Is this thing on?

Testing, testing, one two, one two, one, one, two two two…

It’s been a while since we’ve posted here in any really meaningful way.  It’s somewhat telling that if you go back in time, you jump from Ella’s 11th birthday to getting ready for her 10th.

But it’s time to ressurect it again as big and exciting changes are happening.

Let me bring you up to speed.  Over two years ago I (Tim) quit my job at PwC and formed an Internet Startup with my friend Alex. That’s all documented in gory detail here (http://timbull.com).

In November last year we were acquired by AVOS systems (the latest busines started by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen the co-founders of YouTube).  It’s been great fun so far, but to really do the role justice, I need to be based out of the office in the US.  Karina and I talked it over and we’ve decided to make the big move – we’re relocating to the USA.

So it seems timely to ressurect this blog again.  We enjoyed documenting our London experience here and it’s also a great record of the things we did while there too.  We plan to do a similar thing here again with our move to San Mateo (just south of San Francisco).

It’s now less than a week until we leave (Friday 16th) and we’ve been madly preparing for weeks now.  We’ve recieved our working visas, got the flights and accommodation booked for our first month in the US and we’ve managed to rent the house out too.

We’ve been selling things like mad.  All the electronics had to go (they won’t work because of the voltages) so the TV has gone, along with anything else.  Our couch has gone (it’s too big to store effectively and we don’t know how much space we will have in our place in the US).

While some of this has been challenging, it’s also been a great excuse to clean up and throw out paperwork and other things we’ve been carrying around with us.  I found passbooks from 1992 for a bank account long since closed that were still hand written!

The other exciting part about it is the chance to “start afresh”. For example, because the CD player had to go, we decided to get rid of all our CDs (we digitised them first).  Why buy a CD player if you are starting out?  There’s lots of opportunities like this to rethink what we do.

The house is very empty now.  The following two photos show the lounge and dining area from different angles.  All gone.  You can see the suitcases we’ve started to pack as we sort things into three groups – stuff going with us, stuff to be air frieghted and stuff to be shipped.

Here’s our “lounge room”.  This is in the study where our sofa bed used to be (that was an adventure getting rid of that!).  One neat thing is that all the TV channels now have these websites where you can catch up with shows.  We’ve been able to sit back and enjoy a bit of TV in the evenings if we like just by watching online.  It’s surprisingly good.

Lately most nights have been very busy socialising though with little time to relax and watch TV.  Things are starting to feel very real! 5 more sleeps and we’ll be on the plane to LA Airport then off to San Francisco.

There’s lots we are excited about, but to be honest one of the things we are MOST excited about is that we’re getting a new car! We don’t know what yet, but it’s going to be one of our first purchases when we land.  The Moke has been sold and while it’s sad to see it go, I think we’re just looking forward to a car with a roof and doors with roll up windows!

We’ll keep you up to date here and this should cross post to Facebook and Twitter too, feel free to follow along and please stay in touch.  The world is smaller than ever these days.