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

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Thinking of all our friends in Singapore in gridlock traffic and long taxi queues today. Eat some mandarin oranges for us.

Looking back at 2013

I've been reading other expat blogs and have realized that our crazy 2013 is "normal" in our peer group. It feels familiar to be in limbo and constantly on the go. What feels strange is looking forward to 2014 and seeing a more settled life. We don't have any more exotic international trips planned other than to Canada and we might even buy a house and unpack our things from storage. We could have [gasp] a fixed address. I am simultaneously allured and alarmed by this. I have part of me that yearns for a home. I was once a little girl whose heart was broken every time my family moved. But now I'm a woman who needs a lot of travel to feel alive. A happy medium could be having a home but still traveling a lot and perhaps taking on shorter overseas assignments (1 year seems like a very doable length). I want our son to experience other cultures and be aware of the world he lives in but I also want him to belong as I never really did. How this will play out will keep us guessing for years to come.

Now back to my highlights of 2013

Happy Halloween!

20lbs of pure joy

Austen turned six months, jumped up to 12 month clothing and weighed in at 20lbs and 27" at his last Dr's Appointment. His new skills are crawling, pulling himself up to standing and doing some of his favourite yoga moves like downward dog. 

We have been going to new mom groups to meet other little ones. Austen loves his baby play-groups. It's hard to describe the level of glee when he arrives and sees all the babies. He starts to squeal and giggle and doesn't stop his joyful trill till we leave. 

A few days ago we took him to see The Bills concert in Oakland and he sat with his gaze fixed on his uncle Adrian until he was finally lulled off to sleep in the second half. This kid loves concerts!

That's about all our news right now. Hope everyone is having a really great Autumn. xo

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

Summer vacation in BC

The Olsen farm at sunset. Hornby Is.

Our Canada trip is coming to an end tomorrow. It's been a completely packed schedule of family visits. Austen met most of his uncles and aunts and spent lots of time with his grandparents. We've had some great visits with friends we haven't seen in years.

Aside from the thrill of seeing our loved ones we have been really enjoying music on this trip. We saw the Good Lovelies, the Foggy Hogtown Boys, H'Sao, Marie-Josée Lord and Anton Kuerti at the Hornby Festival and Bruce Cockburn and The Bills at the Butchart Gardens concert series. Live outdoor concerts were one of those things we rarely had access to in Singapore so we've been on a bit of a music binge. We're lucky our little guy is still pretty zen even while teething. He's happy to be dragged along to just about anything any time of day or night.

Dance at the Hornby festival 2013

Good Lovlies at the Hornby Festival 2013

A family that travels together

Austen is four and a half months old now. He's over 26", 17.1lbs and comfortably sitting in the 90th percentile range for his age. I'm buying 9-12 month clothes for him! Ahhh, that tiny baby stage was really over in just a few weeks for us. I miss it already.

So a lot has happened since the last post. Joel flew back to Singapore to be a keynote speaker at a big UX conference. It went well and he was "Twitter famous" for a few hours. He caught up with our friends back there and flew back home after a whirlwind three days. He was there for the tail end of the awful haze that made international news and due to the hoarding and up-selling of masks going on in SG he brought with him a whole suitcase of N95 masks for our friends. We have even more appreciation now for our hill-top place here with the crisp clean ocean breeze blowing.

We did our first road trip with Austen and he was really quite cool about it considering how much he loathes the car. We just split our day up into two hour chunks of driving followed by stops for eating and stretching. Definitely a healthier way to travel for the adults in the car too.

A low point of the month was the disappearance of Kopi-o. Folks on Twitter and Facebook probably saw our posts about it. Really it was one of the worst days of my life. We made a huge effort in our search, leafleting and walking the nearby areas and calling him over and over. Joel was the hero in the end. He crawled under a rundown house and saved Kopi-o from a possum fight and ran home with him under his hoodie. Joel was badly scratched up but Kopi-o was thrilled to magically appear back in his safe home.

We're heading up to Canada for our first trip back there together in two years. This will be Austen's 5th plane trip and a first introduction to most of his extended family and a chance for some more concentrated grandparent time. Joel and I will be arriving already exhausted from this past week of me solo parenting and him at another conference. I'm hoping we can finally catch up on some sleep. Ha! Famous last words. Cheers everyone, we hope you're having a great Summer.

Boxes and boxes

We are FINALLY moved in. The moving truck from Canada came first. That shipment was like a time capsule from three years ago. Our life back in Fairfax perfectly preserved. Even the flyers on the fridge were folded neatly in a box as if they were precious documents. We purged and filled a storage locker and sent loads of things off to charities. What we kept completely filled our little apartment here. It took a week to finally get everything put away.

The first moving truck arrived!

Then the Singapore shipment arrived with 99 more boxes and our Balinese four 4 poster bed, dining set and coffee table. Possibly the largest furniture our movers had ever carried into an apartment.

The Singapore stuff was held for nearly three weeks at customs for inspection. This is the first time we've ever had a delay and apparently this is the "new normal." Just out of curiosity I looked at the contents of all the boxes they had chosen to inspect at customs to see if there was some reason for their selection. Each one contained "liquids" in the description on the manifest (perfume, body wash, cleaning supplies etc). You are allowed to bring these things in to the states but it seems that it may be a red flag for customs. Had I known this I would have thrown out those four boxes that were probably worth very little compared to the hassle and expense of three extra weeks of being in a serviced suite.

Boxes examined by US Border Protection

So all of this stuff now lives in our tiny apartment. We've been selling things on Craigslist and have even rented a second storage locker. I'm pretty sure this place is only temporary (perhaps a year, maybe two) so we aren't quite ready to get rid of EVERYTHING.

So our new hood is pretty great. We are so close to the beach, shops, restaurants and farmers markets. We had a great time with Joel's parents checking out all the amenities and now my Dad is here continuing the settling in time with us. Austen has only had one week of his entire life where he didn't have a grandparent staying with him and that week he had his Auntie Nan. It's going to seem pretty dull when all his favourite relatives go home. We are so lucky to have had all this help with him right now.

If you want more photos of Austen I'm only posting them Facebook and  Flickr in a "friends and family only" album of baby photos. Drop me a line if you need help logging in to be able to see that set.