Lost in transit

Foreigners

Last night, I received a letter from a friend of mine. She and I live remarkably similar lives, only reversed : she is an American, living in the States, married to a Dutch fellow. They speak Dutch in their home, so that their two children will be able to communicate with the Dutch part of the family. We speak English in ours, so that our children can chat with my family.

We meet ( or- more often than not- just miss each other) during the summer months, when they come to the Netherlands to spend the holidays with the Dutch Grandparents, or when I'm in the States with our children for the holidays, staying with the American Grandparents.

They have always said that some day they would like to move to the Netherlands and now that day has come. They have sold their house in Georgia, packed up all of their belongings and in a few weeks will be living but 15 minutes away from me.

She wrote to me that as she sat on her Mother's stoop, watching her children playing together in the early morning, she realised that ... my children are going to be foreigners, are they not? ....it seems rather odd somehow. .

I knew exactly what she meant.

clap clap clap...collapse

Everybody put your hands in the air, like you really really care! Now... keep them there!

I went to a ballet last week, and I’m still thinking about it. In particular, I’m thinking about how much we clapped. We clapped until our hands were absolutely numb, and then we stood up and we clapped some more. And although fifteen minutes of solid clapping seemed a pittance considering that the performers had been dancing non-stop for ninety minutes, it also seemed like an awful lot of human percussion.

I probably get out to big cultural events two or three times a year, and every time I’m surprised by how much the people here clap. When the Tuvan throat singing band “Huun-Huur-Tu” came to perform, they gave three encores. They performed, we clapped, they came back and did an encore and left, we clapped some more, they came back and did a different encore and left, we clapped some more… Finally, the lead singer protested, “Our horses are tired!” so we let them go, but honestly, we might have kept going for hours if they’d been able to keep coming back with a different number for an encore. When the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater stopped in Brno, they came out and did the SAME encore number three times in response to insistent applause. Last week, we gave the Aalto Ballett Theater no less than five curtain calls, despite the fact that they didn’t seem to have an encore number, nor probably the energy to do one. I mean, they just came out and bowed five times. And by the fifth time, they looked a little… perplexed. But we were on our feet, clapping like we couldn’t bear for them to leave.

So the lack of extra numbers at this performance has me persuaded: it’s not an insistence on getting our money’s worth, on sucking the last droplet of marrow from the performers. Nor is it some sort of weird high culture permutation of the rock concert, when you know that Suzanne Vega is not going to leave until she’s sung “Luka” (or whatever performer with whatever signature tune—if they don’t open with it, you can be sure they’re going to close with it, and the “encore” is really kind of a formality). Anyway, nobody in the audience at the Janacek Theater waved lighters in the air.

So what is it with the ardent applause? It’s definitely not what I’m used to in the U.S., where the curtain has barely touched the boards and people are swarming towards the exit doors with their car keys already in hand. Local wisdom would indicate it’s a Czech thing, that Czechs clap both more than their other European counterparts, and more than Americans. I’ve asked why that might be, and the answers range from the idea that we’re just really grateful for touring performers (although I’ve seen this kind of curtain calling for local theaters, too, so…) to the thought that maybe it’s just not a jaded culture, and it seems normal to be enthusiastic at cultural events.

My internal jury is still out. But I’d like to cast a wider net: Do people clap a lot at performances where you are? How much is a lot?

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.

To pack or not to pack, that is the question

Supermarkets. Love them or hate them, they can reveal so much about the culture within which you reside.

When I lived in Australia, visiting the supermarket was a simple pleasure. There were very rarely long queues and the checkout operators, after greeting you warmly, were usually quick and efficient. Despite standing on their feet all day, they'd pack your goods with a smile and bade you a pleasant farewell. If you'd driven to the supermarket the "trolley boy" would even carry your items out to your car for you.

But when I first arrived in the UK and went shopping for food it didn't take me long to loathe the whole going to the supermarket experience.

The queues were always enormous (queuing is actually an artform in this country, stemming, I am told, from wartime Britain when everyone lined up for their rations).

But once you got to the top of the queue, any sense of elation dissipated as soon as you saw the checkout operator, slumped in his or her seat with I-couldn't-be-bothered-to-look-cheery-even-if-I-tried expression on their face. The fact that they barely acknowledged you, that there was never any "hello" and never a hint of a smile, just made the experience all that more depressing.

I was forever wanting to grab them by their shoulders and shake them into life, all the while shouting: "Do you know how LUCKY you are not to be working in an Australian supermarket, where you have to stand on your feet all day long? At least you get a bloody seat here! Now cheer up and pretend you're happy to be here!"

But I always feared that would just make them turn nasty and refuse to pack my bags for me. . . Which is something I shouldn't have worried about. Because guess what? Checkout operators in British supermarkets not only get to SIT DOWN on the job, they DO NOT pack their customers goods for them either!

"You lucky buggers," I'd want to shout. "You've got it easy: a seat and a no-pack policy. You should be smiling for England!!"

Packing my own goods is something I still have to wrestle with. Not because I'm lazy or don't want to, but because it's an experience almost akin to scaling Mt Everest without oxygen. In other words, deadly dangerous.

Checkout operators might be miserable and they might be lazy, but most of them are pretty damn good at whipping your goods through faster than you can pack them. In fact, I'm sure it's a deliberate ploy on their behalf. I can almost hear their thought processes: "Let's throw her goods down the counter at twice the speed of lightning and see how she copes with the baying pack of wolves behind her while she holds up the queue and I sit here oh-so-patiently waiting for her to JUST HURRY UP!"

Yes, supermarket shopping over here is an ordeal I'd rather live without. Sociologists, cultural anthropologists and psychologists would have a field day trying to work out what it says about the English way of life.

What's it like where you live?

Announcing Foreign Substance

Allegedly we've inspired someone, people:

Foreign Substance is a new site that aims to 'capture the pulse of planet'. Lost in Transit was one of the inspirations for our site, where bloggers from around the world post dispatches about what's going on in their neck of the planet. Check out the site, let us know what you think about, and feel free to sign up as a correspondent and (cross-) post stories.

How to Survive an Interview

As a foreigner living in a country with very few foreigners, namely Siberia Sevastopol Slovenia, there's always a good chance I will be called upon by a journalist to give an opinion about the country "through foreign eyes." It's basically just me and some Mormons here, and since the Mormons only want to talk Christ, it pretty much leaves only me. These interviews are always a delicate situation, requiring a Metternichian sense of diplomacy and tact. I don't have this at all but, nevertheless, here are some of the things I have learned:

1. Don't talk about bull's balls.

Sure it might seem funny to bring them up, especially when bikova jajca (bull's balls) was the first Slovenian phrase you committed to memory (after seeing it on a menu) but people will read about it, and remember it, and it will haunt you forever. Instead of hearing "good morning!" you will hear shouts of "Bull's balls!" OK? Don't say I didn't warn you.

2. If someone calls and asks if you'd like to appear on a game show, but is really vague about what kind of game show it is -- other than "It'll be really great! Really!" -- tell them to lick your bull's balls.

I got this call shortly after the second Iraqi war broke out. Since Slovenes were overwhelmingly opposed to the war, I was making an effort to keep a low profile and move among them undetected. For example, I stopped wearing my American-flag cape or the red-white-and-blue shirt that said: "If you have a problem with American foreign policy -- come talk to me about it, pissbubble!"

Like I said, the game-show guy was dodgy about the premise of the show but finally mentioned that it would be a trivia contest between me and my family and "another family." I turned it down, despite my love of trivia, and in retrospect, this probably saved my life. I later found out that they wanted to pit an American family against an Iraqi family in the "mother of all trivia competitions." It would have probably looked something like this:

HOST: Welcome to the trivia show! I'm your host for this evening, Janez Jajca, and tonight we'll be pitting two families against each other in a trivia brawl of geopolitical proportions! Let's meet our first contestant: a man who risked life and limb escaping from Iraq with his family just a few days ago: Muhtadi!

(applause)

HOST: Muhtadi, it says here you're originally from a small village outside Najaf?

MUHTADI: This is correct. Unfortunately, this village no longer exists because last night American bombers dropped 1000-lb bomb on it. Everything is gone, including the local museum with its priceless Persian pottery.

(angry murmurs from the audience)

HOST: Well, Muhtadi, it's funny you should mention American bombers, because our next guest is from the same country that recently vaporized your village! Let's say hello to Michael M.!

(no applause)

MICHAEL M.: Hi, uh, I was told this was a trivia show?

HOST (reading from card): Michael, it says here your biggest problem in life is that you sometimes get a hankering for Taco Bell and there aren't any in Slovenia?

MICHAEL M. (blushing): Well, no, I mean, yeah, I do get a hankering sometimes but, uh, I wouldn't call it my "biggest problem" or anything. I just, uh, thought, uh...

HOST: So here they are, ladies and gentleman! Muhtadi, the man who risked it all to escape the American war machine... (applause) and Michael M., who thinks everyone in Slovenia should eat American junk food! (angry mumurs) Let's play the trivia game!!

I can't tell you how happy I am that I didn't go.

3. Don't curse the immigration office

I know, I know, the temptation is enormous. And when they (inevitably) ask you what you "don't like about Slovenia," it's the first thing that pops into your mind. You instantly imagine that sterile hallway with the wooden door that has "Tujci" (Foreigners) written on it, and the thick rows of Balkan men standing forlornly outside. The mere thought of the hours you have lost there (because they forgot to tell you to bring a medical certificate proving you have a heart and now you have to start all over again from the beginning) fills you with murderous rage. Now is your chance, you think, to let them have it. Now you will right a great wrong, and the people reading their newspapers will say: "Good Lord, I cannot accept that they jerked this poor guy around like this! Tommy, go get Daddy's shotgun and metal tongs. It's hammertime!"

It won't happen. I wish it would... but it won't.

But that's it. That's everything. That's all you need to know. Just stick to these three guidelines, and you'll be as happy and carefree as a pair of bull's balls, swinging in a summer breeze.

Just Another Morning At The INS

3:30 AM:
The alarm clock interrupts my dreams merciless. I take a shower and wake up my 14-year-old daughter Sarah which is a major challenge at this time of the day. I feed the dog and walk him. Just another morning at the INS is ahead of us.

4:15 AM
We start off not without having checked if we have everything required: 3 INS photos from Sarah, the letter that says that her conditions have been removed from her greencard, her new German passport, her old German children passport with the stamp that proofs she is a lawful conditional resident, and my passport as proof of identity.

4:45 AM
We arrive at the INS. We are lucky and get a parking space right in front of the entry where people have already started to line up. I take my note pad with me - I decided to write a journal of this morning to use the time. It's still dark though and I have no torchlight with me.

4:50 AM
I take my space in the line. Beneath me, a pile of cloth. Later I find out that there is a snoring human being under this pile of cloth.
Sarah stays in the car - please don't fall asleep; I can't leave my spot without loosing it. I mentally prepare to stand here in the cold and darkness of an early California morning for the next 2 hours until they open at 7 AM. 2 hours are not bad. I remember that in February 2001, during the internet boom, I waited six hours to be among the lucky ones who gets one of the tickets that allows you to enter the INS. The first time I was here, I had to go home after waiting five hours because the tickets ran out before it was my turn to receive one. Times have changed - less .com companies, less jobs, less H1B visa applicants, less people waiting.

5:00 AM More people have arrived. 10 more INS customers are already standing behind me. It fills up fast now. It seems we arrived just in time to be among the first batch that will enter the INS once they are open.

5:30 AM
I look around me: A Russian couple is waiting in the front of the line; they are propably in their sixties. I deny the offer of my frontman, a friendly Taiwanese student to take one of his cigarettes and hope he is smoking into the opposite direction as I have asthma. He does and starts a conversation with a beautiful young woman from Marseille, France, an exotic dancer as she tells us. The Mexican family behind me is having breakfast. They are equipped with camping chairs, hot coffee, cereal, milk, a radio, and churros which they offer me. I take one, and a cup of coffee. Good opportunity to brush up my Spanish - not bad at all, it's still there just a little dusty and rusty.

6:00 AM
Sunrise; the snack car is arriving and people are buying hot coffee for a ridiculous expensive price. The snoring blanket moves and a Middle Eastern man is rising and bends towards Mekka. I bend towards the fence to circulate the blood in my hurting back. Afterwards, he tries to enter the line and is shocked how many people have arrived since he fell asleep. I allow him to enter in front of me - nobody complains - after all, he was here first. Unspoken rules - never questioned.

6:15 AM
The line is dwindling now. There are about 150 people waiting to speak to the INS officers. An odd collection of ethnicities, backgrounds, ages, and hopes. "The pioneers of today" comes into my mind. Like the pioneers in the old days we have to overcome obstacles to settle in California. Hey, I am proud to be one of them. "You have to have some chaos left in yourself to be able to give birth to a dancing star", I smile when Nietzsche's saying comes into my mind. We are all heroes in some way. Sarah mentions later at home that "all those who fight in wars should be forced to wait in front of the INS to get to know each other better - then they would not be able to kill each other anymore". Not a bad thought for a consume oriented teenager of 2004.

6:25 AM
Some of the newcomers try to post themselves in the front of the line but get hushed away immediately to the very end. "Screw you" sounds similar in Russian, German, Mandarin, Suaheli, French, and Vietnamese. Funny!

6:30 AM
The sun is now warming my face - what a good feeling. My legs are heavy and start swelling. Sarah joins me in the line and gets milk from the Mexican family. She starts playing with their two little boys.

6:45 AM
An INS officer comes out and buys coffee at the snack car. He walks around, looks at us and disappears.
More people are arriving.

7:00 AM
Three officers are coming out, raising the American flag. One yells into the crowd to get rid of cellphones, bottles, and food.

7:15 AM
The yelling officer is now checking our id. He tells us first 11 people, in a lower voice now, to take off belts and chains. Then he yells at an old Chinese woman who has just arrived, " This is not the park, lady, don't stand here." When the lady does not move, he sends her to the end of the line.

7:30
It's time to say good-bye to my INS friends of today. We are ready to enter. I leave the Mexican family behind, waiting.

7:45 AM
We go to the security check, have to take off our shoes, and then we have to line up at the first counter. There we receive number D 403. We sit down in the hall waiting that our number appears on the screen. All counters are still closed except of number ten. It's doing good to sit after standing in the line since 4:45 AM.

8:00 AM
We are still waiting. Only two numbers have been called since we are here. A lawyer is involved in a discussion at counter number 10. Two more counters are opening plus the spot number seven where they take photos for Employment Authorization Cards. This spot is immediately busy.

8:15 AM
I can see the Mexican family trying to get in with all their camping gear. The officer refuses entry and seems to explain something to the father. The daughter is translating while the mother tries to catch the two younger boys. The father leaves the camping gear outside and the family can enter.

8:30 AM
It's our turn. The screen directs us to counter number ten. The officer is nice, asks a few questions, and starts to take Sarah's finger prints. We have to wait again, then we get back Sarah's passport with the new lawful permanent resident stamp. Her permanent resident card will be mailed within six months and will be good for 10 years. This is a good feeling, welcome to America. Now its only me left who has to wait for removal of conditions. With a little bit of luck, there is only one more trip to the INS left, for me, and then we are ok for the next ten years. Today is our fifth trip, our fifth morning.

9:30 AM
We leave the building and head to Flames on Winchester for hot chocolate and a hearty breakfast. Then we go home to take a nap. It takes us until the afternoon to recover from this field trip.

Right Royal Frenzy

England's well known for it's obsession with royalty. Just visit any tourist shop in London and you'll be staggered by the range of royal memorabilia you can take home and treasure. But why on earth anyone would want a tea-towel with a grim-faced Queen Elizabeth II printed on it is a bit beyond me. Ditto for a postcard of the long-dead Diana, Princess of Wales (I mean, who would you send that to?) or a coffee mug with Prince Charles' jug-eared face adorned on it.

So it came as somewhat of a surprise to find that the Danes are almost as obsessive about their royal family . . .

I arrived in Copenhagen on Saturday to discover the city in the throes of royal frenzy. The streets and squares were adorned with giant floral sculptures, mainly in the form of entertwined lovehearts, and shop windows were filled with pictures of the happy couple - Crown Prince Frederick and Miss Mary Donaldson - who will wed this coming weekend.

It seemed like everywhere I turned there were more decorations, more symbols, more reminders that there was a BIG wedding in the offing. The media were already in town, setting up in a big glass-fronted media box opposite the church (freshly renovated for the occasion) where live television coverage will be based.

And, just like the Brits, the royal souvenirs were out in full force. Every manner of wedding memorabilia was on offer from commemorative chocolates to specially brewed beers, thimbles to china plates.

But the weirdest souvenir for me, an expat Australian, was the Australian flags readily available in just about every shop I came across. Yes, the bride-to-be just so happens to be an Aussie, a fact you'd probably have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice if you visit Denmark right now, because there are probably more Australian flags flying in Copenhagen than ever get raised on Australia's most patriotic day of the year - ANZAC Day.

As a consequence I spent most of my three-day visit keeping my mouth shut. Why? Because I didn't want anyone to think I was in town specifically for the wedding. I am a republican after all . . .

I come from Ljubljana with a banjo on my knee

I have to hurry up and post this pointless travel bit before Michael M., who lives there, writes something here and makes it obsolete. I went to Slovenia a few weeks ago on business and it was like time-travel.

Specifically, it was like travelling back in time about ten years, because everyone in Ljubljana was skating around on inline skates, rather than those little silver scooter things people use here in Austria. That was the first big difference I noticed.

Well, actually the fact that there were no highway police or radar boxes on the freeway (which is in brand-spanking-new condition) and everyone drives between 150 and 200 km/h was the first thing I noticed. Luckily I was driving a Mercedes with diplomatic plates so I was able to keep up with them.

I also noticed all the toll booths. We don't have any highway toll booths here in the eastern part of Austria where I live. In Slovenia, though, you hit about six of them in the, what, half hour or hour it takes to get to Ljubljana, which reminded me a lot of a little Venice or Amsterdam, with all those spiffy clean old buildings, and the canal and stuff.

Also at the toll booths, I noticed another difference - I was suddenly transported back in time several years to the pre-Euro era in Europe, where the Maserati behind you in line waits impatiently for you to do the math in your head (how many decimal places again?) and decide whether to ask if they take Euros (they do, but how many?) or just hold out a handful of Slovenian bills and tell them to take what they need.

The hotel we stayed at in Ljubljana, though, was totally up-to-date, both in terms of design and amenities (mini bar, three adult pay channels on the TV) and price.

The people I met all impressed me with how friendly they generally were, how well they spoke English and/or German (the waiter at a restaurant explained the Slovenian menu in proper English-accented English). The people seemed to be a bit more conservatively-dressed than in Austria, especially the young women, who although they have discovered the pointy shoes I see here in Vienna have not yet gone for the bare midriffs, glitter and complicated hair dye-jobs. Rather, many of them had long, straight monotone hair, flared jeans and t-shirts, like my wife when I met here in Austria here 24 years ago, so that was another time trip.

Then we drove to Portoroz, on the coast, and the landscape changed in less than an hour -- actually in just a couple minutes when we crested the hills -- to a sort of hilly Central European mountainous look to a very mediterranean scrubby tree beach-type look. Again, the buildings were spotless and the seafood was very good. Our waiter was an old guy who smoked Marlboros and was charming in English, German and several other languages, as far as I could tell.

I don't know how the wine was, since I was driving and didn't think I could afford even a single glass at 200 kmh.

Wait, I remember exactly when this was - a week before the end of April, because preparations were underway to join the EU on 1 May. They had all these blue EU flags hanging in a park in Ljubljana. There is much discussion in Europe over how great a drag the new members will be on the EU economy, but from what I saw in Slovenia, it didn't look as if it would take long for them to catch up.

Anyway. Toll booths. Time travel. Good seafood.

Bavaria - Bay Area - not only two letters are different

Mig was so nice to invite me to contribute to this weblog. I am, no, not lost but somehow in between or in transit.

I immigrated from Sonthofen, the most southern town of Germany to the apple shaped heart of Plastic Card Valley, Northern California.

I did not come here to start a .com like so many others of my Silicon brothers and sisters; I came here to marry my long-term distance relationship. Well, the ship is gone since two years but I am still around together with my teenage daughter.

It has happened to us - we feel home - too less to be 100% American, not German enough anymore to wanting to go back. In between is our home. Hey In Between is a great place with lots of freedom, no plastic surgery, and really cool neighbors.

My name is Silvia or, as the INS calls me, Alien number XYZ. In my first months here I indeed felt like an alien from outer space. Below are some examples of extreme hardships for a German gal transplanted to California:

Root Beer
Root beer is not known in Germany as beverage. However its scent is very well known. It's the scent of our most popular toilet cleaner, "Null-Null." A German who drinks Root Beer for the very first time thinks he drinks his toilet cleaner.

Turn right on red light:
It still gives me the creeps and takes lots of angry drivers honking their horns behind me to make me turn right when the traffic light is red.

How are you doing?
When Americans say "How are you doing" they mean "Hello". You are not supposed to tell them "how you are really doing". You are supposed to respond "pretty good" even if you plan to kill yourself in the next three minutes. I went through a reality check at Safeways and when the cashier asked me how I was doing, I responded that I would do extremely bad and that I was happy he asked and that it was nice having found someone to talk to. To date this cashier is running away when I am lining up at his counter.

That's enough Silvia poured on your head for one entry. Visit my weblog if you want to know more.

Talk to you later.

Miserable writers

Africa is a bleak continent with crazy drivers, miserable roads, ugly cities, bug-infested hotel beds, and this bleakness is the endless source of content for travel writing about Africa. Is there not something else to write about?

Guardian writer Jeevan Vasagar, in this guardian article, thinks, "perhaps the miserable writer should just stay in a five-star hotel now and then, take an air-conditioned bus and give the continent a break."

I grew up in Kenya and never spent much time 'paining' over the faults of the place, but now that I live in London, I find myself looking with much the same eye as these miserable writers - either that or I spend my time over justifying the place.

Family

I just received a copy of my birth certificate, or, rather, an extract of my record in the Swedish population registry, it's part of the paperwork we need to hand in when applying for new Swedish passports here in Taiwan. One of the items stated that I was "struck from the register on January 16, 1996." For some reason, that made a deep impression on me. I was a bit surprised at that reaction, I've been away for so long that it's not a big deal anymore. Or so I thought. I've gotten used to the idea that I'll probably never move back, and I don't even think I want to - we enjoy our life here in Taiwan, and I also like the feeling of both belonging and not really belonging (that last part may be a rationalization - the fact that I'm a European in a sea of Chinese makes it difficult to truly belong).

I guess the reason for this reaction is the fact that I don't expect to be moving back. My folks are getting on in years, and I feel time is running out. But marrying across borders and across continents, this becomes an inescapable dilemma - if we were to move back to Sweden to be with my folks, that would mean Lady D not being with her folks. Who are getting on in years, and so on... We'll have to spend Christmas and New Year's in Sweden this year.