May 18, 2004
Neither here nor there
If you want to know how it feels to be Lost In Transit, may I recommend a Working Holiday visa. Over 40,000 people come wandering over from the colonies each year, all leaving behind friends and jobs and families to spend two years in the UK.
The honeymoon period is delicious. Everything you see and do is new and exciting, sometimes scary. Every day is stuffed with opportunity and adventure. With no real committments, responsiblities or money, life is pared down to the essentials - work, drink, shag, travel.
Next comes an equally satisfying period where you feel less of a stranger in your surroundings. You now have friends and work, favourite pubs and restaurants. You have routines and rituals. You know which supermarkets sell Vegemite and which don't. Best of all, you know where the buses go. The city map was once a blur of strange names, but now when you see a Number 9 or 33 or 5678 coming along the road, there's a certain cosy pleasure from knowing that you know whether it will get you home or leave you stranded on a dodgy industrial estate halfway to England.
But after awhile this feeling becomes tinged with unease as you remember your time is limited. I was on a train from Edinburgh to Glasgow recently, off to see Aussie band Powderfinger in concert. There were plenty of my countrymen in our carriage and I couldn't help tuning in to their conversations.
I just don't know what to do. My time is running out. I wonder if they'll sponsor me. How hard is to to get a work permit? I'm not ready to go home. Me either. My visa runs out in June. How much does it cost to send things home? What are you going to do when you get back? Fucked if I know.
If you're not ready to go home, the idea of going back seems devastating. Home is where everything is predictable, where Europe isn't two hours and £20 away, where no one will comment on your accent, where you have to think further into the future than your next meal. It's an unreasonable line of thinking - life doesn't have to be dull just because you're going home. But I always recall my friends who've returned from Working Holidays and spent months or years feeling lost and unsettled.
The gig venue was chockers full of Aussies, all seemingly determined to assert their Aussiness. Accents were louder and broader. Many people wore green and gold football or cricket jerseys. One twat wore an akubra. People were texting friends back home, Gday mate guess wot powderfinger right here in glasgow, scotland, uk, can u believe !?! Even the band went ocker as the crowd screamed for more, the singer drawling, Jeez youse are loud, crikey! Everyone pounded the floor and sang Waltzing Matilda until they came back for an encore. If they pulled that stunt back in Australia they'd be decked, but here in Scotland it seemed okay to be cringily Oz. I guess it's that whole expat spirit - you don't always want to live in your native land but you want the world to know where you come from.
I often think the Working Holiday is nothing but a temporary suspension of reality. Unlike "proper" expats, we're only here for a limited time. You're voluntarily abandoning what in my case was a very secure career and lifestyle, just so you can run amok for two years. So much can happen in that time - you have all sorts of fun and meet all sorts of people and grow very attached to your new life. But the only way to make it your reality would involve a lot scheming and/or paperwork. If only I'd had the foresight (or brains) to be an accountant or a teacher so I could get a work permit! And why wasn't my grandfather English so I'd qualify for an ancestry visa? How bloody unthoughtful of him!
It's an awkward feeling, straddling two continents, not feeling quite at home in either space. Sometimes I want 12-month subscriptions to magazines. I want a fancy winter coat and a permanent job. I want to grow basil in a window box. But you cannae do that, hen! Not when you're getting deported in ten months, just like your bread-stealing arrow-suited ancestors.
Posted by shauny at May 18, 2004 08:58 PMI know how you feel, I have to go back to America in two months and want nothing more than to stay. Leaving is going to be devastating, but I'm already trying to plan out how I'm going to come back. I can't offer much in way of advice, but I can sympathize!
Posted by: ghani at May 18, 2004 11:39 PMAmen, Shauny. I came back from a year (bloody Aussies only give us one year, no fair!) in Oz 18 months ago, and I am STILL homesick for cheese & tomato spaghetti in a can (can you get that here? PLEASE tell me yes!), iced coffee by the carton, the cake shops on Acland St., the red dirt... I had such an amazing time in Oz and although I left a good job, good friends and a good life to go, it was worth every moment of struggling to get back into London's social melee and onto the rickety job ladder. What's even worse about the Working Holiday Visa, you know you only get it once and that's IT. Finito. And I turn 30 in a month, and it'll be no more working visas ANYWHERE for me.
So, Shauny - make the most of it. Do everything, go everywhere, live life till you drop. These chances don't come again, and re-entry is bloody painful. Enjoy it 110% while it lasts..
Posted by: jen at May 19, 2004 09:15 AMi'm relieved that i didn't have to worry about that, as i did manage to get an ancestry visa (go the grandfather i never met!), but i've seen plenty of my same friends in a similar dilemma. sponsorship doesn't seem to be too hard to get if you do decide you really want to stay and you work at the same place for a while.
being australian "overseas" in company with other australians can be excellent, that shared sense of place and pride in our beautiful country. being australian in australia is, well, everyone's doing it. *g*
Posted by: anne at May 19, 2004 09:58 AMYes, the life of the ex-pat is great. And I work with 3 other Aussies which is awesome. Not to mention playing for the Baltimore/Washington DC Aussie Rules team!
Once my contract is up or the company implodes, I'm considering doing a 2 year stint in the UK. Either that or apply for a green card in the diversity lottery I guess. Bein an ex-pat rocks.
Dude, I could have written this post. I'm leaving in two weeks to go back to England for six months (the most I'm allowed as an American with only short-term work permit, as far as I can tell) and I'm already depressed about having to leave the UK when the six months is up.
Posted by: Jenny at May 19, 2004 08:49 PMWell, there is also the curse of the dual nationality! I came over to UK from Oz for a year - six years ago! I am split almost equally between which two countries I prefer - and without anyone to boot you out it makes the decision harder! Am trying to get a US visa at the moment to divert my attention from the difficult choice!!!
Shauny, why dont you try going to Ireland? There visa process is separate from the UKs and you can apply from here - you just have to learn how to say "top of the morning" and "to be sure, to be sure" and you will be well on your way! (To a broken nose at the airport, most likely!!)
Shauny, I'm a bit like Heather - I came to the UK from Oz almost six years ago. I have the advantage of staying here as long as I like because I have dual citizenship (thanks to an English-born father who emigrated to Oz with his family when he was six). However, I find myself constantly torn about whether to stay or whether to go back. I'm at the point now where I'm still regarded as an "outsider" by the English but if I go back home I'll be an outsider there too - after all "you speak like a POM now!" If I had a time limit - if I knew I HAD to go back in two years - it would be easier. But here I am in constant limbo. Sometimes I think that I will *never* go back to Oz but then other times I can't imagine not going back. The older I get, the more difficult the decision becomes. I have a fantastic career here, so I always think, what would I do if I went home? How I'd love a crystal ball!!
Posted by: kimbofo at May 20, 2004 01:31 PMMy wife and I spent two years in London on a working holiday visa between 1996-1998. Probably the two most exciting years of our life.
Great blog by the way!
Posted by: Lloyd at May 21, 2004 06:45 AMI spent my first 10 years in Melbourne, moved to England for 9 years, and have been in Perth, Australia nearly four years.
I've got a year left of my degree, and everyone's asking me when I'll go home. Where is home? A choice is nice, but wherever i am, i miss the people and places (and shopping!) of everywhere else. Such is the curse of the dual citizen.
Posted by: clementine at May 21, 2004 07:06 AMGod yes. This is such a better post than my lame-ass effort on the same issue.
Particularly empathise with the throwing in the secure career bit. (Although my most secure path just sucked as a life.)
Have ancestry visa, but with my time as a Masters student running out and in possession of a return ticket expiring in September I am utterly torn.
If I'm accepted for the PhD I'll be back, but if not - then what? Some days, the prospect of going home seems to-die-for, some days like an admission of defeat.
As for upping the ocker, all I can say is going on a bender with Queenslanders in a university town can be a very messy business ...
Posted by: Doug at May 22, 2004 01:21 PMI am so in the outsider's boat. It's been eight years since my family left South Africa for the UK with a three year stop off in Ireland and I don't fit in at all. I'm too 'exotic' in the UK, despite my dual nationality and my had-since-childhood recieved prounciation accent, people always focus on the fact that I'm not "british" and they always want to know when I'm going home. But if I went back to South Africa, I'd stick out like a sore thumb there too, despite feeling like I should fit in because where the hell is home for an chemical engineer/oil brat?
I'm living in Manchester for Uni but as soon as that's finished in two years time, I'm immigrating to New Zealand. I'll stick out like a sore thumb there for awhile but at least it's a choice I made and I plan to make the most of the time I have left here.
Posted by: Meg at May 23, 2004 11:00 AMI saw the Sleepy Jackson play at Coachella, completely forgetting that I, in fact, don't like the Sleepy Jackson. I found myself surrounded by Australians. We even contemplated a round of 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie' before we realised it would be hopelessly tacky.
I hear you, Miss Shauny. Flying back into San Francisco was the most surreal experience. I'd flown 15 hours from somewhere familiar.. to somewhere familiar. It was such a thrill.
I miss Australia. But I've slipped so easily into California that people keep on asking me where I'm going to live next year, as in where I'm going to live in Davis.
I truly can't wait to see you again, though. I still miss you terribly.
Posted by: rach at May 24, 2004 02:50 AM
am in similar situations to those with dual citizenship. Have got both an oz one and south african one... been in oz now for almost two years studying.. the lifestyle is excellent , the oppurtunities brillaint and the exposure internationaly great..
but I sit uncomfortably inbetween both places. Too much choice isn't always a good thing. decisions become larger and timeless.
what would i do if i go home? how can i not go home?
anyone miss the energy of their home country and the sounds, colours and or smells.. these are things untangible , but which take effect after a while..
oh well... decisions decisions...