Gray on 30/6/2018 at 01:02
This was triggered by the (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148873&page=3) football thread, but it's been on my mind for quite some time. As a foreigner living in Scotland, certain issues pop up ever so often. Differences in culture, behaviour, food, climate, authorities, the list is endless. Some I can easily adjust to, some I'll probably never understand. I know it must be a common thing, many people who live in a country other than their birth will have similar experiences. Hence this thread. This is directed to those people.
Why did you move to a different country? Was it for work/love/money/study/safety/survival? Was it your choice? How do you feel now about the country you left? How do you feel about the country you moved to? What's different? What's the same? Is it better or worse? Do you want to go back? Can you go back? Do you have fellow countrymen in your new home, or are you the only one? Did your family come with you? Have you made new friends? Do you speak the language? Questions, questions...
For me, it was love. I moved to a windy rainy country to marry the woman I love. I was never very patriotic or nationalistic while living in Sweden, but after moving I have an uncontrollable urge to point out all things invented by or manufactured by Swedes, or books/films/music made by Swedes, as if anybody here would care. I don't know why, but it seems important now. I'm even watching the bloody football crap thingy (yay, go Sweden!). Also, the sausages here are weird and wrong. They managed to import a royal family from Germany, but not their sausage making skills. And what the hell is cricket anyway, and why does "century" mean something completely different in that context? How can you possibly eat haggis without being massively drunk first? Is that why they invented whisky? What came first, whisky or haggis?
:ahem:
But I digress. I believe you see my point. Please share if you have similar experiences.
demagogue on 30/6/2018 at 03:44
Japan.
Uh, I had to do something and for everything here (in my field) I'm hypercompetitive in an environment that's hypocompetitve so am pretty always the biggest fish in the pond and can set my own terms. My choice.
The US... as its major allies/sympaticos are now countries like Russia, Philippines, North Korea, etc, and its enemies with West Europe, Canada, etc, it's pretty much an enemy state to democratic liberalism & free market capitalism, etc, and deserves to be invaded, occupied, and reconstructed by WWII-era America with a generous Marshall Plan and re-made into a healthy liberal democratic free-market state. More generally, I like everything about the US, Americans (that aren't going through a dudebro stage), the cities, the countryside, the music. My not being in the US has nothing to do with me not being happy living there. I don't think there's anything talismatic about nationality and don't think there's anything special about borders, but I'm a proud American and Texan, culturally speaking, the kind of ground-level authentic culture that you see in Linklater movies. I relate to that very deeply. I don't recognize this caricatured version being bandied about as anything much to do with what I grew up with.
Differences & similarities. Well there's a whole cottage industry about West/Japan differences. To summarize, Japan's principal value is "taking care of each other" and the US's principal value is "self-reliance & individual development". Apply that to every facet of social reality. At this point I can see the world from both perspectives more or less naturally. Self-reliance and individual development is what I care most deeply about too, close to my identity and who I am, etc, but I can appreciate taking care of each other in most of the contexts it comes up here, the gratuitous compassion, kindness & generosity to people just because you can be, version of it (not the version that's a pretext to walking over people & hammering them down into intentional mediocrity).
There's an old joke "Japan is not better or worse, just different." But seriously, Japan's culture is 20+ years behind the West and in no rush to keep up on things like treatment of women, innovation and flexibility in business, open mindedness, etc. It's better if you keep yourself in a bubble, don't seriously deal with the culture, and live your own life perhaps.
Life is comfortable here so there's no strong incentive to go back or anywhere else, unless the proverbial dream job or love magically (improbably) appears. Without that, going back I only look forward to an awful credit score, being set back professionally, and having less time and freedom to do anything interesting I imagine. And my main ambitions these days turn on creating things (publishing, etc.), it doesn't really matter where I live to do that, and here I have the time and freedom to do it. (Cf. the guy that could only write Cloud Atlas because he lived in Japan.)
There are other westerners here, but they don't stay long. They come & go in an unending cycle.
No family nearby. Easy to make friends, but often they're either superficial and stay or deep and go.
I can hold a conversation in Japanese but it's a difficult language to make progress with, to say the least.
I see something utterly bizarre in Japan practically every day. It's an endless well of ridiculous stories. Nobody makes a deep connection with others or the culture in the way we think about it in the West, not even Japanese, and there's always a level of enforced superficiality. It can really beat people down that haven't learned to shield themselves from it, but once you know how to live in a bubble around yourself, with protective shields to guard the walls like good music, books, film, art, discussions, etc, then it's an empty page you have the ability to make anything out of it you like. I don't bother trying to point out US or Texan culture because nobody will care or appreciate the significance. On the other hand, I have learned to deeply appreciate certain Japanese mainstays, like the Zen style of arts (calligraphy, tea ceremony, etc) steeped in patience, ritual, mindfulness, etc, which seem to have been made exactly for my way of looking at the things and living life. So I've learned how to take in Japan (the good parts) in healthy, controlled doses.
How's that?
ZylonBane on 30/6/2018 at 04:29
Quote Posted by Gray
The expatriots thread.
Cough, expatriate.
demagogue on 30/6/2018 at 05:49
Or in ZB's case, who else lives on another planet?
nickie on 30/6/2018 at 08:24
Quote Posted by Gray
but after moving I have an uncontrollable urge to point out all things invented by or manufactured by Swedes, or books/films/music made by Swedes, as if anybody here would care
Don't forget the excellent Scandi Noir TV. I'm in the middle of Series 4 of The Bridge and reluctant to get to the finale. I'm happy to have more pointed out to me.
I was born in another country (which is fun when people start mathering on about people not belonging here if they weren't born here). I've lived in a couple of different countries during my formative years. I guess I feel that one country is much like another and I don't have any particular fondness for Britain so I'm an expatriot and an expatriate at heart.
Wales is a different country - they still hate the English but some areas hide it better than they did 25 years ago. Welsh is impossible to learn unless you start at 3 months old. It's spoken all the time here by virtually everyone so it's like being in a 'foreign' country. We came here about 8 years ago for a variety of reasons. I'd like to go back to England to be nearer to my children and grandchildren but circumstances are a bit difficult so it's better for us to be where we are at the moment.
I wish I'd been old enough to take advantage of living with different languages.
How many sausage brands have you tried? Maybe some more research is in order? I agree about the haggis though but I suspect Al_B might give us a good argument as to why it's the greatest delicacy in the world.
Gray on 30/6/2018 at 08:36
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Cough, expatriate.
My mistake, but it highlights one of my points of this thread. I've been speaking English for nearly 40 years, but only as a second language and I still get things wrong. I was just trying to avoid the abbreviated "expat", but I extrapolated in the wrong direction. Sorry about that. I changed the title, based solely upon your coughing, so I hope you're not messing with me here.
[Edit]
Demagogue, I studied Japanese for a bit, and it's the most fun I ever had at university. One thing I did learn was how very different Japanese culture was to ours (Swedish, casual, impolite, egalitarian), and how it can take decades of hard study just to manage the correct level of politeness and strict protocols for social interaction. I only studied for a few months, and could basically speak like a four-year-old with a learning disability, but I found it deeply fascinating. Also, back in the 80s I had a Japanese penpal (yes, actual letters on paper!), and it was only a decade and a half later I started to slowly understand some of the things she wrote.
Nickie, I've tried a few but all appear quite samey, in the sense they're extremely different from the more German/Italian/Polish-style sausages we're familiar with in Sweden. The "meat" is so coarsely ground so you can almost see the eyeballs, ears and testicles we all know are in there anyway, and there's something weird with the spices and flavouring. And why are they all grey and so violently unappealing? It looks like roadkill stuffed into a condom. If these are the only sausages available, no wonder veganism is getting increasingly popular.
But on the upside, whisky is everywhere and it's awesome.
Naartjie on 30/6/2018 at 11:14
Quote Posted by Gray
But on the upside, whisky is everywhere and it's awesome.
Do you have a favourite(s)? For me you just can't beat anything from Islay, though really I mean the three south coast distilleries at Lagavulin, Laphroaig and Ardbeg. Ideally the whisky should taste like biting into a block of sweet cheddar, marinated in diesel, with your head over a pit of smoking wood.
Right now I am living temporarily in Germany for work. I speak the language but as with many skills, once you start learning, all you really become aware of is what you can't (yet!) do. I can say just about anything I want/need to, but sometimes I have to work out little linguistic strategies to get the point across when I don't have the right vocabulary or idiom.
demagogue on 30/6/2018 at 11:16
Quote Posted by nickie
It's spoken all the time here by virtually everyone so it's like being in a 'foreign' country.
I guess that's appropriate. I read somewhere the word "Welsh" itself means "foreigner" in old Anglo-Saxon, as if the Germanic Tribes making themselves welcome to the place thought the population already living there were the foreign ones.
Naartjie on 30/6/2018 at 12:01
Quote Posted by demagogue
I guess that's appropriate. I read somewhere the word "Welsh" itself means "foreigner" in old Anglo-Saxon, as if the Germanic Tribes making themselves welcome to the place thought the population already living there were the foreign ones.
This is really interesting because in medieval/early modern German,
wälsch can refer to romance-speaking peoples, e.g. Italian, French etc, and it was sometimes used to distinguish non-Germanic from Germanic-speaking peoples.
Ryan Smith on 30/6/2018 at 17:46
Englishman living in America (although I'm technically a dual-citizen)