International relocation in your teens, 20s, and 30s - Part 1

Singapore is now the fifth continent I've lived on. Well, that's if you're of the persuasion that there are seven continents, which counts North America and South America as separate continents. I don't know how they're teaching the kids these days, so I'm going with the seven continents standard.  

First, North America (obviously). Second, Europe when I studied abroad in Vienna my first year at UW,  when I was 18. Third, South America when I was 24 and pulled up stumps to become fluent in Spanish and to travel. Where I both skipped about the continent in proper traveler style and settled into daily life in Peru and Buenos Aires, spending a few months in each. Fourth, Australia where I moved for love at the age of 25. Three and four--best decisions ever. Now fifth, Asia. Singapore. 

With these moves under my belt, it would seem as though another international move wouldn't be a huge deal. But this move to Singapore, it feels very different to the previous moves.

Vienna and South America were both, shall we say, light living? I had a suitcase and a giant duffle bag in Vienna. That was it. For South America, I had a giant travel pack and a little blue backpack. Like a turtle, I could move my home. It was pretty much the same moving to and from Australia. I sent Marcus with a bag of my stuff in advance, when I moved to Sydney. Then moving back to the US, we left one or two suitcases at my sister's house in advance of our actual move back. When we arrived in Seattle, we again did so with our travel packs and maybe an additional suitcase each. We sold the majority of our furniture and household goods before we left Sydney. 

Generally, though, the moves in the teens and 20's (and even at 30--I had just hit 30 before we moved back to Seattle), things were lighter. Easier. More mobile. Our bills were low and of the month-to-month variety with little commitment. It was fairly easy to move logistically. 

This move was a heavier lift with many moving parts. It's logistically been a much larger feat. Emotionally it's been more complex. Career-wise it's felt more difficult, knowing I'm headed for yet another job search and in a country where my network is basically zero. This has been an area I've been compartmentalizing pretty seriously. 

I think all of the complexities will come out as I continue to write, in fits and starts and spread throughout. For this post I wanted to capture the logistics side, the sheer scale of what we were trying to wrap our arms around before taking off from SeaTac. I've made an attempt to categorize the different tasks we've juggled with this move to get a sense of the complexity involved:

• Company coordination
• Immigration
• Property management
• Home maintenance/improvements
• Cars
• Bills, expenses, miscellaneous
• Work
• Friends and family

I thought coordinating our wedding was a feat. This move upped the ante in a serious way.

Company coordination

We had company support in making the move, which was simultaneously helpful and complicated. Marcus and I sketched out one day the many different contacts, both internal to the company and external vendors, that Marcus had to work with. 

Complete with color coding on how easy/difficult the process was to work with these individuals. There were some major rocks that resulted in the move commencing months after it was meant to. Which, silver lining, gave us extra time to spend with friends before making the move. 

This chart details nearly 20 people that Marcus dealt with to facilitate the move. There was the immigration to manage. The actual moving of our stuff and all of the details about what was covered, what wasn't, what channels and policies we had to work within, etc. We spent an hour each week on the phone with our relocation consultant figuring out things like, where would we live? (Three different places--at least.) What kind of housing options did we have? (Condos, townhouses, houses; partially furnished or fully furnished; normally two year leases, etc.) What kind of transportation would we use? (Public transport and personal vehicle options.) What were the options for shipping/storing our things? (Several options, and we ultimately decided to ship most of our stuff here, as we assume we'll get a partially furnished condo, but it felt like a gamble to make that decision having never been to Singapore.) Who were the movers and what stuff would they move? (No food, no batteries, no rated R or pirated movies. That's a no to our Harry Potter collection purchased in Nepal. I snuck in my essential oils and wax for soap and chapstick making.) What kind of health insurance coverage will we have? (We have it...and still need to figure out what it is and how it works. The company also sent us our health insurance cards after we left to Singapore. Wonderful coordination, that is.)

It was basically a full time job for him to manage all of it, which he did in conjunction with his old job and the new job. At some points he was juggling all three at once. It stresses me out just thinking about it, and I adore him for taking it all in stride and managing it without complaint. I had (and continue to have) an abundance of gratitude for him throughout all of this. 

So there was the planning of it all. Most of that got done within a month or two of things getting properly kicked off. Then there was the implementation, which overlaps a lot with the other categories listed below. 

Immigration

Anyone reading this is likely already familiar with the immigration issues we were dealing with, but here's a recap just for fun. Getting the immigration workstream kicked off was like pulling teeth and took months to make headway on. There was one person at the company who needed to connect us to the firm in charge of managing our immigration paperwork. This one person took months to make that connection, despite Marcus constantly checking in to see what was happening, what needed to happen, what he could do to get things to move forward. It was a three month delay from when Marcus was told about the role to when we actually got connected with the immigration firm. Unbelievable. 

That was the first big hurdle with immigration. Then there was the actual immigration paperwork to be filed, and that can be divided into two pieces: 1) getting our Singapore visas and 2) retaining Marcus's permanent resident status in the US. 

The Singapore immigration piece went smoothly. The firm that handled our immigration paperwork was timely and efficient, not to mention that Marcus had to fill out much of the information for them anyway. 

Then there was the US piece. The US always has to make things difficult for immigrants, don't they? It's gotten worse under the current administration. Even as a green card holder, it was an ordeal. There were two different pieces on the US front. One was basically an application to state that despite moving overseas, Marcus wasn't renouncing his permanent residency. (There are requirements that say you have to live in the US for x out of x years to retain your residency. It was the same thing for me when I got permanent residency in Australia.) He'll have to go through this process again in two years. The other piece was an application to keep the clock ticking on the countdown to when he can apply for US citizenship.

For the first immigration piece, Marcus was required to go in for a "biometrics" appointment where immigration would take his picture and fingerprints to verify that he is who he says he is. It strikes me as arcane, but Marcus has done this numerous times already and is familiar with the process. This step was compulsory before we could move, and this was the biggest rock in our way. With Covid, the immigration offices had closed down, resulting in a backlog of files needing to be reviewed and to a delay for all applications submitted. Normally, it would take ~30 days to get the notice on a biometrics appointment and the notification comes in the post, so you have to watch your mailbox like a hawk. With all of the hoorah around the US Postal Service this year, even that felt dicier than usual. 

Marcus checked in with the immigration firm (same firm, different people) and they were entirely unhelpful. After two months of waiting for the biometrics appointment to come in the mail, on a random whim, Marcus submitted an inquiry to the general email addressed listed on the customs website. To his surprise, he got a response saying that they already had his biometrics on file and that he likely wouldn't be required to come into the office. That was the official/unofficial permission we'd been waiting for. When we received that email, the floodgates opened and the transition began in earnest. 

This post is abundantly long already, so I'll tackle the rest in part 2.