Culture shock

I sometimes meet new people (isn't that a truly strange, 2021-type sentence? I used to meet new people ALL THE TIME, it was in fact my job!!!) and one of those new people recently asked me what it was that I find the most difficult to adjust to when I move to a new country. 

I think I was speechless for about 20 seconds (those who know me, know that is an INSANE amount of time for me to be speechless) and then I sort of babbled that I found the language barrier the most difficult in Germany. Which was slightly true but also slightly stupid, to be honest. 

It got me thinking, though. I've been a nomad for the past 13 years, with a foreign partner for 14. So, what are the things I find the easiest, and the things that I would never adjust to? In random order...

1. British people have a strange relationship with tea/sometimes coffee. Most British people I have met seem to be compelled to have a hot drink of some description stuck to their hand for most of the day. My husband drinks upwards of 8 mugs of tea (milk, no sugar) each day. I do not understand this. I mean, I have one cup of coffee in the morning (mostly because I was told by a doctor I should, when I was 25, to help out with a congenital low blood pressure situation). I occasionally have a cup of tea when I feel particularly cold (come to think of it, it happens rather a lot in Scotland! I think I may be onto something here!), but it's about once a week and it's DEFINITELY not what my husband drinks. I will have an occasional Earl Grey, and herbal infusions sometimes (I love turmeric, and fennel, and anis seed, anything spicy). But I don't have a compulsion to continuously sip out of a burning hot cup. It's also not happening in any of the other countries I've lived in (Romania, Bulgaria, Mauritius, Germany). I don't think it's a cultural bandwagon I'll ever hop onto. Segue...

2. Milk in tea. Also a taste I will never acquire. I also stopped liking cow's milk in my coffee. I find nut milks (hazelnut or almond) infinitely tastier in my coffee. The fact that nut milks have far fewer calories than traditional dairy is just an added bonus. Admittedly, I have met people who drink their tea black. But not very many.

3. Ice in cold drinks. This is an American thing and although I've never lived in the US, I've visited and it was one thing that drove me absolutely nuts. I spent most of my time in restaurants in bars asking for an empty glass so I can drain whatever little bit of actual drink I was served, out of the enormous pile of ice it came on. About 80% of the time I was brought a glass piled high...with ice. Sigh. 

4. German people's compulsion to educate the ignorant. I'm afraid I caught this little cultural quirk! Berlin inhabitants (I've no real knowledge of other Germans, actually) have no qualms stepping up to complete strangers and giving them a right telling off if they do something that bends the rules. Like jaywalking - even if it's 9pm and the street is completely empty of cars for miles in both directions. You're supposed to wait until the little man with the swanky hat turns green. Rules are rules and are made to be followed. I found it intrusive and rude to start with, but I eventually understood where it was coming from and I quite liked it. 

5. Mauritians' obsession with rice. It is the staple of their diet and they have no comprehension of someone who can take it or leave it. In my case, mostly leave it. I am definitely not a carbs person, and if I must have carbs, I'll take the crusty corner of a baguette over anything else. It was a fine line whilst living in Mauritius, between feeling that I'll explode if I see one more grain of the bland white cereal and keeping a polite composure in front of gracious hosts. A large part of their society has a cult for a style of dishes called Biryani; I am sure they're delicious but they are one of the chapters of our Mauritian life that I'll not want to relieve anytime soon. Which brings me to...

6. Mauritian Cuisine. The original, pure FUSION cuisine, as they like to brag. And they are spot on. It's exhilarating stuff for a foodie like me and one of the things I miss the most about Mauritius. With some sizable exceptions (rice being one, as described above; dried salty cod and corned beef being two others), I still dream of Mauritian cooking. Probably one of the best dishes my mouth has ever tasted being a dhal puri (chickpea flour flatbread) filled with octopus curry (carri ourite) as sold by a small beach shack on the public beach of Grand Gaube. 

7. Some British home quirks. Like carpeted bathrooms; washing machines in kitchens; homes with no showers (or at most the puny dribbling shower over bath thing); lights that turn on by pulling a string hanging from the ceiling (particularly useful when you are spending your first night ever in the in-laws' house and you need to hit the loo in the middle of the night! How on Earth I was supposed to guess where the 'switch'). And my ultimate, the two separate taps in sinks. I do not understand how one is supposed to wash their hands. You either freeze them or scald them. (The possibility that someone might have intended me to mix the water in the basin fills me with untold hygiene nightmares). I mean, I think I understand the evolution of plumbing and the reason why cold and hot water pipes were separate at some point in time. But this is 2021 and they still sell the things NEW in the shops. Which leads me to...

8. The British people's firm belief in DIY. As far as I can gather, most people think there's no need for a professional...insert whatever handyman-type job you can think of. Plumber? Electrician? Painter-decorator? Bah. Those only exist to pander for truly lazy people, or people with more money than sense (my husband's actual real life opinion, not my snarky remark, folks!). Walls looking a bit grubby, or you're fed up with the 90's 'feature wall'? Head to B&Q (or whatever, I'm no partial to any names!), grab a bucket of paint and a random roller, and git at it. Whilst I admire the 'just do it' spirit, as well as the 'make do and mend' mentality, having recently spent a huge chunk of time looking for our first ever (owned) home, I can say one thing for sure. There is a serious reason for most people to let the professionals handle home décor and renovations. The reason being that when you do it yourself, it really TRULY shows. Not in a nice way either, by the way. Folks, there ARE exceptions (after all, you don't really need a degree in Physics to figure out how to paint a wall) but overall, with these things PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT and I'd much rather pay someone who has had time to practice on somebody else's walls than give it a go myself.

To be continued...

Friday Favourites: A is for Architecture

Image credit

This is hopefully the beginning of a weekly series of posts for me. I'll highlight things I love about Scotland, the UK, other parts of the world, life in general.

Its ARCHITECTURE is definitely one of the reasons I adore Edinburgh. No matter how sad, upset or stressed I may be, a glimpse of the fantastic Georgian New Town restores me to a state of peace and harmony. I've spent hours wondering why that was and I think it has all to do with symmetry. The proportions are graceful and generous and incredibly pleasing. The mellow colour of the stone gives a fantastic contrast with the Edinburgh skies and the black/white painted wrought iron detailing; and in the places where ancient cobbled streets remain, strolling on a rainy grey afternoon in front of these magnificent buildings is an incredibly soothing experience. 

I'm not an architect by any means, if you wish to know more about Edinburgh's Georgian architecture I found this article very informative.

The fact that the quarry that provided most of the stone for the buildings in the New Town is just a stone's throw from our (decidedly NOT Georgian) home is just serendipity...

And one last interesting note: I think my fascination with symmetry is a consequence of my dyslexia. I find busy images very difficult and tiring to process; a simple stroll through my son's primary school - with classrooms and corridors plastered with children's 'art', random printed images and letters, spaces crammed with unmatched furniture and bright, primary colours - makes me physically sick. My brain is struggling to process that chaos. If my school had been like that when I was a child, I doubt I would have been able to overcome the quirks of dyslexia as successfully as I had. 

Surprisingly, my favourite street in Edinburgh is not Georgian but Victorian... yet is equally soothing through its symmetry. I'll take a picture at the week-end and update this post with it. 

Fifteen years

Photo by Jahoo Clouseau from Pexels

March is a hard month for me, hence the silence. 

My father passed away on March 31, 2006. I think I am still angry. 

I think of the cycle of grief. Denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance. If there was any denial, it was very brief. The anger still goes on 15 years later. Not much of a cycle, more of a brick wall. 

I miss him, flawed as he was. I wonder how it is possible to miss someone you are so mad at, all the time. He was my dad. My hero and role model as I was growing up. The world became a very lonely place once he was gone. 

And I am mad at him, because his death was totally preventable. He died 6 months before his 55th birthday. He died because he refused to accept he had diabetes, and didn't treat it. He died because he said 'what is life without some bacon' when his liver was heading for cirrhosis. He died because he said 'I'll just have one glass' when he had been told even a sip of alcohol will permanently destroy his liver. What was wrong with him would have been so simple to manage, yet he chose not too. Every time I miss him, I get even madder. My hero has fallen from his pedestal, because he was selfish. He chose the bacon and the wine over everything else. 

He never got to see me give my law degree dissertation, which he inspired. Standing up to give the dissertation just two months after his death was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done. He never got to see my sister graduate from medical school and become a doctor. 

He wasn't there to hold his grandchildren when they were born. He wasn't there for his daughters' weddings. He stopped being there for my mum, and the joy was sucked out of her life for ever. He was the absolute centre of her universe - he still is. His own dad, my grandfather, fighting dementia at the time of dad's death, was aware enough to say 'if he's gone, why am I still around?'. He then proceeded to pass away too. We had to burry my grandfather less than a week after my dad's funeral. 

The more I think about it, the madder I get. I wonder when will I feel the other things. It's been 15 years. I'm still furious at the waste of it all. I think about him around the anniversary of his death, and I can't help thinking 'Dad, I really hope that bacon and that wine were worth it'.

This is about the only time when I'm sad I am not religious. There's nothing in me helping me to forgive him. I suppose as I age myself, I might understand. And that eventually I can bring myself to tell my son the good stories of his grandad, without telling him about the anger.

Fifteen years is a long time to be mad at someone you love. 

Silence is golden

 I've been busy. Not good busy (not busy with a normal life, I mean) but busy spring cleaning, getting rid of my mother-in-law's unwanted household items after her move in sheltered accommodation, applying for jobs and taking a few courses (to bridge some skill gaps).

Last night I didn't really sleep because of the odd storm that hit Edinburgh from about 7pm onwards (howling winds and driving rain) so I spent my time reading and drifting into truly pointless streams of thought. This resulted into a range of unresolved questions that I decided to put down here in the hope that one day, I might find an answer to at least a few of them (as a blogger I read says, 'Curious minds want to know!').

1. At what age is it ok for people to start having caffeine? From a medical point of view, I mean. My husband said he used to be given tea (the English version, as in black tea) when he was our son's age (8). I think that is completely inappropriate and pointless (just like the Romanian custom of letting young teenagers 'taste' beer to 'get them used to it') and possibly a bit dangerous to growing children. No I don't know if science would support my statement but I know that a. my son DEFINITELY doesn't need an extraneous substance to enhance his energy levels (he can hardly keep still for 30 seconds as it is!) and b. the growth hormone is associated with sleep. Children who don't get enough sleep may be prevented from developing their full growth potential. Why would parents give children something that would 'help' keep them awake? I have enough fights on my hands as it it, getting my kid to bed early enough so he can have at least 10 hours of sleep/night. (not my invention, see https://sleepcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sleep-hours.png for more competent info). 

Maybe I'm wrong about the caffeine thing and I'd like to be corrected so that I don't worry about brain damaging my son if I allow his dad to give him a cup of tea at some point in the near future.

Just as an aside, my husband's baby milk (back in 1972) was made up with 1 SPOON of sugar per 100 ml. We found the papers with 'advice' that his mum was given from the hospital when she brought him home as a new born. She also used to give him and his brothers whisky in their milk when they had a cold (to put them to sleep, perhaps????). Suffice to say, old wisdom is often just old (and not, in fact, wisdom at all). Although I do have a long list of old remedies that I do use and stand by (once I've checked both the science behind them and the effectiveness).

2. Why have I got a swarm of mosquitoes in front of my study window? It's early March for God's sake and it's still too cold to go outside without full winter gear. At what temperatures do mosquitoes hatch, and how long to they live?

3. If all mosquitoes die in the autumn when the cold comes, where do the new mosquitoes come from when the weather gets warm again?

4. Why do people believe the whole human race is too stupid to understand that when you go to a high-audience, sensationalist journalist to 'complain' about your 'loss of privacy', you are in fact only complaining that the mentioned loss of privacy didn't quite get you the monetary return you had expected? 

Actually, forget I asked this. I know the answer. Less intelligent people always assume everyone is as intelligent as they themselves are, if not slightly less. And this I think is all I will say about the subject. I would have not paid it any attention in fact, except it was impossible to turn on the news on any channel and any language yesterday without needing to navigate around the woe is me tale of a couple of completely insignificant (other than to themselves) young individuals who should know better. 

Just realised I fell in the same trap of giving air space to these people on an issue which should not get any. There are bigger problems in the world at the moment. Consider my hand slapped. 

A salad post

 Time seems to fly so quickly whilst doing nothing at all of any note at the moment...I realize I somehow kept mum through the Winter Week of Doom (5 entire days with a few inches of snow on the ground) which was a true highlight of the past few months for the Boy!

I skipped writing up a whole week of meals, which consisted of 4 Gousto recipes (Venison and Pork Burger with Figgy Onions and Herby Fries, Smoked Fish with Warm Green Bean and Potato Salad, Honey and Garlic Pork Noodles with Smashed Cucumber and an oven-baked Normandy Chicken and Apple Casserole); a home-made Pastitsio made with ground turkey; a repeat of the Romanian Cassoulet (by special request of the Boy) and a quick sausage, potato, red onion and courgette bake for an easy Sunday evening.

I moved back from my 'foster' department at work, into my 'home' department...which made me happy although it's only for a week. The situation at work is still bleak. I am on flexi furlough at the moment, moving to full furlough, then back to flexi furlough, then probably onto redundancy when the tap of government money subsidizing its own catastrophic decisions will have dried out (end of May?).

I finally saw my liver specialist (the appointment was ONLY delayed for 18 months, but why dwell on such minor details? We're all SO fortunate to have the NHS in our lives!). She's happy with my progress - or rather lack thereof. When you have a lump growing on your liver, the fact that it's not making any progress is good news. She is happy that all I need to do for the foreseeable is keep my weight where it is. I'd love to get it down, I said, but between my capricious liver function, the chronic fatigue and the inevitable reduction in physical activity caused by this whole pandemic affair, all I seem to do with the balance of calories in/out is to maintain the status quo. Of which I'm not happy. I could do with losing another kilo or two. Can I get some help, I asked - a dietitian/nutritionist referral, for example? She actually laughed at me. She said I'd have to weigh double my current weight to be even considered for a waiting list, and even then the precious NHS resources are so stretched, that I'd be on that waiting list for over a year. Gee, I wonder why 'healthy, young' adults keep dropping off like flies with Covid in this country. I don't think I would even look like a human being were I twice my current weight (which is perfectly normal by the way according to the same NHS - but there is a hint of a muffin top there that shouldn't be, and to my horror a fold is starting to appear on my back when I twist around which is definitely a. unacceptable to myself and b. not normal given my calorie intake/output). The NHS has spent way too long putting out fires and focusing on bureaucracy, and definitely not enough focusing on preventative care. That's one thing the Germans have got pat down.

In other news, I've applied for another dozen or so jobs, and miracle of miracles, actually had 2 interviews (got to the second stage, a 'chat with the CEO') with another employer. Don't think I'll be offered the job but it sure looked nice, and it would have been a great deal of fun to work with them. For the first time since THAT Mauritius job, I would have been doing a job I would have thoroughly enjoyed. Would have been truly nice but the radio silence since my second interview indicates they've probably gone a different way.

Have picked myself up after yet another missed opportunity (became really proficient at this process during our 4 years in Germany) and I carried on writing more applications. 

I'm not THAT stressed, something will come up eventually. After all, I am clever, educated, skilled and I have a lovely personality! One lucky company will reap the benefits at some point.

I stopped in the middle of writing this, to read the latest announcement on Life in House Arrest v.3/2021 edition. The Boy isn't going to school until the 15th of March at the earliest. Sigh.

Besides the damage to his mental health, social skills and the educational delay this is causing, the announcement puts a bit of a spanner in the plans of the new project I was allocated to from the 1st of March. My new (temporary) line manager was hoping I'd be able to work from the office (key work) but 8 years old aren't exactly proficient independent home schoolers, and the Husband's job is such he doesn't emerge from his screens and headphones for hours in a row on the best of days. Oh well. I suppose I can negotiate a half-day training in the office with the Husband. Wonder what I'd have to give in exchange (not to the Husband, to the Boy who has become a complete Mummy Limpet over the past year, as we are all constantly at home, attached at the hip and not seeing other human beings except on screens or from a cautious distance on afternoon walks)...

Things I miss the most since Lockdown 1 (the April 2020 Edition) struck

 1. Going out for Sunday lunch.

2. Charity Shops

3. Regular doctor appointments. Even dentist appointments. 

4. Walking through town or on the Promenade and NOT having other passing people react as if I'm some kind of biological weapon (turn your face away, take big detour around me, even stepping in front of an incoming truck to get as far away from me as possible).

5. Giving friendly dogs a pat and a fuss during said walks. Nowadays owners behave as if I'm passing on the plague through their furry friends. 

6. TK Maxx. 

7. Going to work. In an office. Meeting other people around my workplace. Not having to work out complicated People Tetrix when I happen to be in the staff kitchen and another colleague wants to go past to use the toilet.

8. Children's sports (never thought I'd say this!)

9. Travelling. Never thought I'd say this, either. I've been a complete homebody until the Government took away my ability to decide if I wish to be a homebody or not. 

10. Hairdressers. I'd only go twice a year, but it's been too long now. 

11. Being able to nip down south and see my mother in law over a week-end if she seems like she's struggling with loneliness during Facetime calls. 

12. Places to go. We moved to Scotland in 2018 and we had gotten into a nice rhythm of going places (mostly castles, other ruins, islands and lakes) when it all came to an abrupt halt. We'll probably soon move away and for half our time here, we'll have mostly seen the inside of our home and the one mile radius surrounding it. Such a shame. 

Things I don't miss:

1. Traffic.

2. Children's birthday parties. We have a son, and most of the parties he'd been invited to in 2019/2020 seemed to be 'themed' to some sort of violent activity that I disapprove of so I'm forever divided between wanting my son to socialise and make friends, and wanting to grab the parents and shake them until they come to their senses. Seriously, 'laser tag' is an adequate activity for 8 year olds? Teaching children about guns and violence is NEVER ok and most certainly should NOT be classified as 'fun'!). 

3. Pubs. Enough said. I am against alcohol consumption (not on religious grounds, but on health impact grounds) so I have no time for places where people go for the only purpose of drinking alcohol. 

Snowdrops

 I'm seeing them everywhere we walk. Back home in Romania during my childhood, they truly meant that spring is coming. 

No such luck here...these were huddled against a frozen wind at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, where we went for our daily exercise yesterday. 

This photo was taken at 2pm...it was so dark that the flash came on my phone camera. I think today is our 12th day without sight of the sun and even my enduring love for Edinburgh is starting to falter in the gloom.

We went to the 'Botanics' because it is just about the only place where the Boy is willing to go without a massive argument (he really hates the daily walks, because they feel like they are MANDATORY and they're no fun for a little boy). The Botanics are HIS happy place, like Cramond is mine. I don't know why-but he just mellows as soon as we set foot on the paths. 

Yesterday, although it was grim, grey and cold, we still managed to spend about an hour in the bedraggled gardens, mostly dreaming about the lush days of spring. 

As we were walking into the Chinese Hill Gardens, we spotted a grey squirrel and stopped to say hello (we stop and say hello to all creatures when we are out with the Boy). I thought the little fur ball was going to keep his distance, like they all do, so I was totally unprepared (no camera on hand) for what happened next. The Boy crouched down to see the creature better, and the squirrel ran straight towards us (we were on the path), came to the Boy and gently set a front paw on his knee, looking in his eyes and sniffing cautiously (looking for a tasty titbit, me thinks). I just did not expect that behaviour at all. I'm sure the squirrel is tame because of visitors regularly feeding it, but for my son this was a truly special moment. It was over well before I could get my phone out of my pocket, the squirrel off to some other place in search of a bite, but I know this will stay with the Boy for a very long time. 

I wish we didn't have to book at least a day in advance to get into the Botanics! Our daily exercise would come with a lot less hassle if we didn't live through the times when spontaneity has died.