Catching Up

I'm back in town; a bit of good news; and thinking about leaving Austin

Yes, I know, I need to get caught up. I want to continue the chapters detailing my music history - there’s possibly 2 left, and I have enjoyed writing that. I want to write up my experiences from the past month in China; that might prove interesting or even useful for some people. But that will have to wait.

I’ve been gone for a month. At this point in what’s left of my life, I don’t prefer to do such a long trip. Even in the 00’s, when I was traveling 2 or 3 weeks every month, I usually was home on the weekends. This time no. A week in Beijing followed by a week in Hong Kong (with a side trip to Macau) and then 2 more weeks in Beijing. I got to celebrate my 70th birthday with my wife, and that was very nice indeed.

I got back to Texas on Saturday. Five days later, I’m still jet lagged, still sleeping odd hours, still resisting settling into the proper time zone. I’ve barely gone out of my apartment in the past four days (one meal out, a trip to the supermarket, not much else). Even now, as I’m sitting here writing this (11:40 AM at the moment), I can barely keep my eyes open.

There is some good news. My wife will finally have her interview at the U.S. Consulate for her visa. There were times when we thought it wasn’t going to happen (okay, it actually hasn’t happened yet) or that I’d be dead before it did (that could still happen, I suppose). Her interview is next month and assuming she doesn’t blow it (that could happen too), she’ll have her visa shortly afterwards. (I almost wrote “thereafter” but that’s a shitty word, do people still write that? Is “afterwards” any better?)(Remember, jet lag.)

I moved back to the U.S. to take up my current job in August 2022 - 21 months ago. After I moved out of an AirBnb to an actual apartment, we filed for a tourist visa. We did not know at the time that when a woman files for a tourist visa for the U.S. and her husband is already in the U.S., it is almost automatically denied every time, on the basis that they think once she gets here she won’t leave.

At that point I figured it would be best to hire an immigration lawyer to guide us through the process and hopefully not make the kinds of mistakes I would almost certainly be making. That took a couple of months - getting the list of recommended specialists, doing initial meetings with them and getting price estimates, and finally signing the contract.

No surprise - I found it almost impossible to find an immigration attorney in Austin who had any real experience with getting visas for Asians. The immigration business here must be all Mexicans and other LatinX countries. Well, Jiaoying Summers jokes that Filipinos are really Mexicans who think they’re Asian, so there’s that.

Anyway, a year and a half after we filed, the interview is scheduled. There’s a huge global backlog due to budget cuts and Covid. But we’re finally almost just about there.

Once my wife has her visa (I hope I’m not jinxing it), she plans to travel back and forth to Asia 2 or 3 times a year. I’m hoping to have more trips to Beijing this year. That’s one of several reasons that I’m thinking about leaving Austin.

When I took up this job 21 months ago, I was told that I could be a remote worker and that I could live anywhere I wanted as long as it was in the U.S. So where would that be?

I looked at the rents for the three cities that I know the best - New York (born and raise), San Francisco (lived there for 2-1/2 years), and Los Angeles (so many trips there for WB that I knew the city quite well). The rents seemed prohibitively expensive to me, so I widened the net.

I decided that I would narrow things down to the 9 states that don’t have state income tax - Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming. I ruled out states that had frigid winters.

I finally chose Austin because of the food and music scenes and because I have some family here. As it turns out, that family (a cousin) travels even more than I do. I see her about three times a year. I’m not going out to many bars or clubs or shows, because I don’t like doing that alone so much these days. The Texas barbecue is great, the Tex-Mex food is great, but that’s not really enough to tie me to a particular place.

Traveling from here turns out to be an unexpected PITA most of the time. There are no direct flights from Austin to Asia that I’m aware of. Any time I want to go to Asia, it means adding time and expense to first get out to the west coast. And when I need to go to the office, which is in Redmond WA, there are only two nonstop flights per day to choose from.

(I prefer non stop because I don’t like running around in terminals to catch a connecting flight. It’s tiring and stressful. And my company’s travel policy says that I can fly premium economy if the flight is over 3 hours - direct flights are over 3 hours, any itinerary with connecting flights wouldn’t qualify.)

The Austin-Bergstrom airport itself is badly in need of expansion. In recent years the population in Austin has exploded and the airport has not kept up. It’s very Austin - many local restaurants and shops have outposts there and there’s even some live music. But the airport can be very crowded (even the TSA Pre line can take 15 minutes or more) and one has to do a ton of walking to get anywhere in the terminal.

Lastly, I don’t live in downtown Austin. I’m 20-30 minutes away, but I almost never go downtown. I’m still in the Austin city limits, but where I live feels like a generic suburb. There’s definitely no “keep Austin weird” vibe where I am.

So I’m thinking, my lease is up in October, should I really stay here after that? I know I tend to be impulsive around these things, but I’m giving it a lot of thought.

I could stay in Texas and just move to Dallas or Houston - but I don’t know anyone in either of those cities. I could move to the Seattle area, which is lovely, but then I’d have to become a hybrid employee rather than a remote one; I’d have to go into the office 2 or 3 days a week, and I don’t want to do that.

That leaves California. I lived in San Francisco for 2-1/2 years. I have 2 cousins there and 2 good friends in the area. It also has what I think is the largest Filipino population in the U.S. (there’s at least one Jollibee there!), and that would make things easier for my wife.

The rents are more expensive there, there would be state and city income tax, and of course the cost of moving cross country. I haven’t made any final decision yet. But I’m giving it a lot of thought.

So that’s it for now. I think I’m either going to go out for lunch or take a nap now (or both). I’ll get you caught up on the other stuff soon. Thanks for sticking around!