Month: November 2014

An expat among expats

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“Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson

One of the things I liked when I first came to Geneva was that the city is full of expats from every region of the world. I had the sense that no-one really belonged here but in this communality of not-belonging we all did.

And whilst invariably you would get pockets of certain people from the same country coming together more often than not the groups I would meet would be a real melting pot of different nationalities.

For example the first four friends I made here were Lebanese, Chinese, Dutch and Maltese-Australian. There are about 25 people in my office that represent around 17 different nationalities and you’ll hear a number of different languages floating around the corridors. Coming from my previous job in the UK, primarily made up of white British staff, the cultural mix here was quite new to me but something I warmly embraced.

Events like the World Cup are so much more fun when not everyone around you is rooting for the same team. And I have really enjoyed discovering what experiences and cultural practices are commonly shared amongst this mish-mash of people and what things are unique to each nationality (People in Geneva do have Christmas tree but I was stumped when trying to explain sherbert to a group of co-workers the other day). The office universally shares a love of chocolate but has fun debating which country produces the best or worst chocolate.

I’ve been an expat before when I interned in Cambodia but there we were small in a number and had a tendency to stick together. But being an expat among expats is an entirely different experience with a lot of positives. However, there is a downside as well.

A few months ago I met a chap from abroad who told me that until he and his wife had children they didn’t make any Swiss friends. When I asked him why he explained that with so many people coming and going those that were more permanently based here didn’t want to invest their time in getting to know people who would ultimately leave.

At the time I thought that it was a bit heartless not to make an effort to welcome newcomers into your lives just because they might leave again. But as expat friends of mine have now started to leave or announce upcoming plans for departure I’ve started to understand their thinking. It’s not that they are heartless but rather that its heartbreaking when someone you’ve come to know and care for is going to be gone from your life and possibly never re-enter it.

I’ve always been a selfish creature, for example uprooting the fella and abandoning all UK based friends and family to chase my dreams in Geneva, but it never occurred to me until it started happening to me on a frequent basis how hard it is to be left behind.

A number of people that I’ve met in Geneva that I’ve taken the time to get to know and have gradually forged fledgling friendships with that I thought had the potential to develop into full-on chumminess have announced that they will be leaving in the next few months and I’m honestly gutted.

From a selfish point of view I want everyone to stay and be my friends forever and if I decide to move again for them all to decide to move with me. Is that too much to ask?

I grudgingly accept that not everyone’s lives revolve around me, much as I might like them to, and I understand why certain people are leaving and obviously wish them well in their future adventures. It’s just I feel like someone has grabbed the trunk of a flimsy tree I’d built a nest in and shaken it violently, with the unsettling effect the departure of these people will have just as I was stating to feel comfortable here.

I think it’s good to put yourself out of your comfort zone but it’s harder when other people do this for you. Whilst I know not all my friends are leaving, there will always be constants in my life and that I’ll undoubtedly meet new and interesting people to form new friendships with there’s a part of me that wants to protect myself from future hurt by simply shutting myself off to the opportunity of loving and losing more people.

But then I think, well if I’d done that I’d never have met these wonderful people in the first place. If I hid my heart from other potential friends I’d be letting fear rule my life and that’s against the whole philosophy of what this blog was initially supposed to be about (see ‘The Why’).

So rather than feeling bummed out about the fact that some of my friends will leave I ought to make the most of them whilst they are still here. And it’s quite exciting to think that ten months ago I didn’t know any of them and in another ten months there could be more great people in my life I haven’t even met yet. Plus the further my friends disperse themselves around the world the more excuses I have to go and visit new places. It might be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster but it’s a wonderful world.

 

To sleep or not to sleep? That is the question

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When I must have been about 3 or 4 I had a set routine: lunch, watch the Wombles and then a little sleep. No complaints with the first two but I really hated nap-time.

My hatred of napping continued as a child and I would always refuse to admit I was tired. If caught with my eyes closed and conscious enough to hear someone say I was asleep, I would fiercely retort ‘I’m awake’ and be angry at the suggestion it could possibly be otherwise!

It wasn’t until I started at University that I began to realise that far from being a bad thing, a little snooze was, actually, rather wonderful. Forget the two hours of seminars a day, cheap drinking and student discount card, University living taught me to appreciate the benefits of a short snooze.

For a time I worked for the Student Union’s technical crew. To be honest, I’ve no idea why they gave me a job as I knew less about technical issues then than I do now. I was probably hired because a) no-one else wanted the job and b) they thought a bit of gender balance might be good (the ratio of male to female staff when I worked there was probably something like 20:2).

Because I wasn’t very technical I’d be assigned the easy jobs such as carrying stuff and carefully coiling up electrical wires at the end of the night. There wasn’t much to be done during most events and when there were problems I wasn’t really the one to fix them. I’d take charge of club lighting and this wasn’t much of an effort when you could just set a variety of light effects and leave them on automatic.

In one room, the light controls were in the DJ box and on top of the DJ box was a storage space for different coloured drapes for stage backdrops. I discovered this space was perfect for napping and, with my earplugs in and a careful rearranging of the drapes, I could create a little nest for myself.

People often say that University isn’t just about the degree but the life skills you develop and take away with you and I’d certainly agree. I learnt how to sleep anywhere. Being able to catch up on a few ZZZs in the middle of a club night opened up a whole new world of sleep opportunities for me: the library, public transport, parties, anywhere.

P1020055However, sleep is like a drug. Once you get used to giving into temptation to have a little shut-eye as and when you want it, it actually becomes quite difficult to then ignore that temptation when it comes at inopportune times.

Like the first time you meet a good friend’s, now husband, then boyfriend but you are tired (and possibly quite drunk) so keep having toilet breaks to have 10 minutes snooze time in the cubicle.

In the post-university so-called real world I had a job where I only shared an office with one other person. On a regular basis I would wait until my colleague went for lunch and then, using my coat as a pillow, create a den for myself under my desk. I’d set my alarm for twenty minutes and have a refreshing powernap.

Sometimes I’d hear people come into the office but no-one ever walked around to my desk and discovered me. That could have been hard to explain. Since then I have always been able to find a suitable spot at work where a quick snooze could be an option.

Until now.

My new office in Geneva has no suitable sleep spots whatsoever. My desk is far too exposed for a sleep under there, the staff room is the kitchen, there are no empty offices with armchairs where I could at least pretend I accidentally fell asleep (much less embarrassing than being caught in an under-desk-den) and the only sofa is in the corridor right next to reception. It’s terrible.

I thought it would be ok, tried telling myself that I was a grown up, that plenty of people go a whole day without napping, that I could just do what others do and replace sleep with coffee. And that did work for a time.

However, when I was ill a couple of weeks back an annoying side effect was extreme exhaustion, which, although lessened, continued to follow me when I returned back to the workplace after a week’s intermittent absence. Since then I have been craving siesta-time like never before.

By the time I’d realised how important a quick midday kip was I’d already quit my old job and country so there was no turning back. My only option is to convince everyone else to instate naptime for grown-ups.

In Switzerland, as I understand it, they have a very active kind of democracy. Anyone, with enough support, can call for the government to change the law via referenda, which happen every few months or so. Perhaps I should lobby Swiss friends to call for mandatory provision of sleep areas at work?

Failing that, maybe it’s not too late to switch careers to science and dedicate the rest of my working life to enabling species change so that I can become a cat.

human to cat - bp images

Why I’m not great with doctors

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“Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.” – Marcel Proust

I made a promise to myself that I would blog once a week and as my mother has already demanded to know where this week’s blog is, skipping out isn’t just cheating me but there is a slight chance others may notice (aside from immediate family). However, I apologise in advance. This is unlikely to be my most interesting, well-written or lucid post but I have an excuse and it was either this or an old piece of prose about a broken heart.

My excuse is I have been really ill all week, now don’t worry this isn’t going to be a post like ‘The forlornest looking lampshade‘ where I shared every gruesome detail of my last illness. For one thing, there’s less comedy value in current bout of sickness. For another, much as I love to make the world all about me at the best of times and even more so at the worst of times, I accept that the details probably aren’t that interesting a read.

Anyway, without the gory details, suffice to say my illness has been of the sort where looking at a screen for more than an hour or two has been unimaginable until today and up until now I’ve prioritised screen time for work related duties, feeling not just a little guilty about my lack of paid duty effectiveness.

P1010259That was the excuse. This is apparently the blog post:

I promised my mother I would go to a doctor if I still wasn’t better by today so I did sort of try to keep to my word. I wasn’t very succesful and probably could have tried harder but I made a few calls trying to register as a patient or arrange an appointment with an English-speaking doctor*. By the time I found a likely couple of leads it was too late as I realised neither worked on Friday afternoons.

My friends at work were emailing to ask why I hadn’t gone to a doctor yet and I explained I was on the mend and it was now quite unnecessary. I have been feeling much better this afternoon so this is partially true, but actually this is the longest period of time when I have felt consecutively unwell since I can remember so if I was going to a doctor maybe I should have gone a few days back when I felt rotten to the core.

And why didn’t I? Three equally rubbish reasons.

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Reason number one

I don’t like going to the doctors for anything other than routine appointments because whenever I have gone feeling awful (like last time I had bad sinusitis) there is nothing they can do for me anyway and I end up leaving feeling I’ve wasted their time.

Reason number two

This is specific to being an expat. I just don’t get how it works here. Some places you are meant to register in advance, some places you just turn up. I don’t understand how it works and I don’t trust myself not to put myself in an embarrassing situation by thinking I’ve made an appointment and going to the wrong place or worse going to the right place but completely misunderstanding that under no circumstances are appointments available for nearly thirty year old brunette women who aren’t Swiss.

Reason number three

The final reason is probably the worst one and that’s financial. Every month I pay a ridiculously high portion of my wages for a sub-standard medical insurance with an excess so high I figure I could only cover it in emergency situations as it would warrant eating up my entire British bank account overdraft.

This means that a simple doctor’s appointment is going to be paid for by me. I have no idea how much, see reason two, but suspect it to be somewhere around 100 Swiss Francs. When my weekly fun budget is currently just 40 of those Swiss Francs sacrificing two and a half week’s fun budget just to be told they can’t help me anyway, reason one, doesn’t really seem worth it.

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Do you have a point?

No, not really, I just want to say how much I love the National Health Service and wish that the Conservative Government and other detractor’s of the NHS would recognise the value of it. It is absolutely one of the best things about living in Britain. The fact that the US struggled to realise a very poor version of this and yet some people in the UK act as though they’d be happy to just throw our health service away, something Britain’s had and enjoyed for over 60 years, is truly disappointing.

I do not doubt the NHS is flawed, there can be long waiting lists and there’s probably too much bureaucracy, but it is available to everyone, even those with private health care who don’t need it. It is wonderful and works exceptionally well in emergency situations when people really need it. It is also staffed by some really hard-working and dedicated individuals who take all the criticisms and carry on anyway because they know how important it is.

I hope people will continue to fight for the UK’s NHS because if we let it go then it’s gone. That’s the problem with giving things away, you can’t then demand them back when you finally realise how much they meant to you.

*French is improving and conversations with french receptionists are one thing but I don’t trust my language skills enough not to accidentally tell a doctor I have wings growing out of my back when trying to describe eye-pain and then getting sent to a different kind of doctor entirely.
P.S. I had no appropriate images and lack brain power for wonderful computer stick men drawings so just added photo of the cats when they were kittens so that there’s something nice to look at.