April 02, 2003

Alienation

If you're chasing solitude, looking for a perfect place to be alone, guard it when you find it. Lie low when you hear foreign vowels — your vowels — flung about the place. Look suddenly native if possible. Look surly if you can pull it off. Spit if you know how.

Tourists come and stare and ask questions and go, and language students are happy to get a quick shot of your voice and go home, and all that can be a welcome change. But another expatriate, and particularly an extroverted expatriate, the sort who considers solitude a hardship, is the end of time. Speak just once to an ex-ex in your place and the nest is fouled.

Resist that first urge to say hello.

Posted by Eeksy-Peeksy at April 2, 2003 07:44 AM
Comments

Amen.

Posted by: Mig at April 2, 2003 05:49 PM

Why is it that expatriates in groups of more than, um, one, are an unhealthy bunch?

Posted by: francis s. at April 2, 2003 07:58 PM

As an expat' ( a word which I personally loathe), I suppose that I should head the message and remain silent.

That's ok. I like silence.

Posted by: sue at April 2, 2003 08:35 PM

Maybe we should decide on another word to use.
Emigrant? Foreigner?

Posted by: Mig at April 3, 2003 06:55 AM

A group of expatriates is almost always a weird thing because there's not much room to be choosy. Take ten people who, if they were back home, would never happily spend five minutes with any one of the other nine. Drop those ten in the same foreign town and you'll get at least five of them hanging about together but perhaps not really liking one another.

Posted by: Eeksy-Peeksy at April 3, 2003 09:57 AM