Expat Tech

Life for the average expat affiliated with the USG is pretty sweet in 2012.  Not only are you provided for (rent & utilities are paid up for the next three years) and given privileges like VAT refunds, Armed Forces Network (AFN) and commissary shopping privileges at military bases, but there are other perks today that just 15 years ago were not available.

Let's look at these separately....

Telephone

There was a time about 15 years ago and beyond when the only way to reach your loved ones was via snail mail (beginning of civilization), long distance phone call (1876 - present) and email (1990's- present). That all changed with the internet.  On our first post to Warsaw in 2006, we brought with us Vonage VOIP Phone Services.  For the same cost of a landline (about $35/month), we could now call and receive calls at no additional cost from caller to recipient and vice versa.  Vonage gives you an US phone number so that no matter where you place the call, your US phone number will show up on the recipient's caller ID as if you lived a few houses down from them.  Other than having to keep track of the time difference, keeping in touch was never that easy.  To further advance this technology, Skype came along and with the new Skype app for iPhone and iPad, you can now receive or make calls wherever you have a wi-fi connection.  You can even see who you are talking to with video chat. Forget Back to the Future - we're living it now!

The Internet

Email has been around since the 1990's for the general public.  While it was a great phenomena at the time, Facebook is what has revolutionized social contact in the information age.  While it emerged in 2006, I did not join that bandwagon until early 2008 after trying MySpace and not enjoying it much. It has changed how you keep in touch with people and has helped us reconnect with people from our past that would otherwise have been lost to the passing of time.

The internet keeps you abreast of everything that is going on the world via news media sites and online newspapers.  It's how I figure out what is going on in Austria and the USA at the same time. 

It also makes purchasing US items so much easier.  Most places don't ship internationally and if they do, it cost you an arm and a leg.  However, if you're with the USG there is a US based address that is associated with your post.  This is also available to expats from other countries now as well via Access USA (this one may cost more shipping wise).  So you basically use your personal or USG provided US address as your "ship to" address.  If you shop online, you can order whatever you want (except liquids) and have it shipped to that address.  It usually arrives in 7-10 business days.  We use Netgrocer to purchase items not available to us in Europe (except frozen/liquid products) and Amazon.com (with Prime) for everything else. It's easier to order this way than to have to go to a military base every few months to stock up. 

Television

AFN has been providing radio and TV broadcasts since World War II.  TV started to expand in the 1970's and today there are about 8 channels providing programming to those of us overseas.  While nice to have, it is limited programming that is usually behind the US schedule (with the exception of the news channels).  When you are living overseas, you cannot "legally" view television programs from the United States.  If you try to pull something up from ABC, NBC, HBO or Netflix, etc or if you tried to download content from iTunes, we would get a message saying that programming is not available outside the USA. 

While in Warsaw, we got around this by using a software that gave us a ghost IP address, meaning that it would make other sites think that we were accessing it from San Fransisco.  But internet access in Poland was very slow and downloading a show could take hours.  Flash forward to today...

The virtual private network (VPN) makes home entertainment ever so easy.  Like the ghost IP address, you log on to the network, choose what US city you wish to serve as your IP address, and voila!  Instant programming from all the above mentioned networks and more on computer, iPad or iPhone! Obviously, you sometimes need accounts to view Netflix or premium cable, but with the help of family who generously provided their usernames and passwords for certain cable networks, we will never lack for programming.  Further, if you have a TV with HDMI, you can hook up your computer to the TV and watch whatever program that is on your screen on the big screen.  The best thing about it is that you watch when you want to watch and you don't have to worry about having a DVR because everything is available on cyberspace.

So while some things still remain difficult (i.e. language barrier), life for the expat is far easier in these times and it can only get easier.

For more on how much technology has changed just in the three years from arriving/departing the US, see this older post.