There are lots of little signs that will tell you you’ve really started to settle into a life on the West Coast - regular social outings, the first time you can navigate from Santa Clara to Redwood City without a map, and my favourite - the first “you’re pre-approved for a credit card!” junkmail, which tells you that you’ve finally racked up some form of Credit Rating.

But even after the initial hard work is done and you really feel like you’ve arrived, there are still areas where you’ll find that you need to ever-refine your behaviours and expectations in order to increase your “comfort zone”. Are there five areas worth exploring with this in mind? Youbetcha! (more…)

Checking into the airport for your “relocation flight” is a profound moment. When you finally walk through security and wait to board the flight, you’re crossing the threshold. Things are in motion at last - all the planning, the paperwork, the goodbyes and the waiting have paid off. This is where a new life starts.

But that’s just the problem, too - what awaits you at the other end of the journey? There are some definite hurdles to jump. Here are 5 of the biggest ones you’ll face. (more…)

I do know a few people who’ve worked diligently and carefully to maneuvre themselves into overseas job positions, but for the majority a relocation offer from your company (or a company which wishes to recruit you) can come as something of a surprise.

There is a lot to think about if you have the opportunity to relocate, and unraveling all the knots can be difficult, particularly if there’s some pressure to provide an answer to the offer.

I’ll admit that it didn’t take me long to accept my own offer verbally, in principle. It was made on a stifling Friday afternoon in a Sunnyvale conference room; I accepted the offer on the following Monday. My reasoning was simple - this was potentially a unique offer. If I moved to California and hated it, I could always move back. If I declined, I was left with a potential lifetime of “what if?”s.

Nevertheless, the process of moving is a complicated one, and it’s worth being prepared for all the steps. (more…)

Out of the blue just recently, I got a comment on a rather old article, from someone called Ian

Ian wrote:

Hey - i found this blog while searching for information on moving to Northern California from the Uk…

Similar to you, I have been offered the chance to move with work out there, and would love to hear any tips/reccomendations you can give!

There are various nuggets of information buried in articles on this site, but I thought that for Ian’s sake (and given the seeming rise in Valley-bound immigrants blown here by bubble2.0) I’d re-capture some of the advice as concisely as possible.

There are 3 posts I’m going to write on this subject, each covering 5 useful areas that I think every immigrant should know about. This is all (as always) from the point-of-view of an Englishman relocating to Northern California, but I hope that it’s useful for any English-speaker who might be pondering a relocation to the US.

The first two parts are now available. Part III is coming Real Soon Now(TM).

• Relocating, Part I (”before you move”)
• Relocating, Part II (”arriving in America”)
• Relocating, Part III (”settling down”)

In addition to the points I cover here, I’ll provide one book reference:

“Living and Working in America” by David Hampshire (Survival Books, ISBN 1 901130 61 4)
[On Amazon UK | On Amazon.com ]

I can’t recommend this book highly enough - it answers almost every question you could have, and is a big comfort to have around as a reassuring advisor whilst you’re leaping into the unknown.

Props to eyeteeth for reminding me of something appalling which I first saw about a month ago, and completely failed to muster the time/energy to write about.

The item in question is a Lexus advertising campaign, whose tagline is…

A Strong Want is a Justifiable Need

Part of the problem with writing about this is that it’s so utterly horrible that it defies rational thought. Paul at eyeteeth probably chooses the best path in offering a picture of the offending ad with only a title offering commentary.

But after a few minutes, I realised that I could probably have some fun with the idea, so I dashed off a letter to Lexus’s “General Requests” email line, as follows…

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Another lesson relearned: cities and Public Services don’t really mix so well.

And so it is that I missed the 8:15 bus to work this morning, and am sitting in Peet’s Coffee on Van Ness writing this and waiting for 9:15 to roll around. (more…)

The first time you strap a snowboard onto your feet and attempt to navigate your way down a hillside, it’s a deeply disconcerting experience. All of a sudden, the rules change, the way you balance and move is extended along completely different planes; and your feet and knees take on brand new roles.

But heading out to the slopes in late January gave me a weird insight which should have been pretty obvious by now, but somehow wasn’t. I wasn’t a confident teenager at all; shy and gawky, I often chose to let the world pass me by, rather than submit to the risks of engaging with it. But something’s changed over the last few years, and I’ve grown to absolutely love throwing myself headlong into anything which comes along - be it music festivals, snowboarding, shark-wrestling (okay, that one’s a theoretical “todo”) or upping sticks and moving to America.
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It’s easy to be dead in a suburb.

It’s easy to drift into the background, to disconnect yourself from the situations and people and places and words and momentary ecstacies which set your heart on fire.

And it’s funny how quickly you forget; how quickly the perfect, joyful pain of real life becomes unfamiliar.

But if you’re truly a child of the city; if you’ve ever tied the rhythms of your heart to it; bled with it and healed with it and trudged through it and skipped across it, it never leaves you.
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(…being the sound of my social life exploding.)

I really, really hoped that moving up to San Francisco would provide me with less nights in watching DVDs, and more nights out doing random things. And whadya know? The city answered my hopes and then some.
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There’s a beautiful moment when you very first fall in love. The object of your desire is suffused with the glow of perfection, angels descend clutching harps and singing songs to your beautiful new love, and all is right with the world.

But pretty soon reality catches up with you, and no matter how sweet your sweetheart you realise there are a few quirks of theirs that you just never expected. (more…)