South of the Mason-Dixon line

The last couple of weeks have been tough, and it feels like a lot of things have gone wrong all at the same time.  Firstly, just a week after passing our driving tests, Charlie was pulled over for speeding.  Second, Alice was a bit ill and very unhappy to be going to school.  Third, one of the cars broke down.  And finally, we’ve had some hiccups in our original home-buying plan.  Suffice it to say that it isn’t going as smoothly as we originally hoped.  (By the way, if anyone would like to buy a lovely three-bedroom cottage in Wimbledon, please let me know…)

All this bad news left us feeling, frankly, rather homesick.  We’ve moved all this way, but crappy things still happen.  We might as well not have bothered!  The general feeling of malaise coincided with a visit by Charlie’s Mum and step-Dad, which, though lovely and much-appreciated, didn’t help with the home-sickness.  This all sowed the seeds of doubt and left Charlie and I wondering if we’d really done the right thing.  After all, life in London had been pretty cushy: Alice had been doing well at school, our family was nearby, we didn’t have to worry about buying or selling property, and frankly there’s too much traffic in South-West London to be able to exceed the speed limit!

Luckily we’ve made some good friends here who’ve helped us through the rough patch, and it was one of them who said to us the phrase that’s the title of this post: if it was easy, everyone would do it.  Moving your family abroad and leaving all your support networks is a huge undertaking, and it shouldn’t be easy!  And when we stepped back to look at it, of course they were completely right.  There are so many people who talk about wanting to give up the grind in London and do something completely different, but very few of them actually do it.  Now we aren’t like those people who you see on the television who move from Islington to be a mushroom forager in the Outer Hebrides, using a forest as a loo and eating nothing but potatoes for nine months of the year. Charlie and I both have jobs – Charlie has three jobs, at last count – Alice goes to school, and we haven’t reverted to our hunter-gatherer roots (we go to Whole Foods).  But still, we’ve made a big move and a large amount of it went surprisingly smoothly.*  So we would be kidding ourselves if we didn’t expect some difficulties now and again.

With the advice from our friends ringing in our ears, we have begun to sort out the problems, and at the same time we’re reminded that life is still good.  Yesterday was Dads’ day at school, when the fathers go to classes with their daughters.  It was awesome, even when I was being patronised by the (unknowing) music teacher.  And now it’s the Easter weekend, I’ve had a day off work, the sun has been shining, Alice has been out playing all day and I’ve been sitting on the porch with a beer in my South Carolina beer holder (funky, huh) blogging.

Moral of the story? (This feels like a story that needs a moral.)  Tough times happen wherever you are, whatever you are doing – but they don’t last for ever.

* For example, it was only when we went to the bank, about a week after arriving, that we found out that Charlie’s American passport had expired at the end of December.  Three or four people at Heathrow, as well as a US Immigration Officer, had completely failed to notice this.

 

It’s pollen season in South Carolina, the whole state is covered in a thin layer of green dust, and CVS is running out of anti-allergy pills.  On Tuesday night I washed the cars and the outside of the house.  On Wednesday morning they were, once again, covered in green.  I don’t think I’ll bother again.

Last Friday we finally took a trip to the dreaded DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles.  We’d been led to believe that it was a bit grim, and you certainly see a cross-section of society there, but all the staff were polite, helpful and friendly to the out-of-towners.

We arrived at the DMV office, queued up and presented our papers.  I was rather hoping that I wouldn’t need to do a new driving test – after all, the UK is a pretty strict place to get qualified.  The fact that I was holding a ticket saying “International with Test” should have told me otherwise…

The surprise was that we were both going to do the test then and there.  I was expecting them to tell me to come back in a fortnight and so I’d be able to read through South Carolina’s highway code the night before.  Alas not.

So I found myself in a small room, staring at a computer screen and listening to the questions being read out by a computer voice over a telephone handset – the same sort of thing that people use in prisons to talk to someone the other side of the glass, you get the picture.  Luckily for us, in our completely unprepared state, the pass mark was only 24 out of 30, and the questions weren’t too challenging either.  Here’s an example, and I kid you not:

When the brakes fail during driving, a driver must not:

1. rub a curb to reduce speed
2. shift to a lower gear
3. press hard on the gas pedal
4. pump the brakes

When I was 17 and in Harrogate, I remember having to memorise stopping distances at different speeds and in different conditions.  I mean, I remember memorising them, I don’t actually remember what they are.  So both Charlie and I passed this bit smoothly..

The next issue was the actual driving test.  It only took 20 minutes and was a fairly leisurely drive around delightful North Charleston, with a 3 point turn on an entirely deserted road, and reverse parking between two bits of wood.  Surely it’s much more of a challenge if you have the added stress of reverse parking between two Ferraris.

Charlie had a bit more of an issue with the test than I did: we had only taken my car, which she had only driven for 10 minutes ever.  But of course, she passed with flying colours – as did I, by the way.  Frankly, phew: I don’t know if I could ever have faced the shame of failing a driving test in my mid 30s.

Then I meandered back to the office.  I’d only intended to have been gone for a couple of hours at the most; it ended up being a little over four!  The day ended rather nicely: a cold beer on the rooftop terrace of the office with some of my new colleagues, watching a super sunset.

 

One of the real pleasures of all my trips to the US over the last few years, both for work and pleasure, has been the variety of beers that I’ve been able to try.  It used to be that American beer was Budweiser or another equally bland lager, but nowadays there is a huge variety of ales, from the national through the regional to the ultra-local.  The US Brewers’ Association counts more than 4,000 breweries in the country, close to the record high of 4,131 in 1873.  That’s quite a renaissance from a nadir of 79 breweries in the year I was born.

It’s going to take me quite a while to sample the brews of all 4,000: this is rather a long-term goal!  Meanwhile, I am doing my best to try all the local Charleston beers, so here is a little review about a few of them.  I wouldn’t say I am a beer connoisseur, but I have certainly drunk enough of it to know what I like.

Westbrook IPA

This is the nearest brewery to us, under 2 miles as the crow flies.  They have photos of the staff on their website: a lot of them have beards.  I think it might be a craft beer thing.  The IPA is strong, at 6.8%, and it whacks you around the face with hops.  This brings up an issue that I have with a lot of craft beer: sometimes the brewers just bung in so many hops that you can’t really taste much else.  (I’m not the only person to think this, see this article in Slate magazine.)  With the hops and the strength, I can’t drink too much of this beer.  I like it, but it’s not one to drink all night.

Holy City “Overly Friendly” IPA

Ye gods, this one is even stronger – 6.9%.  You can’t drink much of this and drive home.  I suspect US craft brewers are large shareholders in Uber.  The taste is more mellow than the Westbrook, but there’s still a bit hoppy kick and the brewers even note that if you aren’t used to hops,”this might be too much”.  The “Overly Friendly” moniker comes from Charleston’s reputation as one of the friendliest places in the US.  And Holy City Brewing Company: that’s a damn cool name for a business.  (Perhaps it’s also the name of the Pope’s home-brews?)

Palmetto Pale Ale

I love this.  Look at the label – it’s got palm trees and everything.  It’s actually also a rather nice drink.  The strength is only (!) 5.8%, and there are plenty of citrusy notes without too much of a hoppy bitterness.  It’s probably my favourite of the three and certainly the one that I could drink for longest without keeling over.

You can visit the breweries and I plan to visit all three of them, for research purposes of course, and I hope to write about them at some point.

I love trying the Low Country’s local brews and they certainly suit the location.  But for now, none of them can compete with My Favourite Beer In All The World…

 

 

I debated the title of this post for quite a while, knowing that it would bring me some serious mickey-taking.  In the end, what the hell.

Some of you may have noticed that I started growing a beard just before Christmas. It started off, frankly, from laziness.  Either I could spend an extra five minutes in bed, or I could shave.  It’s a no-brainer.  And after a while I decided to leave it and see what happened.  I could start a new job, in a new country, with new facial hair.  And I began to get rather attached to it.  It became a bit of a project.  My colleagues at Sumitomo even helped me out with a bottle of beard oil.  Really.

After a couple of weeks in Charleston, I decided the beard should have a bit of a tidy up.  So I booked an appointment at the Old South Barber Spa and popped out of the office at lunchtime, thinking I’d be back within half an hour or so.  It’s in an old, typical Charleston building downtown, with gas lamps burning outside and a small courtyard.  Though it was February and a little chilly, at least by Charleston standards, it’s easy to imagine the courtyard on a steamy summer day.  Inside, it’s a mass of dark wood and black leather.

I settled down in the chair for my quick haircut.  After 15 minutes, with a hot towel over my face, I thought my thirty minute target might have been optimistic.  Fifteen minutes and three hot towels later, and I was getting a little worried about how long I’d been away from my desk.  Forty-five minutes in: I was having oils massaged into my face.  I no longer cared about work.  Finally, after an hour, I had the finishing touches and emerged blinking into the sunlight.  A new man!

(picture borrowed from someone else’s blog – thanks)

Awesome as it was, I don’t think I can be going back to the Old South too often.  It feels like the sort of place you should save for a special occasion.  So, much more prosaically, I bought an electric shaver from CVS.  Coupled with my beard oil, this should help me replicate at least some of the barber’s handiwork.  Actually, she was called Danielle.

 

 

We’ve been here for just over a month now and, to be honest, it seems like forever.  Our life in London is fast receding into a dim and distant memory.  A haze of delayed trains, standing up on the Waterloo & City Line and dubious weather.

Monday was Presidents’ Day, which meant a day off school for Alice.  It was also the day that our shipping container arrived.  The journey from the UK had been much quicker than we had expected so we were slightly unprepared for a delivery this quickly.  In fact, the house we are renting is still pretty much furnished so right now it has double the volume of stuff in it.  Amazingly, it’s big enough just to have soaked up all the excess boxes and it still doesn’t feel crowded!

What both Charlie and I have found quite interesting is how little we missed all our stuff.  Yes, it’s all here now which is nice, but we both feel like we could have carried on quite comfortably without all the paraphernalia that so many people seem to think is an essential part of life.  Finally I understand how some people can spend all their lives with a suitcase, a laptop and a Kindle.

Alice, on the other hand, was very excited to receive all her furniture, books and toys.  Her room was the first to be assembled – and right now is still the only one that has been assembled! – but she is re-acquainting herself with her desk, Famous Five books and sewing kit.

The only slight hiccup in the delivery came when they tried to move the piano, which apparently weighs in at 800lb.  How to make yourself popular with a removal crew…

 

Aside from our furniture arriving, the other big event in South Carolina right now is the forthcoming Presidential primary: this Saturday for Republicans and the following week for Democrats.  I know that primary season involves all the candidates taking ever more extreme positions to the right or left to energise their support base, but this year feels particularly unedifying.  Certainly on the Republican side, none of the candidates is acting very presidential right now, and the Democrats aren’t without their flaws either.  I suppose it’s for the best that as an “alien” I don’t get to vote.  Taxation without representation!

 

(Warning: this post contains self-congratulatory language that may upset those of a shy and retiring nature.)

 

It was about 2013 when we first thought about moving to the US, and it took until 2016 to make it happen.  That’s about on a par with my speed at getting served at a bar… The main thing that took so long was for us to find a way of earning money.  America is a great place to live with a certain amount of money, but not such a great place without.

For those readers who don’t know, I fell out of a couple of music degrees and blagged my way into the weird and wonderful world of commodities trading.  In fifteen years, I had a lot of fun: I visited coffee plantations in India, rice warehouses in West Africa, gold refineries in Singapore, sugar buyers in Moscow, mining companies in Australia – and any number of dodgy bars and karaoke clubs in Tokyo… The easiest thing would have been for me to stay in the same area, but find a job in the US.  Plenty of commodities traders in the US, right?  Well yes, there are – but none of them were anywhere we wanted to live.  If you are going to move to New York, we thought, you might as well stay in London.  (Cue uproar from New Yorkers saying their city is much better than London, and from Londoners saying that moving to New York is a step down.  But what I actually meant was that there is not much difference in lifestyle.)

What we wanted was to move somewhere warm, where we weren’t in a small house or apartment in the middle of a big city.  For a while we thought about the west coast and, by chance, there is a precious metals dealer based in Santa Monica.  Bingo!  Hole in one!  They’d definitely like me to work for them.  Then I could go straight from the office to the beach to learn surfing after work.  Er… unfortunately it didn’t work out.  They met with me a couple of times, and said they were interested – just not interested enough.

From then, I started approaching all sorts of investment firms, hedge funds, money managers, in LA and San Diego.  Some of them even replied to me, but of course the answers were always the same: we don’t need someone with your skill set.

That was 2013 used up.  2014 was when we first visited Charleston, and we decided to refocus our efforts on this area instead.  Let’s be honest, Charleston does not have a big financial services sector, though it is growing, so I needed to reinvent myself.  Charleston is becoming a tech hub (Silicon Harbor, in fact) and for a while I tried to get into software sales or business development but again, my skill set was a bit too obscure.

And at some point, I began to have an epiphany: I’m in the middle of my career.  It’s not enough to send someone your CV and say “Can you help me?”  That’s what you do when you are just starting.  At my stage in life, you have to tell people how you can help them.  You play up your skills and your experience, and you sell yourself.  Again: it’s not just enough to say “I have transferable skills”, you have to say “I have these skills and I can apply them to your business, to help you make more money, by…”  And you make contacts: not just to help you to get a job, but just to have a network.

Maybe that’s not a very profound insight, but to me it really was.  I apologise to those of you who are thinking “yeah, and?”

So when I visited Charleston for two weeks in the summer of 2015*, I was re-invigorated.  I had a shiny new LinkedIn profile that was up-to-date and quite pushy.  I arranged meetings with a bunch of people, just to connect with them and to see what happened.

And then, the husband of a friend of my wife said “oh, you should get in touch with…”  I did, of course, and we started a dialogue.  Nothing happened immediately, but I was persistent and at the end of September I flew to Charleston for four hours for an interview.  After that I stayed calm but persistent (silently screaming inside, of course) until, two months later, a job offer appeared.  Two and a half years after we first started looking!

What did I learn?  You’ve got to sell yourself, network, and be persistent.  It’s all quite un-English, which is why it was a long lesson to learn.  But I did it, and I am proud of myself.

And this is my new office:

 

 

*  Charlie and Alice were here for 5 weeks

This is my first week at my new job and I’m a bit too busy to write a lot, so here is a small listicle. (That’s a terrible word and I apologise for using it.  It won’t happen again.)

The suspicious Londoner, in case you were wondering, is me.  (Incidentally, this might be the first time I have ever referred to myself as a Londoner, rather than being from Yorkshire – living somewhere for more than 15 years will do this to you.)

The lesson that I’ve learnt is about interacting with people.  In the UK, and particularly in London, virtually everything you do is easiest online.  You shop at Amazon, get your groceries at Ocado (or Tesco), keep in touch with friends on Facebook, and get insurance, utilities, credit cards and bank accounts courtesy of a ridiculous meerkat or an appalling parody of a tenor.

Arriving in the US, we needed car insurance.  So off I go to a website.  The quote is really expensive and when I forwarded it to the local agent asking if they could help reduce it, I had no reply at all (this is you, State Farm).  So Charlie persuaded me that we could do better at the local insurance broker round the corner.  (I would never have done this in London.)  And of course, the quote was cheaper, the cover was better, and he explained everything to us as well.  Mea culpa.

The problem was that while I was farting around with insurance websites, the dealer sold the car Charlie had her eye on.  But again, knowing people came to the rescue and, courtesy of an Englishman called Jools, we found a natty blue Beetle that Charlie, and Alice, love.

I had a similar experience with American Express: fill out a form on the website and wait a fortnight for nothing to happen.  Call them: the card is in the post the next day…

So, Chris, you nasty suspicious Londoner, stop trying to do everything online and start talking to people!

 

This is the question we repeatedly asked ourselves during the week from hell where we packed up the house, put it all in a container, sold the car, sent the bunny rabbits away to be shipped and started living out of a suitcase at my mother-in-law’s flat (though, that was warm, comfy and very welcome).  That was the question I repeatedly asked myself when I was still going to work right up until the day before we left.  And it was the question we repeatedly asked ourselves when we touched down Stateside, and spent several hours sitting in traffic in the rain, not getting anywhere.

But the next morning we got the answer:

I should back up a bit.  Why would a fairly ordinary English family give up a decent life, jobs, school, friends and family in London and move to Charleston, South Carolina?  Well, over the last few years we have holidayed in the USA at least twice a year, culminating in a five-week stint in Charleston over the summer of 2015 which cemented our desire to live in this beautiful part of the world.  The only thing we had to do was to find a way to make some money…

The first port of call was a job website or two… not much luck there.  The second idea was that I could do my London job remotely, but that request fell on deaf ears.  A few more ideas came and went (perhaps I could be a music teacher?  perhaps I could start my own business?) until finally, I made a contact through a friend of a friend and scored myself an interview.

This was not your normal interview.  No suits, ties, or drab office rooms here.  We went for a drive to the South Carolina Aquarium and walked around it, chatting.  We visited the building site that would become new offices.  We had lunch.  Oh yes, and I had flown over from London specifically.  I guess I did OK, because a couple of months later a job offer arrived.

Then it was crunch time: we had to make the decision.  Certainly a move like this is out of my comfort zone so thanks to Charlie for pushing me in the right direction.  Alice, who was seven at the time, had been saying “I don’t want to move to Charleston,” but as soon as she heard I had a job, she asked when she could start packing her room – so I guess she was happy about it too!  Once we had made the decision, it was just a mammoth exercise in logistics: more about this next time.