nanila: me (Default)
2018-11-18 10:13 pm

Day 322/365: The Friday Five on a Sunday

  1. Have you seen any holiday commercials yet?

    I'm aware that they exist, but because I almost never watch live television thanks to iPlayer, All4, and Netflix, I haven't seen any holiday-centric adverts. Also, I live in the UK, so no Thanksgiving.

  2. Will you or have you ever participated in Black Friday?

    I have not, and I probably won't. Thanksgiving is not a thing here, but Black Friday has been imported. While there is a whole raft of problematic stuff surrounding the concept of Thanksgiving, the actual execution of it isn't terrible. People invite other people round to their houses and feed them, and they all try to be grateful for the good things in their lives. Sometimes said people are not very well acquainted, but everyone attempts to make everyone else feel like they have the option of having said meal rather than being alone. As a person who has moved around a lot in her life and more often than not been far away from close family or friends on Thanksgiving, I have always been pleased that this is a thing. I find it sad that the rabid consumerism has been adopted without the accompanying nice bit with the food and the companionship and the gratitude.

  3. Do you love or despise holiday leftovers?

    I love them. I love that for the week following the holiday, it's really easy to concoct delicious packed lunches.

  4. Have you seen any (non-commercial, i.e. store) holiday lights yet?

    I have seen that the occupants of the garishly lit house on the corner of a street about a mile away have been busily stringing up their lights. They're not on yet, though.

  5. Have you been good to Santa’s way of thinking?

    I have no idea. On a scale of Crowley to Aziraphale, I'd rate myself "adequate".
nanila: me (Default)
2018-11-17 07:55 pm

Day 321/365: The Mash Report is back

Oh yes, my new favourite unabashedly liberal satirical news show is on the BBC again. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is the only way I can cope with watching video footage of the sitting American president. Or watch commentary on the current status of Brexit negotiations.

Top moments so far:

Transcription, so spoilers )

AND FINALLY, and outside the cut because I really want everyone to watch this, from Episode One, Catherine Bohart: “As an immigrant in Britain*, sometimes it’s not enough to merely contribute to the economy or prop up the NHS. It’s also your job to make British people feel more comfortable with your existence. So, here’s my handy guide to Being the Kind of Immigrant British People Don’t Mind So Much.” (Seriously, y’all, watch the rest of her Handy Guide. I was crying with laughter. And also crying.)

* She’s Irish
nanila: me (Default)
2018-10-13 01:21 pm

Day 286/365: Five Questions meme

My five questions came from [livejournal.com profile] manue7a.

  1. What does Humuhumu mean?
    It’s short for “humuhumunukunukuapua’a, which is the name of the Hawai’ian state fish. It’s a trigger fish. It is very beautiful but also quite aggressive. When I was a child, my dad and I managed to catch one when we were idly fishing at the beach, and we brought it home to put in our aquarium. Eventually we worked out that it was the reason our other, smaller fish were disappearing (duh), so we took it back and released it.

    And now it’s my daughter’s online pseudonym. I hadn’t remembered that story when I chose the pseudonym.

  2. Where are your parents from?
    New Jersey and Manila.

  3. In which European country would you like to live, if any?
    Well, I live in the UK and have become a naturalised Brit. Despite the total idiocy that is Brexit, I still rather like it here. I will contemplate moving if, and only if, things get so terrible that I am actively persecuted as a non-native citizen, and if that persecution extends to my children. I speak sufficient Spanish to get by there, and I do love Spain. I’d probably find it difficult in other non-English-speaking countries as a facility with languages is not, regrettably, amongst my talents. I would put the effort in if it was needed, though.

  4. Do you have a favorite painting?
    Huh, interesting. On reflection, no, I don’t. Magritte was my favourite artist for quite a long time.

  5. What music did you listen to as a teen?
    My favourite bands were The Cure, Nine Inch Nails and...Metallica.


Comment below with, e.g. “Yes please”, and I will ask you five questions.
nanila: (togusa: it's all rubbish)
2018-08-26 10:03 pm

Day 238/365: Enervation + Pokégo

Screenshot_20180825-100413
[Screenshot of a rainbow around a Pokéstop at Parkrun.]

I wish to shoehorn in this screenshot from our Pokéhunt at our (not so) local Parkrun, so a brief Pokégo progress update:
  • I finally caught a Shuckle! Sadly, it is not a good one, but I will walk it as soon as I've got enough candies to evolve Quilava as I don't have much faith that I'll ever see another.
  • I'm Level 35 and slightly-more-than-a-half. It feels like progress has been happening more rapidly over the past month. I'm guessing this is at least partly due to the Friending process. I mean, if you pop a Lucky Egg just before becoming Ultra Friends with someone, you get 100,000 XP for the pleasure. That's not to be sneezed at.
  • I love that Pokéfriends make an effort to send me geeky Pokégifts. Thank you. I try to reciprocate with gifts I know people will like.
  • My only regret with my Pokéfriends is that I'm never physically close enough to anyone to trade.
  • I have solo-raided with the children. Somehow it's more fun with them? They like battling in the gyms way more than I do. It's very cute. Keiki: "Can I foyght?***"


I have impending end of holiday lethargy. There are dozens of things I should do before I go back to work, but mustering up the will to do them is a herculean effort. I've just about managed bashing down the laundry Everest to a mere foothill, rearranging the wardrobe, essential shopping for the children, non-essential shopping for the children, and (with the bloke) figuring out what to do with the gigantic crop of courgettes which flourished during two weeks of neglect. So far, lentil & courgette dal in the slow cooker has been achieved. Tomorrow I'll make zucchini bread*, and courgette and potato soup to put in the freezer. I can probably fling the overgrown runner beans into that as well.

We got the car thoroughly cleaned. I had washed the children's car seat covers** after the mountain pass puke-a-thon but the full sparkle-shine service made it feel like even the faintest trace of vom had been banished.

In practical terms I'm fairly sure we're ready to go back to the usual routine. I can't shake the feeling that as soon as I go back to work, I'm going to be able to magically prioritise all the other things I should have taken care of whilst I was off, except I won't have time to do them.

* I still can't bring myself to call it "courgette bread". It just doesn't sound right.
** By hand because Center Parcs lodges don't have washing machines; all hail the cleaning power of Daz.
*** This is my attempt at phonetically spelling the Midlands pronunciation of "fight", which somehow has an "o" in it.
nanila: (tachikoma: celebratory)
2018-08-25 09:47 pm

Day 237/365: Stash renewed, or Susan Dennis Is Awesome

I have only just gotten round to opening the post after returning from our holiday and, to my shame, am not yet finished unpacking. However, amongst the arrivals through our letterbox during our absence was a package from a certain [livejournal.com profile] susandennis containing two bottles of stripper juice (original entry on DW/LJ)

20180825_211502
[Stripper juice + 3 splat balls + Susan Dennis' business card with her address & phone number unnecessarily blurred out because she is the least paranoid person ever]

Thank you for replenishing my supply!
nanila: me (me: ooh!)
2018-08-20 09:22 pm

Day 232/365: Center Parcs

Okay, so getting here was not exactly the dream journey from camping to luxury Center Parcs lodge we were hoping for. We did encounter some shockingly delicious waffles at a hipster cafe in Windermere. That is the first time in ages that I've had crispy streaky bacon drenched in maple syrup. It is just not a thing in this country. Keiki only wanted some of the waffles, not the bacon, so I happily hoovered up all three slices.

Unfortunately, the waffles came back to revisit us about an hour down the twisty winding mountain roads. TMI for vom )

Anyway, we got here, and fortunately one of the lovely things about Center Parcs is that before you check into your accommodation, you can use the massive swimming complex. So we got out, walked up to the changing rooms, showered very thoroughly and enjoyed splashing around in the pools until we could get to our lodge. Once we were allowed in, we bunged in all our stuff, put the groceries in the fridge, and headed out to go bowling.

Now the kids are down, a fire is blazing, Barry is on the stereo, and I gotta go. <3
nanila: (kusanagi: puerile)
2018-08-05 09:04 pm

Day 217/365: Stripper juice

20180805_103325
Me holding an empty bottle of Warm Vanilla Sugar body lotion by Bath & Body Works.

([livejournal.com profile] susandennis, how’s that for a clickbait title?)

One day over a decade ago, I had a conversation with the bloke. We were in the early stages of our relationship. He asked me about my preference in scents, and I thought perhaps he was angling for gifting tips. Probably he was.

Anyway, I started telling him how much I liked the smell of cocoa butter, and was just about to grab the bottle pictured above (they’ve changed the label in the interim, but it’s the same stuff) to show him. Before I could, he blurted, “Cocoa butter always makes me think of strippers.”

I’d been just about to tell him how cocoa butter took me back to my childhood in Honolulu: the smell of the buses and the changing rooms at the beach. So it rather threw me suddenly to be told it reminded him of something, er, quite so adult in nature. I was grumpy for about a week. Then I decided, what the hell, let’s roll with it. And thus the term “stripper juice” was born, to describe the scent I like best.

My favourite incarnation of this scent is Bath & Body Works’ Warm Vanilla Sugar body lotion. The problem with this: There are no Bath & Body Works in the UK. Sure, you can buy other cocoa butter-style lotions here. The Body Shop sells an acceptable body butter. But it pales in comparison to Warm Vanilla Sugar, which makes me smell like a cookie all day long.

For the past fourteen years, I have managed always to plan my trips back to the USA sufficiently close together to replenish my supply of Warm Vanilla Sugar. There is always a place in my suitcase for three to six bottles of it, depending on how far into the future I estimate my next trip will be.

I bought three bottles on my most recent trip to the States, late last year, in the belief that I would be returning this summer. That trip got cancelled, and I now have no trip to the USA planned for the rest of 2018, and indeed, am unsure about 2019 as my parents have said they’re coming here.

So it was with great sadness that I extracted the last drops from my ultimate bottle of Warm Vanilla Sugar this morning. There are not very many things I’ve clung to from the land of my birth, and deliberately bring to the UK even though I know it’s pure sentiment driving me to it. (Double Stuf Oreos. Industrial-sized bottles of painkillers. Victoria’s Secret bras - although I can get those here now.) This is one of the last to go. No longer will I be able to say, "Honey, did you pack my stripper juice?" when heading off on a trip (not to the USA).

Stripper juice, I bid you adieu. You will be missed.
nanila: (kusanagi: amused)
2018-07-06 09:19 am

Day 187/365: Friday’s Unscientific Poll: Pokemon-based Dual Citizen Dilemmas

A couple of weeks ago, I took my usual bus on my usual way back to my usual Place of Sleep in London. As usual, I was busily spinning Pokéstops and occasionally popping a ‘mon into a gym as we pootled slowly through the traffic.

As we passed a couple of friendly gyms, I noticed that someone else, someone whose handle I recognised from almost two years of playing along the same route, was simultaneously adding their Pokémon to defend them. And I thought to myself, this person is on the bus with me.

There were only twelve people left on the single-decker bus. Fortunately, I had chosen a seat which gave me a good view of the exit doors, and I snuck peeks at people’s phones as they disembarked at the remaining stops. No dice.

Until we got to the terminus, which is where I disembark. Four people were left on the bus. I pretended to be hunting around for something in my bag so that everyone else would have got up by the time the bus stopped. It paid off. I surreptitiously scanned phone screens and the unmistakable PokéGo map jumped out at me from the hand of a middle-aged blonde woman, whom I was tickled to discover looked nothing like her in-game avatar.

Now, friends. What do you think I did? Did I bounce up to her in cheerful American fashion, introduce myself and reveal my shared love for the game? Or did I, in the fashion of my adopted country, almost work up the courage to squeak a timid hello in the hopes that she wouldn’t quite hear me and then scuttle off to the nearest friendly gym to pop in another ‘mon before I dashed to Place of Sleep?

Poll #20182 Culture clash: Native or adopted?
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 61


How did I react to my fellow Pokemon Go player?

View Answers

In ebullient American style
9 (14.8%)

Britishly
52 (85.2%)

nanila: (kusanagi: amused)
2018-05-17 07:32 pm

Day 137/365: Apparently I'm from everywhere

Here is a sampling of amusing exchanges I've had recently with people who have tried and failed to identify where I'm from based on my accent.

Anecdote 1
I'm in a taxi late in the evening, going home. The driver is Brummie. I've told him that I've been in London for the day for work. He asks me how long I've lived in the Midlands. "Almost six years," I reply. "It doesn't feel like that long since I was living in London."

Him: "Yeah, you still sound like a Londoner."
Me: “I do, don’t I.”

I chuckled over this internally for a good hour after I got home.

Anecdote 2
I'm in a taxi, going home after an evening out with some lady friends.

Taxi driver: “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
Me: “Er, the bad news?”
Him: “You lost Eurovision.”
Me: “...Did we?”
Him: “Yes, I’m afraid Australia finished last in the popular vote.”
Me: “What a shame.”

I never did find out what the good news was.

And the one that takes the cake, my friends:

Anecdote 3
I’m speaking to someone to whom I’ve just been introduced.

Him: “Your president is very handsome.”
Me: “WHAT”
Him: “Justin Trudeau! He’s very handsome.”
Me: “OH THANK GOODNESS”
nanila: (tachikoma: celebratory)
2017-11-24 08:38 am

Happy Thanksgiving

Yesterday I ran a meeting all day, which was productive but not the best way to celebrate Thanksgiving.

But then! Then, I went to have kamayan (Filipino feast) at a restaurant in Earl's Court, as organised by [personal profile] kake. Also in attendance were [personal profile] owlfish and tiny baby aka Tonic, [personal profile] oursin, [personal profile] kaberett and someone whose Dreamwidth handle I don't know, if they have one. All A+ company, would nomnomnom with again.

We had kamayan, which included lechon, chicken adobo, bangus and pinakbet, served on a bed of rice and with corn on the cob on top. The veggie among us had the tortang talong (aubergine omelette), which I didn't try but am assured was delicious. For the meat-eaters, the fish and the pork were definitely the winning entrees.

20171123_190301
The feast laid out on the table. Kamayan is eaten with the hands, hence the lack of utensils.

Many sighs of contentment were uttered amidst the conversation.

And then, joy of joys, afterward there was halo halo with ube ice cream.

20171123_204158
Halo halo topped with ube ice cream, leche flan (caramel custard) and purple twirl. Also note dueling dessert photos. The nice thing about this is that we then we get to eat our desserts. Everyone wins! \o/

I think this might be the best way to celebrate Thanksgiving outside of the USA that I've tried so far. Many thanks to [personal profile] kake for this. Also to Tonic, for being a tiny baby at whom I could gaze adoringly across the table.
nanila: wrong side of the mirror (me: wrong side of the mirror)
2017-11-14 08:49 pm

Trip to the Asian supermarket, aka Stuff I Miss Eating

Living in the UK for so long, and in a rural English village for the past five years, has caused me to forget about a lot of the food I grew up with, because it's so uncommon.

Whenever I visit the US, I try to go to an (East) Asian supermarket just so I can have a happy trip down memory lane, and also get some tasty food to eat. The closest one to my parents' house is Vietnamese.

20171113_222357
Me with a guava-flavoured soda.

Guava is such a common flavour in Hawai'i, as are the fruits themselves. I guess they don't export well from the tropics. Whenever I have it, I'm reminded of how much I miss it. I used to eat them fresh every day from the tree in our garden.

More food )
nanila: me (Default)
2016-06-14 08:46 pm

LJ-versary: The Five Best Things About Being an Immigrant

And now, my friends, the 15-year LJ-versary celebrations continue, with the flip side: The Five Best Things About Being an Immigrant.

5. You get to act as sole representative of your entire country

If you’re thinking, oh hang on though, don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a pattern for the entire list.

I have discovered, after many years of developing thick enough skin to see this as an opportunity to get a little of my own back, how to turn people’s perceptions to my own advantage. For instance, if I tell an English person I’m from Hawai’i, there is a 35% chance they don’t realise that Hawai’i is part of the United States. I’m not kidding. Americans have a reputation for being bad at geography, and deservedly so. But even though the current US President is from Hawai’i, there are a lot of people who think, “fabulous foreign holiday destination!” and don’t connect it to the USA. So they get to tell me, “I thought you looked exotic/Polynesian/etc” and then squee to me about beaches and honeymoons, and I sit there smiling and imagining what I could get away with telling them now that they have literally no idea that I’m American. I don’t do it, but it is fun to think about.

Assuming, however, that they do recognise I’m American, I can get into conversations about their perceptions of the USA. 90% of the time, if they’ve been there, it’s to New York or Florida. Their memories of those holidays are almost overwhelmingly positive. If the conversation is long enough, I sometimes have the opportunity to point out gently that prejudices about Americans don’t correlate well with their actual experiences of the people or the country. Or, more subtly, by sharing my love of England and travels in Europe, I can in a small way help to combat the assumption that all Americans are nationalistic xenophobes who believe blindly in the superiority of their way of life.

4. Your relationships with natives are hard-earned and incredibly precious

As you no longer have local friends with whom you’ve grown up, gone to school, worked, played sport with or otherwise spent leisure time with, you are starting from the beginning with everyone you meet. You have to build on the shared experiences you generate from the moment of your arrival. You also have to be conscious that the cues you’ve used in the past to pass judgement on, for instance, how welcome you are in a gathering or how worthy a person is of your confidence and affection, might need re-calibration for your new culture. And of course, the usual general social rules surrounding not being too clingy or emotionally demanding of your nascent circle of acquaintances still apply, at a time when you’re probably feeling intensely lonely. So you tiptoe cautiously around, hopefully reaching out to people, sometimes being rebuffed or ignored and trying not to take it to heart. Eventually your weekends are booked up and you have people you can ask to the pub or the theatre or the cinema without hesitation. Or who might even desire your company enough to invite you along. Perhaps you won’t recognise that you’ve made friends until you start to be able to choose to be alone if you want to be, rather than having solitude be your default state.

I can still very clearly remember the first time that I realised I had actually succeeded in acquiring a group of trustworthy, kind, generous British friends whose company was richly rewarding. I’m not going to write about it in a public post, but suffice it to say that it reduced me to tears.

3. Your resilience and adaptability are strengthened beyond what you thought possible

It’s commonly believed that among the most stressful occurrences in adult life are moving house, changing jobs, ending relationships and having children. Immigrating lets you inflict the first two of those on yourself simultaneously whilst putting tremendous pressure on your relationships. (It doesn’t force you to have children, thank goodness.) And - assuming you’re not a refugee or victim of forced migration - you’ve volunteered for it. On the positive side, you have time to prepare as much as possible in a physical sense. If you’re moving at the behest of your employer, you likely have financial and practical relocation support. Once you’ve arrived in your new home, though, you’re largely on your own. You have to forge a way forward into the vast unfamiliarity that stretches around you on all sides. So you do it, every day. You wake up and the wave of uncertainty and panic and isolation crashes over you, but you shower and dress and you make yourself go outside into that unknown territory full of worryingly unknowable people. With the right combination of determination and luck, eventually you win yourself a measure of comfort and a sense of community.

The most difficult test of my own resilience and adaptability with respect to the decision to immigrate permanently is ongoing. Every day that passes is another day in which my children are immersed in my adopted, not native, culture. I am hopeful that the environment that my partner and I have created for them is a rich and diverse place, and that they will be able to pick and choose elements of their nationalities and associated cultures that make them kind and happy people. But only time will tell.

2. You get to redefine yourself

As you learn about your adopted culture, you can embrace the elements that you enjoy, from tiny things like putting milk in your tea and going to the pub after work (without setting off a slew of concern trolling about what must be incipient alcoholism), to big ones, like believing in the ultimate good of a socialised health care system. You can revel in the pleasure of throwing off the oppressive shackles of your native culture and past experience. You can carve out a new identity, one which integrates the desirable remnants of your old self with the traits and behaviours you admire in your new culture and are trying to emulate. While striving to understand those around you, you are becoming more accepting of yourself.

Before this descends into a morass of woo (maybe it's too late...): you also get to smoothly and relatively painlessly sever communication with those irritating acquaintances and relatives whom you could never shake off when you lived thousands of miles closer, as part of this redefinition. I’m definitely not advocating immigration as a first-choice method for selective bridge-burning, but there is a certain petty satisfaction in it being an inevitable side effect.

1. You are living your dream

I must caveat this as well: it does not apply to refugees and victims of forced migration. However, for those of us who have always wanted to live in our adopted countries, it is a hard-won accomplishment and an honour and a pleasure to be admitted into it. You have achieved a thing: immigration. It was a difficult and painful thing as well as a joyous and a valuable thing. You made a dream into your reality.
nanila: me (Default)
2016-06-13 09:49 pm

LJ-versary: The Five Worst Things About Being an Immigrant

I’ve decided to kick off the 15-year LJ-versary celebration with the most negative topic from last Friday’s Unscientific Poll. That way it can only go uphill from here. Neat, huh? So, without further ado: The Five Worst Things About Being an Immigrant.

5. You get to act as sole representative of your entire country

There’s nothing quite like chilling out with a relaxing beer after work with your English friends or colleagues, and suddenly being asked to explain:
  • American gun culture
  • The Iraq war
  • Guantanamo
  • Republicans
  • Donald Trump
  • Insert incomprehensible & idiotic thing Americans have been or done that they’ve encountered most recently here


This is jarring enough, but it pales in comparison to how much worse it would be to be, say, a visibly Muslim woman and asked to explain Islamist terrorists. Or spat on. Which, by the way, I have been, by a stranger, allegedly for speaking with an American accent.

4. You get to act as sole representative of all immigrants - and none

This sounds contradictory, but stay with me.

English people can instantly recognise that I was not raised in the UK when I speak. Despite this, I have often been in close proximity of discussions about immigrants as an abstract group rather than a group of people to which I belong. This is because I (mostly) conform to Western standards as befits a woman of my age in matters of attire and verbal and visual presentation. I have a well-paid job and an English partner, and while a person I’ve only just met might not know either of these things immediately, they will naturally assume from my demeanour and confidence that I am the sort of person who will be agreeable about - to their minds - the undisputable fact that there is too much immigration into Britain because “it’s far too easy to come to this country”, a myth I am quite happy to eviscerate.

Because I spent over ten years working here on various types of permit, and during that time I could not claim benefits. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I note also that I was steadily paying into the benefits system throughout this time. I could not quit my job or be made redundant without having another job lined up, because if you do lose your job on an employer-sponsored visa, you have to find another within 28 days or leave the country. The visa rules changed every time I had to renew (every 2-3 years), so every time I had to fill in a completely revamped 75-100 page form which suddenly wanted to know if I’d had at least £800 in my various bank accounts for the past 12 months. (On the subsequent renewal, that requirement was taken away.) The waiting times for work visa renewals went from six weeks to six months between 2004 and 2012. A lot of times, a working immigrant’s work visa will run out before a renewal has been processed. As long as you still have your job, this is fine, but if you lose your job in the meantime, you’re stuffed. That’s not at all stressful, nope. Oh, and a work visa went from costing about £350 in 2004 to nearly £1000 in 2012. And then there’s permanent residency (£1000+) and naturalisation (£1000+). So immigration to Britain is not “easy”. It’s an expensive, painfully bureaucratic and difficult process.

If you speak English fluently and are white or not quite brown enough to be threatening (hi!), then you’re told “Oh, but I don’t think of you as an immigrant”. Which is 100% intended as a comforting compliment and has entirely the opposite effect on the recipient. The logistical acrobatics required to perform this act of exceptionalism allow the speaker to retain the perception of theoretical immigrants as benefit-scrounging job-thieves rather than attempting to change their views based on the actual immigrant in front of them. There you sit, having declared yourself to be a representative of immigrants to people who refuse to believe that you are one. It’s a cartload of joy, let me tell you.

3. You will never, ever fit in completely

Through careful study and behavioural modification, you can succeed in adopting enough observed traits to integrate into your new culture. You’ll probably have to, if you want to be happy during your stay. If you immigrate late enough in life, as I have done - well past childhood and even early adulthood - it’s unlikely you’ll be able to adopt perfect enough mimicry to have an undetectable accent. Even if you can, through having a very good ear and/or being a professional voice actor, you may not wish to. (I neither wish to nor am I able.) So if you decide to settle, if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford the exorbitant fees involved in repeated visa renewals, settlement fees and naturalisation, you have to accept that as soon as you open your mouth, native inhabitants of your chosen homeland will know that you were born a foreigner. You are choosing a lifetime of unease.

2. You cannot easily recover fluency with your homeland

Some immigrants, like myself, are able to accumulate sufficient sources of happiness that the aforementioned discomfort fades to a fairly mild, constant, background hum. I can also afford to make occasional visits to the land of my birth. However, as the years pass, it becomes more difficult to slide back into a set of cultural norms with which you had instinctive familiarity. When you visit your original homeland, your family and friends tell you your accent sounds British. Strangers begin to assume that you are. You forget your native vocabulary. Things that you could once do without a second thought - tip appropriately at a restaurant, greet a sales assistant in a shop, open a conversation with an innocuous comment about the price of petrol-I-mean-gas - require a conscious effort. Eventually it dawns on you that if you were to move back, you might actually not be able to recover a complete sense of belonging.

1. You have to rebuild your entire support structure

If you are lucky enough to be able to choose to immigrate as a full-grown adult - and I say “lucky” because if you’re choosing it, that means you’re not fleeing a war, you have sufficient money and skills to qualify for a dearly priced legal work visa and you’re likely fluent in the dominant language - then you are most probably signing up to living away from your parents, your grandparents, your siblings, your niecephews and all of your until-now physically close friends. You must learn to navigate new tax, medical, legal and social support structures. You may even have to re-qualify to do things you’ve taken for granted for many years, like drive a car. And you have to do these things all at once, while trying to make new friends whom you’re constantly fearful of alienating because you cannot correctly read social cues, which may be blatantly obvious to natives but are often imperceptibly subtle to immigrants. I’m not exaggerating when I say that immigration is a traumatic experience, even for affluent economic migrants.

So why do we do it? Find out in the next installment: The Five Best Things About Being an Immigrant.
nanila: (kieth: crazy)
2016-06-05 09:30 pm

In "bears poop in woods" news, unintentional racism is still not benign

Last week* on my London evening I went to BBC Broadcasting House with one of my work colleagues, because I had tickets to a recording of The Museum of Curiosity. The idea behind this radio show is that three eminent guests donate exhibits to the imaginary museum after being interviewed by host John Lloyd and the curator. The curator position rotates between comedians. At the time of this recording, it was Noel Fielding. Phil Jupitus and Sarah Millican have previously curated. The guests on this occasion were another comedian, a composer and an architect.

The show seems to make an effort to have at least one woman as an eminent guest, which is rather nice. Unfortunately, I found the one female guest - the architect - actively cringe-making.

She was the last one of the three guests to be interviewed. It turned out that she had originally trained as a medic and practised for a short while as a GP. Then she went to India to spend a month in a leper** colony on an island, and it was there that she determined that she needed to completely change her career and become an "experimental architect". So she could revolutionise the way Western people live, because all our buildings are "dead" and we're locked into worship of machines and we need to learn from people who can make amazing things out of sticks and shit because they've got nothing else, or something. I don't know. Anyway, she actually didn't say the words, "Desperately poor and ill brown people are, like, so inspiring." Make no mistake, though, that was exactly what she meant. I didn't stand up and scream your racism is unintentional but it is not benign, but believe me, it took every ounce of my strength not to. Instead, I withheld my applause when she concluded. I also left a sardonic review of the event in the survey I was e-mailed after the recording, mentioning that they might want to make an effort to vett their guests for offensively colonial 19th century views.

Sometimes I think I've assimilated into British culture a bit too well.

* I've been wanting to post about this since that evening but every time I sat down to do it, nothing but a stream of incoherent rage would come out. So please don't make the mistake of thinking that, because the tone in this is pretty level, that I'm not still very bloody angry about it.
** I did glean some small amusement when one of the other guests - the composer - gently rebuked her afterward for referring to it as leprosy instead of Hansen's disease.
nanila: wrong side of the mirror (me: wrong side of the mirror)
2016-05-20 09:33 am

Happy grandparents, happy children, happy dogs


[My parents, Oma, Keiki, cousins in the front garden at the out-law's house in the Pacific Northwest.]

At the end of our recent flying visit to the States, Keiki and my parents and I drove up to my aunt&uncle-out-law's house nearby. Keiki and I stayed overnight, and Aunt-Out-Law treated us to VIP service to the airport the next morning, taking our heavy luggage to the check-in desk and walking us all the way to the security gate. But before that, we had a birthday barbecue for Uncle-Out-Law, with all the cousins. It was brilliant, and there are lots of photos of family and celebrations below the cut.

+15 photos )
nanila: (me: walk softly and carry big stick)
2016-04-15 09:51 am

Awesome Things My Friends Have Made #2: Duel for Citizenship

My friend Holly ([personal profile] cosmolinguist) is writing a book about being an immigrant. Like me, Holly has lived in the UK for many years as an immigrant and has written poignant posts on the subject, as can be seen the foreignness tag on her DW. She has a gift for voicing thoughts for which I often struggle to find the words.

The Kickstarter for her book, Duel for Citizenship, has just 12 hours left. It can be found here. Most levels of support include a copy of the book as an incentive. If you can support her project, which I see as a vital response to the clamour of toxic and xenophobic anti-immigrant/refugee rhetoric currently dominating the public narrative, I would appreciate it too.
nanila: me (me: ooh!)
2016-04-13 09:38 pm

Estuary English in the West Midlands: I am confuse

Humuhumu has begun to drop her T's, replacing them with glottal stops. Wa'er. Beau'iful. Floa'ing.

I presume she's picked this up from nursery somehow, but I haven't worked out from whom. It sounds very peculiar when coupled with her otherwise Brummie pronunciation ("I loike oice cream").

It also sets my nerves jangling. "Floa-ting, darling," I say calmly through gritted teeth, "Not floa'ing." Inside my head there is a tiny rage-filled fiery-eyed Nanila screaming, "IT'S GOT A T! IT'S GOT A FLAMING T IN IT! PRONOUNCE THE T!"

I'm trying to unpack why this gets up my nose so badly. I have mental mechanisms in place for suppressing the confused welter of emotions, including sadness, that assail me when she speaks and she doesn't sound American. I know that once she realises I sound foreign, she'll never be able to un-hear it. I take delight in the Brummie accent, even though I'm fairly certain that in this rigidly stratified, classist, and small-c conservative society*, she will either have to learn to code-switch or train herself out of it to achieve material success. It doesn't bother me - much - when Londoners drop their T's. I have a terrible suspicion that I've managed to internalise a certain amount of class prejudice, given that when she says "free" instead of "three" or "bahf" instead of "bath", I have the same reaction, though reduced in intensity. I don't quite understand why it applies to my child and not to anyone else, though.

* Gross generalisation, #NotAllBrits, etc.
nanila: little and wicked (mizuno: lil naughty)
2016-04-01 01:56 pm

Friday's Unscientific Poll: Important Bacon Question

Poll #17390 Important bacon question
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 52


I prefer

View Answers

thin-cut/streaky/American-style bacon
21 (41.2%)

thick-cut/back/British/Canadian-style bacon
21 (41.2%)

not to eat bacon
9 (17.6%)

If you eat bacon, do you prefer it

View Answers

crispy
26 (57.8%)

chewy
19 (42.2%)

If you eat bacon, do you prefer it

View Answers

smoked
29 (69.0%)

unsmoked
13 (31.0%)

For those who eat bacon: Here is a food that is *not* improved by the addition of bacon:



Today's Unscientific Poll was prompted by the realisation that after all these years in Britain, I still (not-so-)secretly prefer thin, crispy, streaky bacon to the thick-cut back bacon that gets served with a full English.
nanila: little and wicked (mizuno: lil naughty)
2016-02-26 09:43 am

Fridays' Unscientific Poll: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells

Before Christmas, the bloke & I were amused to discover that the alternate Batman-based lyrics to "Jingle Bells" apparently percolate into the consciousness of children at a very early age.

Since Christmas, we've been amused because Humuhumu will randomly sing them whenever the fancy strikes her, no matter if Christmas is still 10 months away. (As were the elderly couple who were exiting Powis Castle at the same time as us last weekend. They applauded her, which caused her to be overcome with shyness and hide behind Daddy's legs.)

I found it intriguing that the lyrics differ from the ones I sang as a child in the US and are specifically British-English because of the use of the word "motorway". Now I'm wondering if there are other regional variations!

Poll #17326 Jingle Bells, Batman Smells
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 47


As a child, I mostly sang these alternate Batman-based lyrics to the Christmas carol "Jingle Bells".

View Answers

Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg/Batmobile lost a wheel and Joker got away
20 (52.6%)

Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin flew away/Santa Claus lost his claws on the motorway
4 (10.5%)

Something else which I shall write in the text box
14 (36.8%)

I sang these alternate Batman-based lyrics instead:

nanila: me (Default)
2016-01-19 09:40 pm

A series of loosely connected anecdotes

On Martin Luther King day (yesterday)

Me: “My work inbox is quiet today. You can tell it's MLK day in the States.”
Him: “Who's he?”
Me, after a long pause: “This is like that time you got me to explain bukkake to you, isn't it.”

At the dinner table. We are having an assortment of leftovers. I have also cooked the remainder of a packet of streaky bacon.
Keiki, pointing: “Mmm! Mmmm! Mmm!”
Me: “What? Mashed potatoes?...No. Pasta?...No. Beans?...No. Oh, but you've never had bacon before. Are you sure?”
Keiki: “MMMMMM!”
Me: “Okay, okay!”
(He ate two slices.)

In Norfolk

Humuhumu, laughing (age 3): “Bum Bum!”
Cousin, laughing (age 4): “Bum Bum!”
Adults: “Stop that! It's not nice to call people bum bum.”
There is a pause.
Humuhumu: “Cousin! Let's go upstairs so we can say it and they can't hear us.”

At home, a couple of weeks later.
Humuhumu: “Mummy, it's not nice to call people poo poo, is it.”
Me: “No.”
Humuhumu: “Or bum bum.”
Me: “No.”
Humuhumu: “You're not a poo poo or a bum bum.”
Me, gravely: “Thank you.”
Humuhumu: “You're a silly billy.”