Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Poor little John is scared to go out of doors at the moment as he can barely stand up in the wind at the moment!

So far we’ve had no snow though sometimes it has seemed cold enough for it. That’s a bit misleading of course in that the wind chill factor makes it seem a good deal colder than it really is and in fact this morning it was actually warmer outside than it was inside the house!

It is pretty dreadful weather for this time of year though. Ordinarily, we’d not be expecting such severe winds until February and even then only for a short period rather than for days at a time as we’ve been having lately.

I’d like to say that we’ve been using all the time indoors to get caught up on the Winter schedule of activities but instead we’ve been busy organising our Christmas holiday over the last week or two. Still, at least that’s booked now so we just need to source a turkey to take to Spain at some point in the next month or so (Wendy won’t get it in Spain as they do unspeakable things there including leaving the head on!).

A long time ago, I was brave enough to ask the question which many are afraid to ask: do you need to speak French if you want to live in France?

It’s not such a simple question to answer as it might appear. For one thing, there are many expat enclaves throughout France where, by and large, English is the only language used. Within these enclaves, the shopkeepers and so on can be expected to speak English and indeed even if you speak French to them, they’ll reply in English. So, yes, you could live in France without speaking French.

However, in many other areas (most of France in fact) you couldn’t do that. The locals either cannot or will not speak English. After all, why should they be expected to? It is France after all. Except that everywhere else in the world the locals DO speak English: that’s why people expect to be able to move to France without speaking French.

Funnily enough, just a few miles south in Spain the locals won’t speak Spanish and actually insist on using English. Well, to be fair that’s Catalonia and few people outside it ever have the opportunity to learn Catalán which tends to dictate the use of English with foreigners.

Buying a house isn’t just your ordinary purchase, it’s about buying a place that will become your home.

People often overlook that in the rush to buy a place to live and end up with a house that’s not really suitable for their needs or one which is in an area that doesn’t have the amenities that they need. For example, if you have kids, it’s important to consider the schools in your chosen area and think about how your children will get to the school that they’d be going to.

For that matter, will the school even accept them? You can be very unlucky if your house is at the wrong side of the road in some areas as that can mean a different school district. As regular readers will know, we didn’t follow our own advice here and instead of being able to go to the school 1 mile away as we had assumed, junior has to go to a school over 20 miles in the other direction which is down to our house being at the wrong side of the road!

These complications make real estate one of the most complicated purchases that you’ll make and therefore it’s best to do as much research on an area as you can before you start narrowing it down to looking at specific properties.

If you’re looking at specific areas eg Atlanta Homes for Sale or Charleston Real Estate, think carefully about the search parameters that you are using. Don’t think that you can squeeze into a place with fewer bedrooms than you’d planned because you probably can’t and likewise think about adding another bathroom to your requirements if your children are approaching their teens.

Likewise, watch how you specify the area. Zipcodes are great things to narrow the search but they can change when you cross the street so try those for neighbouring areas too. Sometimes you can find fantastic bargains that way eg move outside the Beverley Hills zipcodes (90210, 90211 and 90212) and you’ll find that the prices drop dramatically whilst the quality of area remains high.

Wendy’s about to make a start on Mums Finance after finding out that there’s money in tham thar hills, especially if you’re writing a finance related blog.

I imagine that it’ll be a day or two before she gets going in that we don’t even have the software loaded nor the database set up as yet. She’s busy picking out a new template for it at the moment though.

Sometimes I think we’re getting a bit carried away with the blogs but then we look at the money flowing in from them.

I’m sure that it’s an incredibly misleading statistic but I’m dead chuffed to read that I’ve had over 11,000 readers via Reuters in the last week alone.

Still, it’s a very encouraging statistic and indeed the number of readers of the blog as recorded by the stats on this site are showing a nice upward trend with almost triple the number of subscribers as it had in the Summer. The international readership is also well up with articles being taken by places as varied as FoxNews and the Palm Beach Post.

All of which I was blissfully unaware of ’til I started getting a rapidly rising number of click-throughs from Reuters over the last few days.

If this keeps up I may have to see about getting a job as a “real” journalist!