I’m Julian, a 38 year-old British expat in Los Angeles. I’m global marketing manager for a guitar company, and moved here on a 3-year assignment as part of the team making California the centre of our marketing and planning. I’m here with my wife, Harriet, who’s a silversmith.
My history with travel is…weird. Despite only leaving the UK twice in my first 21 years of life, and my parents never having been on a plane, since joining the company I’m with in 2003, I’ve spent a lot of time on business in Japan and America, and travelled fairly extensively around Europe. But for as long as I can remember, I harboured a desire to live and work in America. After many conversations and a couple of false starts, things slotted into place in 2015 and we finally moved here in February 2016.
Life in LA is fascinating, frustrating, brilliant and awful, all at the same time, and totally different to the expectations I built up spending time here as a visitor. Our experience here has sharpened my sense of what’s really important to me, and given me a renewed appreciation of both the value of here, and of home.
When I’m not at the office, I take full advantage of Southern California’s incredible weather and the mountainous terrain that’s such a stark contrast to what most people think it’s like here. We eat out far more often that we should, because LA is a foodie’s paradise, but sadly Europe still beats the US hands down when it comes to great cocktail bars.
And every day I complain about the traffic. But at least it makes a change from complaining about the weather…