• Embarassingly (and expensively) we have decided to move back to Zürich. We actually decided in June, when we visited, but it didn’t feel like a fact until we put our house up for sale. Here comes a lot of stress and hassle.

    Being an expat is weird. Nowhere feels like home any more. Being an international family makes it even more so — e.g. while I feel fine with the NHS’s prescriptive, often dog-eared ways it must feel pretty weird for those who haven’t had a lifetime of expectations accordingly set.

    Although the UK is closer to my family it is much further from Nanda’s, plus very far from a lot of Zürich friends with kids the same age as us that we used to hang out with a lot. Zürich is also just an objectively better place to have a young family: there are a million playgrounds, lots of quiet roads, mountains, and goats and chickens at the park. I’d better put some real effort into learning German.

    I will be sad to be further from my family. I hope they can visit.

  • On Friday afternoon I took a 4 hour train to Manchester, went to an Eric Prydz show at the Warehouse Project (9pm-3.30am), then took a 5am train home before someone came to see our house at 10.30am. It is what passes as rock and roll at my age.

    The show was good but not the best — the venue is great but the sound was a bit muddy, and the set was a bit further towards the dark techno than I prefer. But given the last time I did a fun thing like this was in February 2020, when I saw Prydz at Printworks in London and probably got COVID before it was a pandemic, it was great to get out again. We originally hoped that kiddo #2 would be taking a bottle so both of us could have 24 hours without kids but alas that is not yet the case.

    I had a McPlant for dinner. It was probably as tasty as a meaty McD’s burger (interpret that as you want). More importantly it’s great that the idea of not eating animals has come as far as a mainstream fast food restaurant.

  • Related to the above, kiddo #2 drank 70ml of formula from a bottle on Sunday. Typical.