A new home

We are in Her Majesty's Land. This is our second day here and we are doing reasonably good. Most of the time has been spent on settling down. The weather has been mild - in the 60's and mostly cloudy. Or shall we say in the mid teens and cloudy. We get a feeling that we are in a new place in the US with a strong resemblance to India - medium sized houses close together, no yards, walking to shops etc. We are relearning the terminology here - we are staying in a 2 bedroom flat on the second floor of a building (after the ground and first floors).

Travel: For a journey with five big suitcases checked in, two carry ons, two laptop bags with three laptops, a diaper bag and stroller, along with an occasionally cranky 10-month old, our travel was very smooth. Immigration was quick, but we were asked to visit a health desk in the airport. A taxi had been hired by my wife's company and a taxi driver was waiting at the airport, holding a placard with my wife's name (she must have felt good). He had brought a Ford Mondeo, which would be a little bigger than a Camry, but he somehow managed to fit everything in the car. No car seats are required for our boy or so we were told. He was a cheerful fellow and educated us to the ways of life in the UK. We reached our guest house after a 45 minute drive. It was a lot of fun hauling the bags up two floors.

The house: It is a fully furnished house in Basingstoke, which is nice because we can cook, unpack, connect to the internet and sleep on a nice bed. It is bad because there are a lot of glass furniture around and our boy likes to explore. The house has a nice view from the window and it looks all green outside. It is on a quiet residential street. It has got all the basics - a kitchen with basic utensils, a couch, TV, dining table, a nice bed, dressers and closets. We have not ventured out to a restaurant yet - the wife has been doing a lot of cooking.

Shopping: The first day was entirely spent on shopping and unpacking. The town center was supposed to be a short walk from our place, but turned out to be a 15 minute walk. It is right next to the Basingstoke railway station. It is a busy place with close to 100 shops. We got most of our food stuff from Sainsbury's. The shop was pretty much like a US store, with the weights in kilograms and prices in pounds. It looks like things are at least 10% more expensive than US and for someone who frequents Costco, the sizes are smaller. The cashiers at the shop are in a seat while they checkout and do not assist you with bagging. I also learnt that a 15 minute walk from the shop with 15 kgs worth of groceries in plastic bags is not much fun. For the second shopping trip, we bought a Sabichi lightweight shopping trolley - a golf bag sized trolley which you fill with stuff and push it home - for 11 pounds.

Being in touch: The home phone in the guest house did not work, but the ethernet connection worked. I had brought a Magicjack in the US, which was a lifesaver. We even used it to call UK numbers through our US calling card - a little weird, but worked. The home phone worked today - I just had to pop out the batteries from the handset and put it back.

Bank and Credit card: I had opened an account with HSBC in the US - that seemed to be the only bank with presence in US and UK. They also helped me open an account in the UK while in the US, which was good because opening an account in UK is a long process. We are using our US HSBC premier card for our purchases - no foreign transaction fees and the exchange rate is actually better than what I get through any FX broker or a transfer through the bank.

We are currently looking for a day nursery (daycare for the uninitiated) for our boy. Planning to go to London during the weekend. Must be fun!

Eastbound

After 11 years in US, I am moving to the UK with my family in the end of May 2010. We are all set with the logistics.

Flight Tickets: It's been a long time since I booked a one-way flight ticket and I was eagerly looking forward to do it. Alas, one way tickets from Boston to London was pricey - a direct flight could set us off by close to one grand per ticket. Sigh! Not agreeing to give up, I did a search with flexible return date (not many sites provided this option) and found round trip tickets for $620 per person. Now we have one week to decide whether we like it in the UK or not!

Moving stuff: Desis do not believe in traveling light. My wife decided to take only the "bare minimum personal belongings" with us - no furniture. Ours being a small move - we estimated 10 large boxes for a total of 500 pounds - it was not advantageous to reserve a container in ocean freight. So, we submitted a quote request from www.intlmovers.com and got bombarded with quotes from many companies. We ended up choosing a company based in Indiana. The smallest move they could move - which comes to about 20 large boxes - would cost us close to $1600, excluding the insurance. After many days of packing done over few weeks, we were done. The movers came last week, repacked everything into their boxes and took them. The final tally was 23 boxes (large, medium and small), totaling 920 pounds. It will be close to two months when they will be delivered to us. I don't want to think of the day these boxes will come home and demand a place. We plan to take five big suitcases with us to last the two months.

Selling stuff: We are renters - no house to sell, yay! The biggest item was a 1 year old minivan and started with that. I put an ad in craigslist and cars.com. Over a period of 3 weeks, I got at least 25 leads through craigslist, not one of them turned out to be a serious buyer. I got two leads through cars.com, both were serious and one of them bought it. Surprisingly, I did not lose money on the car - in fact, I broke even after considering the fees and taxes I paid.

Selling the household furniture took time - but they ultimately did. A lot of it was from Ikea. We ended up collecting $3000 for all the stuff we sold. Don't remind me what we spent on buying them.

We have never visited the UK. A lot of my friends and colleagues asked me if I am nervous. I am not. My wife is not either. My 10-month old doesn't know what is happening to him and is busy yapping away. We both did a big move from India to US, so this should be easy. Or so we think.