I need a costume for Hallowe’en

I have the most random of Hallowe’en plans, which is that I’m going to a party at the Australian embassy in Paris. Yep. That’s me; Ms. International. But it’s going to be hard to top the costumed performance of my sister last weekend. She lives in China, as some of you may know, and she has a bit of a ‘Mando-pop’ obsession. As do I, now that she’s been feeding me things to listen to. I love music that’s good no matter what the genre, and some Mando-pop certainly qualifies (Leehom anyone?)

Over the weekend, my dear sis went to a concert for the band ‘Sodagreen’ in Shanghai and apparently managed to attract more than just a bit of attention.

Sodagreen:

Now I can highly recommend Sodagreen as a band, as silly as the name sounds, it’s some of the most innovative music I’ve heard in a while–combining pop music with classical themes, and I’m hooked. Yes, I’m hooked on Chinese pop music. Welcome to expat life. It’s a bit random and global. But you can see the whole lime green hair thing. So then we have my sister at the concert:

These images were taken from a Chinese chat website or similar, where apparently my sister had become famous for wandering around Shanghai as an Anglo wearing a lime green wig. She tells me the comments are on the order of, “I spotted her on the subway” and she also appeared on the jumbo-tron during the bid for an encore, so clearly she became a ‘15 minutes of fame’ local celebrity in Shanghai. The full concert story is archived on a blog from her friend here, along with this photo:

Now two things are true. I have never been as creative as my sis, and I absolutely adore that she was wandering around Shanghai in this wig. And using it as part of a greater plan to be the lead singer of Sodagreen for Halloween. Second thing, I still don’t have a costume for Hallowe’en and I need help, being not as creative as my sis I’m a bit baffled at the moment.

Oh and maybe a third thing, I can’t wait until spring break when I’m going to China to see my sister’s life in person! Planning must commence immediately…

Home thoughts from abroad

Perceptions. I’m interested in how one perceives their adopted country from their native country. I’ve been back but 2.5 days, roughly. I’ve had meetings in the office, emails to catch up on, planning to do for the next few months at work. I had a big deal work dinner tonight in which I got to see many good “professional friends,” people with whom I work but with whom I actually have come to learn to love to play with as well. Amazingly, I’ve found that after a few days, I’ve been happy to be back. Happier than I was expecting. And more “home” than I was expecting. So the question is, why am I so pessimistic about my life in the UK when I’m back in the US, and why am I so unexpectedly happy in the UK once I’m actually here?

I didn’t expect it. I arrived back veiled in a pessimistic funk. I admit it. How could I not? Being in America was so comfortable. I felt so home-y. I was also doing my beach vacation thing, my go-to-Minnesota thing, my road-trip in a car thing. My shopping thing, my familiar food thing, my reading books about Americana thing. And it was easy to ignore the things that I do like about England. Even the things that I prefer about England. (Ask me how many times I get asked about American Healthcare Reform in my current UK existence…)

I’m interested to hear what other expats think. When you’re back in your native country, do you feel melancholic about your adopted country? What is your average level of stress on return from your native land? Are you happy to be back immediately, or does it take you (like it takes me) a few days to remember that your new life in your adopted country is pretty good? How do you strike the balance? What is too much time away, too much time in your native country such that you forget what you like about your new land?

Apartments (or flats, as the case may be)

I apologise in advance for the fact that I am ornery. Yesterday I was sad about leaving America. Today I am annoyed at myself for living like a student in England, and trying to figure out if I can fix it somehow. Since I got divorced (amazingly coming up on 8 years ago) and sold the lovely 3 BR house that I had lived in, with all the modern conveniences, I have had 5 apartments. Three were in the US, and two in the UK. If one was to make a list of the modern conveniences in each of them, my current digs would come out worst or close to it. Let’s take inventory:

• 1BR High-rise, down-town Minneapolis. Loved the apartment, hated the job. It was probably 1980s era but full of mod-cons and the views were amazing out the many windows overlooking the Basilica. Moved out to go back to school to finish my PhD.
• Studio, student-friendly Marcy-Holmes area of Minneapolis. Closest approximation to what I have now in terms of its deficiencies, but benefitted from having a shower AND a full-sized fridge/freezer. And a pantry off the kitchen. And TWO count ‘em TWO huge closets. Although no washing machine.
• Amazing two-level apartment in Virginia. Again, loved the apartment, hated the job. It was new and totally kitted out including an extra half-bath upstairs where my study was, with my books and my computer, in a room over-looking the main living room with windows about ten feet high. Washer/dryer, dishwasher, the works. Bedroom was so big I used a divider to split off a separate music room.
• Temporary furnished flat in England, at least it had a shower. Barely worth mentioning since I was there only three months or so.
• Current one-bedroom digs in the UK. Only improvement on my student accommodations near Dinkytown is that it has a washing machine and an actual bedroom. But lacks a shower, of course has no mixer taps, no garbage disposal, no closets, no dishwasher, a washer but no dryer, a dorm fridge with a mini-freezer, and generally makes me feel like I am not a grown-up. And oh yeah it’s only big enough for a twin bed in the bedroom, due to the need to take up floor-space with wardrobes, which also makes me feel like not a grown-up.

What can I do? I know that not all British flats are completely devoid of mod-cons. I assume that not all British people live without a shower and are okay with it. I have been working in the UK for nearly 3 years, and thus feel quite annoyed that I am living like an impoverished student. Although I love and adore my job 89 or so percent of the time, I have been increasingly realizing that I can’t keep going home to my flat without being increasingly depressed. And as I basked a long and luxurious shower this morning, ahead of my departure for the UK tonight, I started wondering if it is showers that have been driving my near-constant travel this summer. Living out of a suitcase may suck, but living out of a suitcase and getting to shower every single day? Priceless. Funny how the simplest of things that one takes for granted becomes the most important thing in your thinking when deprived of it. Of course, if I vacated my job-subsidized flat and had to pay market rates for a 1 BR flat near where I work, I could say good-bye to ever being able to travel anywhere again. I can’t quite figure my way out of this particular pickle. But it is definitely starting to wear on me, so I’m going to have to figure something out soon.

Plastic pint glasses?

I could not help but chuckle and roll my eyes simultaneously when I stumbled on this article about calls for plastic pint glasses in Britain.

Plans are afoot in Britain to replace the classic pint glass with one made out of plastic.

The government’s idea is that by introducing shatter-proof plastic vessels it will help address the increasing problem of beer drinkers using pint glasses as weapons in their local pubs.

Needless to say the plan has gone down about as well as a warm beer served, well, in a plastic cup.

There have been cries about how the proposed plastic vessels will substantially affect the quality of the amber nectar being drunk.

Others claim it’s yet another example of the government’s attempts to transform Britain into a “nanny state”.

The last point is a good one, although sometimes you wonder if a nanny is needed when you see statistics like this one, also from the article:

The motivation behind the push for the new model comes from official figures showing that 5,500 people are attacked with glasses and bottles in England and Wales each year.

I do not know what to do about Britain’s binge drinking culture, or the associated violence. I experienced some of this for the first time a few months ago, when on a sunny afternoon I had to walk out of my way to avoid a drunk guy who was covered in blood and fighting with another guy. It just made me sad. And a little frightened. One of the things I loved about England when I first moved there was the ability to walk down the street at night alone without feeling as frightened as I would have in the US. But that’s no longer true, especially when you take the pub closing times into account.

It is my last full day in America until December, something which has made me surprisingly melancholy. I think I spent too long in the states this trip–I’ve acclimated myself back to American ways and now I anticipate a tough transition back to British life. That said, I am tired of living out of a suitcase, something which I have been doing for most of the days since late June. I have no travel planned until mid-December, and for that I am increasingly grateful. I also look forward to getting back into a normal routine after all this time on the road. I woke up yesterday afternoon, napping after returning very early from the beach (to avoid beach traffic) and had absolutely no idea where I was. That makes sense, as this trip has seen me in New Hampshire, Boston, Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and last but most certainly not least, Minnesota. No wonder I had no idea where I was! And that’s after a summer that also included Singapore, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney. Time to go “home” to England and stay there for a while.

Beach cookery

Sadly my beach holiday is over. I did a very un-American thing this year and stayed two weeks instead of one. I am relaxed, tan, and … not exactly thrilled about having to go “home” to England. This trip was five weeks long, half work and half play, but that has been enough time for me to have reacquainted myself with modern conveniences such as showers and mixer taps. Not to mention American grocery stores and Target.

My favorite new snack is Pepper Jack Cheez-its. It seems to me that American cooking and certainly restaurants have all taken on a decidedly Tex-Mex flavor. There are jalapeños in everything! I had an amazing Caesar salad with a chipotle dressing.

But the one place I did not see much zesty fusion was the beach. There it is all about seafood, done in classic styles. The absolute tastiest experiences of the beach trip came at the hands of a local company that I found in the free restaurant guide, Steamers. They make up these tin cans full of yummy goodness that you take home and cook yourself, just by setting the can on the stove and turning the burner on high after adding a cup of liquid. I love the concept because it is such good engineering! There are potatoes in the bottom of the can, that essentially get boiled. On top of this is your choice of shellfish. I had lobster, crab legs and mussels at various points in the trip. On top of that is corn on the cob ears. You call them and say what fish you want and for how many people, and that’s it, instant dinner. The fish and corn get steamed by the liquid coming off the boiling potatoes, and there’s a hole in the top of the can for the steam to escape. I tried to take an action shot but it doesn’t do justice to how cool this was. And you KNOW I’m going to be trying to figure out a way to do this myself…

Life’s a beach

I’m back in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, my absolute favorite place to get a little R&R. Although the internet access is intermittent at best, so my apologies if you are expecting to hear from me by email or any web medium! Life will be back to normal soon enough–I’ll be back in England at work, and commenting on the growing rumbles about American Healthcare Reform and the inevitable comparisons with the NHS. I have a few things to say on this subject But not until I’ve put a few more miles on my legs. Beach for me means regular 6 mile walks, semi-regular 10+ mile bike rides, plenty of swimming and surfing, and lots of cooking. And reading books about cooking. I am obsessed with Tony Bourdain. I have a strange obsession with chefs who swear a lot, apparently, since I’m also secretly quite fond of Gordon Ramsay. But at the moment, it’s all Tony in my dreams. And England seems a distant, hazy place, and one in which I’m not 100% sure what’s going on. I really do have a transient life, where living out of a suitcase starts to feel normal after a while. And I can’t decide if that’s a good or a bad thing sometimes.

Minneapolis update

I was going to write a post about the bittersweet nature of being home in Minnesota, but then I realized I had written it already–last year at this time, when I experienced the same sorts of ups and downs about being here. Read it here. So that’s the emotional update, that made it much easier than trying to write the words fresh. I guess in some ways that is why I don’t spend much time here anymore, much to the chagrin of my family. It’s just a bit too much.

So that said, what have I actually been doing?

• Staying with my best friend in her awesome new digs near uptown but in the part where grown-ups actually live.

• Bought an amazing photo of the old Uptown theater, at the Uptown Art Fair last weekend. Seemed appropriate. And it’s one of those photos that, if you know what it is, it’s awesome, and otherwise it just looks nice.
• Took what must sound like a totally random brief road trip to Madison with my sister. Had a three hour work meeting and then sis and I went on the town, stayed overnight and came right back. If you’re in Madison, check out Harvest Restaurant, it rocked.
• Played lots of Scrabble with my nonagenarian grandmother and her caretaker, who happens to be my dad’s older sister. When my sister’s not playing too, I can win occasionally. When the sis is there, I get crushed every time. Grandma does the scorekeeping and you have to keep a close eye on her or she’ll deprive herself of deserved points
• Had dinner with another good friend and her little girl, now almost 4. There are still a few very good friends here (as well as a large number of facebook friends!) and I don’t do a perfect job of catching everyone when I’m in town, but I try my best. This particular friend has an edge since she lives six blocks from Grandma, so I’m always lurking about her neighborhood!
• Drove over the new 35W bridge, tried to view it from the side from the Stone Arch bridge and decided it is so undistinguished and indistinguishable that you cannot even clearly see it in the photographs, it just blends into the scenery. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
• Bought a few random toiletries at Target

Off to spend my last full day here with the parents and sister, with perhaps one more stop off at Grandma’s. Going to walk around Lake Calhoun in the sunshine, meet my parents’ new dog, and probably eat just a bit too much at newer restaurants in the area. And try to stay busy so as not to dwell on the melancholy or bittersweet feelings, but just enjoy the sunshine.

I like to be in America

It’s amazing that I have been here more than a week and a half already, and have been through three main stages of the trip. Part of the nature of my whirlwind start to this trip was due to the fact that I was traveling with a junior colleague. I wanted to show her an awesome and multi-faceted technical experience as well as a bit of my country, as long as we were here. So after working solidly all weekend, Tuesday was the day for a bit of fun, and we went to pay tribute to a few of my favorites in the Nation’s capital. Almost first was Einstein, but I was so busy taking photos of my colleague in his lap that I forgot to take a photo myself. On to Lincoln.

Washington.

And my personal favorite, Jefferson.

Inspiring stuff. I was never quite so patriotic before I moved to England.

From there it was over to Georgetown for lunch and shopping on M street. I think I showed my colleague a nice day in DC, and for me it was nostalgic to be back in my old haunts.

Travel, packing, anxiety, uncertainty

I’ve managed to combine doing enough laundry, and buying enough new stuff, that I should be able to assemble a reasonable wardrobe for my latest trip, to the states from tomorrow. (Note the excellent post here on the curious practice of Americans abroad suddenly adopting “the states” as a name for the USA, something which I most certainly never said when I lived there!) As usual, I’ve set myself an impossible packing dilemma by making my trip multi-tasking and diverse. My last trip was a good example of this, needing to simultaneously prepare for summer in Singapore and winter in Canberra. Now at least I have summer the whole time, but I have a combination of work and play planned, which requires me to have appropriate clothes for both. Sigh. Thank goodness for Target. Since the work part of my trip is first, my plan is to overload on work clothes and fill in the casual caps with Target and other inexpensive local staples. Should be interesting.

I accepted an invitation (collective groan! more travel!) to give a seminar at a distinguished university in the states in March of next year. (I swear, I WILL stop accepting all of these invites someday, when I wise up and learn not to travel so much!) And for some reason, this particular seminar has featured heavily in my recent set of anxiety-filled dreams. In my dreams, about a half-dozen in the last few weeks, the seminar has been set for 11 am and I end up looking at my watch and seeing it’s some time past 11 and I’m not at the seminar as I should be. Last night’s version was particularly odd, as it had me in Australia at the designated time, which means I most certainly could not have made it under any circumstances. Dreams often don’t make sense, right? But it’s odd that something 8 months away is causing such consternation now. And even odder given that my normal anxiety dream is about missing an airplane flight, and always involves a labyrinthine set of airport corridors, and normally that’s the dream I’d be having, given that at this time tomorrow I should be sitting in a window seat heading towards Boston. And it’s not like I’m dreading the seminar, I’m actually really excited because I have two good friends at said institution, the one who invited me and another close colleague. So I’m not sure what’s going on in my head with this one.

These two weeks in the office, since my return from Sydney, have been productive and even a bit social (thus the relative quietness on the blog front). Admittedly the “social” things are mostly work related, such as the dinner I’ll be going to tonight when I should be at home calmly packing and organizing. And the dinners the last two nights with various work colleagues. All for a reason. The notable exception to this pattern was a visit last weekend by Mike (Postcards from Across the Pond) and his wife, which was purely social and totally enjoyable. I should have expected this, since Mike’s book remains my favorite of all the expat books I’ve read in the last few years. Invariably, when I meet up with other expats I am queried about my long-term plans–apparently this whole “single girl moves to England for a job” situation must look highly unstable as a long-term plan I’m aware that most expats over here either have a local partner or a transported American partner, and I don’t. My social network still revolves heavily around friends back in the US. And I don’t know what the long-term plans are, or even should be. Sometimes that uncertainty weighs heavily on my mind, and sometimes I just go about my life and remember the reasons I’m here and on evaluating all the options I recall that this is the right place for me to be for a while, if not forever. Lately I’ve been experiencing more of the former than the latter, probably because all the travel has me a bit shaken up. I start to wonder if my constant trips out of England are telling me something about how I feel about being in England. And other times I just think I’m taking opportunities for both work and pleasure that are just coincidentally good opportunities and far away. I have no answers. And for today, I have no more time to contemplate the possibilities. The fridge will not clean itself out and the clothes will not self-assemble in my case.

All the single ladies…

… and gents. And those who travel for work solo. And anyone else who wants to chime in. Dine alone in restaurants or not? I do it all the time, both at home and on the road. But I’ve been interested and surprised on more than one occasion to end up chatting with friends who say they have never done it. Never, like never ever? It never occurred to me not to do it. Yes I sometimes bring something to read, most often something for work but when travelling sometimes a local guidebook. And sometimes I don’t read, I just sit back and people watch. Always good when you get a table with a view of passing traffic, but even just the people in the restaurant can be interesting to watch. I even recall the first time I did things alone post-divorce, first meal out, first solo movie, solo concert. It just never would occur to me to not do any of those things if I was not with people. But I’m now intrigued and interested to hear what people think, am I an extreme outlier on this one?