Awk Sauce

Awk Sauce is a phrase my children use to describe an awkward situation, often involving their parents.  Earlier this week I had a breakfast meeting near my daughter’s school at the end of Regent Street.  So I thought I’d take the occasion to pop by.

At the front desk I asked if she’s around and they wanted to know if this was a scheduled visit.  I told them no, that I was just in the neighborhood and thought it would be nice to see her in her natural habitat away from home.

“Oh, how nice, she’ll be so excited,” the office secretary told me.

So we climbed the three flights of stairs to her Spanish class and looking in I could see her big smile through the sliver of window.  She, however, had not seen me.

The secretary peeked in and asked for Natalie.  A chorus of “woo, woo” went up from her classmates, suggesting she was in trouble.

When she saw me the reaction was pure Awk Sauce: “Whaaat are you dooooing heeere?”

We stood outside the classroom and had our moment:

“I just wanted to see you since I was down the street.”
“Why??”

“Because I missed you.”

“Oh God Dad, really.”

We exchanged hugs and kisses and she was off.  My day was elevated, her day was, well interrupted.

Later that night I heard her re-telling the story to her sister.  “It was total Awk sauce.  When I got back into the class everyone asked if that was my dad.  I told them ‘No.’”

DisneyDubaiVegas

When you arrive in Dubai you immediately notice not only that it's a desert, but it's deserted.  Traffic is light and everything is so huge, that it never feels busy.

The beaches, like the streets are immaculate.

Our hotel has 600 rooms, a nice size hotel, but with 22 restaurants and 40 stores?

The Emirates Mall and the Dubai Mall are so massive that nothing could make it feel crowded.  There are 1250 stores in one mall.  My son wanted sunglasses, we passed five sunglasses stores on the way to the bathroom.

The perfect representation of Dubai is the Mall of Emirates.  It is there that my kids could ski and tube at the indoor ski resort, while it's 95 degrees outside.  As my children played in the snow my wife and I drank coffee at the St. Moritz restaurant, complete with a video of a fire in the fireplace and the smell of burning Aspen trees, which sprayed over our heads via a fragrance pump that hung above the restaurant.

Oh yes, and I finally found an open Borders Book store.

There is no recession here.  The malls are open until midnight, at 11:00 it was well-trafficked.

Dubai is a city of visitors.  With a population of 6 million, 4.5 million are foreigners, mostly Pakistanis, Indians and Filipinos, all looking for work.  The guests are 70% Russian. 

The Barj Kalipha, the tallest building in the world has a telescope where you can find hot spots around the city and then push a button and it shows you what it looked like 20 years ago when it was a wasteland.

Vegas-Style the Dubai Mall has an aquarium and a dancing water show.

When we were told to go to the Souk, I pictured the stone alleys of Jerusalem, but instead I found a dirty street filled with Indian expats selling knock-off Hermes bags.

This place is a combination of DisneyLand without the charm, Vegas without the gambling or alcohol.  It's a Twinkie town.  Tastes good, but feels a bit empty.

Swimming and Snooker in Sheffield

Swim meets, or Galas as they are called in the UK, are long days and sometimes long weekends.  My favorite shirt of all time was found at one of these events, worn by a tired parent.  The shirt read:  “If I only had one day to live, I’d like to spend it at a swim meet.  Because they last forever.”

But they are also rewarding watching your child stand on the blocks in front of hundreds of people and take off into the water as she stretches and challenges herself in a very public way.

Sheffield England is a town a few hours North of London and when I told members of my office I'd be going there they gave me blank stares.  Well known for its crucible steel process invented in the 1740's, it's a city on the rebound from years of decline.  Well known for its University, a soccer rivalry (the Blades and the Owls) and this weekend the World Snooker Championships.

But around the world it is best known as the maker of most of England's cutlery.

When the Holiday Inn Express dinner didn't invite we found a restaurant called Vito's which was well recommended by an online website.  We took a cab to this cozy Italian joint where the pasta is Al dente, the house wines are great and a shot of Limoncello and Grappa are gratis.

After dinner Vito came up from the kitchen in his chef top and black and white checkered pants.  We asked him how he made his way from Southern Italy to Sheffield.  He wanted to learn English and saw that all the knives he was using were made in Sheffield.  So he came there to learn English, and "Here I am 30 years later."

The swim meet was held at Pond's Forge.  Did you know how many cups of tea it takes to fill a pool?  This was a country-wide meet with build up that included singing and grand entrances.  

The final activity before the starting gun was the singing of "Land of Hope and Glory" a song written to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance, so it already reached for the parental heart.  And then the hundreds of parents and athletes stood and sang:

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free

How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?

Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set,

God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet,

God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

And while the song was written in 1902 at the request of King Edward, and was no doubt written about the Empire, the song had special resonance for the parents as so many of them looked down from the stands and watched their children perform.  Big burly men and bright haired women with faces painted the color of their child’s swim club shouted the words in their loudest British voices so maybe their children, and God will hear:

God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet, 

God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

From the Township to Jumeirah, Cape Town to Dubai

Once my wife convinced me that Dubai was "on the way back" to London I stopped showing her the Atlas. However, the distance between Cape Town and Dubai is so much more than even the 9 hour plane ride suggested.

In Cape Town we had a Seder with 200 Jews, using the same Haggadah, the same text, the same chicken soup as our ancestors back in the old country and our parents back in Florida.  Dayenu.

In Dubai people with Israeli passports are not allowed in the country and even having an Israeli stamp can cause immigration questions and delays.

We left a country that can't house its people or give them jobs, where 70% unemployment in the township is average and 25% HIV infection is progress.  To a place where the wealth is so vast that only 10% of the population needs to work. Where three quarters of its inhabitants are foreigners who they literally had to ship in to fill the jobs.

We left a place without running water, where living in a room with 16 relatives, but is on the "double story," is a high achievement, to a place where the tallest buildings in the world look futuristic, beautiful and empty.

Walking through the Township our gestures feel empty when all you can offer is a pack of chips, some change, and a hug.

The day before we arrive a train came through town and hit four cows that had wandered onto the tracks.  When word spread men ran from their homes with machettes, hacking off what was left of the dying animals.  They came back home and thanked God for the gift of their Easter feast.

In Dubai my children donned heavy jackets and snow skied in a mall in the middle of the desert in 95 degree heat.

The Big Five

My image of South Africa was molded in the Michigan diag shanty that stood in opposition to Apartheid.  It was formed in the words of "Dont Wanna Play Sun City."  It came from Bono, imploring the fans on Rattle and Hum: "Am I bugging ya?  I dont mean to bug ya."

My generation saw the end of white South Africa, the release and ascension of Mandela, the Vuvuzelas of the 2010 World Cup.

My children's first impression is formed by the baby warthogs they ask to bring home, the dazzle of Zebra that cross our path, the troop of monkeys that unlatch our door, penetrate our home and steal our apples.


The Safari excitement comes from that edge where interest and fear meet.  The crocodile that could take your arm if he wanted to, the elephant that could flip your car with a wrong move, the road that seemed to disintegrate under your tires.

The days are 6:00 AM wake up calls, a search for excitement, a peaceful afternoon, early evening rides before dinner and then zipping into our netted beds.

The first day you are struck by the scene, then the need to find the big 5 (Lion, Rhino, Elephant, Leopard, Hippo) and finally something more, which we got when we found a leopard in a tree with a dead nyala in its mouth and a hyena circling nearby looking for scraps.

The crushing of bones and skull in the leopard’s mouth had one child declaring her vegetarianism, like her mother 30 years earlier. This declaration only lasted until lunch, however.


The game drives were about nature, the history of South Africa would come later.  There was some discussion of the vanishing elephants, the ivory trade, the decline of the cheetahs, the need to live as a partner with nature.  But boarding our plane out of Hoedspruit to Johannesburg history walks by when FW de Klerk comes and sits next to us with his wife and body guard.  The transition to Cape Town begins.

The Case for More

There is an electronic sign in Trafalgar Square counting down the days until the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London.  Today, with the sun shining down, there are 137 more to go.  The countdown is a build up for the city, but for me it represents time running out, as it coincides with our planned departure from our year abroad.

In late summer 2011 our house was a boiling cauldron of overflowing angst about what London might bring.  The night before leaving I video-taped the children and uniformly they were scared about one thing:  The first day of school.  My wife wondered aloud what she would do once I left for work in the morning.  I was nervous for them since I felt the burden of dragging them along on this adventure.

And now six months later the kids can’t remember what the first day of school was like.  And my wife is out of the house before I am most mornings.  So I’m guessing her running/hiking/ art history/photography/museum tour/pub crawling groups fill out her days.

And so with everyone settled into a routine of friends, teams, birthday parties and sleep-overs the question arises, why leave?  We went through the trouble of immigration and Visas and schools and housing and then immersion, all for one year?  Like most things in life it’s about expectations.  If you expect to stay one year it’s hard to get your mind wrapped around two.  If you expect to go home in 12 months you plan a certain way:  Your expenses, your family, your career, your pets.

But if your life is subjectively better with less stress, less driving, fewer headaches, more freedom, more family time (cuts both ways), less criticism, more days of pure adventure and enjoyment, why end it?

The argument goes that if you are here for a year, it’s like a long vacation, but if you stay it becomes home, with stresses like anything else.  If you miss one year of school you can pop back in.  If you miss two years, you come back out of sync with the rest of your friends.  If you miss the first year of high school it’s an entry point making re-entry tougher.

We took a big risk coming here and it worked.  Are we taking as big a risk in year two?

All the negatives for staying relate to what might happen to the children should they be out of their lives for more than the allotted year.  For the parents the negatives are softer.  There are friends and family that are missed.  And we’ve seen the struggle when there is a crisis back home.  But the day to day is richer and in many ways more fulfilling.  And that’s hard to walk away from.

As Chekov wrote:  “Any idiot can face a crisis.  It’s the day to day living that wears you out.”

Abbey Road

You can't live where we do, in the Northwest Section of London, and not become fascinated with the cult that is the Beatles.  You can walk by Abbey Road Studios at any time, on any day, no matter the weather, and see people doing one of two things.  Either writing on the wall that surrounds it, which they repaint every three months, or waiting.  Waiting for traffic to clear so they can take their shot.  The money shot.  The same shot of the Beatles on the cover of the Abbey Road album, crossing the famous walk.

But that's as far as you can get, no piercing the black gates from the street to the inner sanctum that looks like a normal house on a normal street in a residential area.  But for the 80th anniversary of the studio they were letting in a lucky few, Willy Wonka-style.  But instead of chocolate I paid 75 quid for my golden ticket.

At 7:00 PM on a Friday the line stretched out past the gates but soon I was walking through the lobby filled with pictures of music history and into Studio 2 where I spent the next 90 minutes learning about the history of this place.  Even though they discuss the 30 years leading up to the Beatles, it is John/Paul/George and Ringo who made the space famous.  Lots of big time artists have worked there since EMI opened it in 1931.  But the surrounding area is suffused with Beatles.  It's not just the iconic street corner or the St John's Wood tube stop with the Beatles coffee shop, or the memorabilia store a mile up the road at Baker Street where you can buy Beatles cuff links.  The people who come to pay tribute to the band have a distinctly late 1960's feel.

The 50 or so people who joined me in Studio 2 are told that the Beatles were not welcomed inside at first either.  "The music was OK, but they won the hearts of the execs through their personalities."  They weren’t just fun, they were light, witty and smart.  Clever as the Brits say.  And you see it in the outtakes and studio shots of them enjoying the process. 

The studio itself is unremarkable.  There is very little to suggest the specialness of the place, it's just a big room and long beige draperies with stains of white paint from what looks like the work of a sloppy handyman.

We sit in red leather chairs, the same chairs you see in nearly every picture of the Beatles.  They were purchased in bulk because the previous chairs were wood and they squeaked, ruining many a take.  I sit in the corner, in the spot where Paul conceived and played Blackbird.  You see where Ringo sat, his cigarette stand brought in for the occasion.  And what you understand is that there is nothing in this room that gave inspiration, they brought it with them.  In this big old room they dragged their guitars into closets and storage rooms, hallways and backways, and even into the control room, testing every sound, every echo, every twist.

They were kids in their 20s and the sounds that are now iconic were just them trying to find something new.  You can sit and listen and hear them evolve into the performers they would become.  They were just friends trying to be creative together and it became magic.

The studio sits in the same spot where it was bought at the start of the century, in a place where neighbors still complain about the noise.  But EMI knew what they were doing, they wanted it far from the trains and noise of the city.

It was the last place Glenn Miller played before dying in a plane crash over the English Channel.  Amy Winehouse spent her last days here as well.  But it is Beatles' memories that bring people from all over the world.  It's why they stand outside and write and weep, fully iPod plugged in wondering how the magic was made, what went on inside.

And after spending an evening in that place I still wonder how they did it.  But I no longer wonder about the place.  Because I now know the magic came from inside those four boys, not these four walls.