We are invited to travel miles to "once upon a time" friends in a far-away land to attend a wedding. We are the international guests that hardly know their fellow guests. Languages are spoken that are known, but the sense, the phrases, the meaning is unknown as speed, slang and unfamiliarity breeds a sense of isolation. We are the human equivalent of loft insulation to be hidden, we can dampen conversation and can make things a little sweaty under the collar. We are considered the cheap, environmentally alternative to raise the temperature.
We are international guests that can hardly speak to other guests. International borders are being respected. Mingling is a deletion in the next edition of the Oxford English dictionary.
We stand nervously by, as our host leaves his marrying duties to guide us to our weekend friends - the other English speakers. We feel guilty to have disrupted festivities and a bride alone looks on.
We are the international guests resting their laurels on the second tongue guests. We fail to understand the joke, we look bemused to feign understanding of the colloquial terms. But we are left thankful at the pidgin English, we are grateful not to be ring-fenced in an exclusion zone. We are not condemned to silence and family conversations that could have been equally boring at home.
So we at least can discuss the weather and how nice the bride looks. Both are excellent by the way, but excellence is not exactly on the tip of my tongue in terms of "Let us Party". She says she sees and the world applauds, we follow suit in delayed synchronicity, they are married. All around is happy. We are looking happy.
The air flights have been paid and damn, we will put alcohol on the tip of my tongue and quench a throat that is clear of vocabulaty, that is not being used for talking. We will enjoy as a red wine is passed around in ever decreasing circles and volume. Fuzzing brains somehow finds humour in the weather, laughs are made with hand gestures and finger pointing compensating for linguistic voids. In a small way, our victory is like the Berlin wall falling down, well...perhaps not.... but a small step in international peace has been made
Party on Pryces.
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Saturday, 12 June 2010
Sore Thumbs from World Cup Flag Waving
Sore thumbs... and let us hide the thumb screws just in case it sets minds a-racing.
This is the time where nationality, being British, cannot be hidden, we have procured the flag, we loyal to home turf. I am the Standard-bearer via an Astra combo car window. It all means a car stands out like a proverbial sore thumb - the foreigners are revealed, the spies in their midst revealed, our flag adorns window to show support, red and white flag ~the "home" flag ~ alone amongst other colours of the rainbow to show loyalty to "foreign homes" where the Pryce family have laid some temporary roots.
Foreign or home flags, depending on your birth certificate, adorn outside ex-patriate walls, hung like old-fashioned washing from a window. We dare to risk the wrath of a yob at 1 o'clock in the morning by showing loyalty to the homeland in sporting rivalry. Apparently yes.
This is not good. Our car has colours that fly in the wind and fly in the face of the home nation loyalty.
This wind that catches the flags is sadly apparently less of a force than that of footballers' deep breathing judging by TV replays. TV replays have to be explained now, where once it was "you watch nothing but football", now there is nothing but football and its somehow ok with the wife, because the magic words were not 'abra cadabra' or 'I love you' , but "World Cup".
The four year anniversary-time when wives ask to watch football. When the offside rule appears as important as a Jamie Oliver recipe. The sad thing is we both know, as our secret, an unwritten law, the skeleton in our closet, that wifey knowledge at football ended with the closing credits of 'Bend it with Beckham'. But here she - the wife - will watch, wave arms, makes claims of wrongdoing, and I will murmur contentedly in the knowledge we are not arguing about how much time I watch footie.
Instead I want to argue that explaining the offside rule mid-game is not on. A thousand lads in a thousand pubs would not be surprised if I espoused the "ball is moving in the air" and understand this was a genuine concern for national hopes, yet my wife thinks it strange that any goal is scored without the ball moving in the air... I ask you...the World Cup will be long.
Friends are invited around to celebrate a score draw that should have been a win, the ladies discussed on the sofa mid-game the important topics of their work and hairdo's. Mid-game! I point out, as one does, that gossipping is not exactly watching the game and I am told they know how to multi task. Unfortunately this multi-tasking female-over-male superiority, Venus-Mars duopoly, inherent alleged girlie evolutionary multi-tasking advantage rarely translates to ironing and making me a cup of tea. Instead it is a skill transformed in tasking my patience and yes I did say "he had the legs on him". And it makes sense to me.
Together we sit, all husbands, wives and home nation friends sit aghast that another player is felled by deep breathing and unless garlic is involved, we are not suspicious of evil spirits as the only source of foul play, we suspect play acting. We watch as flailing arms make forceful wafts of air seemingly able to floor an opponent clutching a face in agony and football is decided by actors. These footballers are like flags in the wind. Flags at low mast at that.
The kids support the team, the local team, the team that their freinds supports, the foreign national team, a pryce to pay in ex-pat integrated life and it is Ok, as long as my father turns in his grave and enjoys the views.
I am alone in the house dominated by the Plasma God, in supporting my roots, roots that were torn from the ground in search of the Euro-dollar and this thing called bread on the plate. I am alone with my flag, the kids are double agents, the wife is supporting Venus, the locals are local.
This is the time where nationality, being British, cannot be hidden, we have procured the flag, we loyal to home turf. I am the Standard-bearer via an Astra combo car window. It all means a car stands out like a proverbial sore thumb - the foreigners are revealed, the spies in their midst revealed, our flag adorns window to show support, red and white flag ~the "home" flag ~ alone amongst other colours of the rainbow to show loyalty to "foreign homes" where the Pryce family have laid some temporary roots.
Foreign or home flags, depending on your birth certificate, adorn outside ex-patriate walls, hung like old-fashioned washing from a window. We dare to risk the wrath of a yob at 1 o'clock in the morning by showing loyalty to the homeland in sporting rivalry. Apparently yes.
This is not good. Our car has colours that fly in the wind and fly in the face of the home nation loyalty.
This wind that catches the flags is sadly apparently less of a force than that of footballers' deep breathing judging by TV replays. TV replays have to be explained now, where once it was "you watch nothing but football", now there is nothing but football and its somehow ok with the wife, because the magic words were not 'abra cadabra' or 'I love you' , but "World Cup".
The four year anniversary-time when wives ask to watch football. When the offside rule appears as important as a Jamie Oliver recipe. The sad thing is we both know, as our secret, an unwritten law, the skeleton in our closet, that wifey knowledge at football ended with the closing credits of 'Bend it with Beckham'. But here she - the wife - will watch, wave arms, makes claims of wrongdoing, and I will murmur contentedly in the knowledge we are not arguing about how much time I watch footie.
Instead I want to argue that explaining the offside rule mid-game is not on. A thousand lads in a thousand pubs would not be surprised if I espoused the "ball is moving in the air" and understand this was a genuine concern for national hopes, yet my wife thinks it strange that any goal is scored without the ball moving in the air... I ask you...the World Cup will be long.
Friends are invited around to celebrate a score draw that should have been a win, the ladies discussed on the sofa mid-game the important topics of their work and hairdo's. Mid-game! I point out, as one does, that gossipping is not exactly watching the game and I am told they know how to multi task. Unfortunately this multi-tasking female-over-male superiority, Venus-Mars duopoly, inherent alleged girlie evolutionary multi-tasking advantage rarely translates to ironing and making me a cup of tea. Instead it is a skill transformed in tasking my patience and yes I did say "he had the legs on him". And it makes sense to me.
Together we sit, all husbands, wives and home nation friends sit aghast that another player is felled by deep breathing and unless garlic is involved, we are not suspicious of evil spirits as the only source of foul play, we suspect play acting. We watch as flailing arms make forceful wafts of air seemingly able to floor an opponent clutching a face in agony and football is decided by actors. These footballers are like flags in the wind. Flags at low mast at that.
The kids support the team, the local team, the team that their freinds supports, the foreign national team, a pryce to pay in ex-pat integrated life and it is Ok, as long as my father turns in his grave and enjoys the views.
I am alone in the house dominated by the Plasma God, in supporting my roots, roots that were torn from the ground in search of the Euro-dollar and this thing called bread on the plate. I am alone with my flag, the kids are double agents, the wife is supporting Venus, the locals are local.
England will play Germany..... England expects, I expect penalties and a John Terrrrrry could be a great rugby player.
Result 4:1 - the flag is briefly at half mast, as it is downed to save it from the eggs. I prepare myself to talk long and hard about goal-line technology. Tomorrow will be long and hard in the office, I may need a testerone injection to hold off the tears.
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Truth or dare
I am in the urban jungle and this thing in front of me is what we, from Blighty, call the "Zebra crossing" . I know my rights, I have read the book, I will exercise my rights ~the pedestrian's right ~ to stand tall, step out and to bring the mighty traffic system of some urban development to a halt. Take that petrol guzzler.
I am not in Blighty. I am here and here, it is my right to step out and take my own life in the capitals of Latin America.
Drivers blare horns at another infringement of their right to drive fast to the nearest traffic jam. Latino alter egos are released as their berzerker instinct is lit, with a turn of a car key. Sitting in a traffic queue for potentially seconds is against the Latin flair ~ a sin against a machismo humanity, especially where there is an accelerator peddle and a horn.
"Manana" stereotypes of the Latino procrastination goes out of the window, with the cigarette butts flying over driver elbows. Elbows perched nonchalantly ona window frame and by my guess not connecting a shoulder to a wheel, unless he is super lanky, as in deformed super lanky.
This is the Latino-land and in Latino-land there is a "I-feel-the-need-for-speed-gone-bad" mentality as tested at twenty interspersed pedestrian lights. A need for speed that obeys the laws of physics ~ action and reaction ~ the need to play footsie with rubbered metal, alternating between drive hard and brrrrraaaaake..... harder. Perhaps in time.... hopefully......perhaps not, where is the policia, where his driving licence, ...where is the hospital, where is that fairly important body part that was connected to his hip.
It takes a certain death wish for the northen European to put a toesy on the road. The truth is that the national legislation gives the pedestrian rights to step out without fear, without health insurance, without clean underpants and if .....if you dare the reality...the reality of local tradition, custom and practice, it will allow you to be mown down like a rag doll to a chorus of blaring horns and fingerpointing that it was your fault.
Letters to the Editor would be the first order of the day in Blighty as a concerned citizen, a patriot, a parent, a voter, an insurance claimant..... here your pen ink is saved, here your death-defying experience involves waiting patiently. Life's learning curve is gently moved along, as cars do not move along quite so gently.
Enough of the low road, let us not take the low crumbling pavement. It takes a certain type of bravery for the northern European driver not to be rear-ended by obeying the Carretera code at traffic lights...green...greenish-amber...aaaamber....aaaaamber....red.
Red lights are damned as the invention of the devil. Stop at red at your peril, Joe Europe, here there is an unseen half life decay of the previous amber, known only to the local Latino driver and the sympathetic Latino courts, as "pink-ish".
A different perspective, a life outside the tramlines, ever so slightly.
Hey let us take the train.
I am not in Blighty. I am here and here, it is my right to step out and take my own life in the capitals of Latin America.
Drivers blare horns at another infringement of their right to drive fast to the nearest traffic jam. Latino alter egos are released as their berzerker instinct is lit, with a turn of a car key. Sitting in a traffic queue for potentially seconds is against the Latin flair ~ a sin against a machismo humanity, especially where there is an accelerator peddle and a horn.
"Manana" stereotypes of the Latino procrastination goes out of the window, with the cigarette butts flying over driver elbows. Elbows perched nonchalantly ona window frame and by my guess not connecting a shoulder to a wheel, unless he is super lanky, as in deformed super lanky.
This is the Latino-land and in Latino-land there is a "I-feel-the-need-for-speed-gone-bad" mentality as tested at twenty interspersed pedestrian lights. A need for speed that obeys the laws of physics ~ action and reaction ~ the need to play footsie with rubbered metal, alternating between drive hard and brrrrraaaaake..... harder. Perhaps in time.... hopefully......perhaps not, where is the policia, where his driving licence, ...where is the hospital, where is that fairly important body part that was connected to his hip.
It takes a certain death wish for the northen European to put a toesy on the road. The truth is that the national legislation gives the pedestrian rights to step out without fear, without health insurance, without clean underpants and if .....if you dare the reality...the reality of local tradition, custom and practice, it will allow you to be mown down like a rag doll to a chorus of blaring horns and fingerpointing that it was your fault.
Letters to the Editor would be the first order of the day in Blighty as a concerned citizen, a patriot, a parent, a voter, an insurance claimant..... here your pen ink is saved, here your death-defying experience involves waiting patiently. Life's learning curve is gently moved along, as cars do not move along quite so gently.
Enough of the low road, let us not take the low crumbling pavement. It takes a certain type of bravery for the northern European driver not to be rear-ended by obeying the Carretera code at traffic lights...green...greenish-amber...aaaamber....aaaaamber....red.
Red lights are damned as the invention of the devil. Stop at red at your peril, Joe Europe, here there is an unseen half life decay of the previous amber, known only to the local Latino driver and the sympathetic Latino courts, as "pink-ish".
Many a time a European has swept away a nervous bead of sweat from a furrowed brow, in recognition, in honour at a culturally adept, red-tinged traffic light experience; a super-charged, call me "Hombre", pedal to the metal moment; only to notice two Latino object in the rear view mirror look closer than they are. And yes that is my bumper. They that have also made the cut, without dripping a sweat bead and are now swatting cigarette butts out of a window and cursing the fact a northern European is actually now braking, without a pretty lady in sight.
A different perspective, a life outside the tramlines, ever so slightly.
Hey let us take the train.
Thursday, 3 June 2010
small world versus Big World
The mating call of the ex-pat can be confused with two words learnt in all languages... "Two beers, dos cervezas, zwei biers....". We are ex-pats in thirst of wisdom but in the meantime alcohol will do. Ex-pats travelling the globe and drawn to the Church of those Lost abroad - The Irish Pub -The Cradle of Globalisation and the Grave of the Liver. Welcome to Expat world. And like any half decent theme park, rollercoasters dizziness is provided after 3 or more beers, and the water rides comes equipped with a Dyson hand-dryer
Today in Ex-pat World, a surprise face is twinned with a known face in a city of strangers. Surprised faces, my face has joined his in that double-take deja vous. We have been drawn by the mythical star of St Patrick to laydown ones' mobile and take sustenance called Guiness. We are like fleas drawn to the dim moody light, oversized screen and the fake signposts to Kilkarry East.
Today I stare at a memory without a label, he stares at me in a battle with amnesia. There we stare. A stare of recollection turning to recognition, the state of knowing something familiar and unfamiliar at the same point. Two worlds colliding - the past and present combusting ever so slightly that a brain is thrown off keel, until a smile, perhaps a finger point and a "How are you?", a handshake. I am in a "moment", as an analyst, poet or 'time and motion' study man may say. I am stress testing the Pryce synapses ~ Can I remember a name. I know the face from somewhere. He says his name and there is a God, he retreats a hand. He is now catalogued from a different time, a different city, a different country, same continent this time and we are well down the path of "well I never"s.
Tonight in Ex-pat World, another ex-pat mating game, the meeting of older faces is a timetabled via E-mails and mobiles. Its an eventual dividend - "the return" on the annual Christmas card to "the let's touch base" crowd, the networking, an old friend, an old colleague. A planned recognition. We are destined to meet, because we have arranged to meet, because we are in the same "of all the cities in all the world we had to..." - a reunion. A meeting place. A time is set. A beer fest in its foetal beginnings may be on the cards, if we have not matured from when we were friend, acquaintances and drunkards some god-forsaken years ago.
Tonight we blind date. Distant looks on the railway concourse and where in Heaven is he? and why is that old fella walking towards me ... Hiya. Surprise. Fifteen... or is it twenty years and I am surprised he's changed. Where was I when God was passing round the stupid gene .... front of the queue, my friend. He looks older, que sorpresa.
Home turf on the away leg is reached - Irish pub bonhomie. And quickly after a rush of news, a dialogue dedicatedto forgotten friends and enemies, a mutual shared interview without job prospect, and the conversation trickles into a flow as if we had nodded goodbye at the local last Saturday. Return of the drunkards.
And in all this, the moral is that this and every friendship is needed in this cruel world. I have learnt that friends are dearly needed, not only for solace, not only for laughs, not only for grounding the ego, not only for benchmarking the success. They are needed when the hand of the "Man" decides you are to be crushed; these fellows, these "citizens of world" provide hospice, provides a helping hand to raise you when you have been knocked down, to look away from your shame-faced tears with a tissue in their fingertips when the redundancy notice has been served, to massage an ego bruised to its shell, to re-categorise success as survival, to teach you success, teach you to survive, to pass on tips.
So where the Mighty Businesses eventually cares little for its greatest asset, once declared as a Pluralistic You on a Company Website as in "You are our greatest asset". It never cared for the individual you and even your perhaps brilliance recorded in the annual appraisal was recorded without a first or second care. When times are hard, times are hard. Times change, times are dynamic and when economic crisis are two a penny with a bottom line decidely red, it is a time to ready the CV.
Times are hard. The backside kicking is tried and weathered. Then the backstabbing is pursued, as survival of the inner circle of trust is a must ~ Survival of the Dirtiest, if you like ~and the outer circle is a sad place for Freelances to reside. The Company resorts, sometimes slides to outsourcing, downsizing, firing. Being good is sometimes not good enough.
A Company takes a shine to another way forward, a CEO-driven top-down panacea , as recommended by analysts' Pandora's box, lions lead by donkeys on a merry-go-round that invites backsides to be bitten or kissed. It is their "it's not personal view" of Corporate Mission Statements, that did not include the dude on the third floor with the up-to-date paperwork who's there at 8 in the morning to 8 at night. The dude must go.
He must go home to his family to explain. Then he must join the Sad Dude society. He joins the virtual re-hab of friends, acquaintances, recommended friends of friends' help for they know it could be them in this fickle freelance world. The life that was falling apart is re-built and there is costs, it means moving on in the big world, exciting as it once was, and still can be, each and every 'this time', it comes a little bit harder. The Humpty Dumpty "ego-built" egg shell is glued together and it may not be so pretty, but the cracks show "been there, done it, made it" through with a little help of my Christmas Card friends, the surprised friends and the real friends
Now new friends to be made, new offices to arrive early in and leave late. More Christmas cards to write.
The Pryce we pay in the Modern world. Time for a Guiness or three
Today in Ex-pat World, a surprise face is twinned with a known face in a city of strangers. Surprised faces, my face has joined his in that double-take deja vous. We have been drawn by the mythical star of St Patrick to laydown ones' mobile and take sustenance called Guiness. We are like fleas drawn to the dim moody light, oversized screen and the fake signposts to Kilkarry East.
Today I stare at a memory without a label, he stares at me in a battle with amnesia. There we stare. A stare of recollection turning to recognition, the state of knowing something familiar and unfamiliar at the same point. Two worlds colliding - the past and present combusting ever so slightly that a brain is thrown off keel, until a smile, perhaps a finger point and a "How are you?", a handshake. I am in a "moment", as an analyst, poet or 'time and motion' study man may say. I am stress testing the Pryce synapses ~ Can I remember a name. I know the face from somewhere. He says his name and there is a God, he retreats a hand. He is now catalogued from a different time, a different city, a different country, same continent this time and we are well down the path of "well I never"s.
Tonight in Ex-pat World, another ex-pat mating game, the meeting of older faces is a timetabled via E-mails and mobiles. Its an eventual dividend - "the return" on the annual Christmas card to "the let's touch base" crowd, the networking, an old friend, an old colleague. A planned recognition. We are destined to meet, because we have arranged to meet, because we are in the same "of all the cities in all the world we had to..." - a reunion. A meeting place. A time is set. A beer fest in its foetal beginnings may be on the cards, if we have not matured from when we were friend, acquaintances and drunkards some god-forsaken years ago.
Tonight we blind date. Distant looks on the railway concourse and where in Heaven is he? and why is that old fella walking towards me ... Hiya. Surprise. Fifteen... or is it twenty years and I am surprised he's changed. Where was I when God was passing round the stupid gene .... front of the queue, my friend. He looks older, que sorpresa.
Home turf on the away leg is reached - Irish pub bonhomie. And quickly after a rush of news, a dialogue dedicatedto forgotten friends and enemies, a mutual shared interview without job prospect, and the conversation trickles into a flow as if we had nodded goodbye at the local last Saturday. Return of the drunkards.
And in all this, the moral is that this and every friendship is needed in this cruel world. I have learnt that friends are dearly needed, not only for solace, not only for laughs, not only for grounding the ego, not only for benchmarking the success. They are needed when the hand of the "Man" decides you are to be crushed; these fellows, these "citizens of world" provide hospice, provides a helping hand to raise you when you have been knocked down, to look away from your shame-faced tears with a tissue in their fingertips when the redundancy notice has been served, to massage an ego bruised to its shell, to re-categorise success as survival, to teach you success, teach you to survive, to pass on tips.
So where the Mighty Businesses eventually cares little for its greatest asset, once declared as a Pluralistic You on a Company Website as in "You are our greatest asset". It never cared for the individual you and even your perhaps brilliance recorded in the annual appraisal was recorded without a first or second care. When times are hard, times are hard. Times change, times are dynamic and when economic crisis are two a penny with a bottom line decidely red, it is a time to ready the CV.
Times are hard. The backside kicking is tried and weathered. Then the backstabbing is pursued, as survival of the inner circle of trust is a must ~ Survival of the Dirtiest, if you like ~and the outer circle is a sad place for Freelances to reside. The Company resorts, sometimes slides to outsourcing, downsizing, firing. Being good is sometimes not good enough.
A Company takes a shine to another way forward, a CEO-driven top-down panacea , as recommended by analysts' Pandora's box, lions lead by donkeys on a merry-go-round that invites backsides to be bitten or kissed. It is their "it's not personal view" of Corporate Mission Statements, that did not include the dude on the third floor with the up-to-date paperwork who's there at 8 in the morning to 8 at night. The dude must go.
He must go home to his family to explain. Then he must join the Sad Dude society. He joins the virtual re-hab of friends, acquaintances, recommended friends of friends' help for they know it could be them in this fickle freelance world. The life that was falling apart is re-built and there is costs, it means moving on in the big world, exciting as it once was, and still can be, each and every 'this time', it comes a little bit harder. The Humpty Dumpty "ego-built" egg shell is glued together and it may not be so pretty, but the cracks show "been there, done it, made it" through with a little help of my Christmas Card friends, the surprised friends and the real friends
Now new friends to be made, new offices to arrive early in and leave late. More Christmas cards to write.
The Pryce we pay in the Modern world. Time for a Guiness or three
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