Home is where the WiFi is

Expats excel or XL as I probably should use to prove clever dickiness in a world of bytes. Abbreviations, phrases, Buzzwords are used to define one's acumen, one's social strata. Mentioning 'synchronised', 'synergy' and 'paradigm', all in a single presentation keynote speech reacheves levels of smarty pants-ness previously thought open only to the spotty kids with glasses. A photographer blinds one so that I can achieve d-list celebrity staus by way of photographic glory for next year's company brochure and I can be the pin-up of the secretarial ladies and the dartboard of the hairy-backsided engineering team. Although it all could be lost if Keynote speecher says 'para-dig-em'. A career upward curve lost to the English language and its wonderful pronouciation. Paradigm is pronounced 'paradime' and don't ask me why my foreign friends


As a counterpoint, as a nemesis to executive stardom, as a dose of welcoming humility, one returns to home - the teenage home. The family pilgrimage to one's roots. Here paradigm would not get me past first base in either baseball or a blind date...para-what-never-mind-igem-or-imes- get-me a-Guiness-you-tosser. Here I am a now stranger, here the world has shifted so slightly that I am now a sore thumb, a digit on the backside of this valley, and a middle finger to the outer world. Here a life has changed, the buzzwords are a new slang spoken by faces I kind of know ... faces that were young, fit, lean and are now podgy, faces of former friends, old brothers in arms. They speak a new slang, new words having nuances known to this year's generation. One has become lost in time, a parallel universe corrupted by a new language, the new terms, I ahve lost a sense of one's roots. Slowly as one has moved seemingly upward, the place where one belonged has shifted sideways to another place. Home is not quite the home, it once was, perhaps ever was. And yet home is not the outer world, where I live.

Home is in no man's land, not the home of Residency papers. It is not the home of the Birth Certificate.

Home has been relocated to a virtual field in the blogosphere, a gypsy home of friends temporal, friends near forgotten, friends aging in step changes of quirky "Facebook" photos that resembles a United Nations 'most wanted' list, friends animated into a "Wee-me" cartoon, and interconnected by a mouse double-click. Home a hotel lobby with a computer sitting on knees on some distant continent touching base via E-mail with fingers dextrous to the eye, where once touching base actually involved fingers. Human touch relegated to a passing visit or a school reunion. Friends Reunited should be Friends Divided.


And Mam wishes one lived around the corner to post the card, pick-up the pension, do the shopping. So this is the dream they wanted for their son, to be seen once a year, her annual event, grandchildren are an occasional photograph with a weekly telephone commentary on a Mathematics test to prove life goes on without you...... and Facebook is beyond her athritic single click. What sort of son am I? Absent by a university education that parents sacrificed little things to make happen, to be the first in the family to rise to such academic heights, heights that I could climb out of the Valley.

It tis the time to be jolly.....

Ex-pat Christmassing, the best of times as a load of half friends, half wits and good wits gather to discuss which is the best wine, turkey leg or whatever crap joke is in the specially imported crackers; or the worst of times as friends and family are miles away in some distant land reading and half smiling at a crap joke from a cheap cracker.

Or best and worst of times the lottery of guaranteeing to see family and friends and making life that bit more special for everyone, but only if the trains are still running on the leaves on the track, the ice on the runway is de-iced. Returning home becomes an endurance test. A test of airport waiting, entertaining children still excited a bit, but a few minutes later a bit on the point of being bored and running amok.

And then some long hours later the smile, that fleeting tear of a mother, that knows its a bit special this year.

Slowmo - 100 mph to 0 mph in a day

Trouble with holidays is that it takes a while to wind down and once wound down, one can think, one can draw conclusions that have been drowned by the crisis of deadline, one can see the light that blinded, now casts a long shadow on a sad life, one realises one has lived to work, the little red book has cobwebs and is a nasty shade of brown discolouring nearly forgotten names. Saddo comes home.

Fingers that once drummed impatiently at the Big Deal falling down, forefingers that once pointed encouraging at the Powerpoint presentation, thumbs that clenched a pen that initialled a three score and ten pages of memorandum of understandings. Fingers are now entertaining themselves in acrobatic Twiddling thumbs.

The equation that rules this life that Happiness is a function of a pay cheque is queried, until the holiday romance of self delusion faeds and the mortage needs paying, the kids want a super duper thing that has an abbrevaition they understand and means they have kept up with the schoolyard Johanneses and the grind is the ground on which one has built this life.

More than half way through three score and ten years and this is where misunderstandings of the meaning to life is seeded. Fortunately in a fit of what the......True boredom is narrowly avoided by a DVD backlog of viewing and twiddling thumbs can twiddle to the heart's content on a remote control. The Palm D'oh is awarded to the film that caused the least coffee making interruptions and is normally won by Homer Simpson Season last but one.

Homer my hero. Pass me the Duff equivalent and middle age crisis can give way to middle age spread..

Pots and Kettles

A kettle is a kettle and a pot is pot and black is probably a brand of Columbian ..... sometimes things are not black or white. Diplomatic negotiations are sometimes an art of understanding - 'I understand ' does not mean 'Yes'. It sometimes mean 'I understand that you want me to say Yes and I do not want to say No, so I am saying I understand and we are both happy'. Happy until the misunderstanding costs me my job.

I could save my job by coffee...how? .....Coffee conversations are important as career building opportunities. A chance to discreetly compliment the choice of tie, a moment to laugh at a joke that should remain within a Christmas cracker, a miracle of the synchronous nod with my colleagues at the Department's Head visionary vision.
....... over a tepid coffee.


Sadly I like my coffee hot and I like my coffee in my stomach in due time, Call me Mr Kettle.

The Foreigner like an old Lady

The early days of a new home on foreign soil, the excitement, the feeling of all things new, the challenge of all things new, the running around, and around, the new bank account, the boxes, the damaged heirloom, the new lava lamp to thank the kids for putting up with it again, they liked it.




Now a break as months pass by, a little time to compose oneself as months become years have settled into routine of sorts, time at last for finances reviewed, Bank account scanned and what!!!! in the repeating monthly hell is this. Bill is found, contact details found. Call centre is called and matters discussed in pidgin English, she sympathises and refers-defers to public relations who never call back but the letter demanding more comes a new. Pay or else.

One Internet search later, one on-line translation and scammed, grannies scammed, old maiden aunts scammed....... and I skinned and scammed. An ex-pat scammed like a kipper.

Vulnerable, targeted, ripped off like a faded T-shirt.


We never signed the contract, never read a contract, the nagging doubt in those early days a misplaced signature on a German draft placed under nose, surely not, it cannot be. Now a victim as Euros have poured away un-viewed amongst and after the runaround of schooling, working, buying the lava lamp because the kids said it was back in.


The Foreigner abroad like an old lady.

Fitness and the Ex-pat Diet

The Business Trip, the three course meal, the dessert with cream, the apperitif, the wine, the grappa, the whisky chaser...and the trousers no longer fit. New trousers as a result of Business eating should be a justifiable tax exempt Business Expense.


The jet lagged early morning start, the Hotel gym, the cycling machine without the 'how to start' manual. The seat requiring weight training arms to bring it down a sizeable chunk, after the last Gigantuan used it. As the local Adonises pump iron, the superfit Business Manager runs flat out and goes nowhere. I press 'Quickstart' and the wobbling mass appears to disconnect from any bodily reality experience, as out-of-body resonances cause concern to the Building foundations that would frighten a certain Mr Richter. The structural Engineers re-visit their calculations and call for the mandatory increase of safety margins.

Fatties of the Businesss world unite and call for the ban of three course meals, make salads compulsory especially if inducing diet-enhancing diarrhoea. Although come to think of it,that may be the emergency diet option of the fatty.