VAIDS

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Expat life: from kale shakes and sunshine to gossip and icy reality

AFTER working alone on the west coast of the US the transfer to an office in New York is a shock.
There was a moment, shortly after I moved my family from one American coast to the other, when the magnitude of what we had done finally hit me.
NEXT TARGET: New York Police Department cars park in Times Square in New York on Thursday. The two men accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing planned a second attack on New York’s Times Square, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Picture: REUTERS
While gingerly walking down the steps that lead from our Brooklyn street to another one below, I slipped on some ice and bounced the rest of the way down on my back. Lying at the foot of the stairs, dazed, aching and staring up at the slate grey sky, it struck me that Santa Monica was a very, very long way away.
Work relocation requires personal as well as professional adjustment and I have been fortunate enough to try it twice. In 2006 my wife and I swapped London for Los Angeles; then, 18 months ago, now with three children in tow, we moved again — trading sun-kissed, southern California for the slightly less sun-kissed environs of New York City.
Before both moves, we had to contend with friends and colleagues who weighed in with unsolicited advice and warnings.


"You’re mad," one Los Angeles friend said before the move east. "You’re supposed to move from New York to LA, not the other way round."
He had a point. I had met those New York transplants who trade the cold weather and cramped apartments for airy houses, sandy beaches and year-round sunshine. But we had heard similarly gloomy warnings before our move from London to LA, and the dire predictions about plastic people and traffic proved unfounded.
I admit, though, that in my first few months in New York it occurred to me on more than one occasion that I had made an awful mistake, usually when fighting my way through the rush hour on the subway to the Financial Times office. One morning I was delighted to find myself on a completely empty train, my happiness evaporating only once it dawned on me that I was heading in the wrong direction and was on my way to Queens, not Manhattan.

All expats have to deal with change. In LA, the daily sunshine means the seasons blur into each other whereas in New York there are clear seasonal differences. The extremes are greater, with stultifying summers and Game of Thrones-style winters.
One evening in Brooklyn, shortly after my tumble down the stairs, I resolved to clear the thick layer of ice covering the front steps of our house. We had used up the industrial-sized bag of salt the previous tenant had left in our basement so I set about the ice with a hammer. Only, I had misplaced our hammer so I used the only one I could find: a small one with a dainty head that my wife used to make jewellery. As I sat there, miserably tapping on the step, hands numb and small shards of ice hitting me in the face, our neighbour emerged from her house, politely asking if I was all right.
There were no such issues in LA. I had got used to the sunshine, the nearby beach and the peculiar food orders of diet-obsessed dining companions (on one of my final meals there a friend ordered a kale shake and a soy-cheese omelette).

In LA, I didn’t have to commute because I worked from home, which was a big change from working in the FT’s London office. In LA, I would take my children to school each morning, return home, say goodbye to my wife and walk a few yards to the small office adjoining the garage. There I would settle down to work at my desk — alone. With no colleagues to exchange gossip with or annoy, it was a solitary existence. I had to force myself to go out every day to see other humans to avoid turning into Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining.
In New York I was once again working in a real office, which required another period of transition. For the first few weeks I would jump every time someone walked behind my chair. I also had to unlearn the habit I had picked up in LA of talking to myself while typing.

Whether it was the weather, the commuting, or having to wear a tie again, those first few months in New York were miserable. But then, slowly, things began to get better. I had been worried about my children being cowed by the harsh weather but they rush outside every chance they get, rain or shine. I began to appreciate all of the things New York has to offer and also adjusted to an office environment again to the extent that I felt comfortable throwing balls of paper at the banking editor when he wasn’t looking.
Yes, the Yorkshire terrier-sized rats I see frolicking on the subway tracks take a bit of getting used to and, yes, the sweltering summer streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan are ripe with smells I never thought existed.
But none of that has dented my belief that work relocation is positive and rewarding. If, as the new year looms, your thoughts turn to working in a new and different region, give it a try. Just take care on icy stairs.

• The writer is the FT global media editor.

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