We spent our last three nights in an empty flat, sleeping on deflated airbeds. It was miserable. Consider booking a hotel or staying with friends or family for your last few nights in your home country. Those last days before your move are an emotional, hectic time.
‘My doctor in Singapore was a perfectionist and very focused on her patients. She was also very busy, as many OB-GYN are, and because of that, I think sometimes she forgot to smile. ‘
We agreed that with hundreds of languages spoken in the Bay Area, that many things are lost in translation, what would help is a cultural dictionary. Can you imagine?
When I moved to the Bay Area, I had never given much thought to Seattle. I had always seen it as a far-away, freezing-cold, provincial town near Canada: nothing that could compare with our incredible Silicon Valley, where education, technology and wealth found their perfect habitat. This was, until a couple of years ago, when a friend from Italy described it to me as a beautiful city, full of music and life. A few months later, my husband received an interesting job offer from a Seattle-based company. We discussed the opportunity with the family and realized that we were all […]
When the US Presidential election season began, it was all a bit of a joke. As a spectator, an immigrant, a non-voter, watching this media spectacle from the front row, it all seemed a bit laughable. But then the primaries rumbled on, Brexit happened, and someone that we had all seen as joke candidate began to gain steam. But this couldn’t happen, could it? And then it did, Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for President. Suddenly, the joke wasn’t funny anymore. It became more of a horror story, you watch through your fingers, too scared to look properly, but […]
Picture this: rows of Bentleys, Rolls Royces, and Ferraris, palm trees swaying in the sun, and well-heeled folks walking around. No, it’s not a scene from Hollywood’s latest premiere, but drop off at an American elementary school in Dubai.
In March 2013 my husband told me there was a possibility of his work moving us out to San Francisco from London. 16 months later we were on a plane ready to begin new lives. It doesn’t sound very long, but those 16 months felt like a lifetime. I found it hard to give my career in the UK 110 per cent, when I was also looking into the work opportunities in California. I felt split and frustrated by the uncertainty. Ultimately, if our visas had been refused those 16 months would have faded into our joint history. We […]
