08-II-2010.
Recycled from UA into the blogue, on sixth, then rerecycled here:
Have I gone native?
[This is based on what I wrote on a forum; my thanks to TC who provoked this. Forum text is in italics.][changed my mind when reposting it in Byo, it's regular quotes now, and I inserted the links too]
The proof that I'm still Serbian is that any attempt to describe my status would begin with "it's a long story". Though, I may have gone native in many ways - the event an hour ago may be a symptom (finally caught the neighbor's girl with her dog crapping on our lawn, shouted a few hot slogans at her, she picked it up, and I promised them a career on youtube if this repeats, all very loud).
Gone native? :o)
I confess to indulging in a bit of colonial vocabulary here and there, pretending to be a new Lewis & Clarke, or rather a Margaret Mead. It's a very interesting country, albeit not as colorful as was expected and advertised.
The problem with a definition of "native" here is that there really isn't one (other than my relatives living on the reservation). With a country full of folks whose recent ancestors came from elsewhere or who themselves came from someplace else, "native" contains a whole bunch of diverse cultures, beliefs, and practices. :o) One "native" neighbor may be absolutely nothing at all like someone living on the other side.
Native in the sense that "when in Rome...". I wasn't referring to any particular subculture (though you were completely right about my neighbors, they are like heaven and earth), but the number of everyday habits that I have adopted - and then a few that I didn't. If I could only reconstruct a whole week from, say, 12 years ago, and compare it with this week, I'd probably see many differences. Then compare both with my neighbors, and I guess there would be even more differences.
OTTOMH: [if anyone knows what's this, good for you... searched, 'off the top of my head', eh]
Back home I never, but do here:
- have a reliable car (I actually never had a car; I was driving dad's old škodilak, then the rusty old kafeni, then the junk trabant.)
- have to go out to smoke
- walked down the main street without saying hello to a few people I know (This I tried several times during the last visit home in 2005 - and each time I met someone and...you'd call that loitering, but we actually stood and talked.)
- went for a weekly grocery shopping (Our groceries would always fit in two totes, i.e. as much as can be hung on bike's handlebars, even when we took the car.)
- telecommuted more than one day a week, even when I owned part of the company
- had all the power tools - had some, but not nearly such a complete set (had an electric drill but never had all the bits I needed, specially not the driver bits; had a grinder but it was falling apart; had no power saws at all, and now I have a little pinch saw, a circular saw and a chainsaw.)
- walked over the carpet with my shoes on (this is about the soil - the difference between the "everything's either paved or a lawn here" and "the soil makes good thick sticky mud or fine omnipresent dust there" should explain it.)
- yawned without covering my mouth
- had junk mail (though I hear it started there too)
- paid by mailing a check - it had to be cash on the spot, or paying at one of the approved offices (bank, post, sdk) and then sending proof (a virman)
- have walk-in closets (had to have armoirs)
- got a truckload of administration handled without leaving my chair and without having to wait in a line anywhere (with the honorable exception of INS and DMV)
- filled the tank at the gas station myself
- opened the door to the cops looking for previous tenants (pro'lly because there were no previous tenants)
Here I never, but did at home:
- ride a bicycle with purpose other than the ride itself
- watch TV
- make more than four phone calls a week (usually none)
- visited friends for no reason at all, unannounced
- met an acquaintance accidentally on a public place
- buy vegetables and fruit at the marketplace (because it's the same as in the grocery)
- carry a nylon bag in my pocket at all times, because I may find something to buy along the way (wife may call and tell me what to buy when I get back from work) and they may not have bags
- ride the city bus (I actually did, a few times in Orlando, but only once in a city where I lived.)
- loiter
- buy bread
- drive across the border to another country
- like the local beer
- hitchhike (actually did once, got a whole mile of a ride)
- have a New Year doček (look it up, I had to explain this a dozen times)
- own a real scythe to tend to my lawn
- distill brandy
- buy milk, yogurt and cheese at a kiosk
- in the residential area where our house is, choose which grocery within the half-mile radius to visit to get bread, milk etc, and just drive the bike to the next one if the first one doesn't have it
- commute between my customers, riding a bicycle
Lena and the quiz team again in Princess Anne school, on the VB boulevard (and the poor princess has two boulevards too, one a few miles south, and one in Norfolk, and they aren't connected). Knew the place, been there last year, and it's getting interesting this time, because Lena is now in the front line.
They seem to have interesting policies about everything. Lena hates this, of course, they treat their students like imbecils and set up the rules accordingly. The schools have their own cops (!). To be in the halls during classes you need a piece of paper signed by the teacher, even if it's only to go to pee or stop a nosebleed.
Two of the guys got a fresh Canon camera from the school, to document the event, so I taught them the basics of photography. At least it was fun to redo the same old routine, this time adjusted for digital, which isn't too different. It's just a few technical things that have different drawbacks. The guys caught on really quick. It also helps that whatever you tell them, you can show them right away, without having to wait for the lab work to be done.
Spencer, Lena, Siobhan
They were very good at this quiz, and of course they beat the other school. There was a funny case when their default answer, „Smith“, which they used whenever they didn't know the actual answer, turned out to be right. The question this time was „if someone's name is Lefebvre in France, Kowalski in Poland, Kuznetsov in Russia, his name here would be...“. Lena actually knew the answer, but Spencer was faster with the switch and then it turned out that he didn't know the answer, so he just said „Smith“, which was the correct answer.
It all took seveal hours, so I went for a few smoke breaks outside. It being february (or febewary, as the aborigines would say), I sat in the car and smoked there. Turned the key on so I'd have some music. When we bought the Matrix, I thought these red lights on the dashboard would kill me, which idiot's bright idea was this, but acttually no, it doesn't impair my vision at all, and I can read it at all times, no eye hurt at all. Amazing.
Mentions: blogue, Byo (Byo), doček, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), kafeni, sdk, škodilak, trabant, UbiquAgora (UA), virman, in serbian
10-VI-2023 - 5-VII-2026