How to get things over the Atlantic: people and money

Well, our American friends did make it. They had two nights on the West Coast instead of four, which was a shame, but then we had a lovely few days together here. Lovely.

Speaking of the difficulty of getting things over the Atlantic, I don't think I ever told you about the woes of getting our money over, when we sold our house in America. It's a bad enough feeling to be paying a monthly mortgage on a house which isn't shifting, but when you've finally sold it, have been to the American Consulate to sign all the papers in front of a notary, and spent an anxious day waiting for the confirmation email from your realtor, the last thing you want to find is that you can't get your money over to join you. That's a very bad feeling.

Before we left the US, we checked with the Bank of America (with whom we'd had a current account for 5 years) how we would get our money over into our UK account. Oh, no problem, they said. Hah. What they hadn't told us was that we would spend hours and hours... and hours... trying to work out how to transfer a large sum of money abroad. Hours spent online, and hours spent on the phone, getting through all their security systems, and trying to speak to an actual human, and then indeed speaking to an actual human or two, before finally admitting defeat. I suppose, to be fair to them, as a bank, you're always setting up systems which have to juggle ease of customer use against security. A tough balancing act. I'm trying to be fair-minded here. The last thing I would have wanted is for someone else to have nabbed that money. However, I have to say that the last straw wasn't the hours of frustration (at least a full working day...), but the fact that ultimately we couldn't even do it - I don't like being ultimately thwarted. It also rankled that we'd taken steps to check in advance, and had been assured there'd be no problem.

I can't even remember all the details, but I do recall that the bank wanted to send us a security code by mobile phone. The mobile phone had to be a US mobile phone. We, of course, didn't have one by that stage. We were working on some cunning plan whereby we gave the number of a friend's mobile phone in the US, and then they emailed us the code, and then we phoned the bank, but there was some reason why we couldn't do that - I can't remember exactly. Foiled again! Whenever we found some possible way, there was always a ceiling which was a few thousand pounds, and having sold a house, we needed a higher ceiling than that. We must have been desperate, because I remember at one point working out with Husband what would be the cost of getting the money out of a cashpoint till in the UK, little by little, over weeks, using our Bank of America debit card. Not a great option, and we worked out it would be hugely expensive.

What we did in the end was to set up an account with a company that specialises in money transfer. It felt a bit risky, but Husband did lots of research online, and the reviews seemed ok. World First worked fine for us. It didn't have that nice, solid, big institution feel to it that Bank of America did, but I guess we're the last generation who will feel emotionally drawn to that kind of big bank for safety. Those big institutions have really let the consumer down over the past decade or so, and they're going to have a lot of competition from people like World First, who we found to be very customer-focused and efficient.

Travelex is another foreign currency exchange company who specialise in international money transfers. I have no direct experience of Travelex, but if you're on the learning curve that we had to climb up, then do yourself a favour and take a short cut. Read some reviews, have a look at some expat chat forums. These new, lean, internet-based companies have a lot to offer the expat.

Disclaimer: For writing this post, I received a small payment from Travelex. The views are my own.
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Geographical locations come and go, but blogs go on forever

Of course the great thing about blogging is that even when your life moves geographically, your blog can stay where it is, in its own little cosy corner of the blogosphere. I find that settling, in a life which is suddenly in a whirl. So a big thank you, THANK YOU, to whoever nominated me for the Brilliance in Blogging awards (short lists here). Seems I am short-listed in two categories: I am "Lit!" (as in literary, I think, not as in all alight and on fire), and "Inspire!". You are very very kind, and you may just have persuaded me to keep blogging (for yes, dear Bloggy Friends, it had crossed my mind that once I am no longer an expat writing an expat blog, my blogging days will be over...).

So... I'm in the category "Inspire!", which is lovely of you all. I'm going to let you into a secret. When you have cancer, it's not difficult to be inspiring, because people kind of give you that label without you having to try. But I hadn't reckoned on the cancer effect not wearing off for a couple of years. Nearly three, actually. That's rather nice.

However, since I am about to return to the country where self-deprecation is the norm, I thought I should dust off my skills in this department, and share with you one way in which I have been totally uninspiring this week.

I wrapped the side of my car round a small post, about 18 inches high. It serves me right for using a bank drive-thru (sorry, I have to spell it that way). That is about the third time in five years in the US that I have used the drive-thru, partly as a matter of principle - what is so hard about parking your car, and walking into a building, for heaven's sake? - and partly because I didn't know how you actually operated a drive-thru and was too embarrassed to ask anyone. Or perhaps I had some dreadful premonition, that I would meet a sticky end in a drive-thru, and was avoiding them, but as fruitlessly as the King and Queen who banned all spindles from their kingdom, in an attempt to stop their Princess pricking her finger. Her destiny was to fall asleep for a hundred years. Mine was to mash up the driver's door, the passenger's door, and - ooh, my reactions were slow that day - the back wheel arch of my minivan. She dozed through a century, to be awakened by a Prince's gentle kiss. I endured the mirth of the Bank of America employees watching me from behind the big glass window as I got out to inspect the damage, and then phoned Husband to confess (who was very nice about it, though you can't get a kiss - gentle or otherwise - down a mobile phone). She planned a wedding and drifted off into the sunset. I looked up my car insurance documents, and discovered that we have a deductible of $1,000.

The incident did, however, give me a wonderful opportunity to model to my children how to react to such a situation. First off, I parked the car, and went into the bank to pay in the check. Yes, I did. I am nothing if not determined, when it comes to standing up to inappropriate bank merriment in the face of customer misfortune. I was definitely not going to slink away. I even remembered to make the kids stay in the car, so that they wouldn't get the free tooth-rotting lollipops that the bank gives out to them. (Ah... THAT was why I was doing the drive-thru... I knew there must have been a reason, apart from Destiny, of course.) Then I can't quite recall the details, but it involved shouting at the children, and subsequently listening while 14-yo, bless his tactful teenage heart, helpfully pointed out that I often tell him, if he is angry, not to take it out on another member of the family, and engaging him in a lively discussion about how this situation was in no way comparable to any previous one in which I had given that instruction. See? That is just how inspiring I am.

Oh, and the best bit was this. The reason that I crumpled the side of the car so convincingly, and spread it with the bright yellow paint with which the post was painted (bright yellow... so that people can't miss it...), was because when I heard the bang and the crumply noise, I thought to myself "ooh, don't cardboard boxes make a lovely bang and a lovely crumply noise when you drive over them?". Yup. Pretty darn inspiring, wouldn't you agree?

Reasons to be cheerful: Part I

Now, in the interests of redressing the balance following my miserable gloom of last week-end, I’m going to tell you about something that I really like about here. Thunderstorms. We’ve had a couple of humdingers this week. The good thing is, it won’t be long before the next one. Not that they’re really frequent, but frequent is a relative thing. Think about it if you’re reading this in Britain. When was the last time you had a good thunderstorm? And the time before that? See. Hardly ever. And how long did they last? A measly 20 minutes? Here they rumble around for hours.

Thunderstorms here are magnificent. The thunder rolls and booms and cracks. The lightning flashes just like in movies, or when children fiddle with the light switch. Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark. We get that proper forked lightning too. Lots of it. Like the finger of a divine being: “You, yes, you, Iota Manhattan, this one is for YOU”. And zap! You can see it crackling its way down to the intended spot. Actually, I shouldn’t joke, as lightning strikes do account for deaths and injuries here, and it is treated with respect. I’m told you shouldn’t be on the phone or use the computer during a lightning storm, (although there are those of us who will risk personal safety for the sake of our blog readers). People feel uneasy about being outside. Outdoor pools are closed if there is a threat of lightning, and this morning’s preschool trip to the pumpkin patch was cancelled. The words ‘rain’ and ‘mud’ were mentioned, but lightning was given as the reason.

Thunderstorms can hog the stage and perform on their own, without it raining, which I find very exciting. Of course they do bring rain too. Proper rain. Torrents of the stuff, lasting for ages. You get veritable rivers running down the sides of the roads, and the drainpipes flow like taps. Proper rain. Not that drizzle that passes for precipitation in the UK. Over there on the eastern side of the Atlantic, you’re really quite pansy-ass when it comes to a good storm. Bigger and wetter, that’s the style here. Something else I like about rain here is that it doesn’t have to be cold. We’re not talking tropical conditions like the monsoons or anything, but certainly, you can have a warm day that doesn’t turn cold just because the rain has come. I like that. Why should rain always equal cold? Huh? Here, you can be out in the rain in your flip-flops (remember this detail, it becomes significant later on).

So thunderstorms are good. And today it turned out that lollies in banks are good too. Lollies in banks. Usually I hate lollies in banks. Does my child really need a sugar fix just because I’ve paid in a cheque? “Don’t waste your money” I always want to say. “Lollies are not necessary. What else are you frittering away my cash on? Stop the lollies and lower your overdraft charges.” But today, nothing to do with the very satisfying thunderstorm, at least I don’t think so, although you never know how these things tie up in some cosmic realm, I even found a purpose for lollies in banks.

I was going to the bank after school pick-up (why?), so I had three children with me. One, the smallest, was running about in a wild fashion that in Britain would have made me feel rather self-conscious, but here, doesn’t make me feel quite so bad, as they seem a bit more relaxed about noisy children (oh look, did you spot that? Another nice thing about America has sneaked in. I could run a Spot the Nice American Thing competition at this rate. By the way, did you notice the word ‘pansy-ass’ a few paragraphs ago. That’s another. I didn’t know that word a year ago.) Anyway, she was running up and down, with the Burt’s Bees lip salve (oh, there’s another one) she’d stolen out of my handbag, saying “guess where I’ve put lipstick, I’ve put it all over everywhere” and giggling hysterically. This might have embarrassed me, but I knew that (a) she was talking about her own body, as evidenced by the hoiking up of her t-shirt to display her belly button which I could imagine is a pretty tempting target for a lip salve when you are 3 years old, (b) she was laughing so raucously that I knew no-one else would be able to understand a word she was saying and (c) lip salve is clear so that if there had been some collateral damage on the furniture and fittings that I hadn’t witnessed, we’d be long gone by the time it was discovered.

It happened. She tripped over her flip-flops (hah! remember?), her pink bejeweled flip-flops, measured her length and landed on her front, the fall accompanied by a dull 'bop' sound as her little forehead hit the bank floor, since her hands were too busy clutching the lip salve and its lid to be any use in saving her. There was much yelling and sobbing, which continued for a while. Then a while longer. Then, after a pause which only the most heartless of mothers would interpret as resulting from a quick assessment of the size and interest-level of the audience (both satisfactory), a while longer. At this point, the helpful bank lady started talking about ice packs and cold water (more yelling, louder yelling), and I could feel the situation was getting out of hand. So I put aside my pride, and there on my knees in that Bank of America, I uttered some words which I never thought I would utter in a bank. I asked “Do you have any lollies here?”

I suppose I should be honest, and tell you that actually I was rather inarticulate at this point. Kneeling on the floor, arms round yelling child, hands fumbling with lip salve and lid, I was struggling for the right word. I was hesitating to say “Do you have any suckers here?” which is what kids call lollies. It didn’t seem a very appropriate turn of phrase for use in a high street bank. So I started with ‘popsicles’, which I knew was wrong as soon as I’d said it (they’re the frozen ones), and quickly diverted to ‘lollies’ (not right either), which I tried to segue into ‘lollipops’, but I fear I produced some burbling sound somewhere between the three attempts. The nice bank lady understood me though, and of course the end of the story is that they did indeed have lollies there. They had a particularly nice pink and purple stripy one (you see why I wonder about cosmic realms), and all was well. The boys managed to sneak one each too.

Thunderstorms. Lollies in banks. Reasons to be cheerful: Part I.