The Other Side

Well, everyone. Despite the implication of the blog silence, life has not been dull this last month or so. It has been a November packed with house moving, fireworks at Gothic castles, lovers' reunions in Paris and afternoon strolls around Wimbledon Common. Delightful, and all very blogworthy. 

However, none of this moved me seriously to blog (I mean, Horace Walpole's House after hours, prancing around on the turrets and in low lit libraries with a glass of mulled wine in hand. Yawn, frankly. I wouldn't want to bore you). What did catch my fancy last night was the scientifically monumental realisation on the bus home at 11pm that I have achieved a feat mad professors have been working at for hundreds of years: I have travelled back in time. It's true.  Quite precisely, I have travelled back to that time that may be familiar to some of us, circa 2006-2009 when life was made up of London, night buses, waitressing and temp work with the happy understanding that it all served a greater purpose (at the time, books; now, survival until the Real Job begins). 

What is fascinating about travelling back to such a time period is that you experience things that you would otherwise never have chosen to, and it's educationally enlightening in many ways. For example, I have spent the last five days marking year 7 Maths tests and KS3 Reading and Spelling tests for an education company who of course, will remain anonymous.  Whilst I have been responsible for all 60 spellings and all 60 reading questions on all 500 papers (how many questions did Emma mark in total?  Ans = ...), it was only necessary for me to mark questions 3, 17 and 18, 3, 17 and 18 over and over and over again 3,000 - 4,000 times on the Maths papers, during which time I have learnt the following things:

1. Rules and uniformity are really important to standardised testing, but really, bureaucracy is stupid. A child, who does this, for example, gets 1 mark for a correct method, even though they are a moron who can't multiply by 100:

A child who considers it beneath them, aged 11, to demonstrate to an examiner they they know how to multiply by 100 because now they are in secondary school and really, shouldn't they know that by now, will also only get one mark for a correct answer because they have only shown 'part working' and thus their method is considered incomplete.  It feels injust but I'm pretty sure you don't get marks for trying in Life so Child #2 should win out in the end. 

3. I am not the only child who struggled with Maths at school, but number-blind children seem to be much more polite about it nowadays than I ever was:

I totally get what this guy's going through:

And I feel that this child already understands how life works:

3. The District Line makes no sense. But at least they have retro signs. 

4. 2000/ 250 = 8

    8 - 6 = 2

    2 x 250 = 500 

Is the same Maths as...

    6 x 250 = 1500

    2000 - 1500 = 500

Who knew?

5. Images are not always helpful:

This took us a little while to figure out...

6. Poor spelling is hilarious when you read it out loud phonetically in a silent library in a half whisper to your entirely unsympathetic husband, but really, life must be just so confusing for some children: 

7. England is cold, but sometimes freezing early mornings are worth it:

8.  Erroneous. Abscess. Eligible. Precocious.  Allegiance. Who knew they were spelt this way?  Huh!  Not me, the English teacher. 

9. Admitting you don't know how to spell 'mischief' but acknowledging that your iPhone does is humbling. As is remarking and re-entering the data for the 120 tests you marked down for spelling this word 'wrong'. 

As well as the repetitive hysteria of marking thousands and thousands of papers outside my subject area and repressing panic when children use alternative and valid mathematical methods not included on the mark scheme, or in my realm of understanding, I have also been waitressing. This is how I roll in 2006-9.

Last night I waitressed for a lovely South Kensington home-hosted company Christmas drinks for the American expat CEO of a big company that did something with money. Throughout the evening I learnt that his children were quite lovely, if a little overexcited, I met the Filipina nanny and the German au pair and was amused that I counted, for this evening as 'The Staff' and that the mother spent her whole childhood as an expat in Manila and her American accent was not real, but the international school accent that many of us know and love, as long as it's not whining at us at 7:50am.  Miiiissss Shepppppaaaaaaarrrrrdddd?

We got chatting about Asia, obvs, and we totes had an expat affinity and then I watched the whole evening full of intelligent, monied, well-dressed, high-powered people from the other side of the bar feeling slightly surreal that only a few months ago, our enormous, maid-maintained house in Singapore was also paid for by the company, as well as my second home, the bijou apartment in Saigon. 'Oh how the mighty have fallen,' I feel obliged to say, but you know, it was really lots of fun having a sort of external view of this world, remembering my despair at the prospect of being a trailing spouse in Singapore and hysteria at having no pressing reason to get up in the morning.  

I especially enjoyed a gentle reminder that there is still a British class boundary that even the most exciting expatting will not diminish. It's easy to forget, when abroad and all jumbled up with everyone else, sort of like soldiers were in the trenches, your proper place in the natural order of things, but conversations like this help me to remember that if there's a percentile, I'm really not in the upper realms of it and probably never will be because neither my parents nor I inherited a title and I went to a school, lower case, rather than a School, one of select few, upper case:

Lady: (after amusing bants about American phrasing) Gosh, you are funny. Were you at Girton?

Me: ... What is 'Girton'?

Lady: ... Oh. 

If you don't find that amusing, then welcome to the ignorant, but striving middle classes.  I managed to continue the bants for some time after the crushing realisation that the amusing waitress really was one of the Staff thanks to the witty power of high brow innuendo and shared appreciation of the feminist cause, but the Lady was clearly saddened by the fact that we would never really be friends, not truly, and, like Mr Wickham, returned to her posh colleagues and pretended not to know me when I came back to top up her champagne. Oh the sting. 

Sigh. Anyway, next on the agenda: getting festive in France (featuring ovary-aching new additions to Frenchie's famille that I will squeeze.  Yum!) and my first day at the Big New Academy. Actually medium sized but it's important to my ego that I continue to impress and inspire my blog fans...

London! We Could Go There One Day!

Right. If you have a 'real' job in an exciting city - London, say - and you have a sibling who spends their life doing 'fun' things like prancing around dressed as a bookshelf or teaching young people about phallic imagery then I entreat you to run a 'Bring Your Sibling to Work Week' as my sister has done. Check out how awesome the real world is:

On Day 1, between Royal Mail coffee cups, dearest sister suggested I use my lunch break to explore the local surroundings. Oh. Okay. Sure. 

WOW. 

On Day 2, amongst the phone calls and operating the oldest working lift in London, sister suggested I move to the rooftop fire escape to get a better view of the soldiers in the courtyard outside who had been entertaining us all day with their drums and marching and shuffling and chinooks. 

Second from the left in the front row is looking the wrong way. Naughty. 

The roof was also good for pretending that I was Dick van Dyke in 'Mary Poppins'. 

 And for conquering my fear of heights. 

AMAZING!

On Day 3, before we even thought of running out for milk or replenishing the coffee cups, sister suggested a rave. At 6:30am. With the lights on. And no alcohol. 

It was IMMENSE. And also very sweaty. 

Strangely, despite the fact that I have genetically 80s hair and uncannily orangutan-like dance moves, I have never been to a rave and thus was very worried about not having an appropriate rave outfit but luckily, I was staying the night with my friend Chandni who, upon hearing the word 'morning rave', nodded sagely and started rummaging around in her wardrobe, pulling out items that became this most rave-worthy outfit:

YES. Never have I felt more appropriately dressed. Think early morning rave, think leggings and sparkly crop tops.

On Day 4, the weather perked up again and since I was tired after all the raving, I spent my lunch time in the absolutely gorgeous St Dunstan in the East park, which looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic film where nature has taken over civilisation, which in some ways is true because the church was bombed in WW2 but instead of rebuilding, the Parks and Gardens people created this space in 1964. 

 

It is very peaceful here so if you work in the city, I highly recommend it for a relaxing lunch time experience. 

On day 5, it was obviously Halloween and the UK seems to be taking this far more seriously than I ever remember it, which is saying something considering I lived a year of my life with an American from Salem, MA, where they take Halloween very seriously. It turns out that in the world of real people with real jobs, craft skills are as necessary as they are in teaching, and I watched on in admiration as my sister carved this wonderfully frightening creature to sit below my Halloween lilies:

The slightly sad thing in the bottom right hand corner is my attempt at a paper bag pumpkin. Just in case you were wondering. 

As if this wasn't enough Halloween excitement, we were also joined in the afternoon by an argument of wizards who collected in the Guildhall to receive their O.W.L.s (I'm so sorry for the HP reference. It hurt me to do it but it makes the blog reader-friendly). 

So. Take your sibling to work week. Awesome fun times. 

Land of My Fathers

So. Despite the popularity of breasts, there are some BritHaters who have indicated that there may no longer be any blog worthy stories to be had now that I am back in the UK. Practically a treasonable suggestion, I feel and thus am determined to live in a manner that proves these pessimists wrong whilst I'm still riding the we-can-drink-out-of-the-tap-in-this-country?! wave. This is the same wave as the wow!-cows! and the autumn-colours-are-so-enriching wave. Man, there is a lot to appreciate in this country. Isn't it amazing that we have a national rail system?! In Vietnam there was one train that went up the coast three times a week and took three days to get to Hanoi and in Singapore they only had MRT trains because the country was too small to bother with anything else. So BORING.

Anyway, before my big breast adventure in Richmond Park next week, I decided to go on a different sort of adventure to Cymru, Land of my Fathers.  In fact, it's the Land of my Father's Mother and thus only a quarter my own, and if you research your family history, you'll probably find that it's also Land of Your Fathers in some small percentage somehow, because that tends to happen if you're british or sort of washy American, Australian or Canadian: the further you go back in your family tree, the more likely you are to find the Celt.

Driving towards Wales is very exciting because the closer you get to it on the M4, the more it dawns on you that Wales counts as a different country: you don't need your passport to get across the bridge, but you do need to pay £6.50 to get in, like the visa system in Indonesia and Turkey. It's a shame you don't get a stamp of a red dragon somewhere official because that would be the most amazing. It also has its own language spoken by DJs on its own radio station which kicks in around Swindon and plays songs in Welsh and French as well as what I could only guess was anti-Thatcher protest music, and all the signs have double signage: stop/araf, humps/twmpathau, give way/ildiwych and eventually they just outlaw vowels all together.

To prepare properly for my trip and the outlawing of vowels, I learnt some essential Welsh from my two very lovely friends, spitting my way through the 'dd', 'll' and 'rh' letters in the alphabet that replace what now seem like the very unimpressive 'z' sound, and managed to learn 'wine', 'coffee', 'beach', and 'delicious!'  And since I'm a gifted and talented learner, I picked up 'church', 'two', 'white', 'headache', 'goodbye' and 'excuse me' in order to string together three very impressive conversations. So. Just as long as I have just been to a church and am going to drink white wine on a beach, or am ordering a cup of coffee or eating something delicious just before bed time, I am ready to blend in seamlessly with the rest of the Welsh speaking population. I even thanked a lady at the service station and she totes 'diolch'-ed me back.  Practically fluent.  What with my Vietnamese (left, right, straight on, stop, purple, fish, mot hai ba), Mandarin (two chocolate sundaes, where is the train station?) and Spanish (a return ticket to Salta, please!), in addition to my perfect (yes, perfect) French and English, I think I am now justified in writing 'six-lingual' on my CV. Right? 

Now, if all that tropical lingo doesn't convince you that a trip to Wales is an exciting and culturally Li Hi adventure worthy of this blog, then maybe the knowledge that it is home to the smallest city In The World will do more to persuade you.  If you followed my adventures through South America, you'll know that I really enjoy In The Worlds and have been collecting them for some time now (http://emmadoessouthamerica.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/uyuni-salt-flats.html), and St David's is right up there with Uyuni, Cerro Blanco and La Paz.

Obviously, to be a city, there needs to be a cathedral. Oh! Here it is! (Note tropical blue sky, please.)

And to be a historic cathedral in Wales, there needs to be a book of Welsh Law dating back to the 18th century (I think). Oh! Look! Here it is!

No. Really read it. This is the most hilarious thing. Not only did the law enforcer at the time see the need for this to be explicitly detailed as a law, the hilarious curator of the treasury chose this page to display for visitors to a really important historical and religious site. What a legend this person is.

After reading about the rights of 18th century Welsh hermaphrodites, the next two days were spent enjoying the autumnal Welsh weather around the Pembrokeshire coastline, and by autumnal weather, BritHaters of beginning-of-the-blog-infamy who whine about the minging weather, I mean this tshirt gorgeous amazing so beautiful weather:

I'd like to state right now that I have not had Vinegar Bra since returning to the UK and I am so grateful for our gorgeous, non-sweat climate. Thank you brisk wind! Thank you bracing gusts! Thank you crisp mornings with sunshine! Thank you balmy afternoons when jumpers are needed in the shade! My bras are eternally indebted to you all.

So, if you're still not convinced that the UK is blogworthy, and the small role that this blog is now to fulfil is to act as one of those M&S or John Lewis or BBC adverts where everything in the UK looks wholesome and gorgeous and epitomises all that is right and good in the world for my nostalgic expat friends instead of a record of daring equatorial adventures for my envious Brit-based buddies, then so be it. These are for you, Big International School ladies! Aren't the British Isles pretty?

Such fluffy clouds!

Fluffy fluff fluff!

Doesn't original South Wales look remarkably like a smaller version of New South Wales? They really got that comparison quite right. Just a shame New South Wales probably already had its own indigenous name before Captain Cook got there...

And of course, any Welshman would be disappointed if I didn't end with this:

Yes. Childish.

Breasts

We all love breasts. Big juicy ones like these:

Or lovely delicate, petite ones like these:

If you've spent your whole life with the same woman and built a relationship with her breasts and now think of them as old friends, you're probably also fond of the bulky comfort of breasts like these:

Or, if you're still at that stage in life when you haven't yet experienced breasts, you're probably very excited about being associated with a pair like these:

Just in case you're not aware, or are embarrassed to admit it, girls also find the breasts of others very comforting.  It's not just boys.

And we do stare admiringly at breasts like these when we see them in the media:

Because breasts are great. Breasts breasts breasts.

Good, now that I've got your attention: in a similar way, we all hate cancer. There's just nothing good to say about it really, is there?  It's like the biggest, most hateful, dirty mosquito in the world. No good comes of it and we wish it would go away. We have probably all been moved and inspired by the noble and optimistic struggle of someone we love against some form of cancer, but let's be honest, we could be moved and inspired by something with a less shitty end consequence, couldn't we?  Like the London Marathon, for example, where people voluntarily put themselves through suffering. Or, of you need to be really inspired, the Marathon des Sables.  Well, those convenient references bring me to the point of this blog, other than breasts, which are a really good point, of course, but you'll see how it all ties together in a sec...

On the 18th October I'm running 10k for Cancer Research. Not a marathon; a lot more fun than a marathon because I won't expire in a small puddle of despair half way through but rather will finish the race feeling great about breasts. Mine, yours, everyone's!  Also, it is in Richmond Park, which I have never been to but I have heard that it's very pretty and this makes the event blog worthy because it is a tourist activity, really, and I think I will definitely count as a tourist in the UK until I at least have a full time job. 

If I happen to see you between now and then, I will be asking you if you love breasts and want to empty your wallets to support the safeguarding of breasts everywhere, sort of like a breast guardian. A warrior for breasts. A breast bodyguard. So if you have cash in your wallet, give it to me, and I will stuff it between someone's breasts. (I will give it to Cancer Research).  Everyone has told me to do that Just Giving thing, but I can't be doing with it: it's complicated. Just give me cash. 

DISCLAIMER: since writing this blog about breasts, one breast bodyguard (who herself has a fantastic set, very much worth protecting and a joy in which to nuzzle) has set me up a Just Giving page so if you DO want to be modern and sophisticated and digital, please do so here: https://www.justgiving.com/emshep/  Thanks Sheema! 

Then, I promise to run this 10k in less than 70 minutes and I'll try to run it in 66 because this is my target and if I run it in 65 or under, I will be asking for more money from you to congratulate my svelte athleticism in the form of donating more money to breasts. 

That is all!

Charity Work

So. Hello!  It's been a little while since the excitement and typhoons of Japan and whilst the last four weeks haven't been quite as jam packed full of temples, they have been quite interesting an eventful.

Since I don't like to a) sit around b) be prepared, I decided not to spend this last month making the necessary arrangements for an international move, but instead took my mind off all that stressful stuff by volunteering at the support office of a big charity that focus on community development through child sponsorship.  This is what good expat wives are supposed to do when they're not at the pool/ salon/ having babies and I am now determined to save the world in whatever capacity I can (whilst remaining in relative comfort myself and drinking cocktails, of course). 

Mostly I have been attached to the Big Boss doing very administrative and drawn out tasks with policy, but for any of you English teachers out there, I have been putting the APP grid in action by selecting and retrieving information (name that assessment focus) and then answering an IGCSE language paper question 3 by summarising all that I have selected. So, there we go. What we teach in schools really does come in handy later in life. 

In amongst all the policy summaries and chronological logs, which I'll agree with you, was mad fun times, has been lots of chatting to office staff about Big Scary issues like trafficking and extreme poverty and micro finance and floods and donor transformation (not what you think it means) and basically, what I have figured out is that if we don't really understand how poverty works, yo, it's difficult to do anything about it, so now it is my ambition to just be one of those awareness raising people and do a masters in Gender and a Development Studies.  Ooh. Interesting. 

I have also learnt the very important skill of using a franking machine (genuinely exciting) and nodding quietly and discreetly, so that nobody notices you, when it breaks and it's your fault.  The nodding has to be done from your own desk whilst a permanent member of staff is sighing at the franking machine or looking confused because it has never done this before so that it doesn't count as face-to-face lying about whether or not you broke the franking machine because it's a charity, after all, and lying to someone who works in the charity sector would be really wrong.

Another bonus of these four weeks of volunteering, other than the fact that I didn't become an alcoholic or buy a cat or impregnate myself for want of anything else to do, was that I got to pretend to have friends in Singapore for a little while. I even went to lunch at the weekend with one of them and now we are even registered in that official friendship bureau known as Facebook, so it must be real. Luckily, I'm not sticking around long enough for her to realise that when I stand around casually making 'mmm', 'yeah', 'I know' noises in response to conversations about community development I don't actually have any idea what I'm talking about but have mastered the art of asking clever-sounding questions to keep me afloat in the conversation: 'and is that something you've been involved in?' 'How interesting, what was it like?' 'Is that something that happens often?'  She'll forever think I'm highly informed and not a complete fraud. 

Other than that, when Frenchie left me to attend to his other love (crocodiles) in Australia, I amused myself by seeking out the Singaporean countryside and went to an organic farm in the middle of Singaporean nowhere. Whilst here, I was reminded that we have absolutely zero reason to complain about the weather in the UK because it rains for a significant proportion of the year in Singapore and most of the tropics and whilst, yes, it is warm rain and the sun does immediately come out after all the deafening thunder and forked lightening, I'm not sure this is much of a consolation as the heat means growing a sweat moustache between the MRT station and the office and the sad experience of being able to smell yourself at around 10:30am when the air con has dried you out and given you a cold nose. And of course, there's Vinegar Bra to contend with when you get home.

So, in summary, it has been fun, Singapore, and the people in recent weeks have been among the most welcoming I have ever met, but I am very, very, very, very much looking forward to some smart Alec friend or family member reminding me of this post when I start complaining about the London weather some time in late October.  Home time!

My next post, once on UK soil will be my first domestic blog entry and thus a tester to see if it will garner as much popularity as anecdotes about my exotic travels. As a marketing strategy, I will be writing about breasts. Yes. Breasts. Juicy, juicy breasts. 

Homeward Bound

The journey home from Nara via Tokyo felt like it took a very long time and involved a hostel reminiscent of my youfff as a grubby traveller. Frenchie tried to get me to eat raw chicken and gut stew, insisting that I'd get used to the texture, and everything we tried to visit was closed.

To compensate, though, we cashed in on the perks of Frenchie's last moments as a corporate crocodile fatcat and demanded our rightful entry into the Japanese Airlines First Class Lounge at Narita Airport which, with free massage, showers, food, papers, chocolate drops, tea and a very well stocked bar, was a very nice way to finish the holiday.

Better not get used to it though as, to save me from a life of domestic expat housewife bliss, Frenchie has sold his life into a servitude of Yorkshire puddings and drizzle. Consider this exclusive breaking news: the blog might have to stop as I go back to classes of 30 and the drive for the magic C grade, but you'll have me back on hallowed UK soil as of September or October, you lucky things!

Nara

It started raining again just in time for our trip to Nara, which took just a few less trains than our trip to Koya-san, but the same amount of cable cars.  We quickly realised that there were two main attractions in Nara: temples and deer. Because of our eagerness in Kyoto and Koya-san, we were already experts in temples, and the deer - allowed to roam freely as sacred entities because a long time ago a God rode into Nara on the back of a white stag - quickly lost their charm. They were smelly, pooped everywhere and tried to steal our food. Watching small children being traumatised when they bought a packet of deer biscuits and tried to feed one friendly looking deer only to be cornered against a lamppost by a whole insistent herd was an amusing past time, though.

Fortunately, though, we found other things of divine beauty to keep us occupied during our two days in Nara, the old, old capital of Japan...

Day Nine: Festival of Lights 

Our hotel manager was very shocked to hear that we were visiting Nara with no previous knowledge of the Festival of Lights that was due to take place over the next two nights. We were lucky, he informed us.  Very lucky indeed.  Frenchie, intrepid world traveller, who is self-proclaimedly 'impossible to impress' stared at the hotel manager, dead pan.

Frenchie: (in his mind) Festival of Lights?  Are you kidding me?

Me: (tugging at Frenchie's sleeve) Ooh!  Festival of Lights!  That sounds pretty!  Doesn't it?  Doesn't it darling?  Yes, yes.  Let's go tonight!

It turned out that the Festival of Lights was very pretty and included thousands and thousands of candles set up in impressive displays all across the deer park and there were also light displays and lanterns and thousands of people and the policemen manning the crossroads had loudspeakers and helium balloons in the shape of cartoons.  I really think this is the type of thing that could work as a school fundraiser.  All you need is lots of candles, a responsible crowd, art students with VISION, buckets of water and the support of the local fire brigade who would be topless...

... Anyway, the best thing of all was the STREET FOOD, of which I shall have to add photos because it was so goooooood, so Frenchie and I grazed up and down the stalls until we felt sick and had to go and drink cocktails in a posh hotel where Einstein once played the piano to make ourselves feel better.

Here is a gallery of some of the street food.  There was more, but I was too busy stuffing my face with it to get a photo:

Recently, when asked to release an official statement about the Festival of Lights, Frenchie thought for a minute, rubbed his chin pensively, and told our sources here at Vietnam? Yes please! "... I loved the food."

A success!

Day Ten: Kimonos

Since we had vetoed visits to temples or any buildings made of wood, there really wasn't much to do in Nara once we'd taken a million blurry photos of decoratively arranged candles and street food in various stages of preparation.  No trip to Japan would be complete, however, without the purchasing of a beautiful kimono, entirely purposeless to a Western girl once outside of Japan, so we walked around all the shops until we found a kimono that I liked, we let a shop assistant dress me up in it, took photos of me pretending to be Japanese and then bought it.  I'd like to say I know how to recreate this look but in reality, it relies on the aid of the video that Frenchie took of me being dressed up in it, clear instructions from Frenchie to hold here, tuck here, turn around, tighten, and several attempts before getting it right... and even then it's not quite as good as the man did it originally.

Obviously, there are few instances in my daily life that call for a kimono so I'd be super grateful if you'd hold a fancy dress party sometime in the near future with an appropriate theme (Around the World, WW2, 'Memoirs of a Geisha', Asian), and invite me. I'm also available for International Days, Women of the World Emancipation Days and for school or amateur plays. 

The kimono culture is fascinating in Japan and made me feel sad that the UK doesn't really have a national costume. The Japanese love wearing their kimonos and the minute there is any suggestion of tradition (Sunday afternoon temple visit, waitressing, dinner with parents, meeting boyfriend's parents, Festival of Lights, visiting a historical place) they whack those kimonos and obis on and totter around in socks and wooden flip flops and they're loving it!  (All photos taken to illustrate this point are extremely stalkery and mostly show the backs of people.)  The same thing happens with the Vietnamese - national day?  Ao dai, please!  Wedding?  Ao dai!  Ceremony or big event?  You guessed it: ao dai!

I wish Britain - or should I say England since the Scots, Welsh and Irish have their kilts/dancing dresses - had a kimono culture.  Maybe I should start a campaign?