Thiscouldbearadioshow

I want to write today but don't know what to start with...
I am happy. So many friends of mine have recently announced beautiful news... Also my life is very much in a positive trend. My heart is filled with happiness. Just want to spread some of it around. Life is a beautiful gift.
Don't you think?

Setting the plot: I am a 33 years old woman with Spanish blood (100%) born in Geneva, Switzerland and raised there, Travelled Europe and the world. Now leaving in London. Two years in teh West End (expat land) and one year in Hackney (Crackney as my friends tend to call it).

I mentionned this in a response to a blog of mine but thought it was worth an entry.

I describe myself as European and when I moved to London fro prefessional reasons I didn't think it would be a struggle. I was warned it would be but my experience proved so far that it wasn't. I got this book from my HR that was meant to "prepare" me in the transition. I thought it was hilarious and didn't pay so much attention.

I ahve been living in Lodon fro 3 years and find it difficult to criticise my new life. It is not better and not worse in average to what I experience before.

Still I need to mention what others would call cultural shocks. I would call them just strong differences.

1) I thought I had moved to the UK. Very soon I was told that I was in England and to my surprise dicovered that only outsiders would use the word United Kingdom. I leave in England, not in the UK. An English man is English before being British.An English man would probably never use the word British to describe himself. Same for the Welsh, the Scottish and the Northern Irish. They all share the same passport - british - but none of them would evr use the word to describe thmeselves. Shocking!
This was a preambule to the word Europe. England, Wales, Scotland and Nothern Ireland are part of the United Kingdom an dth eUk is par tof Europe geographically but also Europe the political and economic Unioneven if they aren't part of the euro zone. Strangely no one here ever says the word Europe with the idea they belong to it. Europe is actually continental europe and means the close others. It took me some time to realise this. When the word Europe is used here it means the others close by. Some use the expression Continental Europe. Still it was a shock to me to realise that the Brits don't see themselves as European...

2) The drinking. Everybody drinks in Continental Europe. But nothing compared to what happens here. Nothing. I am Spanish.The Spanish drink. Not a surprise. The Spanish get eventually drunk. Yes it happens. Same for the French, the Swiss, etc. Only the Brits have the getting drunk set as a goal and a goal that has to be reached as quickly as possible. "Lest's have shots before we go out" is not anything you would see elsewhere. And people manage to reach the goal early. My first day at work made me experience people completely wasted by 7pm. I couldn't believe it and remember telling friends there might have been some historical celebration I was't aware of...
More shocking even for me was to see young women when not girls absolutely wasted and on their own. This doesn't happen in the rest of Europe. First girls are not supposed tp drink t that extend or it makes them look bad, but if they do they are immediately hidden by their entourage and taken home safely so tah t they don't endure any kind of danger...

3) half naked girls at night in December. I saw them and couldn't believe it. Then told my friend Florence about it when she visited me in December 2005. She wouldn't belive me until we saw them on Regent street in mini t-shirts n, no skirt and summer sandals. My friend Florence and I were wearing coats wool jumpers trousers and boots. We were stunned!I then told a group of male friends about it who came to visit me in February.They claimed I was exagerating. We then got to the clubs area and pointed at a group of girls in the attire I had described. They looked at the girls and said they believed they were professionals... To then realise it was a common thing. The funniest thing is that when I mention it to my British friends they always say the same thing: "This is nothing, you should see them in the North". I don't want to see it. How can they beat it?!!

4) When I started working with British people I was quickly told that my style was inadecuate and too direct.Basically I sounded rude... Me rude! I thought it was a joke... But I got it at last. You can say anything here but it has to come with a lining. If someone screwed up and failed to deliver in a project I would meet them and tell them they screwed up. Rude here. I would have to them, go throught the history of working together, highlight the good things and maybe later mention the failure but more in a way that would be "how can we do this again with a better outcome". At first I thought it was bullshit. It took me sometime to understad that there is something positive about having to think about the positive bfore you bring up the bad stuff. It now works for me but i know that when I work with the continent I have to deal in a different way.

The rest was a dream. My boyfriuend is English and I am glad he is!

Warning: this is just a little one to raise a question that has been bothering me since I moved to London.

Brfore I go on I'd like to remind you or maybe just inform you if you haven't been reading my previosu blogs.

I am a European woman. You like it or not but this is the way I define myself. I am Spanish from blood, been raised by my Spanish parents who left a fascit country with nothing to meet and have a family in Gebeva, Switzerland, a federation with a very strict application of democracy as a political system. Won't go on about it now. I was born in at least 2 cultures, definitely 2 languages, probably one religion even if taught in a very oecumenistic way. I come from all this and much more but I didn't want to bore you yet.
Today I live in a different country than the one I was born. Nothing to be scared for me. I live in a different language. Well I do speak fluently 5 languages + 1 I consider I can speak a little and understand a lot, therefore I usaually say when asked that I speak 5 1/2 languages. Yes I am proud about it and enjoy this skill still I never found it in any way extraordinary. I live in London. I moved here in about 3 weeks between the meoment I was offered the opportunity and the moment I had all my stuff moved over. I wasn't afraid: after all I was moving into an international city, with a job secured and all the admin taken charge by this company HR. So far I thought the UK was part of Europe. Not only the continent but also this dream come reality after the last world war. I was warned by previous expats that London was harsh. That I would experience it when I would be paying my bills and fighting for incorrect utility bills charged to my account and in a more trivial way even when managing my way in the tube or the streets. Warnings about struggle in London kept coming during these 3 weeks I was preparing my move.
Strangely I never got scared.
One week before my move bombs exploded with their carriers in the tube all over the city. It was a traumatic event and I remember trying des[erately to get in touch with friends and acquaintences living there. I remember also my mother calling me at work every 20 minutes that day (she never called me at work before) just saying to me "are you reconsidering your choice", clearly anguished.
These events never changed my mind. I am more scared of drunk drivers than of terrorists and statistics prove me right...
I said goodbye to my friends and family, left my job and got to London. I left on a Sunday and started working the following Monday. I didn't struggle in the tube. I actually found people quite polite and charming and very guarded and reserved. No one pushed me, no one step on my toes. I got to my new office and started out with my team and a felt a difference but a positive one.

I had to find a flat and luckily my company provided me with some help but in one day I had found the place I lived into for 2 years. I paid my bills and yes have in few occasions expereinced the frustrating helpdesks... Still nothing compared to what I was supposed to expect according to the ones who gave me advice. Maybe I have been lucky... maybe I brought luck on me by expecting nothing and receiving anything as a gift. Who knows? During my first week in London I met 2 of my now best friends. Yes the conection was there immediately still it took us sometime to turn it into friendship. But hey, one week in London andf I meet people who share my values and will be laughing and crying with me over the next years?! Luck, fate, trust in people? I don't really know... I just know it happened. It happened to me in London. One week after I moved. So long with all the negative stuff I had heard!

My first year in London has been like an extended holiday. Strangely I realised after that year that I had bever been in touch with a British person. Yes there were some at work... My social life was miles away though and I suddenly realised that the West End was some Expat ghetto. A very nice ghetto. Age range 20-35, babies, pets and elders not aloud. Hectic lifes but also non permanent lifes, work hard party hard types of people. They know they will leave in a couple of years, they live the instant but don't build anything type of people. There is something attractive in it. They are all the same, they bond easily but it b=never really matters. The dynamic is crazy and you never get a second to think about what is going on. It is exciting. I was excited. I lived La vida loca for 2 years and had fun.

Something started to bother me though. It didn't feel was living in London. I was living in expat land. I felt there was a cheat in it. I felt I hadn't really made a change in life. Here I was with the same ones I had studied and patied everywhere else. I wasn't living in a metropole but in a microcosm. I wanted change. I wanted to stop cheating and see a real London, not another eurotrash city.

Luckily I met the man of my life. And he turned out to be English to the great surprise of my entourage... He lived in the other side of London. East! I realise still now that East for the eurotrash means jsut fairly east of where they live. A colleague of mine who used to leave in South Kensington recently moved to East London - for her it meant Mayfair!!!

I now leave in East London, a little more East than Mayfair: Hackney! Expat land doesn't even know where Hackney is. Or if they do it is only to think that it is far far far away and very dangerous. It is far from West London, sure. The friends who live close by to mine call it Crackney instead of Hackney in relation to the supposed crackheads living there and everything related: high crime and so on. HAckney is not as residential as south Kensington, fair enough. There are estates right next to nice streets with nice houses. There is more black people and non white ethnies around much more than in South kensington. There are lots of different people in teh streets. strangely to my west end friends I feel much more secure in my new location.
I still haven't seen anyone smoking crack around and no one attempted to steal my bag or rape me yet. I hope it will never happen to me or anyone else. Something I noticed is that I now live in a community. So yes bad people happen but I believe they happen anywhere. Where I live there is always someone in the street and they are watching. Where I live there are children and they form their own community. Where I live, if the bus driver is nasty with you the people in the bus take openly a position.

Before I moved from expat land to real LondonI made a few visits. M''y boyfriend was living there and I knew I would have to make the move if I wanted to get more serious in that realtionship (my boyfriend has a young daughter who leaves half the week with him and the other half with her mother in the neighbourghood - he is therefore not able to be very mobile). I remember this particular event on my second visit that was decisive in my decision to move. I was at my boyfriend's and we had decided to go to Soho for the evening for a meal and drinks with friends who leave in South London (oooh nosebleed!). We were heading to the bus stop when we saw our bus arriving ang therefore started sprinting. Got there in time and I naturally walk into the bus with my monthly Oyster card (lived i nthe West End, remember?!). My boyfriend had to take a ticket at the bus stop (not living in the West End!)which would be an opereation of about 15 seconds. So when I walk in the bus I just informed the driver of the situationmeaning he would have to wait for a few seconds for my bf to do the right thing. Instead of being understanding the driver shrugged and said something brief and not understandable to me (I am from the West End remember, I really understand english if spoken by anyone not native). So I get in the bus, out my Oyster card on the reader and tell the driver that my bf is buyibg a ticket. he shrugs like he-s got a family of mosquitos inside his uniform, says "something" and drives away. I am shccked and feel very lost. Shall I reming you that I am from the West End? First I don't know where I am. Second I have never been in a bus. I thought the driver was an a-hole but I didn;'t know the bus rules and thought we might have done somenthing wrong. In teh West End I would have been left with my thoughts. What happened here was shckingly different. People in the bus started shouting at the driver!!! Things like "it is not fair" to "@@@%%%$###", clearly showing contemot with what had happened. A few ladies took my hand and told me gently that I should get out at the next stop and would probably find my bf there very soon. A guy in a wheelchair started chatting me up ^where is your accent from*. I got out of the bus at the next stop and found my bf out of breath but there. Nonasty business at the bus stop amd desappointedly no crack smoking action. We got the following bus, talked a lot with very bad words about the previous bus driver but for me that was it. I saw the whole expereince in a good way. Ok bus drivers are usually * but not all are. This nasty driver gave me the opportunity to see a community in action. A group standing for an individual they didn't know. Most people in the bus where black, The ladies who took position were black. The driver was black, I am as white as you can be. WHat I experienced showed that colour is not relevant there. It showed me people caring. I believe that people care if they believe in the place they live and want to be part of it and make it a good place for your children.

This bus event was decisive for me. I left expat land and started leaving in a place where real people leave. They won't leave in a couple of years. They are not there for the experience. They are there to leave and nest and have children who might do the same. They care about ewhat happens in the bus because they don't want it to happen to anyone close to them.

I enjoyed expat land, it was fun. Like Disneyland can be fun. I am now living in a real place with real people. We are different in many ways all of us. Instead of seeing differences we stick together because we are neighbourhood.

I will stay here.

I am very conscious that most of my blogs are actually rants about almost everything. No regrets.
Still this is not really representative of who I am. My blog is actually something I use to get rid of the thoughts that pollute my positiveness. I believe that it is healthy to do so. And it costs less than a shrink...
This time I wanted to look at the other side. Yes there are all these annoying things in life (more coming in later blogs) but there is a lot to appreciate as well. And for me the balance is more on this side than the annoying one.

A few yearss ago I read this book from a French author "The Small Pleasures of life", by Philippe Delerm. Very thin book with a few short stories or at least short accounts. Everyone should have this book at home. It just talks to you in a very special way. The author is an adult talking to adults but clearly calling on their sense to relate to childhood. No nostalgy though. This book is not about "it was better before" or "reach your inner child". Moreso about how as an adult there are all these little pleasures that we are becoming less conscious of but still exposed to on a regular basis.

Delerm mentions the first sip of a pint. Think! It is hot and you are thirsty. You are looking forward to this beer. The forst sip will be better than any other sip that will follow. Delerm describes this first sip so well and also with such an economy of words... He also describes something that will put us all at the same level wherever we come from, our age or social backgroung. In about 3 pages he brings us all together. And this is just a one little part of this book. Check it out really. I believe it should be everywhere, starting with schools.

This kind of book makes me happy. it inspires me. I will try and keep on this streak instead of ranting again and agian and again.

Have a good night you all, and as my 2 years old stepdaughter says "Schleep well"!

This needs to be raised. Now!
One of my pet hates is those awful price stickers on anything you buy. Careful: not all of them are irritating or awful. To qualify they have to:
1) be on items that you will keep forever or at least months or years.
2) only irritating if they are not possibly removable. See what I mean?

Just bought this really nice wooden salad bowl. Stick anything on it is already bad enough ( I mean wood!) but when you attempt to remove it it doesn't go in one go. Actually it doeasn't go in 25 goes! I have got some bakeware I have put in the dishwasher about a 100 times and the remainings of the sticker are still there.

Why oh why?
I am bothered!