The first few months in a place, there is the rush to boast to the fellow stay-at-home natives, the inquisitive relatives and long distant letter receivers that in-between the fag-end cardboard boxes and insurance claims that one has touched base as a Tourist in residence. I am not only a survivor of the cardboard boxes, but I have now to have an in depth knowledge of local culture and monuments to history.
Now months later the agenda has changed, I am a resident with my picture on an ID card, that I may not have voted 'for' in the Homeland security debate as it was an invasion of my privacy. I am a turncoat radical persuaded by "they" - the local bureaucracy ~ that may be looking for an excuse to send me home - they do not understand my objections to infringements of civil liberty and I think by sign language they do not care. They want me to have an ID card. I want an ID card.
Now we have the plans at the ready to receive Visitors , the tour is reduced to a fast turnaround of local antiquities or theme parks of what looks like old antiquities.....we are hosting visitors. There is an expectation of the holidayers, they want a rush to visit the local visit places that one as a resident should now know the best back-alley snack bar like the back of my hand. Visitors knowing that I will give the Visitor a true taste of foreign lands. And By schucks McDonaldini's not going to cut the ice.
The back of my hand is gloved.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Seeing is believing
Just passing through... it may be the most wondrous statue in Christiandom, but I am not a Tourist. The postcard granduer of a nth wonder of the world appears smudged in a taxi window that is cricking your neck a tad too much to be worth the pain. And anyway there is business at hand, doing the deal, answering the queries with the right degree of knowledge and charm.
Can one be forgiven ... blind to things beautiful. And also blind to things not beautiful but functionally required to survive the Ex-pat day on a business tour. In an hotel room and the mind is exasperated at finding the hotel bathroom is missing a tissue or indeed tissue dispenser. My nose is a like a flowing river, a waterfall that Tourists might want to see. Where is that tissue dispenser, I have a nose to blow. The hotel room is not the only thing missing essential items. I also appear to have missed an eye test; as within several minutes it, the tissue dispenser is found right where it would be expected to be. I am growing old.
Old and now about to enter the danger zone the shower facility. Facing up to the metallic tubular junior version of the Hadron Collider, let alone mastering it, let alone actually getting clean without rupturing a spleen, this engineering challenge was not on my hotel bathroom agenda as I started my ablutions, yet here I face the executive torture chamber with a wish to have a simple bath, is defied by a multi-point massager tri-point axis max-power shower with a big red button marked "super-hot". It is a challenge. It is a brain teaser. I am old. I do not want a physical endurance test. I want a simple wash. My brain is being teased. This is sudoku by Meccano.
I can truly forgive myself in having an university education and that it still did not prepare me for things with more knobs than a rugby team post game shower. This is a parallel universe for the nerdshow - this is walk on the wild side of geek street. Designer shower and the Designer has gone wild, he's gone bleedin' mad. A Designer renegade from some Theme Park, where this shower would probably be called the Waterfall Xtreme and I should be able to goto the hotel lobby and buy a "I survived the Waterfall Xtreme". In this theme park ride, I am stark naked, I am not surviving the ride.
Or perhaps, my mistake, this is the hotel tanning machine for whitey Europeans to step-out with a local look in minutes and winner of the innovation award for design for best tan without use of environmentally harmful chemicals. Tanning by reddening and its probably called "The Beetroot Xtreme". Perhaps I may be treating the subject matter a little too lightly, there is a risk of Death ....Death by third degree burns of the Ex-pat by this super charged Shower - "The Widowmaker Xtreme".
It is not so wonderful after the near death experience and the severe bruising of a ribcage that may be require bandaging,... that I find my nano-second usage of said shower is now defined as a causal effect.... the final coup de grace, .....I find I have flooded the bathroom, the waters are threatening the bedroom; or to be correct in any police or insurance testimony that I may be required to give; it has caused the flooding. This is embarrassing. The cleaners may think I have a serious bladder problem but this is a Biblical proportions bladder. I am afraid exotic animals in pairs are going to turn up shortly and call me Noah or should that be Doolittle. Forget the complimentary tissues, I want the complimentary sandbags, are they hiding by the tissue dispenser.
Is this the Hotel from Hell revenge for those rockstar guests who do not appreciate hotel rooms are better with TVs and pavements are better without.
Now, I am afraid to turn on the TV for fear of surround sound, mega light four pixel glare, besides the fear of water ingression and explaining a broken TV without contact to a nearby pavement on the Expenses form. And I mop up the flood with my non-complimentary towels.
Can one be forgiven ... blind to things beautiful. And also blind to things not beautiful but functionally required to survive the Ex-pat day on a business tour. In an hotel room and the mind is exasperated at finding the hotel bathroom is missing a tissue or indeed tissue dispenser. My nose is a like a flowing river, a waterfall that Tourists might want to see. Where is that tissue dispenser, I have a nose to blow. The hotel room is not the only thing missing essential items. I also appear to have missed an eye test; as within several minutes it, the tissue dispenser is found right where it would be expected to be. I am growing old.
Old and now about to enter the danger zone the shower facility. Facing up to the metallic tubular junior version of the Hadron Collider, let alone mastering it, let alone actually getting clean without rupturing a spleen, this engineering challenge was not on my hotel bathroom agenda as I started my ablutions, yet here I face the executive torture chamber with a wish to have a simple bath, is defied by a multi-point massager tri-point axis max-power shower with a big red button marked "super-hot". It is a challenge. It is a brain teaser. I am old. I do not want a physical endurance test. I want a simple wash. My brain is being teased. This is sudoku by Meccano.
I can truly forgive myself in having an university education and that it still did not prepare me for things with more knobs than a rugby team post game shower. This is a parallel universe for the nerdshow - this is walk on the wild side of geek street. Designer shower and the Designer has gone wild, he's gone bleedin' mad. A Designer renegade from some Theme Park, where this shower would probably be called the Waterfall Xtreme and I should be able to goto the hotel lobby and buy a "I survived the Waterfall Xtreme". In this theme park ride, I am stark naked, I am not surviving the ride.
Or perhaps, my mistake, this is the hotel tanning machine for whitey Europeans to step-out with a local look in minutes and winner of the innovation award for design for best tan without use of environmentally harmful chemicals. Tanning by reddening and its probably called "The Beetroot Xtreme". Perhaps I may be treating the subject matter a little too lightly, there is a risk of Death ....Death by third degree burns of the Ex-pat by this super charged Shower - "The Widowmaker Xtreme".
It is not so wonderful after the near death experience and the severe bruising of a ribcage that may be require bandaging,... that I find my nano-second usage of said shower is now defined as a causal effect.... the final coup de grace, .....I find I have flooded the bathroom, the waters are threatening the bedroom; or to be correct in any police or insurance testimony that I may be required to give; it has caused the flooding. This is embarrassing. The cleaners may think I have a serious bladder problem but this is a Biblical proportions bladder. I am afraid exotic animals in pairs are going to turn up shortly and call me Noah or should that be Doolittle. Forget the complimentary tissues, I want the complimentary sandbags, are they hiding by the tissue dispenser.
Is this the Hotel from Hell revenge for those rockstar guests who do not appreciate hotel rooms are better with TVs and pavements are better without.
Now, I am afraid to turn on the TV for fear of surround sound, mega light four pixel glare, besides the fear of water ingression and explaining a broken TV without contact to a nearby pavement on the Expenses form. And I mop up the flood with my non-complimentary towels.
Friday, 19 March 2010
Resident by Schooling
We moved so often, having experiences for the better or worst, one day a child may tell me, as he or she fails to deliver a commode on time, that it was not the best of childhoods to be given, relocating for the euro-dollar. So now a decison is made, career sacrificed for what may be normality and fears that the kid may change his natioanlity if we stay too long.
Stability searched for and is given a try, as an anchor is thrown over board in a foreign land, a laying of my wherever hat, I am doing the right thing by the kids. But oh but, but it was like pitching up a tent in the dark and hoping it was not sitting on a snakepit, this stability, this place to be called home. In the morning you realise, of course, the tent had no floor of snakes, it was only spiders. Spiders!
Domestic priorities have won over career, wins over standing up for your love rights with "the Man" from the wrong side of management theory. And that sacrifice hurts, doffing a cap means buying a cap and handkerchief to wipe the tears from my eyes. I am becoming a resident of a foreign land, a resident in order that the school can be remembered in its every nook and cranny.
A school that may not be that brilliantly good, that may be full of artistic achievement, that may be brilliant in academic over-achievement, we only had two weeks to decide; but it was the single school that accepted the foreign language kids.
And a school built of brick and mortar that is staying put just like the kids.
Stability searched for and is given a try, as an anchor is thrown over board in a foreign land, a laying of my wherever hat, I am doing the right thing by the kids. But oh but, but it was like pitching up a tent in the dark and hoping it was not sitting on a snakepit, this stability, this place to be called home. In the morning you realise, of course, the tent had no floor of snakes, it was only spiders. Spiders!
Domestic priorities have won over career, wins over standing up for your love rights with "the Man" from the wrong side of management theory. And that sacrifice hurts, doffing a cap means buying a cap and handkerchief to wipe the tears from my eyes. I am becoming a resident of a foreign land, a resident in order that the school can be remembered in its every nook and cranny.
A school that may not be that brilliantly good, that may be full of artistic achievement, that may be brilliant in academic over-achievement, we only had two weeks to decide; but it was the single school that accepted the foreign language kids.
And a school built of brick and mortar that is staying put just like the kids.
Friday, 12 March 2010
You will be my friend
Nods have been exchanged, eyebrows raised an half inch, a quick side step was made to avoid bodily contact at the "turning of the corner incident at the airport". Blushes were saved and unwarranted rumours of 'boys will be boys' on Monday in the typing pool avoided. Typing Pool I am so ..oooh... 80's.
Now we are travellers together forced into a voyage of mutual discovery, at the beginning we will talk about the job, the weather, the football, I hope, the family or lack of, gradually moving onto the wonderful dinner, the quality of the hotel room, and at the end we may be bosom friends having laughed at a common cause, or perhaps we may nod a goodbye and shake a hand and hope the project never happens or at least not with him or me ~these feelings can be mutual.
A project failing on inner personal chemistry. Business is not always business.
Now we are travellers together forced into a voyage of mutual discovery, at the beginning we will talk about the job, the weather, the football, I hope, the family or lack of, gradually moving onto the wonderful dinner, the quality of the hotel room, and at the end we may be bosom friends having laughed at a common cause, or perhaps we may nod a goodbye and shake a hand and hope the project never happens or at least not with him or me ~these feelings can be mutual.
A project failing on inner personal chemistry. Business is not always business.
Friday, 5 March 2010
The Universal Dictionary
And what did the Romans give us? straight roads, a dead language and probably an inferiority complex, not that I am a psychiatrist. The straight roads at least have ups and downs which I can verify from my 800ccc Mini days, them were the days when I could admire an open road as thousands admired my rear bumper. The Romans gave us a dead language and contaminated a fair few other languages with their conquering and pillaging. Being on the pillaged side allowed the natives to be gracious losers and so accept a lot in life as a butt-end of inferiority complex. It is humbling.
And the good news from this language of lawyers and medical students is ....
So with a good stab at an accent pronouncing a 'w' as 'v' or a 'll' as 'y', depending on where the airport leaves your hat. I can say 'introduction', 'reduction', 'production', 'such and such-tion' and be cheered as a natural in a European tongue. 'Et tu-ing' with the best of them, or did I just say "did you just ate two". Sadly I have a feeling my ribcage now looks like a rack looking for a knife to the hungry neighnourhood canibal who would have been satisfied with a porkchop. The local Brutuses are apparently not taken in by my easy charm and dyed-in-the-wool dialect. May be my 'how to speak a foreign language' theory needs some iteration, before the "Learn Freutschish in 9 days" Book deal is signed. Maybe I need to shrug a bit more, stare wildly and make garruff noises. I believe the Book deal may be superseded by the DVD package.
Or perhaps my theory in practice on the streets of Freutschishland may prove me wrong as a Brit throaty noises may not translate without spitting, the next post may involve hospitals or hospitalisation as I should say.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
