Amusing tale! I too went from Oxford (the not crap one….) to California after having married an American woman; I spent 27 years there, many as a tech entrepreneur. While I could never return to the gloomy damp parochial introspective backward-looking UK, I’m loving life in Switzerland: the scenery is more magnificent than anything in the USA (Grand Canyon and a bit of Yellowstone excepted), the people are pleasant, the food quality is superior to anything the industrialized-junk-products USA churns out (including so-called “organic” stuff) and amazingly no one feels the need to go and shoot other people on a daily basis. After 12 active shooter incidents within 1 kilometer of me in the space of 11 years, and after spending two years traversing the Bible Belt, the USA’s charms evaporated entirely, leaving me in much need of time spent in a less ignorant and less insane culture. Plus, unlike most Brits (I was born outside the country and traveled widely) I actually like the French, so living in Vaud within le monde francophone is another huge plus! But good luck for you for as long as you stay in California, which really does have one of the best climates in the world and, along the coast, some of the nicest scenery too.