Stalking

The few weeks that I have been in the USA alone have been a little tough despite the warm welcome of friends here.

Before I left Portugal, Anne suggested that we get a couple of cameras, partly for animal activity and partly as extra security.  In the USA we had been using a platform that has a base station that the cameras connect to and a monthly subscription.  I was not too keen to use something with a monthly recurring fee so I settled on a camera company that has SD cards and a mobile phone app with an optional monthly subscription if you feel you need to store information for later retrieval online.

So it was that my phone in the USA kept on pinging me when there was movement in the front or back of our house and I would regularly open the phone app and see Anne or Nick hanging out on the front porch. Once or twice I said something to them through the camera but more often, I'd send them a WhatsApp message to tell them that I was snooping.

In my last post I was so focused on talking about being hosted by people we'd met and befriended in America that I forgot to mention some old friends!

In 1999 we had decided that I'd look for work outside of South Africa and we had a couple of friends who had gone to America to work in the booming information technology industry during the dot com bubble.  One family who we'd known for years in Grahamstown and who's children and ours built an elaborate fantasy that they were cousins, had moved to America and offered to host me at their house for an exploratory trip.

In 2000 I planned to go first to England and then to America on a scouting trip.  Our friend in England was away for a conference once the dates were finalized so I switched the plan to start in America.  Before I left home I used a facility on one of our servers to send an email set to arrive while I was in the air.  At the time this was a trick that was not known outside of tech circles so was utterly unexpected.   The email said goodbye, and made some promises about a different future.  I discovered with some horror that this email coming over the ether from me freaked her out.  Suddenly the sweet message played out as somewhat sinister message saying goodbye to the living and reassuring her that despite this, her future would be different now.

My hosts in America treated me to tours, road trips and a ride up to meet a climber who knew a mutual friend of theirs.  It was on one of these climbing outings that I learned about a company that was looking for someone fitting my background.  It was also not the first time that "Rhodes University" in my resume was interpreted as "he was a Rhodes Scholar".  Technically I suppose I am a scholar from Rhodes, but I only learned quite a lot later that this false conclusion had helped to cement my credentials at the time.  

Anne had a similar experience with an item in her resume that listed her as having taught in East London.  It was on the morning of the day that she was introduced to the school that she realized, as the headmaster proudly announced that she had taught in East London, that he had assumed it was London, England!

We have had a standing tradition of a Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) lunch with these South African friends since we came over to America so our more recent visits have been a little sad given the distance to travel for a meal like that.  They also have the distinction of being friends that we have jokingly alternately blamed and then thanked for encouraging us to come to America in the first place.

I was able to take a trip down to Raleigh to visit a couple we grew close to over the first ten years in Boston.  I had worked with the husband at my first job.  He and his wife adopted a daughter who become our adopted niece.  She was a the subject of many of my attempts at child portraits before they moved down to Raleigh and is in her early teens now.  I was honored that she agreed to allow me to take a photograph of her while I was there.  Anne will no doubt use one of them as a reference for a new drawing of her.  I really enjoyed hanging out with them and experiencing the warmth of their company.

Their daughter has inherited her dad's sense of humor.  I told her the story of the fairy house and asked her if she thought the fairies would find the house that our granddaughter built for them and move in?  She said:

"Yes, they'll find it.  And they'll get you!"

After I officially retired at the end of April I have been going through these bittersweet steps to transition from full time work.  I have made myself available for some consulting to smooth the process of my exit so I expect to have increasing time at my disposal in the coming weeks to get started on the few projects that are lined up.

Last all-hands send off

I told a colleague that my daily routine would probably involve carting some wheelbarrow loads of stone from the yard, fiddling with technology to get our gates working again, setting up graphs to show the temperature trends in our hot water system and reading.  When I told Anne what I had said, she reminded me that I have a lot to catch up on in the cooking department so I guess there is that too.

My last stop was at Yale where Matt graduated on Monday.  He has a Masters in Nursing Science which makes him a registered nurse and a nurse practitioner, a career in the USA (and perhaps elsewhere) which allows him to consult with patients and prescribe medicine.  It is a role that is somewhere between a nurse and a doctor.  He specialized in Family Medicine (General Practice) and he will start a residency in Seattle in the fall at an outpatient community clinic.

The Yale campus is truly beautiful and I was proud to be able to go there and be with him for his graduation.

My flight back to our new home leaves in a few minutes and I won't be putting an email up to be triggered while I am flying over the Atlantic, though mostly because in all likelihood I'll have wifi and be able to message from my seat way up in the air.

I have one more month on my tourist visa to the EU after which I have to leave.  I'll have fingers crossed and be holding thumbs that my visa approval for the residence permit is approved in time for me to return to the USA, pick it up and head back home at the end of the first week of July.