Strange but true, I'm actually starting to feel sorry for Americans. Being constantly mistaken for one of them is giving me a kind of inside view on how they are treated. Someone who overheard my accent actually yelled "Yank!" at me on the street this weekend.
Brits seem drawn siren-like to the accent, culture, food, music and yet can't resist expressing all their negative stereotypes about the US--the people are fat, rude, the TV is bad, they are warmongers--all of which could be levelled equally at England IMHO but it lucked out with stereotypes like pip-pip-cheerio and 'ello 'ello Mary Poppins. I know Canucks are guilty of the same stereotyping but I think we are a little less conflicted about the fact that the US has excellent as well as negative aspects, just like any country, and Americans themselves are as variegated as the rest of us.
So now every time I help a little old lady with her bags up and down the ridiculously steep stairs at the train station, I feel like somehow I am contributing to a little nicer attitude towards our neighbour to the south.
Sometimes, though, I just wish I had a bit more distinctive Canadian accent...eh?
Good news
I have gotten a new job at Kohler Mira, a company that makes showers and stuff. Mira is a well-established shower maker in the UK, and it was recently purchased by bathroom and kitchen giant Kohler. I'm going to be helping them adapt docs from Kohler in the US to the Mira style for Europe. This will mean translating US English into UK English...neither of which is my first language, but hopefully the influence of a lifetime of US TV and a couple of stints in the UK will give me the skills.
It's located in Cheltenham, which is about an hour drive South of Birmingham. Luckily there is a really fast Virgin train that only takes 38 minutes to whisk me from Brum city centre to Cheltenham. I have bought myself a Giant Halfway folding bike to cover the trip from the station to work...folding bikes are free to take on the train, and cool, eh.
I haven't started yet, but it should be good times.
Enough of these impersonal links, time for an update about what I am actually doing with myself.
I have been, shall we say in case the Home Office is reading this, volunteering with honorarium, at a running and triathlon store that opened around the corner. Lucky I had that shoe job in high school; little did I know how useful that knowledge of midsole technology would be! It's pretty cool, good times and a little bit of cash, plus motivation to keep up my running as we have a running club that sets off from the store on Thursday evenings and I am supposed to be a pro and not the lamest in the group.
The job search is still ticking along; it's actually going pretty good although I feel like I've been unemployed for donkey's years. It's nice, it's like summer holidays in elementary school when you just hang out and build stuff and ride around on your bike.
On Monday I am heading down to London to meet up with my cousin Chris, who I haven't seen since 1985. Cool!
A hilarious article in USA Today about how Americans are getting flak in Europe because of the war, and tips on how to avoid it, such as: "take a rain check on wearing clothes featuring American flags or sports team logos," and "soften your speech; Americans typically overshadow their hosts in the volume department."
Good advice for peacetime too, I'd say!
"'Man, it was bad,' says the Rat Pack-y star of Swingers. 'These girls saw us and were kind of flirting, and they kept asking us if we were American. Finally we said, 'Yes,' and they just took off.
'One girl turns and says, 'We were hoping you were Canadian.' Canadian? Since when was it cooler to be Canadian?'"
Since always, I'm afraid.
