#520—

Moving to London

By Nat Welch

Ladies, Gentlemen, Friends and Foes: Nathaniel Welch is moving to London, England.

This might be coming out of the blue to some of you, so let me give a little back story. In early October, the team I work on at Google decided to reorganize due to a variety of reasons. We decided to go from having teams in Seattle, San Francisco and Bangalore to instead having teams in just Seattle and London. Those of us in San Francisco were offered the opportunity to move to Seattle or London if we wanted to keep working on Google Compute Engine.

I have thought long and hard, and petitioned many of you for your opinions. I made a post on Facebook, which pretty much unanimously said I should go live abroad. I believe I only got one negative response, from my brother, and knowing his sense of humor, he was basically agreeing with the populous.

Travis

So yeah, it's happening. Still a few things that could block the move (I don't have a visa yet, but hey, Uncle Google is on it), but I'm 100% committed. My start date in London is February 3rd.

London has around a nine hour time difference, but given my already kind of strange schedule, and the fact that Google is still based in Mountain View, California, getting a hold of me isn't too hard. That being said, once I move, my phone number will change, so texts and phone calls will go unheard. So here are ways to get a hold of me:

Also, after the first month or so I'll have some couch and/or floor space, so if you know me, hit me up and come visit!

Finally, I'm looking for any and all advice about living in Europe. If you've lived in London, or done any traveling in Europe, please send me recommendations for neighborhoods to check out, countries and cities to visit, food to try, coffee shops and pubs to checkout, and any other advice. I've done some traveling, but in general, I've spent most of my life in California.

/Nat

Update: Move date changed to February 3rd from January 20th.

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