All posts filed under: Life

Money saving tips from a frugal person:

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#1 is my newest tip. A coupon website that seems brilliant! I found out about ‘Honey‘ today. It is a website that searches the internet for money off coupons, use of the website is free of charge and from the research I have done so far it looks like there is no negative hook. So I feel confident sharing the sign up link with you. Follow it and check if your an find a coupon the next time before you buy your regular brand new shoes. These codes seem to not be limited to clothing. So go explore! Save money. But don’t buy things you don’t need! joinhoney.com/ref/1ktfzl   Check it out before using it, but it seems like an amazing tool to me. (I looked them up on Reviewopedia ) #2 is another money savings tip and this one is thoroughly tried and tested by myself and several of my friends is: Transferwise! If you use my link to sign up and make your first international transfer then you will get your first transfer for free and …

So very soon I will return to America!

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I can’t quite believe just HOW soon I will return to living in America! HOW did this happen? Remember back in the years before I met Jason? Back then I had just absolutely no interest in the Americas. And then whoosh, I got swept off my feet and piece by piece of me got slowly reeled in like a fish on a tasty worm-laden hook… I am also completely hooked on the books by Isabelle Allende, many of which taking place in the early days of discovering and establishing life in South & North America. So many stories of immigrants, so many courageous women in the pages of her books! And now, now I have a green card, now I am preparing to envision my life in America! I am still bewildered by it all. I know it’s been a slow and gradual process and maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised, but I thought I’d just go visit, stay a little while, go back to Europe and that would be it. Little did I realise that …

Taking inspiration and courage from the small silver linings of life…

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What are they? Those elusive silver linings at a time when international politics has gone upside down and many are scared, me included? What are those silver linings when the intercontinental love affair that has now lasted over 7.5 years also be the primary contributing factor to the situation that I may have forfeited my residency right in the country that I have called home since the 90’s !? When all that nomadism has rendered me quite penniless, quite literally, at this moment in time? When health is shaky because stress is constant? Silver linings: First and for most of course the answer just has to be: Espresso is a primary silver lining! And: I have had the great luxuries that money can or can’t buy: time. I have had a lot of time in the arms of the one who truly loves and supports me. I have had time, a lot of it, to become the person I am, which would have been impossible in an easier, more standardised and more secure life. I have a …

notes: What price to pay for love ?

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A list of rhetorical, pondering questions: What price is love worth? Would you give up your home, life as you know it, your career, your vocation (irrespective if it is working for you or not), would you give up your successes and failures, your friends, your books, your everything that sort of makes sense to you right now? Would you hand over your right to reside in a country that you have called home for 20 years? Would you hand it all over for love? Could you handle it? Would the weight threaten to crush your love? Could your love survive all of this loss? How would you handle the grief, the disorientation of this loss of everything? Would you experience as a loss? Add to all this financial instability, you have no powers, all your security nets are gone. How would you handle this? Would you still trade it all for love? How would love change? Would it change?

From trying out life in America: Finally found a dentist .. What a relief!

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report: Reasonably positive experience. Good welcome by reception, the dentist is definitely friendly and gentle (! yay!) and I’d be very happy to share coffee some time. bonus points: she likes popcorn, too.   I’m on the fence about: 1) the office set-up – there was no spitting sink with running water: only a suction device in my mouth.. 2) the follow up: I should have received an email with my x-rays.. I haven’t yet.   Would I go back?: YES if I had an urgent issue, but if I could I would prefer my UK dentist, simply because of cost and 18-20 years of trust.   Recommended?: I don’t know how other dentists in the area are, so if you need one then I would say YES. If you can have other options in Europe with your usual dentist or you need a lot of work done then I’d say: wait and go in Europe. The total cost for entire procedure required (I only took the emergency portion and will complete in the UK): …

It never rains in Northern California…

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…. at all. It’s day after day sunshine here. It is definitely very tantalising and the flavour of opportunities around the corner is everywhere. In our case without a car we can’t really reach them because it is true, America is a car culture and you better have a car here or be limited but the opportunities are there. There is a distinctly different attitude here to everything. An optimism that I am always trying to understand the origin of. For example in real terms being poor here sucks more than In the UK even (!) thanks to this culture of ‘the individual’ this mentality that creates and progresses SO much “everyone out for themselves: ready, steady, go” but it leaves one a bit by the wayside when in the UK (up until ‘Cameron the Coldhearted Opportunist’ came into power) and Europe there would be some support to helps bridges gaps until one can gain a foothold again. This here really is not a model I would follow if I had a say over government …