It’s been just over a year now since we signed our 3 year
contract and relocated to
Vancouver,
BC.
I can’t believe how fast it has all gone and
I’m happy to say that life here in Vancouver has exceeded our
expectations.
We have met so many
wonderful people, forging friendships that will last long after we leave, and
created adventures that our whole family will remember forever.
The Canadian culture is at times very
familiar and at other times very foreign, but we have embraced our ex-pat life
and taken it all in stride.
However, I would have never predicted just how much we would
be challenged. Now that life has
stabilized to a mere thunderous roar, I can recount some of the recent history
and bring everyone up to speed.
6 months after we moved, we had hit our stride…..we had a
routine for life and Vancouver had become our new “home”.
I recall a weekend when Allison and I were
talking about the past few months….
how
it was a big change, but we made it...
we laughed about how we had worried so much about the kids, when in
reality, they adapted quicker than we did.
Our world turned sideways on September 12
th, 2011
when I was informed that our Divisional management had
made a decision to close the development site
in Burnaby.
To be fair, I had seen some
signs in the previous weeks, but the formal message was devastating.
Timing was aggressive with a closure date in
April 2012.
Over the next four months, while keeping ongoing activities
moving, I had to confidentially plan to transfer all of the local R&D
activity to other sites, while supporting a small team to plan the shut-down of
the entire facility.
The work side of it
was just another challenge, but the personal side of this process was one of
the more difficult things I’ve had to do in my career.
For us, initially we were just angry.
It was a huge decision for us to move to
Vancouver in the beginning. The process
of getting to Vancouver was tough as our house in PA took very long to attract
any buyers and ultimately we had to sell for a big loss.
Allison had quit a wonderful job and
sacrificed not being able to work, for my career…. we sat over more than a few
glasses of wine and asked ourselves… how should we react to this?
Some nights
we laughed at how crazy it was, but most
the time we were sad.
Thoughts of all the places we wanted to go,
thinking about how we couldn’t tell our friends for months and making up
stories about why we weren’t signing the kids up for activities in the spring,
or making plans for next summer.
It was
depressing and affected us both to the core.
As time went on, we just fell into what we know best.
We were together as a family, everyone was
healthy, and this would be just another adventure that we would work through
and tell stories about in the future.
The next step was to answer the burning question “where do
we go from here?”
The first option
presented was China.
Bosch offered a
development assignment for 2 years to create an R&D site in our factory in
China.
This was a tremendous opportunity
for my career, but we needed to learn more.
In December, Allison and I visited China for just over a week, to see
the city, look at housing, visit the schools, and generally determine if we
could accept living in China for 2 years or not.
A few years ago, I would have turned this
down on the spot, but after our experience in Vancouver, we were a changed
family…..we were open to adventure and interested in broadening our experiences
and learning about new cultures.
I had travelled into the region for work, several times
before, but you view things in a much different way when you are thinking about
living there! For Allison, it was her first visit to Asia.
Zhuhai, where the Bosch factory is located,
is in a geographically nice area of China, across the bay from Hong Kong.
The air is significantly better than the
areas around Beijing or Shanghai. The schools were amazing, and the housing
exceeded our expectations.
We spent the
week with sponsors from HR, other Ex-pats and members of the management team in
Zhuhai, who all made our visit special and very enjoyable.
Sure, we had our moments, where we looked at
each other and said…. What in the hell are we doing here…?
but we had more moments where we were simply
struck with awe that we were in China giving serious thought to relocating to
the area.
This is the view from one of the apartments we really liked. It was in a huge housing development outside of Zhuhai. We were impressed with the environment where all the parking was underground, they had playgrounds and many greenspace areas between the buildings, along with trails along the river to walk or ride bikes on.
Allison and I at the ship restaurant in Zhuhai. We had so much great food during our visit!
After the week in Zhuhai, we had the weekend on our own, which we spent in Macau and Hong Kong, and had a wonderful time.
The Venetian, in Macau, is currently the largest casino in the world. It was literally larger than life.
Allison in the canal shops area...
We saw a cirque du soleil show while we were there for the day. This is a picture of the stage after the show..
Just playing with the camera taking night shots of some of the building exterior....
Light show at the Galaxy while we were waiting for the shuttle bus to the border.
The International Commerce Center building in Kowloon. This is currently the 5th tallest skyscraper in the world right now at 1588ft.
The clocktower at Victoria Harbor. We were fortunate to have a beautiful and clear day in Hong Kong.
On the pier at Victoria Harbor.
After walking around the night market, we went back down to the harbor to see the light show. The buildings themselves are really beautiful at night.
We have a series of pictures, from our travels over the years, of goofy signs. This was was worthy of our collection.
We had an evening flight from Hong Kong, so we spent the morning on the island, and went up to the peak. We took a bus up and rode down on the historic tram. At one of the lookout spots, they had these stone figures. Loved the picture with the city in the background.
Panorama of the view from the lookout. It's an amazing city that just goes on and on.
In a funny way, Starbuck’s ended
up being the one constant that we experienced during our entire trip…. And
after Vancouver, the land of Starbucks on every corner, that was a good thing!
After returning, we got through the holidays and after many
sleepless nights and long conversations, we agreed to go.
Contracts were discussed, terms and conditions
were agreed to…
and we finally announced
our big decision to family and friends.
Then….
Just a day later, the Bosch management team came back and
informed us that they had decided to cancel our assignment in China as part of a series of cost control measures. !!!! How could this happen again? After
all the thought and consideration we had given to this... and having made a decision, we were committed and excited
to go. To have it slip away that quickly
was really difficult to accept. There were a lot more angry conversations than anything else for several days. In the
end, our recourse was to return back to Lancaster, just a year after we left.
In the middle of all this personal turmoil, we came to the announcement date
in Vancouver, and informed all the associates about the planned closure.
This was a relief for me
personally as I didn’t have to continue living a double life toward the
associates in our office.
The next few
months were a whirlwind of meetings and workshops to hand-over the business to other
R&D sites in our division, while we planned to move home.
This empty floor is the result of 4 months of effort. It was no small feat and the entire team participated in their own way.
On the last day I was in the office... it was strange to see it all empty, a space once full of desks and people.
After the
second cancellation impacted our personal lives
significantly, I decided to look around at opportunities outside of Bosch just
to see what might be available.
As it
happened, in just a few weeks time, I had several very interesting opportunities.
In the end, we relocated back to Lancaster, Pennsylvania in
the first week of May, in the middle of what was coordinated chaos! In just a
week’s time, we packed our house in Vancouver and travelled to Pennsylvania, we
bought a car, a house, appliances; got Owen started in his new school and coordinated
the movers carrying almost 400 boxes into our new house.
As final closure to this saga, I also
resigned from Bosch and accepted a new position with Dorma, as their Director
of R&D for the Americas Region.
It
was a difficult thing for me to leave Bosch, because of the great people that I
have worked with along the way, and for the growth in my career I was given
during my time with the company. For these things, I will always be grateful,
but at the same time, I know it was the right time to separate and go on to a
new challenge.
Do we wish this story had gone differently on several
occasions…? Yes, of course. But we have no regrets. We love our friends in Vancouver, and miss
being there, but for our family, we grew together and learned things about
ourselves that we would have never known if we didn’t go through this. So I’ll wrap up this with a quote from our
favorite storyteller, Dr. Suess, who stated it well when he said:
“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”
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