Bank Account Issues

Trying to forge a new life in a new country requires some basic principles. Or at least one.

I’ve adopted it from diving: the ‘incident pit’. The premise is that when one thing goes wrong underwater (let’s say your buoyancy is all over the place), you tend to flaff around a bit and then continue with the dive. But when another thing goes wrong, and you’re already wired from the buoyancy issue, you can flip out quite easily.

So the rule is that you resolve each issue fully and you calm the hell down before proceeding; you don’t let things build up.

Translated into the whole relocation système, this means that if you should go to open a bank account only to discover that the legislation has changed in the six months since you’ve been here, and in order to open the account you now require a bunch of documents that you have packed safely away on a freighter that’s somewhere on the Atlantic, the ‘incident pit’ teaches us that that’s probably enough relocation work done for the day. It’s time to sit in the sunshine and have a beer, do some sudoku. I can feel some part of my brain ferreting around with solutions, but I refuse to address it right now. I’ll think about it tomorrow…