It’s been just over a year now since I moved out here to live in California and given the anniversary I figured some time in reflection would be in order. I started this blog as a place to put stuff specific to my american experience since I have other places to talk about normal things and figured this was a log of the struggles to acclimatise to a similar but often annoyingly different culture. As the time has gone on I’ve had less to say on this blog since I’ve been gradually settling in and everything has been becoming the norm but still every now and then I get surprised by something some Americanism or aspect of their culture that just catches me off guard.
The hardest part of deciding to move out here when I finally got the go ahead that they were making me an offer to go (which as I’ve stated before took two frustrating years) was the thought of being 6K miles from friends and family. I was fairly concerned about this going in it felt like that more than any other factor could break the endevour and make me want to come back to merry old England. The distances and cost involved with going home means it’s a serious trip to make not something one can do on a whim of a weekend.
While I have missed things like the board game days at Pete’s, the dvd nights at Rob’s, the cinema trips with Byrnie, and the weekend long lan parties, I haven’t felt as cut off from everyone as I feared. Most of that comes down to modern communications technology keeping in touch via the net is pretty easy and with arrangement the odd game of L4D was always doable being able to play and talk with people half way round the globe without much in the way of lag or cost is a modern marvel. Plus the on going collaborative world we have in the minecraft lackof server is a nice virtual meeting space. I still talk to my parents once a week though this time via Skype rather that paying a fortune on phone calls so I haven’t felt so out of touch as I was worried I would.
In addition to the worry of loosing the friends I already had there was the concern about how I would go about meeting any new people. I’m not the most outgoing of people definitely an introvert if not shy so I did wonder how I would meet people since my natural tendency of staying at home reading or playing games or going to the cinema are not really that conducive to meeting new people. This is where the meetup group I joined, the south bay geek club, had proved very helpful. Through it I had a way to meet like minded geeks for that essential human contact. I can turn up to an event and know that everyone there is more or less on the same sort of page while there are a surprising varience in interests and ages for these groups they’ve always been very friendly and welcoming. I’ve had lots of good experiences the regular board games nights and film nights as well as the various events I’ve been to with the group have been a great help. While the makeup of those sorts of meetips is often somewhat transitory with often different people every time it has been a starting point that through which I’ve been able to meet people and also start to build more meaningful links with locals such as my D&D group and I have hopes for the just started Scifi book group.
So all in all the negatives I perceived before moving out here haven’t proved to be as much as a negative as I expected.
There have been some problems which were complicated by my being out here an impractical timezone away from UK business hours. The issue with the first tennants I had in my flat was especially annoying where they bitched and bitched and threaten me with legal action accused me of being an uncaring slum landlord got one of the neighbors involved (who was someone I never met in the 7 odd years I lived there so unsure how and why he got involved but he wrote me a fairly offensive letter full of nasty accusations) disparaged my decorating skills and threatened to go to the local papers. It was one of those annoying situations where I couldn’t seem to do anything to make it work possibly because they just wanted to break the lease without getting stiffed by the contract they signed but it was a frustrating and costly no win situation as far as I was concerned where every time I thought it sorted they would come back and complain again a few weeks later.
The new guy so far has only bothered me about one thing which turned out to be perfectly valid (broken washing machine motor) I gave them the number of the warranty people and they fixed and that was that no further bother since then he’s been a quiet tenant which is sort of how I would prefer it.
My job hasn’t changed much since I’ve been out here the location makes some thing easier (it’s now an hours flight to our main customers rather than 11 hours so I can easily go home on the weekend and not suffer from jetlag the only down side is it’s now so much easier it means they send me much more often) and other things harder (I can’t physically grab other engineers and shake an answer out of them). The pay seemed like an increase initially (I won’t be so uncouth as to quote numbers but my US salary was a significant chunk more than just a straight dollar to pound conversion would have been not quite double but almost) but given the cost of living out here has equated to about the same standard of living as I had in the UK. The apartment building I rent in is a touch nicer than you’d get in the UK with facilities (the only facilities I had in my UK flat was an enclosure for the bins and a door entry phone that didn’t work here I have several pools & jacuzzi’s, Gym’s, an indoor basketball court, Internet rooms, an onsite starbucks quiznos and little market) some of that sort of thing seems standard for anything but the crappiest of places. When I was looking I saw 10 different buildings some cheap some more pricey than my current place and all of them had pools and gyms and other little things.
The upsides of being out here have been plentiful lovely weather most of the time I’m closer to a lot of “the action” so can do things like go to Maker faire PAX and all sorts which previously would have required elaborate planning. California and the bay area in particular are full of immigrants from all over the world so it’s a very mixed place with all manner of people from all over the world. I still occasionally come across that american pride thing the we are number one syndrome. When ever there is some big event you will almost certainly hear someone say how it’s only possible to do this thing in freedom loving america. Which just isn’t true even in an area full of immigrants where a lot of the technical expertise is from overseas there is still this blinkered america is the only country that exists attitude. It’s off putting because this place isn’t without it’s faults and I often think america is guilty of being too focused on the good things and just ignoring the bad even going out of their way to demonize people who bring up failings with the “why do you hate america” stuff.
I’ve got another year and a bit to run on my visa and without going into details if feels like given the redundancies in the UK team that my days would be numbered, which almost makes the decision for me. I think it would be worth staying especially if I can in the process wangle a green card which would give me a lot more freedom we’ll see how things go and what happens with the immigration people as to how long they let me stay out here. It looks like this could be the first time having a masters degree gave me a tangible benefit since they have separate pools for people with masters.
Anyway I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
