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Jetset & the International Lifestyle - Blessing or Burden?

My life, and career, to date have given me the opportunity to live, study and work in a number of different countries - specifically, but not necessarily in this order: France, Spain, UK, Croatia (briefly) and USA. This has meant that I have a large number of international colleagues, ex-colleagues and friends - I think when you start to see things at an international level be it at work or at school, you never really revert to a purely national view of things.

What does this mean in reality?

It's a small world.
The world really isn't that big, when you think that they've built a tunnel connecting the UK and France and a bridge between Sweden and Denmark, it won't be long before the Mediterranean is an inland lagoon and shortly after that the causeways of Florida will cross the Atlantic. What I really mean is that in this day and age, it can take just as long to travel from Paris to Marseille as it can from Paris to New York (depending on which metro line you take) so you start to have friends all over the place and national boundaries are simply arbitrary ways of ensuring that there are enough phone numbers to go around.

Friends all over.
Having been through two international degree programmes - the first the CESEM course in Marseille with partner universities in London, Bremen, Valencia and Charlotte and the second the UPF MBA in Barcelona with students from Spain, Italy, Mexico, Germany, Uruguay and Argentina (where part of my family happens to be) I can tell you that I have really do have friends in the four corners of the globe - just imagine how people start to migrate once they realise that the world isn't really that big.

A weekend in the country could be the other side of the world.
For some of my more nationalistic colleagues, a weekend break could be a trip to the Normandy coast - a quick 3 hour drive away. Or for something further afield a jaunt down to the south coast where if you're lucky the TGV could cut the trip to only 4 or 5 hours and if you aren't you could be in the car for up to 8. So when I drop the suggestion that I fancy a weekend in New York, specifically to have a Saturday night dinner with some friends they look at me aghast - everything is relative, if I'm sleeping on the plane then the travel time is almost equivalent and a break is after all a break!

A short move could be to the next country, and a more serious move could be across the world.
So when it comes to changing job or moving house, where I look (compared to those nationalists) has a much wider frame of reference than most people might be used to. London, Paris, New York might sound jetset to some people, but to me it is the front of those rather chic Smythson address books and also the cities I tend to consider in my first list of places to look for a job.

But now... back to the real subject of this post... Blessing or burden?

From the outside, it's clear that this jetset lifestyle looks wonderful and with it come certain benefits; although these tend to be limited to business perks and regular travel can get old very quickly; there are on the flipside some negative features associated with living this life and I'm starting to wonder at what point the cons outweigh the pros - and whether there is a way back to... the simple life.

Business travel isn't like in the movies.
International outlook tends to mean international business, virtual teams, conferences in Bangkok, finance meetings in New York and site meetings in Mexico; depending on where your home is this can be a fair few miles to cover in a given week and airport bathrooms and hotel dinners suddenly become more common than curling up in your favourite armchair with the weekend papers. Business travel in the movies always looks like limo drivers and arriving home with souvenirs, but in reality, being a road warrior is exhausting, limits your social life and can at times be expensive in your own pocket.

Too much choice make choices difficult.
Twenty years ago choices were different - paint came in 3 colours, jam in 4 flavours and car brands had only a few models. The 20th and 21st centuries have seen an explosion of choice, and when you add our international variable into the equation, choices become almost endless. Making a choice is about assessing, understanding and comparing the options, which when done properly even with only a relatively small number of options can be a painstaking task for a serious decision like buying a car, moving house or accepting a job. In today's market with endless options it is hardly possible to make an informed decision, and so our best guess is all that remains - making choices, difficult.

Friends far and wide sometimes mean few friends at home.
When your close friends are spread across the globe you seem to always have someone to go and visit, or someone you know in that strange corner of the world - but more and more it seems that this means fewer friends at home. As the international group moves to new cities or is posted to the latest company outpost, they are spread thinner across the cities that we know and finally there are only a few at 'home' and we are forced to make those long trips simply to catch up for a few days.

Travel costs & increasing complications.
Finally, post 9-11, travel really isn't getting easier - between the explosive costs of oil making air travel almost prohibitively expensive and the unending security checks looking for illicit substances in your toothpaste and the heel of your shoe a short trip can quickly turn into a long one.

Are you a jetset, high flying, international businessman? Is it all it's cracked up to be? Or would you rather be home enjoying some of life's simple pleasures? Let me know.

Anglo or English?

It gets harder and harder as the years - and the moves - go by to answer that inevitable question "where are you from?". And when you have the pleasure of starting x new jobs in y new countries it tends to come up quite a bit. It's been almost 10 years that I left the UK to study in France (I went to the 'prestigious' ESC Marseille-Provence; recently rebranded to Euromed Marseille Ecole de Management - see one of my early posts here) and I've bounced around the world a little over that time - so how or what decides where we are really from?

I guess that this is almost a nature versus nurture question. From a nature point-of-view I would have to English - although when we start to look at my bloodlines even that comes into question: My mother was born and raised in Argentina, my father in the UK - but their respective parents are a combination of Austrian and Polish, and Swedish and English - finally there is some English in there too and I did spend the majority of my formative years in London (being born in Switzerland simply confuses matters and adds little relevant information). For the nurture side of things, I might plump for French, even if I can't sing along to the cartoons of the 80s and I'm still not 100% sure of what happened in May 68, and this mainly because of the fact that I guess I could say I've moved (or moved back) to France three times over the last 10 years and so it seems that it is becoming my 'port d'attache'.

So am I English, British, Ango-Saxon, Anglophone, just Anglo, or just me? I'm not quite sure.

My answer, for today, goes something like this:

I'm an Anglo-Saxon at heart, when I write I don't follow the structured these, anti-these, synthese approach, I speak a combination of English, French and Spanish, my family roots are definitely in the UK, but I'm a Parisian in my soul. How's that for an elusive answer?

From my old blog to a new one

After struggling for a while with various different blogs and not really knowing how to make them all work together - or for that matter to find a particular direction - I have now decided to focus purely on Anglo Abroad and to abandon the various other sites.

I have therefore imported the relevant posts from my previous blog to this one; no need to go elsewhere to read them and herewith the previous intro:

London - Paris - New York With a small sejourn in Barcelona Bred in London, I've been to Texas, and I've come from Paris, but stand back Carrie Bradshaw, Here comes Lex... Posted to the city that never sleeps, I'm joining my sexy cousin (SJP - and you too now Rya) to try and get a grip on the myth that is NYC. Lex... and the City

As is clear, I've moved on again, from NYC back to Paris and so have taken the blog one step further and christened it 'Anglo Abroad'. I'm not 100% happy with the design, but I will be playing with blogger over the next few weeks to find something that works.

Itchy Feet

Itchy feet is a beautiful English term - I'm not entirely sure that it has made it into American usage - but it so neatly encompasses the feeling that I tend to get every 6 to 10 months.

A while back, I wrote a post about Choosing a City which is worth me re-reading quickly before I continue.

Some options to consider:

* San Francisco
* Buenos Aires

The Blackberry Pearl

I have finally plumped for another crackberry - after a week or so of saying that back in France I didn't need to be connected to my email 24/7... I was wrong... It appears that once you crackberry, you can't go back.
So I have opted for the new Pearl on SFR.

En route to CrackBerry-dom

So I've finally decided that I need a Crackberry - not just because I'm a gadget addict but also so I can check my email on the treadmill at the gym in the morning! I'm only part way through my existing contract, so will have to shell out a few hundred $ to get the gadget, but who cares... The decision now is which one to get.

FriendsReunited - OK, so it does work

FriendsReunited.co.uk so it does actually work...

I had dinner on Saturday evening with someone who I was at primary school with - amazing to get in touch with someone after 10 years.

Thanks Jessica =)

France, Italy & UK - 3 countries in 2 weeks

A brief whirlwind tour is coming to an end...

1-Aug: JFK-NCE followed by lunch in Italy is one hell of a way to start a vacation.

14-Aug: London-Paris EuroStar... Dinner at Kong (tbc)

16-Aug: CDG-JFK & I'm hoping the security alerts aren't going to cause any problems.

Thanks to Caroline for a fabulous wedding and congratulations to you both.
See you soon!

Choosing a city...

With my little European jaunt underway, I stopped to think this morning about how one should choose a city to live in; it's clear that not everyone has the luxury of dreaming a city and saying "I want to move there" but there are times (I've had a couple) when you need to decide where to go.

So in order to make the next move easier - I'm listing some criteria - we read a nice book during MBA (Smart Choices) that explained how to make decisions based on weighted criteria and decision trees; of course under the emotions of a decision we never stop to be logical, but who knows, maybe next time...

* Climate
* Lifestyle
* Cost of living
* Social network
* Employment opportunity

Any contributions greatly appreciated!

Oh Delta; how do I love thee... let me count the ways...

...or not.

In this 'mild' heatwave we've been having, the worst thing about travelling is the thought that you are going to get hot, bothered and sweaty on your way to the airport and then have to sit like that for X number of hours as you fly across the world in your tin can.

So this morning, I decided to plan:
First step was to carry my enormously heavy bag down to the curb and look for a yellow cab - it might only be a 15 minute walk to my office, but one that can easily induce unnecessary body heating as you cross Union Square -
$5 later and I'm safely in the AC environment of the building.
Next was lunch - an easy solution, just order in and there was no problem there.
Finally my car to JFK pulls up in front of the building, and a small exertion to get the dead body weight bag into the trunk and I'm back in the AC on the way out of town.
It's at this point that I was feeling very pleased with myself and thinking that I'd wake up in Nice the next morning feeling relatively fresh and clean... how wrong was this.
Arrival at the JFK Delta terminal and what do I see? A line of approx 200 people on the sidewalk and even overflowing onto the street waiting to check in. Of course the ever optimistic me was sure that these were people without tickets, without passports, who wanted to overheat and breath exhaust fumes in the street or at least not on the same flight as me... So I wander up to the officious looking employee at the head of the line to ask where Nice check-in might possibly be located... "You need to go to the back of this line."

Need I say more?

Let's just add that one of the call buttons was jammed on the plane, so they had to turn off all the audio system for the duration (7 hours) of the flight and although they offered free (alcoholic) drinks in compensation, at that point I'd already spent my $5.

Oh Delta - I do love you - but I'll also be avoiding you at all costs in the future - that's the way love is!

The Taproot Foundation

I've joined the Taproot Foundation, www.taprootfoundation.org which is a volunteer group offering marketing consultancy services to charities & NGOs.
Click on the link and find out more.

We are currently working on the annual Report for Achievement First, www.achievementfirst.org a group of charter schools in CT & NY.

Trading in my TX license

It was a sad day at the DMC when I had my eyes tested and handed in my TX license to replace it with one from NY state...

The system could easily by compared to French bureaucracy - and I'll probably be murdered for saying this - and it might even be a little bit worse organised.

My only saving grace was that through sheer miscomprehension of the system, I skipped the queue (line for the locals) and ended up in front of all those who had been waiting outside with me for the last 45 minutes - my apologies fellow New Yorkers.

So $45 and 45 minutes (inside time) later I am one TX license down, and one shabby temporary NY license up.

Goodbye Texas The Lone Star State

The Target Obsession

So it's been a week since my Target adventure and in retrospect it seems like a funny story to tell - and yes, Anya you can share this too...

It all started with an ad (a full page ad) in GQ for a great looking herringbone blazer - just great for the holidays that I thought would do me well; so I set out to look for it. Of course there are no big-box stores on Manhattan (and according to the site the closest are Jersey & Brooklyn). So my next best bet had to be Banana Republic where they had a great looking blazer for $248; unfortunately, 3 days, 4 stores, a lot of site surfing and a call to BR customer services later, it transpired that they didn't make the blazer in the size I wanted... Now when you've invested this much time and energy to find something, it becomes kinda an obsession...

So going back to the heart of the matter, I decided that Target was the place to go, and since an errand in Jersey City was on the cards it seemed like an ideal opportunity. This was my first mistake.

We walked about the equivalent of 30 city blocks, through most of Jersey City, a deserted industrial estate, two mall car parks and the mall itself before arriving at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel - no sign of Target. A friendly salesperson in Sears who asked "where are you parked?" tried to give some helpful directions - which might have worked if we'd been driving, but on foot no way. Enter the friendliest cop in Jersey (and she was blonde too)- this one person has given me confidence in the entire metro police force who gave us exact directions to get to Target, of course there wasn't really a sidewalk and we had to cross twelve lanes of traffic going into the tunnel - but we made it.

Target was wonderful, everything we had ever dreamed of, and a I bought two blazers for $60 each!

But the story doesn't end here, because how to do two pedestrians in NJ get back to Manhattan at 7pm on a Saturday evening? Re-enter (stage left or north side of the Holland Tunnel entrance) the friendly cop who explains that NY cabs can't pick you up in NJ - lesson number two - and that we'd better walk to the PATH station, which was only about 5 blocks away. Lazy Brit steps up and decides that it's too cold, too late and he's too lazy to work with public transport and we begin to try and convince a cab to take us back to the city.

Three cabs later, a friendly chap who's prepared to break the law and take on two crazies in NJ. So he says "how much do you normally pay from here to the city?" So the billion dollar winner's curse question... I guess and replied between $10 and $12 plus the tolls and he seemed to agree.

The end of the story goes that we made it back, happy and warm, and above all overjoyed with our purchases and I'd spent less at Target plus the cab fare than I would have done at our friends BR.

The first Thanksgiving

So that whole thing about 'first' thanksgiving isn't really true - I'm not going to write a history lesson about pilgrims, indians and founding fathers; not because it isn't interesting, or because it wouldn't be helpful to 99% of the people reading this but mainly because I don't know and therefore there's a good chance I'd get it wrong!

So here are a few bullet points of what I've learnt today about thanksgiving traditions:
* Nobody buys presents (gifts) but you really need to bring flowers/chocolates/wine/strange turkey shaped candles/copious amounts of food/etc - so in fact a boring book or socks is beginning to sound good.
* There is only one meal, it is planned as lunch, but starts late, and tends to drag on into dinner.
* Everyone tells you not to eat the day before, so you starve yourself; then drink too much wine on an empty stomach while everyone else prepares the meal and you get to talk to the matriarch/patriarch who cross examines you on your European heritage.
* When you finally sit down, the plates aren't big enough to hold all the food and you need a second plate to hold just your first helping.
* Everything is sweet regardless of what course it is: Sweet potato, sweet chestnut, pecan pie, sweet stuffing.
* It tends to be freezing in the evening and you still have to somehow make it back home to the city in a combination of warm car, freezing sidewalks and strangely crowded subway.
But at least you eat well!

Apartment hunting in Manhattan...

So my time in TriBeCa is coming to an end and I've been looking like crazy to find an apartment. Of course the classic in New York is Craig's List which has listings upon listings of rentals, sublets and microwaves for sale.

After apartment searches in London, Marseille, Barcelona and Paris, I can't say that this city is any easier or more difficult than another; but you have to go through the emotional rollercoaster of seeing, loving, losing and accepting. And then, and only then will you find something where you can cohabit with the mice and the roaches in harmony!

Having looked at a few apartments, it's amazing what criteria you come up with:
- Must have a basin with a mirror in the bathroom.
- Must have a door to the bathroom.
- A sink & rice cooker don't make a kitchen.
- If the current tenant isn't smiling, there's usually a reason...

It looks like I've found a sublet in NoLiTa - don't you love the NYC acronmyns, this city is running so fast that they've even had to shorten the names of the neighbourhoods - didn't see any mice or roaches, and the heating works well.

Targetted move-in date is Thursday 12/1.

Coming to America

Now wasn't that a cheesy 80s Eddie Murphy film? And now I've really set the tone for this whole blog. Well I'm writing this at the Air France gate @ Paris, Charles de Gaulle, Airport - it's early, I'm not feeling creative, and god knows who I'll end sitting next to on the plane. I leave today for a new adventure in the big apple, the story begins.

Unfortunately, not sponsored by HBO, unlike...

A little introduction...

Thanks to the UPF MBA, Barcelona for sponsoring my mugshot.
So that's me, not on one of my best days, in fact it looks like I've just
been involved in a failed mafia hit, in an italian restaurant with bad
meatballs (but that's another story). I'm a British BA-MBA-OP, not necessarily in that order, working for a French F6 in Paris.

A brief history of my life in a few lines:

1978: Zurich, Switzerland - Birth, etc.
1978-1999: London, UK - School, driving lessons, etc.
1999-2001: Marseille, France - ESC-MP Undergraduate Business
2001-2002: Dallas, TX, USA - The Richards Group - Ad Agency
2002-2004: Barcelona, Spain - UPF MBA
2004-2005: Paris, France - Ogilvy & Mather, FullSIX France
Nov 2005: New York, USA - FullSIX USA