The trouble with moving

Whenever we move customs has to clear our container at the border and our relocation company spends a lot of hours preparing the manifest and paperwork for this. During the last two moves this was a breeze. This time they pulled our shipment for secondary inspection at the port of Los Angeles and then updated our container's status to "undergoing extensive search." For what? I have no idea. The folks who packed it were the best moving team we've ever had and each and every detail was taken care of. There's not a single thing in there that could possible be a problem. We have to assume it's a random selection.

Looking for a place to stay

The reason this really sucks is our temporary housing check out date is Tuesday (yes, THIS Tuesday) and this place is overbooked so they can't extend us. Our new apartment is empty save Austen's new crib in his bedroom and our enormous fridge. So all of a sudden here we are, four adults, a baby and a cat looking for a place to stay for another week while we wait to move in. It's high season for this area and I have ONE day to somehow find a place with that kind of space and availability. Everyone pray to the apartment gods, or call your long lost cousin at US customs. We're going to need all the help we can get.

Homesickness or just memory appreciation?

Everyone I talk to about travel has a different take on homesickness and a different experience of it. When I was a kid my family moved 3,000 miles and I was a miserable homesick wreak for a year and took longer than that to really settle in. (Lesson learned: move with a 10 year old at your ow risk). Later on in my teens and 20s I moved around quite often within Canada and didn't really have an issue. The difference I think was moving on my terms and having the ability to own feelings of loneliness or nostalgia and put them somewhere more productive.

When we moved to California in 2007 I thought I'd be homesick because that was a big move. I only remember being homesick a couple of times in the first few weeks. After that I was just too distracted with our new challenges to be looking backwards. There were certainly a lot of hurdles in our first year there and it was also on our first expatriation. The learning curve was sometimes a painful one and I was at times frustrated but I wasn't really homesick.

When we did the move to Singapore we were felt like our time in California was cut short since we'd only had 2.5 years there. Our good-byes were tearful and we miss lots of things from that life. Every so often I get a pang when I see a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge or a familiar bottle of wine shows up at Cold Storage (at 4X the price). I'm convinced it's not really homesickness because it doesn't linger and I don't want to head back. It's just a moment of appreciation for a great adventure we had. So I'm re-branding this particular pang as "Memory Appreciation." The well adjusted sister to homesickness and a much better travel companion.

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.