03.17.06 Offshore Bank Account

"you will need a UK bank account to rent a flat in the UK"

"you will need 3 months of utility bills from your UK address to open a UK bank account"

...those two statements didn't raise any logical issues for the two britons who made them. I'm beginning to detect a pattern. It turns out that setting up a bank account from overseas is a real pain. Firstly, there are no international banks (at least that I could find) who provide the ability to open a bank account in your own country, and just be accessible in another country. Cash machines are no problem, you can use them from anywhere. The same goes for visa/mastercard. However, these don't cut it as far as renting a flat, which is a requirement for me, since my sweet wife refuses to live in either a residence hall or school provided married student housing. The normal way of opening a UK bank account is 1) live in the UK at an address for 3 months, 2) bring proof of #1, and 3) open a local HSBC, Barclays, etc. account. This obviously won't fly for us. The next option is to open a special account set up for the "international customer". Some examples of this are:

• HSBC "Passport" - http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/personal/current-accounts/passport

...this is set up for people like me, but requires at least two separate trips to London 1 week apart, which blows. Reba and I are going to Oxford for 2 weeks this spring to rent a place, and can't be waiting around for paperwork and meetings in London

• HSBC "Premier" - http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/personal/current-accounts/premier-home

...another no-dicer. This wants you to have a mortgage of £200,000 or more with HSBC Bank, or savings or investments of at least £50,000 with HSBC Bank, or annual income of £75,000 or over and a mortgage of £100,000 or over with HSBC Bank; none of which I have or will have.

There are also a bunch of "student" type accounts out there, but that just screams "don't rent to me", from my perspective.

Finally, after scratching my head on this for a while I found this:

• HSBC "Offshore Bank Account" - http://www.offshore.hsbc.com/1/2/international/current-accounts/offshore-bank-account

...this is about as good as I'm going to get. This is an account that lives on one of the channel islands (little islands off the coast of France that are owned by the UK) and takes advantage of funny business rules that allow for this sort of application process. It allows me to do regular checking at any HSBC in the UK, open entirely from the US, and fund from the US. Basically, this will give me a UK account that is ready to rock with a debit card and checks before I show up in June. The downside is that I have to keep a £5000 ($8800) minimum balance, which is crazy, but apparently they're trying to prevent people from racking up a bunch of debt and then splitting. Although since I'm living on savings, I suppose it doesn't matter. I'll probably move to a regular account as soon as I've been there 3 months anyway.

03.04.06 "Flat" hunting

We have to rent a "flat" to live in while I'm at school. This, like many other aspects of our move, seems to be more difficult than it ought to be. Normally, students live in a college when attending Oxford. These are sort of like a Harry Potter Frat House / Dormitory, but there's quite a bit more to it than that, check out the deets here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleges_of_the_University_of_Oxford

Obviously, my wife wasn't too excited about the prospect of living in a residential hall setting, so that got vetoed quickly. It turns out that most of the colleges have special married student accommodations away from the main college, but that really didn't fit for us either. Apparently you don't get to see what they're like before you move in ("because the current residents are still in them" ...classic Oxford reasoning), and we would have no idea if we could get a place with an extra bedroom for visiting friends and family. So, it has to be an apartment. This would be fine, except it is not at all clear when I should go apartment hunting. I have been told all of the following, by different people, regarding the subject of "flats" in Oxford:

• "it's not possible to say when the best time to go flat hunting is until they come up free"
• "there are some flats across the street from the SBS, I'll look into them for you" (never heard back on this one)
• "we released 150 apartments for the 2006/2007 school year in December, and there are two left (this was in February)
• "other SBS students haven't even begun to look into rentals at this point"
• etc.

So, with lots of conflicting info, and nothing firm, I am taking the spam approach, and writing to any letting agency we can find, asking about good times to come and look for a rental.

In no particular order...

http://www.rentaflat.co.uk/

http://www.collegeandcounty.biz/index.html

http://www.qbman.co.uk/

http://www.hamptons.co.uk/

http://www.nops.co.uk/

http://www.medicsonthemove.co.uk/index.html

http://www.manorhouseproperties.co.uk/home.mhtml?count-num=127332

http://www.elwood.co.uk/

http://www.thomasmerrifield.co.uk/

http://www.spaceagency.co.uk/index.php

http://www.letting-agents-uk.org.uk/agent.asp?id=8403

http://www.lucyproperties.co.uk/

http://www.email4property.co.uk/oxford/form_letting.htm

...hopefully something will pan out.

02.24.06 Visa visa visa, part deux

Visa Debate is OVER

After much fret and worry, the decision has been made: student visas are the way to go. I will get a student visa, and my wife will get a student dependent visa. When I get to the end of my studies, I will apply for an HSMP, which I should get even without the extra 50 points an SBS (Said Business School, the MBA school at Oxford) diploma gets you. This introduces the potential issue that I may have to return to the US briefly after school ends while my HSMP visa gets approved, but whatever. It's better than trying to explain to the immigration dudes why I am getting an HSMP now if I'm going to school, or why I'm a student who's a dependent on my wife's HSMP, or why I have one type of visa and my wife has another, etc. Check out all the wacky stuff they want me to send in to get a visa:

• completed application form VAF1
• your current passport
• your old passport or a copy of it
• Immigration status (Original not copy):e.g. Permanent residence card, Valid I-94 H1-B - L-1 - B-1 I-20 (Signed on reverse side) IAP-66
• Employment authorisation card with advance parole document
• evidence of funds available to you, for example recent bank statements covering at least the last three months
• either a letter confirming your period of leave from your employer together with salary slips for the last three months; or a certificate confirming you have continuing studies; or if you are self employed
• evidence of your business
• a letter of enrolment from a recognised UK University, College or School giving details about the proposed course. This should including the length of the course and the number of hours of study each week.
• An estimation of the costs your also be provided
• your educational qualifications or copies of them
• evidence of Government sponsorship (if applicable)
• One recent passport photograph (not more than six months old)

...quite a bit of stuff just to prove who I am! I've got it all now, though, with the exception of the financial records of funds available. I'm consolidating money from various places (stocks, options, whatever) into the tender clutches of my stockbroker via the single account that he manages on my behalf. Once this dough is all in the same place, I can get a single, compact statement that shows the immigration dudes that I have enough money to come and live in the UK. It turns out that I also have to prove to SBS that I have enough scratch to afford school and living in Oxford, etc., so I'll get this info off to them at the same time as well.


Living in the UK... is it expensive?

All of this money talk has got me thinking about the cost of living in Britain, the value of US dollars in Britain today, etc. Everybody says that living in the UK is expensive, you don't make as much money there as you do here, the exchange rate is bad just now, etc. etc. etc. So, I did a little internet searching, and found that the International Salary Calculator at homefair.com thinks I will need to make ~30% more money to enjoy the same lifestyle in the UK that I currently do here, yikes! To get a feel for just how bad the current exchange rate is, I did a little looking, and found data to chart the following:




...pretty interesting. Today's exchange rate is $1.75 US = 1.00 UK. This really isn't a ton of change relative to the rate over the last 20 years. Historically speaking, that makes the current value of the US dollar relative to the UK pound...

• 4% higher than the average over the last 2 years
• 6% lower than the average over the last 5 years
• 7% lower than the average over the last 10 years
• 7% lower than the average over the last 20 years
• 18% higher than the average over the last 50 years
• 54% higher than the average over the last 75 years
• 83% higher than the average over the last 100 years
• 123% higher than the average over the last 150 years
• 134% higher than the average over the last 200 years
• 136% higher than the average since 1791

There were all time exchange rate lows of $1.30 in 1985 and $1.50 in 2002, as well as an all time high of $9.97 in 1864 (during the civil war), but we are still at a near historically low value of UK Pound relative to US Dollar... there's more interesting data regarding historical exchange rates, "real" currency values, etc. available here: http://www.eh.net/hmit/


The Best Thing About Today

This has absolutely nothing to do with moving to the UK, but I got the following in my email today, and am officially TOTALLY HAPPY NOW.

02.22.06 Sallie Mae? or Mae not?

"SLM Corporation (Student Loan Marketing Association, NYSE: SLM), commonly known as Sallie Mae, is the United state's largest paying-for-college company, managing more than $107 billion in student loans for more than 7 million borrowers. Sallie Mae was originally created in 1972 as a government sponsored enterprise (GSE) and terminated all ties to the federal government in 2004. The company remains the country's largest originator of federally insured student loans."

...another example for my "why the US is secretly a socialist country" file. Sallie Mae is where I am getting my MBA loan from, they are one of the few US institutions willing to lend me money to go to school overseas. Apparently, they hold 1/3 of all US education loans! They gave us a pretty great rate, and now, after a bunch of rigmarole, I finally have the dough. Practically speaking.



The rig(amarole), a short story by Ean Hernandez


Online Forms, Easy-Pleasey

To apply for and get approved for an MBA loan, all I had to do was fill out an online form, and have my wife fill out a similar online cosigner form. That took about 20 minutes, and worked great.


Online Forms Only Work if You're Online

Next, I had to get Oxford to fill out a couple of fields on the form. Since they haven't set up with Sallie Mae to do this online, I had to mail this to Oxford. Nothing gets to Oxford fast. Even pricey overnight stuff gets to just outside of Oxford quickly, and then seems to slow way down as it enters town. Then, paperwork likes to sit around in in-boxes, get shuffled from department to department, and finally, get the pre-longweekend brushoff. After a month of this, my form made it's way to the equally efficient offices of Sallie Mae, who seemed to take a damn long time goofing around with it as well. During this time, I got semi-weekly robot phone calls from Sallie Mae letting me know that my loan still hadn't been fulfilled. However, after about two months the paperwork had made it's way into the Sallie Mae computer systems, and I was good to go with my loan. Almost.


The Credit Check / Disbursement Issue

Try this conundrum on for size: as a well compensated software development manager with a decent credit history, I got a good rate with Sallie Mae: Prime+0%. Throw in my well compensated biotech researcher wife will equally good credit, and we got Prime -.5%! Not too shabby. However, a credit check is only good for 6 months, so you have to either take the money soon, or risk getting a worse rate when they rerun the credit check at some future date. Enter the "disbursement date" issue. I can have SM send Oxford the $$$ now, be all paid up, and not worry about getting my loan any more, BUT, if I do that, I start accruing interest now, a at rate of prime - .5%, or 7.5% - .5%, or $292 per month. I don't have to pay Oxford the full amount until Sept 1st 2006, so I could always wait to have SM send them the cash and not start accruing interest until the last possible minute... the risk there is that I won't have much wiggle room if some kind of SM problem crops up. Worse yet, if they have to rerun my credit in Sept, I will no longer be a well compensated software development manager, I will be an out of work student (aka bum) and might get a crappier rate or even have problems getting the loan at all! So, waiting until Sept is bad too. The plan: I had Oxford tell SM to do the disbursement in May, that way I get a couple of months to clean up any last minute issues that might arise. This required several calls to both Oxford and SM, but now my loan was ready to go. Almost.


Adjusting the Length of Course

As it turns out, the full time MBA program at Oxford lasts 12 - 15 months, depending on the length of your internship, 12 is typical. However, I don't know what is going to happen when I go over, so I wanted to specify 15 months, just in case. Of course, the folks at Oxford put 12 months on the form, so I was somewhat worried that I might end up being done with school from SM's point of view, but still have another 3 months to go in my internship! SM loan payments start 6 months after the graduation date listed on the application, which could be 3 months after my actual graduation. If I'm still looking for work, or on some sort of long vacation or whatever at that time, I don't want to have to cough up an extra $292 a month. So, this took some more phone calling, but the length of the program was extended to 15 months on the SM form, and now, everything should be in order. Almost.


epilogue

I actually have a letter from SM saying they are going to give me the money, it will be disbursed in May, etc. Of course, Oxford doesn't have the cash yet, but I really have no reason to assume there will be any problem at this point ...right?

02.08.06 Visa, Visa, Visa

I need a Visa. Figuring out exactly how to get one, what to put on the application, etc., plays directly into my long term UK aspirations. The machinations are pretty endless...

Student Visa

Since I'm paying OUT THE ASS to go to school in the UK, I can get a student visa no problem, and then Reba can get a student dependent one for sure as well. These will let me study, as well as work up to 20 hours/week, and Reba can work full time. However, these visas expire literally the day after I graduate! So, travelling outside of the UK (my plan after graduation) would potentially end up in a situation where I was refused reentry to the UK! This will really screw up my long term UK living plans.

HSMP Visa

After graduation, it's a different story. If I want to stay in the UK, I have to get a different visa. The most logical is the Highly Skilled Migrant (worker) Program Visa. Yes, I, Ean Hernandez, will move overseas at great expense and effort to become a migrant worker! Of course, unlike many other Hernandi, I will not be picking, shucking, digging up, baling or otherwise harvesting anything. HSMP works on a points system... you get a certain number of points for making so much money, a certain amount for have a certain type of job in a certain field, and even a certain amount for being under 28 (no idea why on that one). You have to have 65 points to qualify, and in a fairly obvious attempt to get MBAs into the country, the UK gave graduates from 50 top international business schools 50 free points. Of course, they have to pander to the UK business schools, so regardless of whether or not they are really in the top 50 schools worldwide, there's about 10 UK schools listed there, one of which is Oxford. The upshot is that it is pretty easy for you to get a 1 year HSMP after graduating from Oxford. After is the key idea there, because you have to have graduated to get the 50 points, and my student visa runs out the day I graduate! That could be a sketchy couple of weeks while the HSMP paperwork processes. After the 1st year, I can apply for a 4 or maybe 5 year HSMP extension. Apparently, you don't even have to have a job while on the HSMP, it basically just lets you live there. I think they're figuring that the HSMP "type" is going to get a job though, I certainly am. Reba can work as a dependent on my HSMP, so as long as I have one, she can work in the UK too. I'm not really sure that she'll qualify for one on her own, but as long as I've got one, we're cool.

UK Passport

Here's a wacky option: Reba's dad was born in the UK (granny was a war bride), and lived there for about 1 year while grandpa did some gnarly clean-up duty in some German concentration camps. When gramps finished up, the whole family went back to the states. So, while my father in law is about as English as English Bob... (that's funny, because his name IS Bob) for some goofy reason Reba is entitled to a UK passport, which gives her dual citizenship, I think. This basically lets her work and live in the UK all she wants. Exactly what this imparts to me is more mysterious, but I'm working on it. The US state dept web site is a little bit crabby on this subject, making vague references to how dual citizenship could screw up your US citizenship...

"...a person who acquires a foreign citizenship by applying for it may lose U.S. citizenship. In order to lose U.S. citizenship, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign citizenship voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. citizenship."

What a bunch of dicks! I'm not too surprised, really. They probably all voted for W. The scuttlebutt out on the internet is a little less sinister:


(from http://www.americanexpats.co.uk/dual.htm)


In order to lose U.S. citizenship, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign citizenship voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. citizenship. NOTE from American Expats In The UK: This means that unless you denounce your U.S. citizenship..you will keep it while having dual citizenship U.S. and U.K.


(from http://www.easyexpat.com/en/faq/departure/q21.htm)

Will I lose US citizenship if I naturalize as a UK citizen?

Many wonder if becoming natualized as a British citizen means losing US citizenship. This is NOT the case as shown below.

U.S. law does not require a person entitled to more than one nationality to give up his/her other nationality. Travel on a foreign passport does not affect U.S. citizenship. However, please note that all U.S. citizens, even dual nationals, must enter and depart the United States on U.S. passports.
http://www.usembassy.org.uk/

In order to lose U.S. citizenship, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign citizenship voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. citizenship.
http://travel.state.gov/travel/

Countries usually do not like to tell you that you are entitled to dual citizenship. As a US citizen, you are perfectly entitle to acquire another nationality and keep your US citizenship. [31-01-05]





(from http://www.richw.org/dualcit/faq.html#noway)



But I thought US law didn't permit one to be a dual citizen -- that if you were (by birth or otherwise), you either had to give up the other citizenship when you came of age, or else you'd lose your US status. And that if you became a citizen of another country, you'd automatically lose your US citizenship. So what's all this talk about dual citizenship?

It indeed used to be the case in the US that you couldn't hold dual citizenship (except in certain cases if you had dual citizenship from birth or childhood, in which case some Supreme Court rulings -- Perkins v. Elg (1939), Mandoli v. Acheson (1952), and Kawakita v. U.S. (1952) -- permitted you to keep both).

However, most of the laws forbidding dual citizenship were struck down in 1967 by the US Supreme Court. The court's decision in this case, Afroyim v. Rusk, as well as a second case in 1980, Vance v. Terrazas, eventually made its way explicitly into the statute books in 1986; up till that time, the old laws were still on the books, but the State Department was effectively under court order to ignore them.

Rules against dual citizenship still apply to some extent to people who wish to become US citizens via naturalization. The Supreme Court chose to leave in place the requirement that new citizens must renounce their old citizenship during US naturalization. However, in practice, the State Department is no longer doing anything in the vast majority of situations where a new citizen's "old country" refuses to recognize the US renunciation.

The official US State Department policy on dual citizenship today is that the United States does not favor it as a matter of policy because of various problems they feel it may cause, but the existence of dual citizenship is recognized in individual cases. That is, if you ask them if you ought to become a dual citizen, they will recommend against doing it; but if you tell them you are a dual citizen, they'll usually say it's OK.

...so, I think it will be cool if Reba gets a UK passport. That will be pretty cool to actually be married to a brit! I always thought they had really sexy voices. :)

Work Visa

The final option I know of is a regular old work visa. I haven't really looked into this, but I think it's really a function of who wants to hire you and if they're willing to hook you up with a visa. I figure that between the post-graduation recruiting events and the internship I work up, I should have a shot at one of these, but I really have no idea. There's enough other options that I will probably back-burner this for now.


ttfn

e

02.03.06 91%

This is the score I got on my first accounting test, which is OK, but not as good as I would have liked. The stuff I got wrong was mostly a product of not understanding the way my instructor thinks about accounting, instead of not understanding accounting itself, which is good. However, I want a 100%! I keep reminding myself that the point of this exercise is to become familiar with the basics of a subject with which I will be expected to become familiar on an unreasonably short timeline. So, this is groundwork. Ethan (my brother) says that this stuff will help me with 1/4 to 1/2 of my first financial accounting course, but after that it's all big picture stuff that this "beancounting" course won't help with. I figure, at the minimum, it will get my brain working and in the habit of studying again. While the French classes were awesome I have to admit that they were pretty conversational and non scholastic toward the end. Of course, I had fun with that. :)

01.24.06 third eye gone!

In an attempt to shore up all of my medical needs while I'm still on US insurance, I am getting some dentistry done and a lypoma removed from my forehead. A lypoma is a little lump of fat that builds itself up in one place or another, I don't know why in particular. This one was on my forehead, and I called it my "3rd eye", even though it was quite small. I still thought it was ugly, and didn't want to get into the situation that my father in law had: his got as big as an acorn, and moved down his forehead so that it hung over his eye! Today I went in to see Dr. Lawler to have mine removed. First, they injected lytocane (sp?) which made it swell up, so that it really looked like a 3rd eye.

Then, they cut the thing out. Reba watched, an I could kind of see what they were doing via the reflection in her glasses. Yuck! After a lot of cutting, ominous scraping, and blood wiping, they had the little guy out. It was the size of a cherry pit, sort of globby and yellow/bloody. Here is a picture of it in the biopsy container.

And finally, they stitched me up, and put a bandage on my head, which is pretty goofy looking:

...so I'm staying home the rest of the day. Plus, this will give me a chance to finish up my accounting homework.

01.23.06 work, life, school, ducks

This weekend was my last duck hunting expedition before the big move. It was really sad to watch Robby and Sarin standing on the shore waving goodbye, and to watch the duck blinds and favorite hunting spot disappear around the corner as we were ferried up the Winchester Wasteway and back to the launch. The hunt really wasn't very good, Saturday was mostly spent picking at small groups of divers, and Sunday was so bad that only two (long) shots were fired all day. Happily, I got 2 Goldeneye Drakes and a Shovelnose Hen on Saturday, one of which I nailed with a classic pass shot... I was really happy about that one. The other two were acquired more in the sluicing method, and while it's irresistible in the moment, I frankly don't feel too satisfied after the fact.

Regarding the low number of potential shots, I suspect that more is at work than Hernandez luck. The guides say that Moses Lake hunts have been hit and miss all year, and from what I can remember, they've been hit and miss for the last few. I don't think that duck populations are down in general, I just think that the farming practices in the Moses Lake area are not supporting the volume of ducks we once had. I do know this: since I got back into hunting about 4 years ago, I have not seen a set of more than 1 dozen ducks come in to a blind I was hunting, and even groups numbering a dozen have presented themselves less than a handful of times. Generally, I have shot at small sets of 2 to 5 ducks, and this last weekend's level of shooting has been more common than not. I'm beginning to wonder if Moses Lake is just played out? I hope not, but I am considering that my next trip will be to somewhere like Mexico or Canada. It's sad, because I remember shooting at groups of 30 or 40 ducks regularly as a kid... much of that was in the Skagit, but Eastern Washington had similar productivity when I was out there. We'll see. Maybe I'll give old Moses Lake another go this next year, if I'm back in town for the Xmas holiday.

Of course, the upshot of this weekend's activities is that I now have to cram in a bunch of Accounting homework tonight and tomorrow, hence the title of this post. Balancing the fun stuff I like to do with the work I want to accomplish is going to be different in an academic setting than in the work setting I am so used to.

I have to get some minor surgery in the AM tomorrow, but I'm hoping to feel OK to finish up the assignment before class that night, even if I just email it in. My hobbies are going to have to really slow down in order to support the level of studying I want to do... weekend-long getaways are not going to be possible over the next few months, and even less possible when I start at Oxford. I just need to get into that rhythm of studying all weekend, which I actually enjoy to a certain degree. The other issue is that my focus is weak right now, and I need to get it up into good fighting shape: I can't be half spaced out and hope to grind through a ton of study work at the same time!

01.08.06 change in owner equity

This accounting stuff isn't killing me yet, but there are a few concepts that are not going into my head nicely and quietly, so I'm really glad I'm taking this class now! I'd hate to be struggling through these concepts next year while my academic overlords try to kill me with sheer volume of work. I'm actually finding accounting to be aesthetically pleasing in the same way programming is: when everything works out, i.e. the accounts balance, the program compiles, whatever... I feel this soothing sense of order (and a smug sense of superiority). That's a lot of S's. I'd probably get marks off for that in a paper. In any case, when things don't work out, and I'm beating my head against some idea... then it's not quite as satisfying. Although, I suppose that satisfaction in a completed task goes up some amount for every beat of the head against the [insert metaphor]. Tomorrow is the first day of asp .net class at the UW. I hope that doesn't kill me either. Since I set the whole thing up, I kind of get to call the shots with the instructor. I was on a conference call with him Friday, when he actually asked me how much work I wanted assigned outside of class! MY GOD!!!! For the first time in history, I actually got to decide how much homework the teacher would assign! For 2 seconds, I thought that I would tell him to go easy, because it would make things easy on me. Of course, I felt guilty about that and told him that this class needs to be challenging, and my people need to work for it... I also told him that each one gave me a personal commitment to do the reading and homework, and really work their asses off. So, I chumped out and basically told him to give us lots of homework. :) Oh well, we'll all be the better for it.

01.06.06 skypeage

After just a few posts to this thing, I'm noticing a clear desire on my part to post more, even if there's nothing to report. I find myself wanting to tap out the trivia of my day and most recent concerns, even though they are not the point of this blog. Therefore, I will resolve to only post items relevant to my overseas journey, and hopefully let off a little trivia pressure whenever I get enough appropriate material to warrant a post. The tension created between wanting to jabber and not finding noteworthy subjects should make for interesting something or other. We shall see.

On to it: Frank turned me on to this thing called Skype, which is a voice over ip service that runs on your PC, and has the following features:

• totally free calls to anyone using Skype
• 2 cents/minute from Skype to land lines (in the 1st world)
• 25 cents/minute from Skype to cell phones
• local phone numbers wherever you like that forward to your computer wherever you are for $30/year
• forward to a land line or cell at the same rate as calling a land line or cell

...best of all, this all works the same and costs the same, wherever you are in the world.

So, theoretically, I can give my mom a Seattle (206) number to call us at, it will go to my Skype account on my PC, and will cost only 2 cents a minute. This beats the hell out of the 1 POUND a minute I was paying on my crappy "pay as you go" phone that I took on my last few trips to the UK. If I have it forward to my UK cell, it will only cost 25 cents a minute, still about 1/7th the cost I was paying last time. If I can teach her how to use a Skype phone on her computer, it's entirely free!

No matter which way we go, this makes for a dirt cheap way of doing long distance, EXCEPT for the forwarding to cell phone case, which probably wouldn't be super useful anyway, as I don't want to get calls from mom in the middle of class.

I'm going to check it out tonight, Frank even lent me a usb voip phone to try. Maybe this will keep me from going broke via long distance phone when I go over.

Update: the phone works fine, the service works fine (sometimes fades in and out), and the Skype site and online store are kind of crappy. The experience is a bit cooler when you use the microphone and speakers of the computer, except then you have issues with echoes. I'm going to keep working on this, I'd like to not have to spend so damn much money on phones the next time I go over.

L8tr

e

01.04.06 ACC210

The loan info and wire transfer have been sent. Now, I'm stuck going to Oxford, unless I give up my deposit. I only wish I didn't have to wait 8 more months!!!

Had the first session of ACC210 last night. Several other people and I were standing outside the class waiting for the instructor to arrive, and as class time got closer, no one in apparent authority showed up. One guy was worrying somewhat vocally about whether we had the wrong room or not, and another guy wearing a purple shirt mentioned that he had heard the instructor was a "real jackass". Fabulous. Then, just at class time, a security guy came and opened the door, saying hello to purple shirt guy, which seemed odd. Then, purple shirt guy came clean and admitted that he was actually the instructor, which was pretty damn funny, and scored points with me. The class was OK, he talked about some very basic accounting stuff, which seemed appropriate for the crowd he's speaking to: bookkeepers, 4-year transfer hopefuls, high school kids getting occupational education credits, people who own small businesses and need to be better at the books, etc. etc. And then, there's me. I know absolutely FUCK ALL about accounting, so even the most basic data is useful. The age range in there is probably from 16 to 50, I suppose that's typical of community college courses. I hope that I will be able to handle taking this class as well as the asp.net programming stuff coming up, but if last night is any indication, I should be OK.

01.03.06 money

Got the paperwork to do the US to UK wire transfer from my stock broker today, Reba has to sign it tonight, and then SBS gets their down payment sent tomorrow. Also have the student loan docs done, which also require my fine wife's signature before sending off. This down payment is non refundable, so if announcing to my colleagues that I'm quitting wasn't final enough, sending off the wire tomorrow will make this life-move pretty damn irreversible. Of course, at this point, I've told everybody I know, and if I forgot someone, the rumor mill spreads the story for me. It's funny how a fancy name like Oxford makes everyone chatty... the congratulations and back slapping and "isn't that a neat adventure" stuff is of course great, but I imagine it would come regardless of what school I attended. There's something about this school in particular, or more probably, the American conception of this school in particular, that makes people talk it up. While this is all fun for me now, I'm starting to feel the pressure already... there is no freaking way I can afford to fail at this. I don't think I'd want to come back to Seattle if that happened... just facing everyone would be unbearable. So, I will just have to succeed!

Tonight is the first night of Accounting 210 at SCCC, my attempt at doing some pre-game warm up for Oxford. Next quarter will be business statistics, which should be interesting, at least. We'll see what accounting is like, honestly I'm not looking forward to it. I am, however, looking forward to being on a tighter schedule, with all the holiday free time I'm getting antsy again: I only need a few hours of sleep at night, gain weight, etc. So, this will keep me focused and tired, which always takes a load off of my mind.

01.02.06 getting started

11:33 pm January 2nd 2006.

The idea of having a blog is so my friends and family can keep up with what I'm doing over in the UK when I go to school. Since this is post #1, I suppose some background is in order.

At the age of 36, I decided to go back to school to get an MBA, somewhat because I think that will help me move forward in my career, and somewhat because I'm ready to try something new. When I told Reba (wife) about this idea, she said "sure, but there is one requirement: you are NOT allowed to work and go to school at the same time, you are not capable of focusing on that many things at once." She was probably right. From there, I thought, "well if I'm not going to keep my job during this, I should go somewhere cool for school." Since I've always wanted to live in Europe, I figured this was as good a chance as any. Initially I was thinking about a 2year English language program at the IESE in Barcelona, where they even teach you Spanish at the same time as the MBA stuff and have really good food AND weather, but Reba was not down with this: she wanted to keep working, and therefore wanted to be somewhere where people speak English at work. Ok, so I started looking at the UK. To make a long story short: the university of Oxford sounded like a damn cool place to spend one year overseas, and after a lot of GMAT studying, test taking, essay writing, and to-the-UK-flying, I got accepted to the Saïd Business School at Oxford. Here's the business school's website: http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ Also, some funny background info on Mr. Saïd and the arms dealing controversy can be found here: http://www.oxfordstudent.com/tt2002wk1/news/what_was_saïd

Campus liberals up in arms aside, I'm going. The timeline works out like this:

• (may '06) sell house, move into sub let in seattle, visit Oxford briefly to pick an apartment
• (aug '06) move to Oxford
• (sep '06) screw around in the UK, France, whatever
• (oct '06) start school, get ass kicked by reading assignments, etc.
• (jul, aug '07) consulting project somewhere cool in the UK or Europe
• (oct '07) work for at least 1 year in the UK... the UK govt gives a 1 year work visa to Oxford grads
• (oct '08) stay? return? unknown!

Since I got the OK from SBS in October, there hasn't been a ton to do in terms of prepping for school. That all changed last week, when I got the official offer package and a demand for an ~£4000 downpayment and proof of having the cash to cover the whole £29,000 tuition within 15 days. This appears to be pretty typical of Oxford... £29,000 is about $50,000, so most people would take out a loan. BUT, you can't get a loan unless you have an offer of a place in the program. SBS doesn't care, they want their down payment and proof NOW. So, I'm scrambling a bit, but should be OK.

The other imminent step toward business schooliness is the Financial Accounting class I'm going to take two nights a week starting tomorrow. The idea is that if I have some inkling of how that works before I get to SBS, I won't have to learn all the basic basics while I'm getting slammed with a ton of other material in Oxford's somewhat legendarily intensive terms. While business school in general interests me, I don't seem to be super drawn to accounting, so I suppose it will be an exercise in "can you handle doing something you don't like doing", which is pretty much what I do for a living currently, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Ok, that's about it for now, I plan to update this as stuff develops, but mostly not until I move, which is the point at which things will probably get interesting.

L8tr

e