On crackers

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.

Good things about England v2

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.

Midwestern Mash-up

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?

Dear so-and-so, autumn edition

Dear British girls with bare arms and bare legs when the rest of us are wearing coats and scarves:

Exactly how much do you have to drink to be that impervious to the cold?

Puzzled, NFAH

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Dear little girls,

I saw you on the street wearing shirts that said “(Town) Community College” and realized that “community college” must not mean the same thing here as it does in America. I mean, I know I’m getting older and everything but you could not have been more than ten.

Curious, NFAH

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Dear British Shopkeeper,

It was very charming to put a sign on the window of your old shop, when you moved locations around the corner. However, the sign reads:

You are just two minutes away from PROBABLY the best (thing) shop in (town).

Emphasis on “probably” being yours, not mine. Seriously? Could you please stop being so British and drop the “probably” already?

Exasperated, NFAH

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Dear Self,

Do try and remember to stop by the market and buy fresh flowers every week. They brighten the place up and are so much better than the ones from the grocery store.

Just saying, Me

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Time/Fall Back

UK daylight savings time (a.k.a. British Summer Time) ends this weekend, and I’m delighted. Why? Well, I love an extra hour. I could use one more often. “Fall Back” time has always been a happy time for me. But never so much as when I moved abroad. The first thing that is immediately noticeable is that the US does not switch at the same time, so there is a magical week of decreased time differences: 4 hours to the east coast instead of 5. Five to Minneapolis instead of 6. I love this. We get a few magical weeks each year in the spring and in the fall when this happens. I wish we could maintain the shorter time difference always, and I panic at the thought of the proposals to equalize the UK with European time and permanently move forward an hour, thus increasing the difference to 6 hours UK-east coast. Hopefully the UK-France animosity will prevent such an equalization and the Eurosceptics will prevail in this one small thing.

But this line of argument reflects the overall expat existence in some ways. I don’t live in British time. I live in some strange mid-Atlantic time-zone between here and there. The east coast is normally 5 hours, from me, the midwest 6, my colleagues in Colorado 7. I don’t seem to have many working relationships at 8 hours away in California, but I know it’s there. In general, these time differences are an automatic subtraction when I look at my watch and think about who I need to talk to and what I need to say. Fortunately I have a relatively flexible job in terms of the timing, and as a result I don’t normally book appointments before 10 am. And I often don’t “down tools” until 8 or 10 pm. I don’t religiously work a New York day, but I’m definitely closer to that than to a typical working day for those around me in the UK (although thank goodness 8 am starts are not the norm here, in that I do NOT miss Minnesota!)

That said, I have the intrinsic tendency to be slightly nocturnal, and sometimes this does not help. The time zone shift provides me an excuse for not integrating into UK time as well as I should. When I have to do something at 8:30 am (as early as I’ve been asked to do when not travelling) I’m pissy and resentful, because you can bet I was not in bed before 1 am (8 pm on the east coast!) It’s a delicate balance. And I’m eager to hear from readers–on both sides of the pond–how they accommodate this moderate but not insignificant time difference. Is it a help or a hindrance? Is it better to be in China (as my sister is) and be completely shifted in the US, or is it good to have this evening window both in the US and UK where people can overlap in timing, as long as the US person gets home from work early and the UK person manages to stay awake late?

Clickers, anyone?

England is pushing me back to the 80s. When I was in junior high and high school, it was that transformative time in women’s hair styles where big, tall curled and hair-sprayed bangs and the required associated implements, curling irons, were all the rage. At some point, the “must have” item in my adolescent world became the “clicker” or cordless curling iron. Called a “clicker” because it had fuel cartridges and an ignition mechanism that made a loud clicking sound, it was the thing that defined a girl as cool. I had to have one. I did have one. C’mon ladies, surely you remember?

Fast forward somewhere between 15 and 20 years and I’ve bought one again–that’s right, I have a brand new “clicker” cordless curling iron for my newly shorn tresses. The reason I needed such a device, of course, is the lack of electrical outlets in the bathrooms in the UK–coincidentally the only place in my flat where I have a large mirror, but in which I can’t have electrical tools for styling my hair. Unless I use the webcam on my computer in my living room for styling, I’m sunk and regular use of the webcam is just too silly to admit.

After chopping off my hair yesterday, I realised that at the new length I could do my favorite 40s movie star looks if I had some curling implement. Went to my local Boots and sure enough, the “clicker” is everywhere–available in 3 different sizes and refill fuel cartridges also available aplenty. I now wonder where the thing developed–was it really a portable hair convenience tool in the US, or did it grow out of necessity in the UK due to this strange electrical code that forbids curling irons in the bathroom? I’m sure I’ll never know. But I was sporting fabulous 40s hair at the work dinner I attended this evening, and I’ll be happily using my cordless “clicker” in my UK bathroom in weeks to come.

Expat Haircut Surprise!

First of all, if you live in the UK may I highly recommend the online booking facility available for Toni and Guy and Essensuals salons? This is so cool. You have to have been at the salon and be “in their system” to get registered, but then you can book haircuts online (and thus avoid the inevitable difficulties associated with accents and telephone calls… or is that just me?) So I did this and had my haircut today. Chopped. Hacked back to a chin-length bob from half-way down my back. I was tired of it taking so long to dry. My instructions to the lovely gentleman who cut my hair was to only leave it long enough to get the top half into a ponytail for the gym. Else it was going to have to go, and go it did. I left piles of hair on the floor of my local Essensuals, hooray!

So expat awesome surprise number one was that my randomly-selected hairdresser (that is, the one who was available for a cut after noon on a Saturday!) was an expat, he was from Vancouver. So North American bonding a-plenty. For once I actually enjoyed chatting while my hairs were falling to the ground; there was none of the stilted small-talk that I’ve experienced with the British girls who have cut my hair. And I suspect it’s both things–with one really important exception (Estetica in St. Paul, Minnesota) my best haircutters have always been men. And yes, nearly all of them were gay. And that brings us to expat awesome surprise number two; when chatting with the lovely Canuck about long term plans, he said “Well my husband is British so I’m here for the long haul” and I remembered “Woo-hoo, I live in a country where a gay man can say that!” Yesssssssss. Good things about England indeed. OK, fine, technically it’s civil partnerships but still…

Given this awesome experience (not to mention a pretty good haircut) I followed my lovely readers’ advice and left a generous (a.k.a. American-style) tip. Although the link URL reminds me why I needed a haircut so badly… has it really been seven months since I’ve had my locks shorn? No wonder I was looking such a right mess. Oh well, I’m sure now with the ability to book a haircut online, I’m actually more likely to go back. And look for my good Canadian friend.

There are no bumper stickers here and I just noticed

I have now passed my expativersary and thus have lived here more than three years. I do not own a car and I walk to work, to the gym, to the store, anyplace I need to go within my town. But somehow it had completely escaped my notice that the cars in England aren’t likely to have bumper stickers whereas many cars in America do. I certainly noticed lots of bumper stickers on my drive down towards the beach and back in August. And many of them were political, religious, or both. It was interesting at the time because I had forgotten that aspect of American culture–the proudly displaying one’s views on abortion on the back of one’s vehicle. And it took several weeks back in the UK for it to dawn on me that I don’t remember ever having seen a bumper sticker here. Or car art of any sort. No University stickers in the rear window, none of those silhouettes of barbie-figured girls on the back of trucks. Certainly no “OBX” stickers, which were on most cars heading in that direction. So clearly this is just something that has not caught on in the UK, the sticky things must not be available for sale the way they are in the US, with the end result that I spend very little time in the UK reading someone’s unsolicited views about abortion while stuck in traffic. And I have absolutely no clue if your kid made the junior high honor roll.

Coffee

Apparently, and I say apparently because I have no personal knowledge, Starbucks is marketing a new instant coffee called “Via” which is, clearly to those of us living in the UK, pure evil. Instant coffee = not an excuse for real coffee. Stop now. England is already full of people who do not know the taste of real coffee or the difference between real coffee and instant, so we do not need to play this game. Coffee? Yes, I’m a coffee nut and I’ll have a real coffee every time.

Flashback

I just returned from my local grocery store on one of those glamorous Tuesday night missions. The person in front of me in line at the grocery store had an assembly of items that looked remarkably familiar: a single white plate, a single white bowl, some pasta, some pre-made heat-and-eat pasta sauce. It was like looking at myself… three years ago this week. On the 8th of October, 2006, I got on the plane from Minnesota to (horror of horrors) Gatwick airport with two suitcases and a small carry-on bag. I arrived in the UK on the 9th of October. I struggled to get from Gatwick to my town, unaware at the time of the beauty of the car service that now lugs me back and forth to Heathrow whenever I need to travel. I stopped into my new workplace briefly, then went (with suitcases) out to my temporary furnished flat to pick up the keys. By this point it was nearing dinner time, and my suitcases contained things like bedding and clothes but no food or cooking items, and although my flat was furnished with furniture, it was not in possession of a fully-equipped kitchen. So back to the town center, to my (now) local grocery store, for some rudimentary food and the exact same single plate and bowl, along with some cheap cutlery and a coffee mug. I’m guessing I bought instant coffee at that time, since I had no other choice, and a cheap electric kettle (that I still have to this day). It was about four months before I was in my current flat, surrounded by boxes and furniture that was shipped over from the US.

In some ways, those were halcyon days. I had a shower. I had very little in the way of “stuff”. In the months after arriving, but before the arrival of my American stuff, I accumulated more things: a single non-stick pot, a square baking dish, a loaf pan for bread, a plastic bowl and some measuring cups. I started to discover the local clothes shoppes and equipped myself with work clothes to supplement the few things that had accompanied me on my journey over. My flat was not exactly right by the grocery store, so I learned to shop nearly daily–a practice that I have maintained, thanks to life with a tiny dorm fridge. Perhaps that is not so bad.

I had not thought in a while about my early days here, not until I saw the woman–who could have been me three years ago–with her single plate and bowl. For four months, that was all I had–there were no dishes to accumulate and things had to be cleaned every day in order to eat again. And yes, it does make me look around at my small but stocked kitchen–the kitchen with a potato ricer that allows me to make gnocchi, the new flatware from last year’s “expat-iversary”, the Nespresso machine that makes coffee much better than the instant I suffered on early arrival. Suddenly it all starts to look like a pretty good life–albeit a little cluttered. So this weekend, for my expat-iversary round three, I will be purging. I will be trying to get back to my early, halcyon days in England when there was just not as much stuff in my local environment.