Going native, slowly
The lessons of life abroad are found in the routine interstices of daily life. We’ve encountered challenges in setting up our life here but not because this place is so radically different; it’s because this place is so deceptively similar.
There are a few things a middle-class family must do to get up and running in a new place: find a home, fill the apartment with the things needed for life, set up a checking account, get a local cell phone number, subscribe to a broadband Internet service provider. Luckily, we don’t require daycare or schooling for Bobby at the moment.
We managed to find an apartment with the help of a real estate agent hired by my employer. Most of the apartments we saw were awkward in some way. In the end, we found one that’s acceptable, but we are surprised at how many fees and taxes accompany a rental property in the U.K. My wallet hurts. Ouch.
Very annoying has been the extreme background checks we've had to go through, and the extreme disorganization of these property agents. Every day for a week there was a new request for documentation from us -- passports, local residence cards, marriage certificate. You'd think this was the FBI trying to certify our identities.
Our apartment is in a new building in a gentrifying neighborhood. As we walk to local supermarket, we rub shoulders on the streets with, among others, Londoners of West Indian, African, and Middle Eastern descent. In so doing I feel a bit bad if I’m part of their displacement. But there is also a dedicated wine and cheese store only a few blocks away, and we’ve already had Italian-style pizza at two different places. Our apartment also has a surprisingly good view of central London. In addition, while not a sign of gentrification, it is immensely useful for us: there is a Chinese supermarket very close.
Being able to make payments in the form demanded locally has been a huge hassle, and I’m sorry to any foreigners to the U.S. that couldn’t get a bank account or credit card. Credit cards are widely used in the U.K., but perhaps not quite as widely in the U.S. So far, we have not been able to sign up for an Internet service provider, a subscription to the London Review of Books, or a mobile phone contract. I also can’t yet get a corporate phone or credit card. All of these require a local bank account so that they can pull the funds directly each month from the bank. A credit card can’t be used. Also, Amazon.co.uk has twice locked me out of my account after trying to make large purchases with a US credit card. They are not presently acknowledging my requests to unlock the account. I am not committing fraud, idiots.
We can’t get a local bank account until we can prove we are living here. We could do that with our newly signed lease, except that we signed our lease digitally, and that’s not accepted by the banks as valid proof of address. The struggle continues.
In the meantime, we are without some products we wish we had. Christine has cell phone service because she bought an expensive pay-as-you-go plan, which works only intermittently in the apartment, but I am without a phone or a number for now. We don’t generally have an Internet connection, except for Christine’s phone, and then I can use the Internet at work when I’m supposed to be working. On Craigslist we bought some household items we need, but the rest we plan to order online. It would really help to have access to Amazon. Bastards.
Remembering my earlier adventures living abroad, I am used to this adjustment period. For the first month or so in India, I felt so annoyed with the place I expected I would never go back. At the end of my three-month stint, I had figured out how to live daily life there, I had friends, and I didn’t want to leave. It just takes time to figure out how to do the things you want to do and how to learn how the locals do them. Also, I was a single man scrimping and saving at all opportunities in those days. Now, I have a family, and we’ve grown used to a higher quality of living than I in my early 20s. If we had showed up in London and sat for three weeks without contact with my firm like I did when I arrived to Ethiopia, surely Christine would kill me or just force us to go back to the States or just take Bobby to Singapore, leaving me to lead my dangerous rebel adventures alone.
Of course the FD Linges fancy ourselves as adventurers who are able to go native in whichever place they find themselves. But you can’t just get off a plane and go native. It takes time to learn the native ways. It takes even more time when you’ve turned into a bunch of fancy pants bourgeois members of the professional class who maybe just aren’t quite the wily adventurers of 10 years ago.
There are a few things a middle-class family must do to get up and running in a new place: find a home, fill the apartment with the things needed for life, set up a checking account, get a local cell phone number, subscribe to a broadband Internet service provider. Luckily, we don’t require daycare or schooling for Bobby at the moment.
We managed to find an apartment with the help of a real estate agent hired by my employer. Most of the apartments we saw were awkward in some way. In the end, we found one that’s acceptable, but we are surprised at how many fees and taxes accompany a rental property in the U.K. My wallet hurts. Ouch.
Very annoying has been the extreme background checks we've had to go through, and the extreme disorganization of these property agents. Every day for a week there was a new request for documentation from us -- passports, local residence cards, marriage certificate. You'd think this was the FBI trying to certify our identities.
Our apartment is in a new building in a gentrifying neighborhood. As we walk to local supermarket, we rub shoulders on the streets with, among others, Londoners of West Indian, African, and Middle Eastern descent. In so doing I feel a bit bad if I’m part of their displacement. But there is also a dedicated wine and cheese store only a few blocks away, and we’ve already had Italian-style pizza at two different places. Our apartment also has a surprisingly good view of central London. In addition, while not a sign of gentrification, it is immensely useful for us: there is a Chinese supermarket very close.
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| From our window and balcony you can see the Shard, the Cheesegrater, the Gherkin, and St. Paul's. Alas, we cannot see the Glass Gonad. The camera lens makes a deceiving photo here because the buildings look closer in person. You'll have to come visit to see for yourself. |
Being able to make payments in the form demanded locally has been a huge hassle, and I’m sorry to any foreigners to the U.S. that couldn’t get a bank account or credit card. Credit cards are widely used in the U.K., but perhaps not quite as widely in the U.S. So far, we have not been able to sign up for an Internet service provider, a subscription to the London Review of Books, or a mobile phone contract. I also can’t yet get a corporate phone or credit card. All of these require a local bank account so that they can pull the funds directly each month from the bank. A credit card can’t be used. Also, Amazon.co.uk has twice locked me out of my account after trying to make large purchases with a US credit card. They are not presently acknowledging my requests to unlock the account. I am not committing fraud, idiots.
We can’t get a local bank account until we can prove we are living here. We could do that with our newly signed lease, except that we signed our lease digitally, and that’s not accepted by the banks as valid proof of address. The struggle continues.
In the meantime, we are without some products we wish we had. Christine has cell phone service because she bought an expensive pay-as-you-go plan, which works only intermittently in the apartment, but I am without a phone or a number for now. We don’t generally have an Internet connection, except for Christine’s phone, and then I can use the Internet at work when I’m supposed to be working. On Craigslist we bought some household items we need, but the rest we plan to order online. It would really help to have access to Amazon. Bastards.
Remembering my earlier adventures living abroad, I am used to this adjustment period. For the first month or so in India, I felt so annoyed with the place I expected I would never go back. At the end of my three-month stint, I had figured out how to live daily life there, I had friends, and I didn’t want to leave. It just takes time to figure out how to do the things you want to do and how to learn how the locals do them. Also, I was a single man scrimping and saving at all opportunities in those days. Now, I have a family, and we’ve grown used to a higher quality of living than I in my early 20s. If we had showed up in London and sat for three weeks without contact with my firm like I did when I arrived to Ethiopia, surely Christine would kill me or just force us to go back to the States or just take Bobby to Singapore, leaving me to lead my dangerous rebel adventures alone.
Of course the FD Linges fancy ourselves as adventurers who are able to go native in whichever place they find themselves. But you can’t just get off a plane and go native. It takes time to learn the native ways. It takes even more time when you’ve turned into a bunch of fancy pants bourgeois members of the professional class who maybe just aren’t quite the wily adventurers of 10 years ago.
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| Bobby holding his new library card. Islington Central Library is nearby. Bobby is obviously excited by all of the books he will check out and throw around the apartment (hopefully someday reading them). |
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