Also available in: Dutch, German

In four weeks, when Koos will be kind of done with his project, we will go traveling. Because then we won’t have a home, we’re now thinking about what to do and where to go. Koos’ contract won’t be extended, but the client is satisfied about is work and there’s big demand for designers in Silicon Valley. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a job here.

We won’t look for one though. It’s a lot of fun to be in the US, but to really live here has some big drawbacks. Visa issues aside (all work visa for 2013 are issued already):

1. We don’t want to live in Silicon Valley. We’ve tried and it was nice for a while, but besides work, there’s nothing to do. Yes, the weather is great, but if that were important, all Dutch people would have moved to Spain by now.
2. Living in San Francisco is much more interesting than the boring Cupertino and San Jose suburbs, but it involves about three hours of commuting each day to most tech companies. Which doesn’t leave much time to enjoy that nice weather. Besides, San Francisco’s climate is totally different from that in the Valley. “Don’t call it Frisco. Or summer” —Lake Tahoe’s slogan to attract tourists.
3. Although not all people earn so much, you can definitely get a nice big salary here. Unfortunately, the cost of housing is so high that you don’t really get to keep much of your income. Even our little apartment already costs more than a good job would pay one of us.
4. Employee rights are pretty much limited to physical safety regulations. With a permanent position you’re about as certain of income as with a freelance project, but with fewer holidays.
5. We would have to pay American taxes and we’re not under the impression that’d be money well spent. Socioeconomically, in many ways the US looks like South Africa, with just a few more millionaires. No offense to those from any of the two countries, but public transport is very limited, healthcare is badly organized, everywhere you see homeless people. We doubt the trailer park dwellers are better off than those living in the townships. Perhaps they have better sanitary facilities.
   In the Netherlands people sometimes complain about bureaucracy, but the US has so many laws and rules, that the average citizen breaks three of them each day. Nearly every publicly accessible building in California has a sign at the door warning about the risk of getting cancer because of harmful substances inside. Not that these substances are really there, but if so, without the sign somebody could sue the building’s owner and warning for non-existing danger is not prohibited. We’re getting off topic and didn’t even get started on spying and wars.
6. We miss you guys in Europe.

Except for that last point, we weren’t really inconvenienced by any of the above yet, so we really like that we still have some time left here. Every time it’s wonderful to walk along the bay near our place, looking at the sunset, seeing the pelicans flying by, to go on forest hikes, have nice chats with the Americans we randomly meet on the streets and to enjoy live in the city. We very much look forward to the two and half weeks of vacation that we’re going to plan now!

We like it here!