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When relocating to a new country, it's important to establish routines and traditions. My ritual here in London is spending an hour on the phone with the bank every day.

It's a strange thing about 2014 — we've got one collective foot planted squarely in the 21st century, while the other is stuck in back in the 19-something-or-others.

My email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts don't care whether I'm in Dublin or Dubai. I can jog along the Seine in Paris to the same music on Spotify that I listen to when I'm running along the Willamette River in Portland.

On WhatsApp, I send text messages to my friends every day at no cost, no matter where in the world I am. Skype is a snap. But banking is something else altogether. (Phone calls go in the same category as banking, but that's for another blog post.)

This is a universal experience, from what I can gather. Anyone living abroad wrestles with the arcane formulas and fees that go into converting an American salary to a British (or Brazilian, or Burmese) bank account.

Two weeks in London, and I've already found that American expats trade banking horror stories like crusty sailors comparing sharkbite scars.

My story, briefly, is this: In order to avoid a $35 Bank of America fee every time I move my paycheck to the United Kingdom, I devised a hopscotch as follows: Dollars leave Bank of America to an international transfer company. That company hands off the money to a Lloyds Bank International account. Lloyds International plops it into an account with UK Lloyds. Hardly simple, but at least the plan comes with no fees. Guaranteed.

The first transfer took three days longer than planned, and arrived with $600 less than the amount that left the U.S.

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Parallels

Some Brits Not Ready To Say 'Ta-Ra' To Iconic Telephone Box

Former California official Maria Contreras-Sweet is President Obama's pick to lead the Small Business Administration. She was introduced and her official nomination announced at a White House event Thursday.

Born in Mexico, Contreras-Sweet became the first Latina to serve as a cabinet secretary in California when she led its Business, Transportation and Housing Agency from 1999-2003.

That post led Obama to tell this anecdote:

"Maria, on the way in, told me a wonderful story about how her grandmother, back in Mexico who was a migrant worker, said to her that if she worked hard, studied, stayed in school, that someday she'd be able to work in an office as a secretary and really make her proud. And she ended up being the Secretary of Business Development and Transportation in California. And now she's going to be helping the folks who are following behind her achieve their dreams. That's what America is all about.

"So Maria is fulfilling the vision of her grandma in ways that maybe are not entirely expected," he said.

After leaving her job in the California cabinet, Contreras-Sweet went on to found community lender ProAmerica Bank, and to work in a private equity firm that helps fund small businesses, according to The Los Angeles Times.

If confirmed to the post, Contreras-Sweet would take over from Jeanne Hulit, who has served as the SBA's acting administrator since Karen Mills left the post last year. The job of SBA chief is the last remaining opening in Obama's cabinet – and as the AP reports, she "would become the second Hispanic in Obama's second-term Cabinet. The other is Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. She would also become the eighth woman in Obama's current Cabinet."

At Thursday's event, Obama highlighted the stories of a few small business owners who were in attendance: craft brewers Deb and Dan Carey of Wisconsin's famed New Glarus Brewing Company, which has more than 80 full-time employees, and Casey Patten and Dave Mazza, founders of the D.C.-area sandwich chain Taylor Gourmet. As the president pointed out, there's one close to the White House.

Obama also said that his administration has supported small businesses by lending "more than $130 billion to more than 225,000 small businesses during the course of five years," and by making it easier for small businesses to work with the government's federal contracting system.

Former California official Maria Contreras-Sweet is President Obama's pick to lead the Small Business Administration. She was introduced and her official nomination announced at a White House event Thursday.

Born in Mexico, Contreras-Sweet became the first Latina to serve as a cabinet secretary in California when she led its Business, Transportation and Housing Agency from 1999-2003.

That post led Obama to tell this anecdote:

"Maria, on the way in, told me a wonderful story about how her grandmother, back in Mexico who was a migrant worker, said to her that if she worked hard, studied, stayed in school, that someday she'd be able to work in an office as a secretary and really make her proud. And she ended up being the Secretary of Business Development and Transportation in California. And now she's going to be helping the folks who are following behind her achieve their dreams. That's what America is all about.

"So Maria is fulfilling the vision of her grandma in ways that maybe are not entirely expected," he said.

After leaving her job in the California cabinet, Contreras-Sweet went on to found community lender ProAmerica Bank, and to work in a private equity firm that helps fund small businesses, according to The Los Angeles Times.

If confirmed to the post, Contreras-Sweet would take over from Jeanne Hulit, who has served as the SBA's acting administrator since Karen Mills left the post last year. The job of SBA chief is the last remaining opening in Obama's cabinet – and as the AP reports, she "would become the second Hispanic in Obama's second-term Cabinet. The other is Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. She would also become the eighth woman in Obama's current Cabinet."

At Thursday's event, Obama highlighted the stories of a few small business owners who were in attendance: craft brewers Deb and Dan Carey of Wisconsin's famed New Glarus Brewing Company, which has more than 80 full-time employees, and Casey Patten and Dave Mazza, founders of the D.C.-area sandwich chain Taylor Gourmet. As the president pointed out, there's one close to the White House.

Obama also said that his administration has supported small businesses by lending "more than $130 billion to more than 225,000 small businesses during the course of five years," and by making it easier for small businesses to work with the government's federal contracting system.

Despite a $7 billion effort to eradicating opium production in Afghanistan, poppy cultivation there is at its highest level since the U.S. invasion more than a decade ago, sparking corruption, criminal gangs and providing the insurgency with hard cash, says John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

In testimony before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, he warns Wednesday that Afghanistan could degenerate into a narco-criminal state.

"The situation in Afghanistan is dire with little prospect for improvement in 2014 or beyond," Sopko says. "Afghan farmer are growing more opium poppies today than at any time in their modern history."

His assessment largely mirrors a United Nations report released in November that about 209,000 hectares (515,000 acres) of land was being used to cultivate poppies last year – with the highest concentration in southern Helmand province. That compares with just 8,000 hectares in 2001 and 74,000 in 2002, when U.S.-led international forces toppled the Taliban.

As NPR's Sean Carberry reported from Helmand late last year, many Afghan farmers in the province, who say they have few other options, see poppy cultivation as the lifeblood of an otherwise arid region.

"The narcotics trade is poisoning the Afghan financial sector and fueling a growing illicit economy," Sopko says. "This, in turn, is undermining the Afghan state's legitimacy by stoking corruption, nourishing criminal networks, and providing significant financial support to the Taliban and other insurgent groups."

The value of the heroin produced is worth $3 billion annually, or roughly 15 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. As much as 90 percent of the world's heroin is produced there, and some of it is now reaching the United States and Canada, Sopko says.

"It is widely thought that every drug organization supports or works with insurgents in Afghanistan," he says. "I have been told that these same groups are closely linked with corrupt government officials."

The special inspector-general complains that counter-narcotics has been a low priority for both the U.S. and Afghan governments and that robust law enforcement is needed.

He says that many U.S. and international donor officials and experts have advised him that "one of the greatest risks facing Afghanistan is that the narcotics traffickers and other criminal networks will expand their influence, filling a power vacuum in the areas where the Afghan government is weak."