13 years and counting…

Today is the anniversary of the day I moved from England to come live in the USA. Thirteen years. That’s more than a quarter of my life. In fact it’s nearly 50% of my working life. I first moved here in October 1995, at a time of global uncertainty, towards the end of a small global recession that took place in the early to mid 1990s. At the time I was living with the woman who later became my second wife and who is the mother of my two youngest children, trying to eek out a living running my own small business selling computer add-ons, life insurance, investments, and generally anything that would keep me in gainful employment. Times were indeed different from the heady days of the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was traveling back and forth to Taiwan on almost a monthly basis, buying PC parts, designing new laptop computers and generally living what would be called the ‘American Dream’ (although of course I was English and lived in England!). So, when a long time friend of mine suggested that I should move to the USA to start a new career I was suitably excited.

The actual immigration process was long and drawn out and involved a lot of paperwork, form filling and interviewing. It also involved me getting married to my then girlfriend as this was the only way we could both come here to live. That’s not to say this wasn’t something that would have happened anyway, just that it now became another checkpoint on the road to leaving England. As I alluded to above, the process was long and although I first applied for a job in March of 1995, it was October before everything was finally approved. Then it was a case of sort everything out in less than two weeks (including leaving the apartment, selling the car, disposing of furniture that was superfluous, getting the rest of the furniture into storage, and a million other tasks besides). To further complicate matters my wife was pregnant with our son and was unable to travel on that initial journey. So on the 10th October 1995, which is also the birthday of my eldest son who is 24 today, I left with my friend to embark on an adventure that many before me and since have also taken. We flew from London to Orlando and then drove on to Tampa where my friend was living and working and where the company that I was to work for was based. Except that by the time I arrived at the office there were no current contract positions open. It was an unnerving couple of weeks, away from my family, in a foreign country, doing all the things I needed to get sorted (Social Security Number, driving license, etc.), and every day enquiring as to when I could actually start my employment. Eventually I secured my contracting position in Hoover, Alabama, at BellSouth Telecommunications.

I left Tampa to drive to sunny Alabama a few weeks after I had arrived and my friend gave me a piece of advice that has stayed with me all this time. He too was not an American and so he had also had to learn how to survive and flourish in a foreign country. He basically told me two things. Number one, ‘you’ll either go back to England within a year or you’ll stay forever’. And number two, ‘America runs on networking, who you know, not how good you are’. These both proved to be very true pieces of advice. As I left Tampa, which was the only place I had ever been to in America, I was trepidatious of what was going to befall me. I had an 800 mile journey ahead of me across States I had never visited before, to a city I had never heard of. Indeed I had to look on my newly purchased driving map to see exactly where Alabama was. The only thing I knew about Alabama was that it was mentioned in the song ‘Oh Susanna’:

“Oh! Susanna, don’t you cry for me;
I come from Alabama,
with my banjo on my knee.”

I know, I had a very serious American geography problem!

Nonetheless, I duly arrived at my destination and was welcomed by my new manager, and began the task of settling into my rented ‘extended stay’ accommodation. What did I know of such things? Monday morning I drove to the BellSouth offices and reported for duty as a Visual Basic programmer on a small team that was looking to convert some legacy systems to a client server environment. Those early weeks hold some great stories and memorable experiences, but they are probably best left for another day.

In the melee of life that followed, my wife gave birth to our son in England, I went apartment hunting for our family, I bought a car and returned my friend’s borrowed car to him in Tampa, I made new friends, I tried to work out how to fit into American life, and much more besides. Christmas came and went and then finally in the very early New Year of 1996 my family moved out to live with me.

So that was thirteen years ago. So many things have changed in that time. And so many things haven’t changed. We are in a recession once again and the global economy is in a little turmoil. I am now what I consider to be ‘an American’ and view the world through slightly different eyes than I did when I first laid eyes on the flatness that was Florida. I managed to stay more than a year. I also remembered that networking gets you jobs and keeps you in employment, and I have lived several lifetimes worth of experiences in the thirteen years I have called this country my home. During the next few months I will be retelling some of the experiences that are my life; a troublesome Englishman living in the USA.