Sydney
In August 2008 I am going back to Sydney to live.
I have lived in New York for nearly eight years, and I have decided it’s
time to draw this experience to a close.
There are a number of reasons for the decision, some of which are
explained below.
And some reasons don’t have an explanation, including the feeling that,
well, it’s time.
Why Did I Come Here?
To understand why I’m going back to Sydney it makes sense to consider why
I decided to come to New York in the first place.
At the time I was working for an American company, and the world was in
the middle of the dot-com boom — demand for computer skills was at
a peak everywhere, but nowhere more than in the United States.
And just like a sports player in the minor leagues who wants to play for
one of the big name teams, I wanted to see if I could make it in the big
time.
Of course, money was a major factor.
I knew that my colleagues in the U.S. were earning considerably higher
salaries for essentially the same work that I was doing in Australia,
and I saw no reason why I shouldn’t climb aboard that particular gravy
train.
So what has happened with regard to those two factors?
Well, the work has certainly been interesting at times.
There is a scale to computer systems in the U.S. that you don’t get in a
smaller country like Australia — systems with hundreds of servers,
for example, or systems that handle hundreds of billions of dollars’
worth of securities in a single day.
But the problem is that the development of these systems is tied to the
general health of the economy.
No-one wants to start work on new systems to tackle interesting and
challenging problems when the economy is experiencing serious
difficulties (and there is no doubt that the U.S. economy is in serious
trouble right now), so the type of work available lately has not had
anything like the level of excitement of earlier times.
Or perhaps I’m just getting jaded, and I’m not impressed with what’s on
offer any more.
And the money has been a dreadful shock.
When I came to America the Australian Dollar was trading at about 44
U.S. cents.
Right now it’s about 95 U.S. cents — in other words the value of
the Australian Dollar has more than doubled, or to put it more accurately,
the value of the U.S. Dollar has halved since I arrived.
Then there’s the fact that a large proportion of the annual income
of a person working on Wall Street is in the form of a year-end bonus, and
the bonus figures have been atrocious lately.
Combine these factors, and you can see that the dream of making my fortune
in America has become something of a nightmare.
Income vs Expenditure
OK, so the income side of the equation hasn’t been too great lately, but
surely the expenditure side has been dropping as well with the fall of the
U.S. dollar?
Well, yes, but only partially.
The problem is that oil is priced in U.S. Dollars, so to counter the
sinking value of the dollar the price of oil has been going up
astronomically.
And the price of oil is an indirect contributor to almost every aspect of
life, from airfares, to home heating, to the harvesting and transport of
food.
And there is an additional factor unique to New York.
While house prices and rents everywhere else in the country have been
dropping, the low U.S. Dollar has led to an increase in demand for
apartments in Manhattan — much of this demand coming from overseas.
Wealthy Europeans and others are seizing the opportunity to buy or lease
an apartment in New York at prices which seem ridiculously low when
converted to their home currencies.
The effect is to drive up prices and rents in New York, while the rest of
the country is experiencing a severe housing slump.
In fact, the final straw for my decision to leave New York was the
notification of the proposed rent increase on my apartment here.
If I wanted to stay, I would be up for a 25% increase on a monthly rental
figure that I think is already extremely high.
The decision that was forming in my mind became pretty much a foregone
conclusion with the arrival of that notice.
Dual Intent
When I first moved to the United States I was on an L-1 (intra-company
transfer) visa, and I subsequently switched to an H-1B (skilled temporary
worker) visa.
Both types of visa allow for a fixed period of residence in the U.S.,
with the understanding that at the end of that period the visa holder
will leave the country.
The intial visa is for three years, and a single renewal is available,
making a total of six years.
But a person on one of these types of visa may also apply for permanent
residence — the so-called “Green Card”.
This requires that the applicant have the intention of remaining in the
U.S. permanently, which on the face of it conflicts with the requirement
of the L-1 or H-1B that the holder intends to leave the country when the
visa expires.
To get around this conflict the Immigration Service has the concept of
“Dual Intent”, which allows an L-1 or H-1B visa holder to
apply for permanent residence while holding a temporary visitor visa.
As it turns out, Dual Intent is a resonable description of my attitude
towards coming to and staying in America.
I had originally assumed that my stay in the U.S. would be temporary
— I guessed that I would be here about five years or so.
But I always held out the possibility that I could stay longer —
perhaps even indefinitely — if I found a job for which I was
absolutely perfectly suited or if I met the love of my life.
Neither of those things has happened so for me to be leaving after nearly
eight years is pretty much in line with my original expectations.
If anything, the question should be — why have I stayed so long?
What Will I Miss?
One of the greatest assets of New York is its public transport.
The subway runs 24 hours a day and is ridiculously cheap — a $2
flat fare takes you anywhere in the system.
And if the subway is not your style, cabs are plentiful and not too
expensive.
This means that I have not needed to own a car all the time I’ve been
here.
And that in turn means that I’ve had none of the expenses of car ownership
— tax, insurance, maintenance etc.
New York is probably the only city in the world where this is possible.
Of course, the best public transport system in the world would be
worthless if there was nowhere to go.
But New York has a vast amount to see and do — from the cultural
attractions like the MoMA and the Met to the wildlife and flowers of
Central Park.
From the fine dining of midtown restaurants to the bars of the Lower
East Side.
It’s been a great experience to live amongst this huge array of
entertainment options, even if there have been long periods when I took
little advantage of it.
Of course I will miss the friends I have made here — that goes
without saying.
But the Internet makes keeping in touch a lot easier these days.
I’ve managed to maintain contact with my friends in Australia and
New Zealand all these years so I’m sure it will work the other way.
On the Other Hand…
But there are aspects of this city that I will not miss, and first on the
list is probably the weather.
New York is stinking hot in summer and freezing in winter — the
only months that are actually pleasant are May and June in spring, and
September and October in fall.
At all other times the city is only made livable by the expenditure of
vast amounts of energy on heating or cooling the place.
And New York can be a very tough city.
From shop assistants who clearly hate their work to commuters who wish
everyone would just get out of the way, everyday interactions with other
New Yorkers can be a stressful experience.
I’m fit enough and healthy enough to cope with it all right now, but I
hate to think what it would be like if I were disabled or elderly.
New York is not a city to retire in, it seems to me, unless you’re very
rich.
But Wait, There’s More
When I get to the other contributory reasons for my decision to leave, the
list is endless.
New York is an island of progressive attitudes in a vast sea of
conservatism, but I can’t escape the fact that I’m living in America, not
just in New York.
My disagreements with widespread American attitudes on a broad range of
issues will provide fodder for a whole sequence of rant articles in
future (keep watching this website), but I will just say that I am pleased
that I will no longer be contributing my tax dollars to the greatest
foreign policy blunder of the last fifty years.
A friend mentioned the other day that it was a shame my stay in the U.S.
had coincided with the presidency of George W Bush.
There is a very good likelihood that the Democratic Party will take the
presidency and both houses of Congress at the election in November, and
that will undoubtedly change the mood of the country for the better.
But it will take a while for President Obama to undo the economic and
foreign policy disasters of the last eight years, so I suspect that real
change will be slow in coming.
In the End
In the end, has this whole experience been worth it?
Oh, absolutely, yes.
I’ve met some lovely people here, had some great times and gained an
insight into America that I couldn’t possibly have acquired otherwise.
I’ve been to concerts at Carnegie Hall, I’ve seen Spring in Central Park
and I’ve tasted Nathan’s hot dogs at Coney Island.
And thanks to the travelling I did as a consultant in the first few years
I was here, I’ve also got to know cities like Denver, San Francisco,
Los Angeles, Boston and Washington D.C.
But having seen all these places, I can safely say that New York is
different.
Nowhere else in America has the vast array of cultural assets —
museums, theaters, iconic buildings — that New York has.
Nowhere else is so international, with influences from Latin America,
Europe, Africa, Asia and yes, even Australia.
Nowhere else is so concentrated, so that everything is just a short subway
ride or cab ride away.
I will miss it.
I may never be an American, but in a small way, from now on,
I will always be a New Yorker.