I Might Still Be in Luton If Not For the Web

Some of my American friends, knowing that I do so much on the Internet, think that I must use it to keep in touch with friends and family in England. The truth is, with the exception of my Brother, who got his first computer just a month or two back, very few of them have access to the Internet. Or if they do, they rarely use it. So, having been online since before the widespread use of the World Wide Web (I was around in the days of online Bulletin Board Systems), I've been a bit of a pioneer.


As I've written elsewhere, I met my American Wife (while I was living in my home town of Luton, England) through a mutual love of American folk music. We were both on a discussion group for singer-songwriter Dar Williams, when she e-mailed me about something I said on the group. A friendship grew over the Internet, which turned into love.


When we married, I moved here, and while I was waiting for a work permit, I took an online course to keep my computer skills up to date. A chance e-mail to my instructor led to him employing me. I've worked for the company for around ten years.


These days, I have made many friends through the Internet, on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Using e-mail, the Web and Social Media sites has helped me with my work for local nonprofit and community groups. Of course, it has enabled me to write my blog, which is a welcomed creative outlet. I'm grateful too, that I have a small group of faithful readers, scattered around the globe


As someone who has always been a little shy, I do believe that if it wasn't for the Internet, I might still be living in my home town of Luton.

A Community Within a Community - Carmen's Story

I met Carmen Villadar (@digitalfemme) on Twitter a while back, when we had an impromptu brainstorming session about business start-ups in the current economic climate. It was enough to convince me that we have very similar views about many things. Then she very kindly offered to proofread my blog posts and offer comments before I published them. It's great to have a second opinion before I "go to press."

When I started wondering about how other people coped, living in a country other than the one in which they were brought up, Carmen was an obvious person from which to solicit an opinion. She was born in The Philippines, but immigrated to Canada when she was three. After spending her childhood and young adulthood in Toronto, she moved to Texas to pursue a career in nursing. She lived in Texas for eleven years.

Participating in Second Life, a popular online "virtual world," Carmen met a man from Frankfurt, Germany. Cutting a long story short, they fell in love, and Carmen moved to Frankfurt in 2007. Once she was able to get her work permit, she became a freelance business English trainer. She now works in Business development for a company that is seeking to expand into Europe.

I wondered whether she had become involved with local organizations as a way of trying to become part of her local community. Actually, Carmen has taken a slightly different path. While she has been able to meet her personal goals, it seems to me that she is not sure whether she has really succeeded in becoming part of her community yet.

Each time she has moved, it has been because of a personal connection she has made. When she moved to Texas, it was because a family member living there recommended it. Her move to Frankfurt came about because of "Second Life."

Carmen has made many of her connections online, via Social Networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Her current job came about after a conversation on Twitter with an employee for the company and a Facebook chat with the CEO. Perhaps more importantly, these sites enable her to remain connected to friends from Toronto and Texas and to chat in English with friends around the world.

One of the biggest barriers to becoming completely comfortable in Frankfurt, where she currently lives, is not being fluent in German. What she has done to get around this is to build her own community, really a "community within a community." She has started a couple of networking groups in Frankfurt, Frankfurt Girl Geek Dinners, and Open Coffee Club Frankfurt. She feels safe within this microcommunity. Instead of breaking out into her locality, she invites people from outside to join her.

It occurs to me that Carmen could do what she is currently doing in Frankfurt in just about any part of the world. Could she be part of a new breed of "World-citizen," living in a world without borders?

I would love to hear your comments about Carmen's story. Perhaps I can persuade Carmen to stick around and answer any questions you have.

A New Jerseyan in England

I had a very interesting conversation via Twitter, the social networking site, over the weekend. I was talking with Debra Denton, known on Twitter as @debra47, an American woman married to an Englishman and living in England. In addition to us living in each other's countries (she also comes from New Jersey) and being married to a native, we have quite a few other things in common. She is also a blogger. Her blog is Power Pop Review. We both moved to another country to get married quite late in life. We also both met our spouses over the Internet because of a mutual love of music. As I have mentioned on this blog in the past, I met my Wife on the Internet discussion group for singer-songwriter Dar Williams. Debra met her husband on the now sadly defunct music site Audiogalaxy.

Our conversation began when a comment about wine evolved into a little conversation about single malt scotch, which I adore, but cannot really afford here in the US. Debra developed a taste after a tour of a whisky distillery a while back. What became the most interesting part of our conversation started when she asked me what I missed about England, apart from fish & chips and single malt scotch. I told her I missed my local pub. Of course, I might be missing it even if I was back in England. We talked about the alarming rate at which pubs in the UK are closing (at the time of writing, six pubs are closing each day). High beer prices and a recent ban on smoking in pubs seem to have resulted in most people deciding to stay at home. There they can smoke, drink cheap supermarket booze and watch their widescreen TVs.

Debra told me that what she misses most about New Jersey is being able to find a diner, with a huge, reasonably priced menu, open 24 hours a day. She believes that she is healthier since she moved to England, because she is able to walk much more than she was able to in New Jersey. Although my particular neighborhood is pretty walkable (I told her my family had walked to a new diner just the previous day, much to her surprise), much of New Jersey is not pedestrian-friendly. People get in their cars to drive a few blocks. On recent trips back to the US, Debra noticed that many "downtown" areas (town centres) have disappeared as large superstores appear on the outskirts of towns, pretty much sucking the heart out of them.

In my adopted hometown, Edison, New Jersey, many people work elsewhere, and only come back to Edison to sleep. With their long hours, there is no time to get involved in things going on locally. This is happening in the US and in the UK. Debra suggested that perhaps this lack of community is what has drawn both of us, along with many others, into Internet-based groups. I suggested that if more companies allowed their workers to telecommute when practical, it might help restore local communities because people would be around much more, and it would help the environment. Many employers fear that if they are not standing over their workers, they will waste time. However, I have found that telecommuting, with its lack of physical distractions, often results in increased productivity.

We discovered that we were both regularly asked, "Do you prefer it over here or over there?" We have the same answer too: "There's good and bad in both." We can both honestly say that there are things we love and dislike about our countries of birth and our adopted homes. We are caught between two cultures and we get the best and the worst of each.

We also both get comments about how our accents have not changed. Debra is asked a lot if she is a Canadian. I wondered if that was perhaps because people hoped she was not American, because in the UK, Americans have often been tarred with the "Bush brush." Debra says that she has certainly experienced some anti-Americanism, but that it seems to be subsiding since the election of President Barack Obama.

I have invited Debra to write a guest post in this blog, and she has said that she would love to. I think it would make an interesting counterpoint to my own posts here.

Are you living in a country other than the one in which you were brought up? Perhaps you have a friend in this situation. Please do post a comment and share your observations.

Be Mine, Valentine!

On this St. Valentine's Day, I wanted to outline the main differences between Valentine's Day in Britain and in the US.

In Britain, the tradition is to send Valentine's cards anonymously to the person or people in whom you are interested. I have since found out that the probable origin of this is a Lancashire tradition, which actually may go back to Roman times. Apparently, eligible young men and women put cards with their names on into two separate piles, and each girl and boy took a card at random. Each person made their own subsequent arrangements, having a choice of two options.

When I moved to the US, I was surprised to find out that people sign their Valentine's cards. Not only that, but it is customary for children to bring tiny little cards (and sometimes candy) to school for every child in class. I clearly remember the difficulty of trying to sneak a card into the locker or bag of girls I "fancied" at school.

My Wife has indulged me in my preference for anonymous cards.

Talking of indulgence, I wanted to hijack this blog post for personal reasons. If it all proves too much, I recommend the Wikipedia article on Valentine's Day.

Firstly a cute story: My four year old daughter went to her dance class this week, and one of the little girls in her class had brought Valentine's cards and gifts for everyone. Not knowing who would be there, her Mother had written who they were from, but had not written the names of any of the intended recipients. She handed a bag of them to the teacher to hand out. Each time my daughter (who is an excellent reader) was given a Valentine, she tried to give it to the girl the card was from. She thought it had been given to her by mistake.

Last, but certainly not least, I have been sick for the last few days, and it has rather limited my plans as far as Valentine's cards or gifts are concerned. Therefore, I am taking advantage of this very public channel to wish my Wife B. a Happy Valentine's Day. I think it's legitimate that I share it here, since she is the reason I moved to the US in the first place, and she continues to be my inspiration.

With All My Love

From

Your Biggest Admirer

There's No Sleeping at the INS!

Did you ever see the movie Green Card, with Gerard Depardieu and Andie McDowell? An American woman and a French man marry in order for him to get a Green Card. They spend much of the movie studying each others' habits, living arrangements, etc., so they'll appear to be a genuine couple. Ever think that it might present a realistic view of what it's like for an American woman to marry someone from outside the United States? Think again!

Bear in mind that the events I describe took place pre-9/11, so heaven only knows what the process is like now. It was also a grueling bureaucratic procedure that I've tried to push to the back of my mind, so the sequence of events is probably off, and I've no doubt forgotten many aspects of it.

Pretty much as soon as I'd proposed to B. we started researching what we'd have to do to get me into the country. Fortunately, we were both net-savvy, and there were online discussion groups full of couples who had been in, or were going through similar situations to us. We found out that, although tedious, the process was something we could do ourselves, without the help of an attorney, which would save us some money.

So first B. had to apply to what was then the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) - what is now USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) - for permission for me to come over to the US on what is known as a "Fiance Visa." We didn't know how long that would take to process, so we couldn't, of course, make any plans until we received the visa. When we received the go-ahead, we only had a 90-day window in which to get married. Yep, that's right - we had to plan a wedding in addition to planning for me to get over to the States within 3 Months. We got our approval in December 1998. I was over by Christmas 1998, and we were married in March 1999.

I have to say, even given the limited time we had, we had the best wedding! It fitted our personalities perfectly. It was held at a little tea-room which we had often visited together. It had a small art-gallery attached, so we had the wedding in the art-gallery and the reception in the tea-room. Unlike many couples, we actually got to enjoy our little wedding, surrounded by family and friends, one friend providing the music, another performing a song she'd written for us.

Of course, the immigration process was still not over for us. Once we were married, we had to initiate the Green Card procedure. Once we'd completed the paperwork and submitted the various documentation and filing fees, it was a waiting game, but one with some rules that we had to be aware of.

Firstly, if I wanted to work, I had to apply for a separate work permit. That was worth doing, because it takes a long time to get a Green Card. One other thing we had to take care of was something known bizarrely as "Advance Parole." This means that if we wanted to leave the country for any reason, we needed permission for me to do so, otherwise I would be considered as having abandoned my Green Card application and wouldn't be allowed back in the US. This has sadly happened to some couples, resulting in them being separated for months on end.

We were dealing with Newark INS. They did not let you make appointments to see them to get Advance Parole. All we could do is line up on the street at 4am with the several hundred others waiting to get into the building when it opened. They would only allow a certain number of people in during the day, so if we didn't get there in time, we were out of luck. When we eventually got into the building, there was a further wait during a shift change. Many people sat on the floor while waiting. B. actually lay down and rested her eyes for a while, during which time a security guard prodded her with his foot, saying "There's no sleeping at the INS!" Eventually we got herded into another room, which had its blinds closed. It'd all taken such a long time to get this far, that we had no concept of the time. We pulled the blinds aside a little to look outside and almost immediately a head popped up above a partition, telling us that we were not allowed to look outside! After going through all this, at least I had my Advance Parole approved, which allowed us to visit my parents in England.

Eventually, my Green Card came through. We were given an appointment at Newark for an interview prior to getting it. That was the closest we ever got to the situation portrayed in "Green Card." Our one and only trick question came when the woman conducting our interview asked Becky how I spelled my surname. I've spent just about my whole life spelling my name for people, so I started blurting it out, before B. shot me a look, and I realized that she was being tested. And she did get it right!

How Much?

Many of you will be familiar with the early days of a "serious" relationship. It can be quite an expensive time, since you have not yet settled into the humdrum routine of spending nights watching TV, getting the recycling ready to go out, and so on. Instead, you're going out to restaurants and doing lots of fun stuff. Now imagine what this period might be like for a long-distance relationship.

When B. and I figured out that yes, we were dating, there was certainly some sticker-shock involved. We both, of course, made quite a few transatlantic flights. B's parents and one of her sisters came to Ireland for a vacation with some genealogy thrown in, and B. came with them for part of the trip, so one of my cheaper flights was to Dublin to meet the family. I discovered it pays to complain about poor service. On one of my trips to the US, there was not only a delay followed by a cancellation, but it was handled terribly by staff; a letter to head-office resulted in a free flight.

One of my regular trips was so we could go to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival held in July in upstate New York. This festival is very special to us. Along with many other wonderful artists, we got to see Dar Williams, who was responsible for our relationship in the first place (she did find out about it, and has been very good to us over the years!). We became festival volunteers together, which not only made it a relatively cheap date, but also brought us together with a wonderful "family." Falcon Ridge was so dear to us that it also became the place where I proposed to B, in a solar shower stall in our campsite (yes, were were fully clothed, and yes, I got down on one knee, even though it was wet). Despite the surroundings, B. said yes!

And then there were the phone calls. Advice to anyone embarking on a long-distance relationship: Make sure you get on a calling plan QUICK! B. and I were calling each other just about every day. B's first phone bill after we started phoning each other regularly was enormous. But she got monthly bills. Mine came quarterly! Once we got onto sensible international calling plans, things were not so bad. I'm an early-morning person, and B's a night-owl, so the five hour time difference worked well for us; we'd call each other at Midnight Eastern Time, which was 5am in the UK. We'd talk for a while before I got ready for work.

Any idea how much it costs to import a husband? The story of our dealings with the INS will wait for another day.