The Displaced Nation

A home for international creatives

Category Archives: Pot Luck

RANDOM NOMAD: Anita McKay, Property Manager

7 Comments Posted by on April 1, 2011

Born in: Indonesia
Passport(s): Indonesian and British Permanent Resident
Countries lived in: Australia (Sydney): 1999-2001; Scotland (Aberdeen): 2007-2009; Western Australia (Perth): 2009-2013
Cyberspace coordinates: Finally Woken (blog)

What made you leave your homeland in the first place?
I left in 2000 to study for a master’s degree in Sydney. I left again in 2007 because my then fiance (now husband) got a job in the UK. Philosophically, I have never really felt at “home” in my own home country of Indonesia. Lots of its values don’t match with mine. From the time I was a child, I felt like an alien and longed to go away.

Is anyone else in your immediate family a “displaced” person?
No. My brother doesn’t like to travel and still lives at home with my parents. But three of my father’s sisters are married to Germans: two still in Germany and one in Indonesia. And I have four cousins living in the Netherlands and Germany.

Describe the moment when you felt the most displaced over the course of your various travels.
It was in Sydney. I was working as a casual staff at an ice cream shop while doing my postgraduate study. It was winter, around 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. I had just closed the shop and was waiting for the bus. It was rainy and cold, and then all of a sudden, there was a hailstorm. I almost cried, I felt so sorry for myself. I was thinking about how if I’d stayed put in Indonesia, I could have been working for a big company and earning a nice salary by then, living with maids and a chauffeur. I wouldn’t have to mop floors or clean windows to pay the rent. In the Indonesian island where I come from, everyone knows me and my family, but here in Sydney, no one cares who I am or whose daughter I am…

Describe the moment when you felt least displaced.
Weirdly, I almost always feel more at home in anywhere but my own country.

You may bring one curiosity you’ve collected from your travels into the Displaced Nation. What’s in your suitcase?
A flash disk containing thousands of photos.

You’re invited to prepare one meal based on your travels for other Displaced Nation members. What’s on your menu?
Chicken tikka masala — it’s originally from Glasgow, most people don’t know that — and cranachan for dessert.

You may add one word or expression you’ve picked up from the countries you’ve lived in to The Displaced Nation argot. What word(s) do you loan us?
“Bollocks.” My hubby, who is Scottish, says it sounds cute when I say it. I try to use a Scottish intonation. He would let me say it whenever I wanted — until I said it in front of his 95-year-old grandmother, and then he explained it was actually a very very rude word.

img: Anita McKay (left) with a good Indonesian friend who was visiting her in Scotland, in front of Balmoral Castle, the only royal residence outside England.

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Free at last of the media bubble: The FT’s Simon Kuper on the expat life

4 Comments Posted by on March 31, 2011

Every once in a while, I come across an article on the expat life that is so brilliant, I cannot refrain from screaming “yes!” aloud — thereby disturbing my two dogs, who don’t like being aroused from their naps unless it’s food.

That’s how I felt when reading Simon Kuper’s “Why expats don’t get tinnitus,” which appeared in the March 25 FT Magazine.

Kuper had me with the opening sentence:

I’ve lived in Paris for nine years now, but I’m still often not sure what goes on here.

Yes, I can relate, after my nine years in England and my seven in Japan!

He then goes one to say that he doesn’t actually mind living in ignorance, if it means being immune to the daily news cycle —  who’s up and who’s down — as well as the “status dance.”

Yes, I get that, too! Particularly in Japan, where I soon reached the point of not really knowing or caring whether I was meeting VIPs (the exception being when I met Prince Charles). I could decide whether I liked a person for who they were, not for the “status hat” they were wearing. (Not sure he could have worn a hat, with those ears.)

For Kuper, living in the media bubble can be likened to having a “constant dreadful ringing sound in your ears,” or tinnitus. He says he loves his tinnitus-free life, recognizing he’s not the first expat to feel this way. (No, he’s not!) He quotes the writer James Baldwin saying he was grateful to Paris for treating him with “utter indifference,” notes that Gertrude Stein appreciated Paris for a similar reason, and acknowledges Pico Iyer for capturing the liberation-through-alienation sentiment so well in his book The Global Soul.

The only thing I can’t concur with is Kuper’s conclusion, that if the Internet could be shut down, he’d be completely cured of his tinnitus. Were it not for the Web and my Google alerts, I may never have discovered this article of his, and would be the poorer for it.

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China — just TV, fantasy

1 Comment Posted by on March 20, 2011

When I was an expat in Japan, I enjoyed going to talks at various expat clubs. It made me feel more in touch with thinkers and trends from my former world.

Sometimes, however, this “old reality” dose can highlight just how displaced you are.

Nancy Lewis, who teaches English in Shanghai, furnishes a brilliant example of this in a March 9 post on her blog, Wandering Solo, about a book talk hosted by Shanghai Dolls Book Club. The speaker was Emma Donoghue, an Irish writer who lives in Canada. Her most recent novel, Room, was shortlisted for last year’s Man Booker Prize. It tells the story of a woman who is trapped in a close, sustained relationship with her captor-rapist from the point of view of the five-year-old child, Jack, who is the offspring of their union. Jack has lived in the 11-by-11-foot room of the title with his mother since the day he was born.

Donoghue acknowledges that she was inspired to write the book by the Elisabeth Fritzle case.

Lewis enjoyed Donoghue’s talk so much — she found her “warm and engaging, with a great sense of humor” — that she went home and downloaded the book on her Kindle, spending the rest of the evening engrossed in the story.

What’s more, Lewis concluded that the boy’s view — he sees everything inside the Room as real, and everything outside as TV, fantasy — has something in common with how she views her own life in Shanghai:

When I’m at home, I’m alone in my 10-foot by 10-foot bedroom, reading or studying or chatting with friends on Skype. When I’m at work, I’m surrounded by Westerners – people like me. (Since we’re writing English language learning materials, we’re all native speakers of English.)

My contact with Chinese life is short & intermittent – the morning commute on the subway, a 10-second conversation with a shop keeper, giving directions to the taxi driver. …

Every once in a while, I have to remind myself that I live in China. China! CHINA?! How did that happen? It’s not an altogether real part of my life. My job is real, my room is real, my Western friends are real. But China? China is just TV. Fantasy.

 

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PHOTO: Sea of green

Leave a comment Posted by on March 17, 2011

For the past 43 years, the Chicago River has turned green on March 17. So the residents of New York City’s East Village didn’t blink an eye when the water in the street near an Irish bar turned green this year as well. It seemed plausible to many of us that a leprechaun had been crying a river wondering why Irish Americans are more Irish than the Irish. (His eyes had not been smiling…)

“Is it a case of far away hills being greener?” he lamented with a keen.

You see, Dublin is quiet on St. Patrick’s Day, but American cities are anything but…

UPDATE: By the following morning, the green water had magically evaporated, proving we’d been right to give short shrift to the skeptic who insisted it was an antifreeze leak.

image: E. 10th St., NYC, by mlawanohara

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Some tart comments on the sweetness of American food

Leave a comment Posted by on March 17, 2011

The two-year-old blogging relationship between UK-based American Mike Harling and US-based Brit Toni Summers Hargis has entered a sweet phase. Mike wrote on Pond Parleys the other day:

I was surprised, on our recent visit, at how sweet America was: the beer, the bread, the pretzels (sugar-coated pretzels—honest to God) and even, oddly enough, the candy. And if it wasn’t infused with sugar, it was too salty and/or covered in cinnamon. After nearly ten years in UK, I found it all a bit too cloying.

Toni agreed, throwing in a recipe for marshmallow fruit salad, while also defending British food against its reputation for being too bland.

Most commentators agreed that American food is too sweet but less because of sugar as of additives like high fructose corn syrup and trans fats. One US-based Brit opined:

The epitome of American sugary ‘candy’ … has to be the easter ‘peeps’ that my dear mother-in-law is guaranteed to give us and which will stay in the cupboard in all their food-colouring sugariness until I throw them out next year to make space for the more recent offering.

Another British expat to the U.S., however, noted that she can’t tolerate canned baked beans in either country because of their over-sweetness. She went on to say she’d developed a liking for America’s apple pretzels as well as cinnamon flavoring. “I may have to make apple crumble tomorrow,” she wrote.

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When tragedy strikes, should you listen to the home government?

Leave a comment Posted by on March 17, 2011

Not if it’s Japan, apparently. More and more foreigners are opting to leave in the wake of the nuclear radiation threat — even those who aren’t being relocated by their companies.

A 22-year-old Aussie explained his decision to abandon his home in Fukushima and get on the next Qantas flight, as follows:

My message is don’t listen to the Japanese media, don’t listen to the Japanese Government because they’re trying to keep Japanese people calm, which I completely understand, but I don’t think that they’re giving the full truth. I think that by not telling people the complete truth, people aren’t able to make rational decisions, and the only rational decision at the moment is to get out.

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Bye for now, world!

7 Comments Posted by on March 17, 2011

Detail of Chinese Ship by Fra Mauro, public domainAND A WARM HELLO to all international travelers, be they backpackers, globetrotters, expats, rexpats, repats, or armchair dreamers. We have created a country for those of you who have traveled for so long and crossed so many cultures that you don’t seem to belong anywhere else.

The best way to gain entry is to subscribe to our posts!

Perhaps you are a little anxious as we aren’t in the guidebooks. Let us reassure you. While not a storybook paradise, the Displaced Nation is beguilingly otherwordly and exotic, full of twisting vines, golden cobwebs, and silky-haired monkeys. It is the kind of place that entices you to stay because of all the wonders and sources of inspiration you find within.

But before we get carried away with the pleasantness of it all, a few ground rules. While we haven’t got a constitution or a bill of rights, we expect our citizens to behave with the sort of decorum that has earned them a place in other people’s cultures for so long.

Also, please don’t be affronted if you find some of our instincts counterintuitive. For instance, we are great believers in navigating the new world with old maps. Our generation may have big dreams, but let’s face it, many of our forbears were great adventurers, too. Are we any less clueless than they were? A dose of humility is in order.

Cheers,

The Displaced Nation Team

image: Detail of map made around 1450 by the Venetian monk Fra Mauro, courtesy Wikimedia

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