There was a massive winter storm in Minnesota this week, and people are just starting to dig out. Funny that, it makes me nostalgic. I don’t miss the realities of Minnesota winters, but I do miss the romance! I lived most of my pre-England life in really snowy places (Minnesota and Michigan) and when the Christmas songs start playing, I start dreaming of a white Christmas. Even though I am almost never in a white Christmas kind of place these days. Last year in Australia I was definitely not in that place, and I quite enjoyed the cognitive dissonance of being in a sunny clime over the holidays. And seeing a gigantic Christmas Pelican with presents in its beak. And eating Christmas dinner outside by the pool, with freshly grilled fish as the centerpiece.
Now I’m heading for Florida, and I’m guessing there will not be a white Christmas there. I don’t miss the realities of it all, and I quite like that my window is open to air out my flat here in England where it’s been quite temperate. But Christmas really is the season of nostalgia, isn’t it? Dreaming of idyllic childhood holidays and happy times. Bing Crosby dreams and all of that. For this, I think the most appropriate thing I could say is in the lyrics of the Tori Amos song ‘Winter’ which was also my ex-husband’s favorite song of this season. He loved the part about putting hands into the father’s glove. I love this part:
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
Things do change, so fast. When I was with the ex whose song this was, I had never been to Europe. I’ve now been living in the UK for nearly 10% of my life, which is a scary thing to contemplate. And I’m relatively settled, I have plans for the future and they don’t involve much but continuing on with my current plans and existence. I will have to deal with an application for residency in the next 1.5 years, and I will have to continue to work hard and live up to my foreigner status as a net contributor to the UK economy.
But I’m sure I’ll always feel nostalgic for snow at this time of year, even when I know that a storm such as the one that hit Minnesota would bring my life here to a standstill. I don’t miss owning a house in Minnesota. I don’t miss shoveling the driveway. I don’t miss worrying about parking when Snow Emergencies are declared. What I do miss is the beauty of the snow, the break in time that takes place when things shut down because the weather really is that bad. So I guess I have to learn here in the UK to take a break and enjoy life, Christmas, and the whole thing.
Dear Bicyclists who ride straight at me when I’m walking to the gym,
It seems so easy to me. The pavement is split in half with a white line and even a ridge down the middle. There is a picture of a pedestrian painted every few meters on one side of the line, and a picture of a bicyclist painted next to it every few meters on the other side. So why the £%&(^%$ do I keep having to jump out of your way when I’m walking on the pedestrian side?
Thinking if you can’t figure this out maybe you shouldn’t be riding a bike in public, NFAH
Dear hopeless French chef,
I know you disagree with the concept of being a vegetarian or pescetarian, but do you even try the food you prepare for us? I’m guessing not, because tomato and basil sauce on roasted parsnips really did set a new low.
Unapologetically not about to start eating game and thus destined to leave dinner hungry, NFAH
Dear Brits around me who have lived abroad,
You continue to amaze and amuse me with your comments about Britain and the British, which often voice things that I dare not utter myself.
Increasingly serious that living abroad should be a requirement for a University degree, NFAH
Dear recently unfollowed Twitter peeps,
You can’t say you weren’t warned. (See previous Dear so-and-so for details)
Apparently more snarky than ever, NFAH
Dear ladies with science PhDs who are some of my favorite people in the world,
I am SO looking forward to seeing you at the conference next week in an undisclosed sunny location. I suspect that you can tell from all of this rage that I could really use a break from my current surroundings.
Following up on the success of last year’s Christmas party for my group from work, I did it again. A few things were different. First, the gauntlet had been laid down over the bake-off, so as you saw earlier this week I made Krumkake. Let’s just say they were a hit. I have 9 cookies remaining, after having made literally dozens. Given the fact that there were 10 people at this little soiree, and I did not have any once I started seeing how popular they were, I think the team averaged 4-5 eaten cookies each! Second, I also cooked something hot in addition to providing cheese and crackers (all American ones, Triscuits, Club and Saltines, from my cracker bounty!) and nibblies. When I was in the US last summer with one of my colleagues, she had remarked after several different hot dips at restaurants that she loved them and did not remember having seen them on British menus nearly as often as they appeared in American restaurants. So I made (what I thought was) an enormous vat of crab and artichoke dip (think three packages of cream cheese and four containers of crab meat to get the scope of the scale of this thing) and I swear they left nothing behind, the entire thing went–and quickly! Finally, in addition to my contribution to the bake-off, one of the temporary visitors to the group offered to make and bring a Tiramisu. We nearly polished that off too. (I swear, I am am not a slave driver and I have no idea why they were all so hungry!) The best, though, was when people discovered that the hollow centers of the Krumkake were the perfect place to put the Tiramisu. Like me, my team is largely made up of expats and so clearly this sort of fusion had broad appeal!
Photos of the before and after:
(The dip was not out of the oven, nor had the Tiramisu arrived yet).
The Christmas miracle was that I ended up with more and better wine than I started with. Aside from a few generous creatures bringing a bottle each, one of the gang found an import wine merchant that had oaky Californian Chardonnay and brought me 6 bottles! Enjoying a lovely glass now… Happy Friday Night!
Normally this is a Friday thing, but I’m bubbling over and can’t wait three more days.
Dear December,
I am not ready for you. Could you please wait a few more weeks?
Time-crunched, NFAH
Dear British ladies of a certain age:
Yes, you are right in thinking that those neon colored tights with black skirts and shoes are making a statement. That statement is, “I’m not young enough to pull off this look.”
Helpfully yours, NFAH
Dear Gym,
I know you must think I don’t love you since I don’t visit you very often. Hopefully the three visits in the last eight days will help reassure you that I really do love you. And I do plan to visit you more often in the new year.
Yours with sore muscles, NFAH
Dear American boys,
Your shameless self-promotion is really starting to wear on me. I know this attitude would work okay in America, but here in England it’s a bit much. Why don’t you just whip that thing out, and I’ll grab my tape measure.
Glad I don’t have one, NFAH
Dear team,
I promise you that in the next 48 hours my flat will become tidy and food and drink will be obtained. I realize that from the look of things right now, it does not appear that a holiday party will take place on Thursday.
Channelling Cinderella (but not until tomorrow), NFAH
Dear Social Media people,
There are really only a few ways to piss me off, I swear. But you’re very good at them:
Be a (very) minor celebrity but refuse to be facebook friends with anyone you don’t know. Send a message explaining how you don’t want to have too many facebook friends. Excellent, I will be sure to delete that post I was writing about your self-produced CD
Actually do tweet what you are eating for every meal and when you are bathing. TMI and I don’t need to know.
Or tweet the name of a new song every 3 minutes
Or keep tweeting the same message day after day
Or keep trying to advertise your latest scheme
Or make your blog content unreadable due to advertisements
I was walking in an English town today, wearing jeans and a red hoodie and carrying a very large cup of Starbucks coffee (i.e. looking as much the hapless American as is humanly possible) when I saw something up ahead. A police motorcycle, blue lights flashing, was waiting in a zebra crossing. I looked up the road and saw more blue flashing lights. Several more police. They started moving towards me. Then a fancy black car. Funny, it had a flag on top. I peered in the large car window (not even frosted–perfectly clear) and saw an elderly couple sitting there in the back seat. She had on quite the outfit, a peach hat and matching jacket. No, it couldn’t be… yes, yes it was.
I had accidentally stumbled on the Queen’s motorcade.
A few more cars, a few police, and it was over. And I was shellshocked. I had a stupid grin on my face for at least the next five minutes. The locals I spoke to later in the day were impressed, none of them had seen her in person before. (Contrary to popular belief, not all Brits actually know the royal family.) And yet there I was, minding my own business, walking down a random street being all American, blissfully ignorant of what the royals were up to. (I now know that there’s a website where you can find out where they are and what they’re doing.)
Of course, when I emailed my sister with the “you won’t believe what I just saw” news, her retort was almost as incredible:
I ran afoul of Obama’s motorcade in Seoul today. Good day for us.
Actually it was probably more the Twitterverse. Regardless, either way the breaking news earlier this week was that sex-blogger and author ‘Belle du Jour’ was a PhD scientist about my age. Not a professional writer. Suddenly the lines about how it was so well-written make sense–in this business, doing science or research is only a small piece of the pie, we have to communicate our results both in person and in print. So I’m not terribly surprised that she is an academic type in the sciences, we have to be able to construct sentences.
Overall, my interest in the story should be obvious: blogger, female, PhD, similarly-aged, in the UK, etc. Although I confess now, I am not, nor do I ever intend to be, a sex-blogger OR a prostitute. There we go, you’ve heard it first. I promise that my semi-anonymity on this blog has nothing to do with a secret life as a lady of the night.
What interested me most about the ‘breaking news’ was the apparent contradiction that I saw in how Belle du Jour, now Dr Brooke Magnanti, was described. In the above-linked article, she was in one paragraph “an obscure research scientist” and a few paragraphs later “a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol.” Surely there’s a contradiction in being both obscure and respected? In order to be respected, someone must know of your work (and I mean the science kind, not the other thing) and thus by definition one could not be obscure,
Although when I entered her name into the search engine for finding academic publications (the mark of respect vs. obscurity in the research world) alas there were only a few, which tends towards ‘obscure’ in the general community (although perhaps respected by immediate colleagues).
The obvious mind-game that an expat in this situation must play is to imagine what would happen had the same thing transpired in your own country. Here in the UK we saw lots of press and a great deal of publicity for bit-players related to Dr. Magnanti (her father was apparently not happy, but I don’t link the story here as it reeked of spotlight-gathering). Other ousted sex bloggers took to the ether in the form of twitter, blogs, and daytime chat shows. There was commentary about the glamorization of prostitution. Apparently Dr. Magnanti is supported by her employer and work colleagues. And here is where we see the big difference between England and America.
If anyone, as a PhD and engineer/scientist with a good job in research, were to come out as a former prostitute while living in America, they would not be in the position of Dr. Magnanti. They would be in hiding. They would not have supportive colleagues or a job anymore. They would most likely have ruined their professional careers for life. Now some time will have to pass before we can ascertain whether Dr. Magnanti does or does not go on to have a fulfilling and productive career in research (and given the leaky pipeline we can guess that the odds are against her). Regardless, the fact that this is even an option is what makes England different from America, and makes me happy to be here in the UK as this story unfolds.
You rock. The exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in London last weekend totally blew my mind. Too bad about the poorly behaved little kids running around unaccompanied, though. Hopefully they’re not doing too much damage to your amazing sculptures.
Glad to be an art lover, NFAH
Dear Gordon Brown,
That thing where you pandered to the xenophobes and explained your plans to cut skilled worker migration really sucked. Believe me, we net contributors to the British economy (paying taxes and with no access to public funds) are NOT the problem.
Feeling like an unwanted expat, NFAH
Dear Person from yesterday,
Just because you’re a girl doesn’t make it okay for you to be checking out my breasts the whole time I was talking to you. My eyes are about 8 inches north of where you were staring, ok?
Not sure what to wear in public anymore, NFAH
Dear Everyone,
Do pop over and wish Mid-Atlantic English a happy 40th birthday today!
The word ‘crackers’ means different things in the US and the UK. In the US, it’s my favorite snack food, much better than potato chips (crisps) and often either cheese flavored or used as vehicles for cheese or other nice savory foods. Here in the UK this meaning is mostly the word I find confusing, ‘biscuits’ which can can be either like crackers or can be sweet and essentially like cookies. I am well-known on this blog for being obsessed with the American crackers called Cheez-its, which are my favorite snack food ever. They are amazing on their own, or are even better in a double-cheese configuration when dipped in cream cheese. This was the subject of my recent shock contest win from another blogger in the US, where I won a box of boxes of crackers mailed to me. The resulting bounty of snack foods are pictured here:
Yum. I’ll be busy for a few weeks with these, although as they arrived more than a week ago, I am already down one box of Wheat Thins and one of Cheez-its. Crackers don’t last long in my carb-craving household.
But as I was walking home from work today, I saw the seasonal British crackers in a shop window. I actually experienced this for the first time in Australia last Christmas, and there are pictures of me wearing a paper crown hat. Thank goodness for semi-anonymous blogs, as I have the perfect excuse not to post the image. But you can get the idea at the ‘Christmas Cracker Shop’ website. I looked downright silly. I can see how this is one of those holiday traditions that one retains from childhood, and I thank my Aussie friends for sharing their tradition with me last holiday season. Maybe I’ll even buy some this year to acknowledge my increasing adaptation to my adopted country. But on the balance, I think I prefer Cheez-its. And thank goodness I have another box yet to go.
Following up on the previous post of good things about England (buskers) I bring you the latest installment: the British weather. I love the British weather. I know, it’s normally not something that gets complimented about this country. But let me try to explain. When I lived in the US, both in Minnesota and Virginia, I had to check the weather forecasts all the time. Daily. I had weather.com bookmarked, and I don’t have weather.co.uk bookmarked here. Why? I just don’t need to. It is relatively mild here year-round, and the daily changes don’t require nearly as much planning as the 20-30 degree swings I’m used to experiencing. I notice that it starts to get gradually colder as fall proceeds, but I don’t find myself in a dire situation if I haven’t been memorizing the five day forecast. I do try to keep an umbrella in my bag at all times for the infamous English rain, but I don’t otherwise think much about the weather. It’s one thing I can count on. And when it does get ‘cold’ here, it doesn’t get Minnesota cold. And with the rare exception (which this summer I missed, as I was in Singapore in the one week it was hot in England) it does not get Virginia hot here either. Overall it stays relatively mild and unchangeable. Which leads me to wonder, as ever, why the Brits are infamous for talking about the weather–talking about something that is reasonably uneventful and not worthy of the extra words. Kate Fox claims it’s just the universal ice-breaker here, but I can imagine better ones. Regardless, the weather is definitely one of my favorite things about my adopted country.
It was always going to be a good idea. I had a massive deadline for 4 pm today, probably the most serious deadline I’ve faced in my professional career. Coincidentally, I had been trying to schedule with one of my Minnesotan-in-England friends a pub meet-up with a couple of other midwestern girls. The only trouble for me was going to be staying awake, after the 4 pm deadline and a 4-5 pm meeting, I was dragging at 5:30 and unclear how I would make it to the pub for 8:30. Fortunately I persisted with wakefulness and managed to go. And oh what I would have been missing had I not stayed awake.
The round up is this: I’m native Minnesotan but went to college in Michigan. My Minnesota friend is actually a transplanted southerner. The two new acquaintances were a Michigander who went to college in Wisconsin and a Wisconsinite who moved to Minnesota around age 10. And here we all were doing girls’ night in a British pub. Can you see all the conversation possibilities? Yes, it worked. Awesome. Throw into the mix that I’m having dinner tomorrow with another friend who’s actually from Illinois, and I’ve managed to cover a pretty large proportion of the midwest in a short period of time.
It’s a good question, though, why it’s such fun to hang with fellow midwesterners (I mean, not just other American women but specifically American women from the heartland) in England. Perhaps an even better question is why are so many midwestern American women in my local town? And how is it that they are all such interesting women, with interesting careers, opinions and experiences such that in all cases I’ve definitely wanted to see them again? Soon! Does this reveal something intrinsic about midwesterners, or just about the midwesterners who happen to move to England? And where are the British girls with equivalently interesting careers, opinions and experiences? How have I been here for three years and not met them, but I’ve met a whole gaggle (technical term) of midwesterners in the past few months?
