4th of July 2014

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.

June Gloom?

I just wanted to document our suffering here...

LA's famous "June Gloom"... sigh, it's just so...

Obviously my pictures speak for themselves. We're truly on the verge of buying UV lamps to sit under or something. [sigh]

June has been eventful for us. I'm now working! I got really busy with freelance jobs so all of a sudden I had to reorganize my life. A nanny and a house-keeper were hired on to the pick up the slack. Austen loves his new nanny and is happy to play with her and still have mommy cuddles throughout the day. It's truly the best of both worlds for me. Kopi-o has also requested a masseuse be on staff but for the time being his request is on hold.

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

Santa Monica Farmers Market

Settling in again

First of all, we found a place to live! We looked high and low (mostly high though... have you seen west side real estate lately?) and from Hermosa beach to the Palisades. We viewed tiny places in corporate plasticy condo buildings and some total dives. The process was pretty frustrating and unfortunately we had quite a list of must-haves to try to satisfy. In the end we got location and character and took a hit on in-suite laundry and 18 stairs. I know... as a new Mom I'm probably blissfully unaware of what a pain in the ass it's going to be to haul Austen upstairs and haul laundry downstairs but I'm pretty excited about the rest of the perks. We have a little ocean view, our windows let in fresh cool salt air and every room gets sunlight. We're a few blocks from the beach, Main St (Joel's office) and all the shops and restaurants of the shopping district in Santa Monica. We're also by a library and a short walk from Whole Foods. There's no reason to drive anywhere at all. Lots of things are going into storage as our place is a little smaller than the last two places we've had but there's something kinda fun about curating your collection of crap and putting some of it away for some other time.

At 11 weeks Austen's almost rolling over. Every day I'm packing away another outfit he's grown out of. That makes me sad but I'm equally happy to see the bright chirpy boy who appears a little more each day from this tiny infant.

We've had great company in our transition. My mother arrived with us and her departure was chased with the arrival of Auntie Nan and then there was a short overlap as she departed and Joel's parents arrived.

We have yet to actually move into our place as our stuff has not yet reached the port here and then we have customs to clear. I'm hoping we'll finally be in on the weekend of the 8th. After that move-on we can begin to plan a road trip up to SF and Marin. We are aching for that but it has to wait just a little longer. If anyone needs the new address, send me a message or fill on the contact form on this blog here.

Graduation trip part two

I left off at the end of Disneyland. The family, filled with churros, had just left for Canada up the PCH and Joel and I moved into a suite in Santa Monica. Joel started back to work using the LA office nearby and I did what I do when Joel's working in LA: walk up and down the beach, stroll vintage stores, eat amazing food at little cafes and drink really great coffee. People like to hate LA. I get it, the highways inland are hideous, the urban sprawl is epic and there are some major cultural differences between the two sides of California. That said, LA is just a breeding ground of new music, new art new architecture and urban cool in all it's untamed forms. If you situate yourself somewhere like Venice, Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach or any of the west side beach oriented areas it's really not a bad place at all. I love living in jeans and flip flops, having salty wind blowing through my hair and knowing that the next whole foods is probably only five minutes away.