished our tour with Amanda and half a dozen five year olds claiming that they had just seen Nemo the Common Clownfish.  

Unfortunately I had the hapless task of informing Amanda that it was in reality Nemo’s lesser known second cousin Thomas the Tomato Clownfish. A rather sad ending to an otherwise wonderful afternoon.

Now if I could only find some Rolo’s. 

The return of the Spencer’s

I spent one year, five months and nineteen days waiting for my parents to make the journey across the pond, but they’ve finally done it.  And we had such a great time.  As they have also lived in the UK for a couple years (albeit 19 years ago and 3 hours south of where we live), they have already seen their share of Stonehenge, we didn’t tour the rocks.  I feel that we have now branched out to the second tier of tourist attractions.  We also had to make a few adjustments to the activities to avoid the torrential rain that we seemed to accumulate while they were here.  Of all our guests, the ones who had lived through the Great British weather probably got the worst rain, most wind, and coldest temperatures.  But it was okay.  We stayed inside and ate scones...

...and petted some dogs...

...and played some dominos...

When it did dry out a bit, we headed out to see Bristol (obligatory Clifton Suspension Bridge photos to follow).

We visited the eminent Bristolians William Penn & Archibald Alexander Leach (aka Cary Grant).

And walked our way down the harbourside to the locks.  Mom & I have to visualise things with our hands to understand how tides work.  Don’t mock, we got there eventually.

The next day, solely because of the weather and not at all because we REALLY, REALLY wanted to go, we headed north to the Cadbury’s factory.

Cadbury’s opened in 1824 as a tea shop that also sold some cocoa.  By the 1840’s chocolate was selling better than tea, so John Cadbury decided to dedicate his entire shop to the rich, dark sweet and went on to open a large factory near Birmingham to produce more chocolate.  In 1861, John gave the business over to his sons, Richard & George.  Richard was a business man, while George liked experimenting with varieties of chocolate.  George’s son, George Jr, decided to add milk to the chocolate bars.  Production slowed due to rationing in WWII, but Cadburys was able to work in a bite size piece of chocolate as part of the military diets.  The Company grew steadily after the war.  In 2009, all cocoa used for Cadbury’s became Fairtrade certified and in 2010 Kraft bought Cadburys (though you’d never know that fact by taking the tour – instead they say that ‘Kraft has made a significant investment in Cadburys’).  Never mind, we just like to eat chocolate.

Still on a slight sugar high, the following day we headed to Cardiff Castle (or in Welsh Castell Caerdydd).

Originally built by the Romans in 55AD, the castle was destroyed then rebuilt by the Normans between 1000 and 1200 AD.  It was passed through British Lords and royalty who moved various walls or destroyed or rebuilt parts of the castle until the 1760’s when the Bute family took control.  The various Bute’s attempted to restore the walls of the castle back to the original – or at least what they thought the original walls looked like.  They’re not real sure where the original walls were.

Some of the statues hadn’t been replaced.  I offered to help.

Daddy thought this was a better place for me to stand.

He then had to remind me that you’re not supposed to smile while in the stocks.

After a wonderful, but all too short visit, we took Mother & Daddy to Southampton on Thursday where they caught a cruise ship to head back to Texas (via Portugal, the Azores, and Ft Lauderdale).

You realise you might be a grown up when you drop your parents off at cruise port with all the other OAPs and watch them make friends in the line to check in without looking back at you to wave goodbye.

As it was Thanksgiving and we were not going to be able to have a turkey – I had to return to work on Friday & we were only going to get home about 5pm on Thursday so I didn’t have time to cook a full T-day meal.  So, in our need to have something American, we ended up at the roadside McDonalds.

Now, isn’t that festive.

Raise a glass

Sometimes you do things because you really want to & sometimes you do them because they’re for a good cause.  I’ll let you decide which reason we chose to participate in my office’s charity wine tasting last week.

A Master of Wine was brought in to host the evening (by the way, Master of Wine is a much cooler profession than accountant).

The evening began with a short presentation on types of wine and different grapes and brief instructions on the approach to tasting and identifying flavours.

After which, we got down to the important things of the evening.  Drinking.  I mean, giving to charity.

With each wine, we were asked a series of questions to test our knowledge of wine (and listening skills from earlier in the evening).  My table managed a 9 out of 31.  Apparently we need more practice.