Category Archives: bio

bio, living in Italy

Leaving Italy: The Practicalities

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On March 31st, 2008, my residence in Italy was officially revoked. This was easy to accomplish. A few days before, Enrico and I had gone together to Lecco’s Ufficio dell’Anagrafe (I guess a reasonable translation would be “Population Records Office”). This is where you go to record transfers of residence (within Italy), births, deaths, and marriages.

To undo my Italian residency, all that was required was to write a letter which the nice lady at the window dictated and Enrico transcribed (his handwriting being much more legible than mine). She photocopied my carta d’identita’ (Italian identity card) and gave it back to me, then told us to go to the Registry Office (within the same building) to officially hand in the letter. The lady there gave us a dated and signed photocopy, and that was all there was to it.

You may be wondering: why did I so easily give up what so many foreigners would give their eyeteeth to have? Taxes, my friend. Most countries in the world, including Italy, make all their residents, citizens or foreigners, pay some sort of income tax. The US is perhaps the ONLY country in the world which requires its non-resident citizens to pay tax. So, if you’re an American living overseas, you’ve got two sets of taxes to file per year. There is a tax treaty between the US and Italy such that the US gives you tax credits for the Italian taxes paid on the first $86,000 of your income. Beyond that, you’re paying both governments for the privilege of working. There was a time, in my Dotcom boom heyday, when I was paying over 50% of my income in taxes.

Since I will no longer be availing myself of Italian national services such as health care and education, I see no good reason to keep giving money to the Italian government, especially when I have to put a kid through college in the US. So I’ve cancelled my Italian residency. I can still visit at least as often I’m likely to have time to, I think the limit is three months out of every six. Supposedly at some point someone official will show up at our house to ascertain whether I’m still there or not.

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First Weeks in Colorado

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I don’t always have the mental energy to write profound thoughts or reach important conclusions, but I know that some of you enjoy keeping up with what I’m doing, so here’s a sort of travelogue about my recent move to the US.

Mar 31 Departed Milan. Enrico drove me to the airport in heavy traffic, from which I concluded that I should never again try to get to Linate during rush hour. Made it with a comfortable margin in the end, but it wasn’t worth the stress.

Transited through Frankfurt and decided never to do that again, either. Security has been relaxed, I suppose – we didn’t go through the full body pat-down I’ve experienced in Frankfurt before, but we did have passport checks at the gate. This is fine when your passport is checked just before you get on the plane, but in this case we were required to be checked before going into a holding area just outside the gate. This area had insufficient chairs and no bathroom, so it got very annoying when the flight was delayed.

The delay was due to severe overbooking (so much for German efficiency…). Lufthansa offered a business class upgrade and 500 euros to anyone who would take a later flight through Chicago. I considered it, but was worried about arriving in Denver around midnight, tired, with lots of baggage, and needing to drive an hour over unfamiliar roads to reach my new home.

The flight, of course, was full to the last seat. My seat neighbor was returning from a business trip to India, and had loved it, so we found plenty to talk about. Plus I watched some decent movies from the wide selection available on the seat-back video screens, and read the latest Montalbano book.

…and didn’t have time to write any more!

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bio, TCKs

Coming “Home” to America

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So I’ve returned to live (and work) in the USA. A number of people, particularly US immigration officers, have said: “Welcome home.” I am grateful for their friendly intentions, but “home” is not what the US represents for me. I’ve lived here only about a third of my life to date.

Having spent many of my formative years in Asia, I tried to come “home” to America once before, when I graduated from high school in India and entered college in the US. Like many third culture kids, I had felt out of place (though not unhappy) in the exotic countries I’d lived in, where I was very obviously foreign even after being there for years. I dreamed of returning to a country where I would feel wholly at ease and be accepted as a natural part of the scenery. It was a rude shock to discover that this homeland, for me and others like me, is a myth. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was a “hidden immigrant”: on the surface seemingly a local, but in reality a not-quite-native, which manifested in ways which confused and irritated the real Americans.

Continue reading Coming “Home” to America →

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bio, living in the USA

The Perfect Snow

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Yesterday we had the perfect snow: it fell very prettily for hours, coating everything in white – except the roads. But I didn’t know it wouldn’t stick to the roads, so I went home early (I don’t know very well how to drive in snow yet, and try to avoid it) and participated in a phone conference from there.

WFH (working from home) will be much easier after I get an Internet connection installed next week. I can’t use my housemate’s; she uses it for her own Sun OpenWork. OpenWork was mentioned in the Economist this week, as part of a special section on The Mobile Workforce, with several quotes from Jonathan. Recommended reading.

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bio, living in Italy

Leaving Italy

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Once again, I’m doing something unusual: leaving my husband behind in Italy while I move (mostly) to the US for work.

And, as usual, I’m struggling to explain to people what I’m doing and why. (The story of my life is that there is almost no question about me to which a simple answer can be given.)

So…. what am I doing?

I have accepted a job with Sun Microsystems, which comes with a requirement that I be based in the US. I’ll have an office at Sun’s Broomfield, Colorado campus (though I’ll also travel a lot); I’ll have a home within easy commuting distance of that office.

My husband Enrico will remain in Italy, where he has a good job as a university professor, and we will maintain our home in Lecco as it is today. We will travel as much as we can to see each other – fortunately, both our jobs allow for flexibility. But the cold fact of the matter is that we will mostly be living apart. No, I’m not happy about that.

So why am I doing this?

Because I aspire to challenging work in which I can make a real difference to at least some small corner of the world. I want the possibility of growth in my profession, commensurate with the skills and hard work that I bring to it. And I need to make a dignified living, to help provide a secure future for myself and my family (not least: our daughter has just been accepted to college in the US!).

I have tried for seventeen years to achieve all this in Italy, in my industry (high tech). For part of that time I have made progress along my chosen road. But it’s never been easy, and it’s only getting harder. Italy is in a zero-growth slump from which neither I nor anyone else sees much hope of near-term recovery. As much as they love their country and the lifestyle they have historically had here, many Italians despair of the future, for themselves and especially for their children. (More on that, too, in a future article.)

Most Italians don’t have or would never make the choice to leave Italy – they are deeply rooted (which has its upsides, of course). Some foreigners, too, have chosen to make lives for themselves in Italy, and are far more emotionally invested in living here than I ever was. For many years I chose to be here for my family, and that was the right thing to do at the time. Now that Rossella is grown up and gone from home, probably for good, I have more scope to make choices that are right for me. And I’m very excited about that.

So I have a chance to get out, and I’m taking it. Better yet, I have a chance to do something new and exciting with a great company. There are risks, and there may be costs. But, weighed against the certain costs (both financial and emotional) of not taking the risks, this is the best choice I can make right now.

Wish me luck!

ps. For those who come here for my articles and info about Italy, don’t worry – there is still plenty to say about it, and I’ll be travelling back often enough to keep plenty of ink in that particular well.

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