Dusty Old Blog
No, I have not died, nor been so assimilated by America that I can no longer communicate with the outside world. I can't say my life has been that interesting lately, however. You'd think that I'd have more to write about, having moved abroad and all, but it's only America. It's just like Britain really, except it's hotter where we are, and they drive on the other side of the road and stuff. Working from home, and having a small child to look after, means that I don't get out much. I can feel what few social skills I ever had slowly atrophying. Hopefully I can do something about that before too much time passes and I become a weird shut-in.
I think I might start blogging again though. All I seem to do at the moment, other that work and change nappies (they call them "diapers" here - weird!) is consume movies and music and video games, so I might as well write about those.
Tomorrow.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Settling
I suppose I'm coping ok in my new environment, though I have only been here for a month, and so am still in that 'holiday' period. The novelty is keeping homesickness at bay, though I do wish that Google Street View hadn't chosen this week to launch in the UK, resulting in a slighly tipsy and maudlin hour spent clicking through my old hood.
Working from home hasn't been the minimum-productivity skivefest I feared it might, though I've had a few unpleasant episodes of cabin fever, and I do miss the peace of my morning train journey, cold and rain notwithstanding. For someone used to being able to nip across the road to Tesco at a moments notice, living in a place where driving is not optional is hard going.
So yeah, I'm here. Now what?
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Moved
Well, would you look at that? I appear to have emigrated, and am now a resident of them there United States! Goodness, how did that happen? I am a legal alien, which is quite cool and makes me feel like I'm David Bowie's character in The Man Who Fell To Earth, but then remember that song by Sting, which is substantially less cool, even though I'm not an Englishman. Nor am I in New York, but Allen, Texas.
I could bore you with the messy details of the move, but shant. It's probably much as you imagine, anyway. I've already blogged about the visa process, which is the most complicated part of the whole affair. The rest was just a matter of sorting out what to send off on a slow boat (clothes, DVDs, music, books), what to pack for the period until the slow boat arrives (five suitcases worth), and what to get rid of (everything else, either sold or given to charity). Oh, and saying goodbye to family and friends. That was no fun at all.
For now it feels like we are just visiting, and it hasn't quite sunk in that we can NEVER GO HOME AGAIN!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Visa
So yesterday I was at the American embassy in London for the final stage of the torturous visa application process - the interview. Here's my description of the day, as written for the excellent Dive Into America forum, without which making sense of the whole horrible mess of forms and regulations would have been far, far harder ...
I turned up at the Embassy in plenty of time, carrying just my paperwork folder, having left my phone and other items with a friend I was staying with. I was on my own, my wife staying at home in Glasgow, since we have a six-month old son and didn't want to have to drag him down to London. The embassy building itself was a little underwhelming, being a grey 1960's concrete slab on one side of an otherwise picturesque square. I had imagined something far grander, but I digress. The day was cold but dry, and there was a very short queue to see the first security guard. She checked my passport and appointment letter, asked if I had any electronic items (to which I said no), and sent me on to the security checkpoint.
In the little security building I was asked to remove all metal objects from my pockets, this I did, and the guard spotted my car keys. I thought I had left all electronic items at home, but had forgotten about the remote for the car and was sent back out. I nipped along to Gould's pharmacy, which is just a couple of minutes walk along the road, and had to pay £5 for pleasure of having them look after my keys. (Actually £6, for storage and a packet of Smints, since I didn't have enough cash and they don't take cards for purchases under £6.)
Back at the embassy I went through security, round to the door for visa appointments, and into the building proper. At the front desk I was given number 5023 and shown into the waiting room, which was uncomfortably warm and pretty crowded. My heart sank when I saw the screen indicating that they were currently serving number 1021, but thankfully realised that there were two queues - one for non immigrant visas with numbers beginning at 1000, and another for immigrant visas starting at 5000. According to the screen, there were seven people ahead of me in that queue.
I sat and waited, wishing I had brought a book, but probably too nervous to concentrate on it if I had. At one point an alarm went off and a recorded voice announced "Blast Warning! Move away from windows! Duck and cover!" which was somewhat disconcerting until a rather sheepish voice came over the tannoy and said "Er... please ignore that last message."
After about an hour I was called up to a window and asked for my identification. He then told me to wait while he fetched my file, returning with a folder and the large brown envelope containing my chest x-ray. He asked when I was planning to move, and I replied "mid February", and he pointed out that I would only have until April to make use of my visa, since my medical had taken place in April last year, and the chest x-ray is only valid for a year. (We had originally received an appointment last year, and rescheduled, but I went for my medical at that time anyway. I knew that the results of the medical were only valid for a year, but though that was fine so long as you had your visa appointment in that time. It turns out that you have to TRAVEL in that year - something to be aware of.) He then asked for each piece of my documentation and copies thereof and took my fingerprints before sending me to the cashier's desk, where I paid my $400 and brought him back the receipt. I was given a form to fill out for the courier, specifying the address to which my passport would be returned, and asked me to sit down again.
Another hour of waiting passed uneventfully before I was called up again for the interview. This time it was a very pleasant American lady, who returned the original copies of my documents. She took my fingerprints again and asked where my wife was, the year in which we were married, pointed out that because my wife had not earned enough to file taxes that she was invalid as a sponsor, but that my joint sponsor was acceptable, and asked why we were moving to the states. She also wanted to know if my wife had a home in the US. I answered "no", but was about to show her the rental agreement on the apartment we had found when we were last over as proof of intent to domicile, when she asked about my home here. I told her that our flat was under offer. She asked how much we were selling it for, and seemed happy with that. I had brought along the offer letter, but she didn't ask for any proof. Finally, she asked about employment, and I explained that I was transferring to the US division of the company I worked for now, and told her how much my US salary would be.
With that she said that she "couldn't tell me that my visa was authorised" because they still had to run a fingerprint check, but that as far as she was concerned everything was in order. She told me to take the courier form to the desk by the entrance to the waiting room, and that I should expect my passport, and the legendary sealed brown envelope of mystery, in 3-5 working days, wished me luck with the move and told me to have a nice day. Elated, I paid the courier and headed back to my friend's flat (via Gould's) to phone the missus with the good news.
A pretty standard tale for these parts, I suppose, but if I have any advice it's to make sure that your pockets are emptied of ANY electronic device whatsoever (Would they have knocked me back for a digital watch, for example? What about an analogue one?) and bring a pen so that you don't have to borrow one to fill out the courier form, and a book to fend off boredom.
(Incidentally, I receive a text today to say that the courier should be delivering my passport and visa tomorrow. Not bad - they quoted me 3-5 working days but got it to me in 2.)
Labels: move
link | 2 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, January 12, 2009
Washing Up
Some years ago, I registered my real name as a .com domain, under which I wrote a personal blog. Nowadays this would be considered a spectacularly silly thing to do. Unless you are a celeb, or at least someone who is using a site to promote themselves and their ideas, it's always better to blog at least semi-anonymously. It's ok to point friends and family to it, but you never know when a prospective boss, say, might search for your name and find a foaming-mouthed rant about your current workplace, or even just evidence that your personal tastes or politics are at odds with their own.
The Internet was younger and more innocent back then, of course. Something of a niche hobby. Even mentioning that you had an email address would be enough for most people to scoff and call you a geek. But as time went on everyone and their granny got on the net, and having my name plastered all over an online journal, no matter how innocent its content, began to seem less and less like a good idea. In addition to which, the blog at myrealname.com had attracted a number of trolls who liked to hang out in the comments and post abuse. A change of domain was therefore required.
I didn't really spend an awful lot of time coming up with washing-up.co.uk. I could probably have thought of something better, but my criteria were less than exacting. It was semi-abstract, available, and didn't contain my real name. In addition to which, it was a sly dig at my other half, who steadfastly refuses to take a turn at a particular household chore.
There was another reason for choosing it. We were also thinking, at the time, of moving to another country, and I thought that if anyone asked me what the domain meant, I could explain that it was because I didn't know where I would "wash up", and feel very smug and clever.
Except nobody did. And I never blogged about moving.
Part of the reason for not blogging about it was because, for all of my best intentions, this blog was never really anonymous. Oh, I was careful to scrub every mention of my real name from it, but Google pagerank is too smart for that, and washing-up.co.uk is now the #1 hit for my name. At least I shook off the trolls for a while. But in any case, I didn't much want to accidentally tip-off work that I was planning on upping-sticks and leaving, nor go into detail about something that looked from time-to-time that it wouldn't happen at all.
But now, it looks like it really is. The three of us are planning on hopping the pond and setting up home in Texas. And soon. Scarily soon.
We began the process of applying for my visa about two years ago. This is never rapid, but it was hindered by a combination of laziness and uncertainty on our part, and plain old bad timing. The final task that has to be performed in order for me to get a visa to live and work in the US, is for me to attend an interview at the US Embassy in London, accompanied only by a thick bundle of complex paperwork. I was initially given an appointment for last April, but the visa, once issued, has to be used within six months, and with R heavily pregnant we really didn't think we could orchestrate a move in that time. After informing the embassy of this, we were told that we would receive an alternative appointment. When it finally arrived, it was for a date on which we would be in the States for Christmas. Appointment number three came, and is on Wednesday.
Our original plan was to sell our flat before R had the baby, and move to rented accommodation that we could drop as soon as my visa was ready. Thanks to the knackered economy and dead housing market, this never happened. However, just before Christmas we were made an offer on the flat, approximately the same time as my visa appointment letter arrived. Ahead of us, then, is a mad scramble to move out of the country at the same time as moving out of our home. Providing the god of bureaucracy smiles upon me and grants my visa, of course. (Which is, worryingly, not guaranteed. Although I think we have everything in order, I have heard horror stories.) Even though we started planning this two years ago, it seems like it's all happening very quickly, as though we've been on that first part of a roller-coaster where you are winched slowly to the top of a steep hill before being nudged over the edge.
There is much I will miss about Glasgow, and Scotland in general (including many friends), and the pros and cons of moving have been chewed over again and again. The clincher is, simply, that I have lived here for 33 years and I have the opportunity to have a go at living in a foreign country - and easy as it is to forget, America really is a foreign country - so why the hell not? If I don't, I'll always wonder "what if?" Fortunately the nature of the work I do means that I can do it anywhere there's an internet connection, so I will be keeping my job when we move and working from home. I think this scares me more than anything - will I go completely batshit insane without all those other faces around every day and a commute to ensure that I get out of the house? Fortunately, the interwebs really do make the world a smaller place and there's no longer any good excuse to lose contact with a friend no matter where you live. In addition to which, I may well be back in Glasgow on business once in a while. (Or with my tail between my legs if I cannae hack it.)
Progress will be blogged and Twittered of course. Wish us luck!