Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Some jobs sound really fantastic.

You know the ones: you hear about a friend who lands this great job which has them jetting about all over Europe and it sounds brilliant, doesn’t it?

Except, of course, that it’s incredibly tiring. At one point I had one of these “fantastic jobs” which at one point involved flying to London three times a month. Now, at the beginning, that was brilliant as I could pick up all kinds of things in London that I couldn’t get in the local shops and I could do a bit of sight-seeing as well.

After a month or two of that though you’ve seen all the sights and been to all the shops and then it’s just tiring which is, of course, the problem with jobs that involve a lot of travelling.

Just as we were assuming that we were back down to lower paid opportunities and not a great selection for that matter either, today happened.

Whilst it’s always possible that a particular paid post outlet could have a run of opportunities, today just about all of them seemed to be full of opportunities whereas only a few days ago they seemed to be drying up.

So much did this take us by surprise that we stuffed ourselves with them today and hit a new personal record of postings of 16 posts in a single day!

A pretty unbelieveable number, eh? Still, no more posts from now ’til Wednesday for me ‘cos I’m off to do the final Spanish exam of my Modern Languages degree.

What should you pack to go on a short trip?

One thing’s for sure: don’t think that you can just replicate your packing for a full-scale holiday because you’re just going to run up a bill for excess baggage for no reason at all. If you’re going for a long-weekend it’s just being silly to even consider a full-sized case that needs checked in: carryon is the only way to go.

What should you bring though?

In terms of clothing, that depends on the temperature difference between where you live and where you’re going. Clearly if it’s Winter at home and Summer at the destination (or vice versa) that will dictate you having an extra change of clothing above what it would otherwise.

Essential items should be trimmed down to the minimum. That minimum should include:

1. passport;
2. credit card, debit card and cash card, all international versions (ie with a Visa/Mastercard on the credit/debit cards and Plus/Cirrus on the cash card). Make sure one is Visa and the other Mastercard as acceptance isn’t equally widespread in all countries and max three cards in total in case they’re stolen.
3. driving license (even if you don’t plan on driving);
4. plane tickets (or their electonic equivalent ie the booking number);
5. electical adaptor for foreign electrical sockets (get a “world” version rather than just a “european” one to cover all the bases);
6. guidebook (sometimes they’re not available locally in English)

And, of course, personal items such as contact lens solutions, glasses, sunglasses, womens items, and the like.

Ideally, all the stuff you’re taking should fit in a supermarket carrier bag. Any larger, and it’s definitely too much for a weekend break!

Whilst we had loads of housebuyers staying with us in 2004 and 2005, 2006 saw none of them at all.

Who knows why? The UK interest rates weren’t much higher than they were the year before nor did there seem to be a big difference in the UK house prices.

It’s the same this year too ie no big difference. Yet, we’re just into the main house-hunting season (usually October to March) and already we’ve had three separate house-buying families call in with us. Whether this is the sign of a major buying spree is a good question but at least it’s a sign of the start of a movement in the French market.

Although I’ve been plugging away with a series on living in France and you’d think that it would be something French that would be the most popular post on the blog, in fact it’s a post that is solidly in the expat finance field that is by far the most popular.

It’s, of course, our article on opening a bank account in America as a non-resident. Why? Well, for those that are running a small business on the Internet, the preferred way of getting paid is via PayPal which is brilliant for a small business as you get to accept credit card payments with no hassle at all. However, obviously you need to get the money out of PayPal and into a real bank account at some point and that’s where the problems start.

PayPal is basically an American payment scheme and only lets you transfer money out to a fairly limited number of countries. Crucially, that range of countries excludes quite a lot of Asia who are, of course, one of the most active business communities on the Internet.

If PayPal don’t support bank accounts in your country they give you only one other option: transfer money to an American bank account and so opening a bank account in America has become very popular. Unfortunately, the tightening up of security checks after 9/11 means that it’s quite difficult to open an account there or at least the options have closed up somewhat.

What’s happened then is that there has been a massive growth in websites offering to sell you the information for anything from $5 to $1000. Yes, up to one thousand dollars! Since I don’t charge anything for somewhat better information, the post in question has steadily moved up the rankings in google and indeed the corresponding entry in the expat resources section of the Whole Earth Guide has soared right up to the top of google too.

In fact the post has become so popular that I’ll be rolling out a similar guide for other countries which have been requested (Switzerland is next in line, the Channel Islands after that).