HOME | A long search has a happy ending

We just closed the sale on a house in Fairfax... It's really happening. I have to pinch myself. We've talked about buying our first home for about a decade but were weren't sure where we wanted to put down roots. Since we lived here between 2007 and 2010 we've talked about it often and wondered if we'd ever have work in this area again. Well work happened and here we are.

Fairfax is a tiny town in Marin County. And where is Marin? If you drive over the Golden Gate Bridge you end up in the rolling hills and redwood forests of Marin.

Our little town is known as the hippi enclave where deadheads and the inventors of mountain biking created a community that reminds us a lot of one of the Gulf Islands back in BC. Funky handmade homes blend into the hillsides, everyone bikes everywhere and the local grocery store is all organic.

Joel took the picture below from the top of our property. You can see a bit of the roof of our house below and our neighbours look-out platform to the right. I want to build my office up here. The GG bridge photo above is looking North and this photo from our place is looking South at the other side of those hills.

We're about an hour and a quarter by bike from Joel's work downtown San Francisco. (It's about a 45 min drive w/o traffic). He has a beautiful ride over the bridge every day. He also has the option of getting on a ferry. My work is about 15-20 minutes away when I need to be at the office in Corte Madera otherwise I work from home. So we're feeling like this place gives us a refuge from the city and some work-life balance.














My family is coming for Christmas and we're just thrilled as we've never had the space before to host. I'm looking forward to kicking back in front of the fireplace and catching up with our loved ones.

Giant pumpkins and hot summer days

I'd nearly forgotten how spectacular the weather is in Marin, especially in the Autumn. Downtown San Francisco is pretty clear this time of year too making for some beautiful ferry rides and brilliant sightseeing days though it's a little colder down there. Our days here are averaging in the high 70s to high 80s (or high 20s and low 30s celsius).

Life is sort-of settling in. We've been here for five weeks and Joel has been on business trips every single week. He's seen more airports than open houses. I've got our new nanny working with Austen and I'm juggling all the household stuff, house hunting and working on my contracts. The house hunt is going very slowly. In the areas we are looking there are only a couple of houses for sale at any given time and the stampede of offers on each one is amazing. Houses are going for 25% or more above the list price and sellers are preferring all cash offers (which are plentiful). We've got this furnished rental covered till new years so the pressure is on to close on a home before then. 

Austen is doing great. He's continuing to astound us with his physical feats (insert some minor heart attacks here too) new words and phrases. He's potty training already (yay!) so we're just thrilled about that. Having half days with his nanny and afternoons with me suits him fine. He's thriving and everyone is happy.

That's all for now! I'll update when there's something to report like... maybe a home. Fingers crossed everyone. 

Arrival in Marin [again]

Well here we are! Waking up back in Marin after a four year hiatus. Joel walked down to the ferry this morning to go into work and Austen and I are about to go fill up the fridge at Good Earth. 

How to pack & move in three days

So we flew home Sunday night and then we packed up and moved three days later. People keep asking us how we managed to pull it off. This is our fourth relocation and this is generally how it goes.

Day one: pre-pack anything that we need to have with us for immediate use. Pre-pack anything we need to have shipped directly to our temporary place for the first month or two. We can do this in one day. This time it took 7 hours.

Day two: packers arrive. This time we just had three guys and they packed up all our furniture, clothes, books etc in about four hours. We spent a few additional hours checking their labels and ensuring errors weren't made

Day three: they filled the truck. This has always been a half day activity for us because we always live in fairly small places though it was a bit longer this time because they had to also stop at our storage locker. Our cleaners arrived at noon and we'd done the walk-through by 2:30. 

And that's how we roll! We had phenomenal support from our neighbours and friends who brought us food so we could just power through and git 'er done. 

As we drove away we decided to take the PCH out of town. A nice way to say good-bye to this chapter and usher in the next. 

Another suitcase in another hall

It's official, we are moving again. In September we'll be packing up our little place here and the other 5000lbs of stuff in storage and heading up to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Joel's work is once again the catalyst for this change but we knew that our time in LA was only going to be temporary. This timing is good for us. Austen is getting bigger and needs more than 500sq feet to live in and I need a proper office. We'll be searching for a house in Marin County close to where we were a few years ago during out last stint in The Bay area. On arrival we'll be in a serviced apartment -- that's Singapore speak for a furnished place -- and will probably be there for 2-3 months till we find something more permanent. Our goal is to be moved in to a real home before Christmas.

How do we feel? Well a little sad to be honest. Our life here in limbo has been so much fun. We were not expecting to enjoy our time in SoCal quite this much.

The move is coming up fast and we are consulting our bucket list of things to do before we leave...

LA Bucket List

The Getty Museums
LACMA
The Huntington Gardens
Griffith Observatory
Disneyland
Attending the Oscars
Concerts at the Santa Monica Pier
Seeing a concert at the Hollywood Bowl
Seeing a concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall
The Gamble House
Take a surfing lesson
The Rose Bowl
Cocktails at the Roosevelt Hotel

What else should we do? Leave a comment if you have an LA must-do suggestion.

Expativersary: our first year in Santa Monica

A year ago we were dragging four heaping luggage carts, a cat carrier and an 8 week old baby through customs at LAX. We marveled at the cold breeze that caught us off guard when the glass doors rolled open and we spilled out out of the arrival doors.

There were many moments in the following weeks that left our mouths agape and eyes wide. So many little details of American life that we'd simply forgotten about. We were still expats. This is not our home country but we'd lived in California before. It was almost a feeling of repatriation but without that same level of let-down we'd have felt if we were shunted back to Vancouver. This was our first destination outside Canada and we felt our time here was cut too short the first time and we'd never lived more than a few months at a time in LA before. Southern California was largely a new place to us.

This re-entry to the US had another new feature. We were on an L1A visa with all the countesy this "premium" visa affords. There has been a sudden lack of hostility at the border. Being on a TN1 or an H1B visa was tumultuous in the past. We've been through many humiliating and terrifying encounters with border guards who were merely underpaid and working under the assumption that all immigrants are inherently evil.

We were able to rush through our Green Card paperwork and these cards should be arriving any day now. Our old drivers licences just needed renewal and my Social Security card was a simple as a 10 minute visit to the Social Security Office where it appears I was ushered to the front of the queue and processed with impossible precision and courtesy. My card arrived a couple of days later. Our lawyers filed for a work permit for me just after we arrived and that too tumbled out of an envelope in the mail in a very short amount of time. It would seem that which visa you get does matter. A lot.

We're looking for a house to buy once the Green Cards do show up. It will be our first home even though over the past 13 years we've looked at buying homes many times. The market has always been too unstable or our jobs too impermanent. It feels funny to be planning more than a year or two ahead and not seeing a new country again on the horizon.

To sum of this year I have to say it's been easy. Making friends and getting oriented in our seaside home has been fun. I have never tired of watching the sun set over the beach every night nor have I ever taken the fresh breeze for granted. I am in love with farm-to-table slow food restaurants we've visited and am so happy to be able to serve up local organic food again for my family.

Of the things we miss, it's our friends back in Singapore and the side trips we used to take we miss the most. We also miss the late night walks in the Botanic Gardens and spicy Peranakan cuisine. I'd love to go back soon for a visit and would welcome another stint of time in SE Asia though right at the moment this is exactly where I'd like to be. Cheers!

Grapevines in Santa Barbara

Wine tasting room in Santa Barbara

Picking Strawberries

The hashtag

I started a thing on twitter where I number my thoughts that I feel are related to reverse culture shock in our move from Singapore to LA. I'm up to 54 now and thought it would be fun to archive them here. It was particularly fun to read the first ones again.

Culture shock #54: smiling! When you smile as you pass someone on the street here they smile back. #reversecultureshock
— Stacey (@singaporestacey) September 2, 2013

53) I've been hit-on more in the past 24 hours than in my past three years in Singapore combined. #reversecultureshock
— Stacey (@singaporestacey) July 21, 2013

52) I had to watch Adventure Time to understand current pop culture references. #lumpies #reversecultureshock
— Stacey (@singaporestacey) July 21, 2013

Moving on

With a mixture of excitement and sadness we are officially announcing our next relocation. Arriving and being an alien in a new land is a big part of the expat experience but so is coping with these bittersweet endings to great adventures. More than anything it's the people we will miss the most. We've built such great friendships in our two years here.

Without further ado, I'll reveal our new location...



Venice Beach, CA!

We used to spend a few months of each year there and feel comfortable with the area. Our families are only going to be a 3 hour little flight away. We're happy to say this is a career centre that works much better for both of us and it will also give us both a chance to get back to working on some side projects that were put on hold while in Singapore.

We think baby Austen is going to be thrilled with his beachside playgrounds and more frequent visits with the grandparents. Kopi-o will eventually forgive us and will hopefully get to play outdoors and hunt something more exciting than tiny ants.

Many of you may have heard through the grapevine that this was in the works but it's taken a very long time to finalize all the details so I'm only getting to announce this 4 and a half weeks before our move! Timing-wise we're right down to the wire. Our visas should be ready in three weeks and Austen should have his passport and Singapore dependent's pass within the next two weeks. He had to get a passport photo when he was four days old! I'm sad that he won't get to have any memory of his life here but he does have a pretty cool birth certificate.

Speaking of Austen, he's been getting some really exciting mail these days and I'm a little worried about anyone mailing stuff beyond this point (mail is very slow getting here). Please contact us for a forwarding address if you are doing any mailing.

Expat basics: before you move to Singapore

I get a lot of messages from people about to move to Singapore who want to know what to do before they arrive. I've only done two international moves but I think we made most of our biggest mistakes the first time and felt pretty on top of things on round two. Here's a list of  things I think are really good to do before you set foot out of your home country. 

Banking Switch your home banking over to an international bank at least a few months before you leave. HSBC and Citibank are good options. Make sure you have some money successfully wired over before you arrive so your first trip to the bank is as smooth as possible. 

Insurance Take out a comprehensive expat health insurance policy from your home country. No, you are not allowed to use travel insurance. We've used David Cummings Insurance in Vancouver and they were great for getting us set up with a plan for our US immigration. We later did a policy with BUPA based in London.

To add an extra note for folks heading to Singapore: I haven't seen any Singaporean health plans that don't absolutely suck. Unless your new job comes with a full expat policy from your home country, assume the local policy they are going to offer you is going to be 80% useless. The crazy thing is, your company's HR department will think their plan is great. They also think it's normal for families to spend all of their retirement savings if someone gets hurt. It's a cultural difference and one that unfortunately can get you in some very serious financial trouble.


A warning to women: expat policies usually do not include maternity coverage. Maternity insurance is an additional policy with a 10 to 12 month waiting period before you can claim. Even the most expensive expat policies do not cover women who are already pregnant. Do not leave your home country pregnant or intend to get pregnant in the first half year of your relocation. I've met far too many trailing spouses in Singapore who ended up playing Russian roulette with their pregnancy. Just to throw a few numbers out there, a C-section could put you out $22,000 sg and a premie baby could be around $250,000 sg. 

Address change.  Moving away when you don't have a forwarding address is really complicated. In Canada you can do int'l mail forwarding but in the US you can't (I guess the US can't imagine anyone leaving?). I recommend getting a mail box at a private mail forwarding company. Set up the address change before you go. Once you arrive, have them bundle mail once a month and send it over. We used Bongo this time and they were awful so just avoid that one. 

The Expat Experience

A lot of people have asked me how the relocation is going so far. I'm surprised to find myself saying that it has been much easier than I thought it would be. In fact, it's been easier than our move to California. One factor is, we've done this before and had a lot of things organized long before we left our last home. Another factor is that Singapore is simply set up for people to arrive from all over the world and be up and running in a few days.

Going to the Ministry of Manpower to get an employment pass was about as complicated as ordering a coffee in Starbucks and took a total of 10 minutes. We found an expat cell phone plan complete with cheap long distance and shorter contracts. We haven't needed credit checks anywhere. The banks seem so un-phased by newcomers, they are willing to set up accounts with the idea that we'll establish a permanent address at a later date. In a country with such modern business infrastructure and so many rules I thought we were going to be fighting The Man at every turn. In reality this well oiled machine knew exactly what to do with us.

If you're wondering what kinds of things we miss, both Joel and I agree that we miss natural cool air though we're finding 24 degrees celsius at night is starting to feel chilly now. Joel misses the good road cycling in California but he's excited to start mountain biking here. We both miss organic local food and good wine. In all we're really happy with our new locale and have no regrets. Cheers!

Farewell Fairfax

The move became real this week. The relocation company arrived on Wednesday and they started packing up boxes. The temperature soared into the upper 90s which made the manual labour extremely tiring. Joel and I had to settle on what exactly needed to be in the container going to Singapore (which we won't see till October) and what needed to travel with us for the next six weeks in Canada. Then we sent our furniture and fall/winter clothes up the coast in a truck to be stored in Victoria.

Our good-bye visits this week were both wonderful and sad. We feel incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to build this kind of community and to get live here.  We will miss strolling around Fairfax at night, the live music and great places to eat and all the weird and wonderful characters wandering around. We'll miss all our fantastic neighbours and Delila, our cat friend. I will miss my school and having all my talented classmates around to critique work. I might not miss room 521 though.

We'll both miss all the great people we met through Joel's work and the many great impromptu gatherings we had. California has been great but it's time to adventure again! Thanks for all the great memories, we'll be back one day.

-Stacey