This really came out of left-field, whichever way you look at it.

Six years ago, I was studying for a degree in English Literature.

Five years ago, I was working on a cottage-industry startup website.

Three years ago, I was running my own (albeit cottage-industry scale) website company.

And a year ago, I started work for a large multinational web company in London.

It’s been a strange roller-coaster so far, particularly as I entered the whole web industry thang about a year before everything done went boom and most of us were left riding out the storm clinging to small pieces of e-Wreckage.

And here I am now, having spent the past six months negotiating and organising a move to California to work in Silicon Valley (not as glamorous a place as it sounds, I promise).

So, in honour of such a momentous move, I’m doing the unthinkable and setting up a diary of the online variety, for two main reasons:

* Moving abroad is, erm, tricky, and one of the big things that surprised me is the lack of first-hand advice I could find regarding moving from the UK to the US. Hopefully I’ll occasionally write some stuff which is useful for anyone else contemplating such a move.
* I have plenty of friends and family in the UK. They probably want to keep vague tabs on what I’m doing, and whilst I’ll try to email/phone/etc (promise guys), this is another way to keep in touch.

Finally, some ground rules:

* I will occasionally leave commenting open on pieces. I will ruthlessly edit, though. My site, my rules. Told you it wasn’t a blog.
* I will probably never directly mention the name of the employer on whose behalf I’m moving continents. Not because I’m ashamed of them – far from it. But this is primarily about my *personal* experiences of transatlantic living, not the people who pay my wages. Most people who’re likely to read this know who I work for anyway, so it doesn’t need reiterating.
* An important addendum to that – anything (really, *anything*) I say here is *not* endorsed by, the opinion of, or in any other way related to my (anonymous) employer.

Let the fun and games commence…

This article first arrived on the interwebnet on Thursday, December 30th, 2004 at 12:49 pm .
It's arbitrarily categorised as being about: 5371 Miles, Thinking.
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