Pettifogging

Tied in to the previous post, here’s two lists that my wife and I have put together about what we miss about America and what we would miss about Scotland.  Some of this is specific to my home state of Kentucky.  Lists are not in any particular order, nor have they been proofread.

America

1. Waffle House
2. Sam’s
3. Sugano
4. Cracker Barrel
5. Target
6. L.L. Bean
7. Whole Foods, Good Foods
8. Friends
9. Family
10. Halloween
11. Family gatherings
12. Southern culture
13. Mammoth Cave
14. Shaker Village
15. Libraries with DVDs
16. Porches
17. Summer evenings with insects and lightening bugs
18. Cardinals
19. I can return to teaching
20. Better roads and traffic
21. Keeneland
22. Tractor Supply
23. Opportunity
24. KY Horse Park
25. Horse Farms
26. I can vote
27. Health care, once acquired, has few waiting lists for non-critical procedures
28. Irish Rover
29. Easier to own a home
30. With a private school, probably better to raise a kid
31. Easier for both to get work, based on experience
32. I can return to my customizing hobby more easily
33. Warmer people in general
34. No eternal darkness during the winter
35. Joseph-Beth
36. Hippie second-hand bookstores
37. I can go to Joe con things with friends
38. No health & safety bs
39. Dia de los Muertos
40. The West
41. Warmer weather

Scotland

1. Castles
2. Compacted history
3. Family
4. Fish & chips
5. The sea
6. Mainland Europe plus Ireland
7. Free health care
8. A wide range of landscapes within small driving area (mountains, sea)
9. Wonderful trekking
10. No trespass laws/free access to the countryside
11. All horses around here are ridden english style
12. Wife can vote
13. Walking in towns to get to a shop rather than driving everywhere.
14. Main roads are not as intimidating as in America
15. Easy access to fresh fish.
16. No HFCS
17. Better vacation benefits (in general)
18. No tornadoes
19. Easy to buy fresh fish (straight from harbour)
20. Train rides
21. Real pubs
22. Edinburgh Festival
23. Olympia and Horse of the Year Show

I figure my one hundredth post should be somthing with meat on its bones, so I hope this will provide material for a modest gnawing.

Two years ago my wife and I decided to move overseas to her homeland of Scotland.  The decision came at a time when we were both feeling unfulfilled in our jobs and life.  We needed a change… adventure… something new.  As she had been married to me and living in America for nine years time, it was only fair that we reverse the roles.  Two years ago… yet regardless of the struggles along the way, it feels like only yesterday.

A year was spent unencumbering ourselves of those things that people collect during their lives.  The house, the cars, all the possessions that go along with living on your own.  All the extras that are nice to have when you’re settled but become a burden when making such a major move.  All the items that you know you can replace when you get settled again or that you know you’ll have to replace because they won’t work when you get to the new country.  All these things were slowly but steadily parted with over a year’s time.  We stayed with my parents once the house was gone.  Stressful is a mere shadow of the word needed to describe the times.

Other preparations were made.  My visa application was completed and sent away. Shipping for that which we kept. Transportation of the pets.  Resignations from jobs held for years. All was put in order.  My visa was approved one year after our making our decision.  One year in the past from now.  Our flight was booked and we arrived in Scotland on February 28th, 2009.

We knew things would be difficult to start out again.  We stayed with my father-in-law until one of us was succesful in finding work.  It was my wife who won that race.  This gave us our first freedom in almost a year of living in transition.  I was hired into a part-time position at the tourist attraction where we volunteered on first arriving.  Nothing paying much but enough to help out a little while I continued looking for a permanent job.

Little did we know that I would still be searching even today.  I sent off my first job application on December 18, 2008… a mere six days after my last day of work in the US.  Applications flowed from our residence.  My first interview did not occur until November of 2009.  A month away from having a year in country behind me and still nothing.  Still no sign of permanent employment.  I have another interview in a week, but it is only for a year-long position.

I have to pay the British government £820 to have my visa made permanent or else it shall expire in April of 2011.  However, to secure a job I would likely need to do so around summer of this year, lest employers be scared off by the prospect of an employee that would be unemployable just a few months into their job.  It is a catch-22.  Do we pay this money, draining a large portion of our savings, so I can stay in a country that finds me, a person with 10 years’ experience of web development plus 7 years’ experience of teaching at collegiate level, unemployable?

It is thus that we are at the point where it is likely time to return to America.  If in June I have no permanent work, it will be time to make the move again.  A year and a half of looking for employment and not finding it is a situation that can’t be allowed to build upon itself.

That said, even if I were to secure a job at this upcoming interview, the writing appears to be on the wall that our exit from Scotland will still occur.  There’s something missing here that America, with all its faults… its Teabaggers, healthcare issues, consumerism… still provides.  We miss the hopefulness, the positive outlook, the warm interaction, even with strangers.  These things aren’t entirely lacking here, but they seem to be something that is hidden away in a few special people while the rest live in a darkness… a cynicism… a deafeatist nature that neither I or my wife can put up with for much longer.

No regrets, just new lessons learned.  I may return home with less than ever before but I will have new experience to draw from and the pride of knowing we gave it our all.  I will have lived abroad and few of my countrymen will ever know that pleasure, no matter how disappointed I may be in its not going off as we imagined it would.

Before you delve deeper into this post, go take a look at a world map.  They’re readily available online if you don’t have one hanging in your house’s library or have let your membership at your local explorer’s club lapse.  Find Scotland on said map and notice its position in relation to Canada and Alaska.  See how much further North it is than you might have expected?  That’s important for this post.

Last weekend we made the change off of British Summer Time and did the “Fall back” routine of “Spring forward, Fall back”.  Thus, say, when it’s 6pm now it would have been 7pm last week.  No big deal you may think.

What you aren’t thinking though is that with this being Fall the days were already becoming shorter.  Couple that with the time change and it is now pitch black at 5pm.  But that’s not the end of it… no.  Daylight hours will still be creeping back as we get further into Winter.  Remember, we’re up North.  Scotland doesn’t quite hit the 6 months of daylight then 6 months of night situation but it feels similar effects.  During the summer it was still quite bright even at midnight; now I get to live as in a cave for a few months.

Excuse me while I consider hibernation.

This week I feel a pressing need to touch on the fashion trends that see most deeply rooted in the local area.  Obviously, we all know that Scotland is a land of interesting, non-standard dress thanks to the widespread knowledge of the kilt.  At least the kilt has a certain panache to it and, as a national dress goes, it certainly trumps what I see the younger crowd wearing on a day-to-day basis.  I see plenty of well-dressed people around too, especially those from the continent, but when I see someone who falls under any of the descriptions that follow, I can bet my ass they’re a local youth.

One’s first reaction upon being dropped into a larger Scottish town would be to wonder if you had also been transported in time alongside your switch of locale.  The predominant style for most girls of the under twenty crowd seems ripped right from the 80s.  I even saw leg warmers displayed, possibly even proudly, in a store window.  The style is modified for the climate though as any short skirt or pair of shorts is usually accompanied by a pair of block hose.  Hairstyles are based on ample use of hairspray, teased out and badly bleached or dyed.

For men and women of a slightly more working class background, the tracksuit (or shellsuit) is the uniform of choice.  In women, the hair will be severely slicked back and tied in a ponytail. A baby in pram is an optional but extremely popular accessory.  Very few who wear these are large, inactive slugs like in the States, but their thinness doesn’t communicate health or physical activity.  It’s the unnatural thinness you associate with either a very sparse diet, drug use or both.  Not to say that they are all starving meth heads or the Scottish equivalent… it’s just the impression I get.

One fashion accessory that I’ve seen surprisingly little of, at least in use, is the hoodie.  Sure, I see some here and there, but when you’ve heard the stories one typical hears of how Britain is being overrun by hooligans in hoodies it comes as a slight shock to not be surrounded by hooded yobbos.  Personally, I spent quite some time weighing whether I should even bring the one hooded sweatshirt that I own over with me because I was afraid that I’d either be looked upon with disdain by the locals or attacked by the hoodlums for infringing on their style.  Maybe this trend is much more prevalent down in England?

Those who are in their mid-thirties or above dress slightly more stylishly than their American counterparts with jeans being a rarer sight, though still commonplace.  Chinos or specialised walking trousers are dominant, especially as the subject’s age reaches higher digits.  I have seen an unsettling number of twentyish guys wearing those jeans with the pencil-thin legs though.  A bit too 80s rock for my taste.

The kilt?  Never seen unless the wearer is heading to an event that requires formal dress, such as a wedding or special dinner.  You can also catch football fans wearing cheap kilts in the colour of their favourite team when heading to a game.  I find this quite sad.  The kilt is such a unique item of dress, for it to be relegated to special occasions is shameful.  I certainly don’t expect all to wear it but it feels like it’s been relegated to a particular role and wearing it outside that particular function is dangerously close to being treated as such an unusual happening as it would be outside of Scotland.  My specially purchased Utilikilt hangs in my closet due to fears of the reaction if might garner.

To open this recurring feature, I feel it’s best to focus on the one thing I’ve noticed most since I’ve been here:  In general it seems that people are much more oblivious to the existence of others in public than they ever were in America.  From driving, to walking down the street, riding the bus or shopping, there are constant reminders of this.

When I’m in a store and pause along the side of the aisle to look for a specific item, I can almost count down the number of seconds it will be before someone else comes along in front of me to stop and look for something they need.  Never will an “excuse me” pass their lips nor any other acknowledgement of my existence.  It’s strange though, because this seems like the only time they notice people.  If you’re alone in an aisle and stop to look for something, within 30 seconds to a minute at least two other people will find you and stop in the exact same spot in the aisle to look in the same space of shelf.  It’s like they’re afraid you’ve found some deal that they aren’t aware of.  I would be willing to take best that if I stopped staring at a wall people would eventually gather with at least one of them trying to shuffle in front of me.

They push their carts out of the aisle without looking to see if anyone is coming and, even if they *do* notice someone coming, they don’t stop.  I’ve even had a woman pushing a stroller notice me and my basket coming across the aisle yet she kept on heading out at full speed toward the side of the cart.  A week ago when I entered the store, two people were stopped having a conversation right at the entrance, one each on either side of the anti-theft scanners.  One could barely push a cart around them.  What was most irksome is it was obvious that they were both entering the store to shop since both carts were still empty.  Instead of going further into the store where there is plenty of room for everyone, they stop blocking people from entering or leaving.  Why?  Because they are completely unaware of anyone else’s needs.

On the bus, it’s amazing how opposed to fresh air the Scottish seem.  The number of people who, in a bus full of passengers, judge their own comfort over all others’ is staggering.  People board the bus, sit down and immediately close any vented windows in a 30 mile radius around them.  They never ask if it’s ok; never consider that the rest of the passengers who were there before them and hadn’t closed the window before then might like having it open.  No, it’s only their need they can register.  I’ve seen people get out of their seats and walk the length of the bus to close a window that no one else on a bus full of passengers seemed to mind.

I truly feel that, in general, the Scottish culture somehow breeds this into people.  It’s something I never registered in previous visits since I spent more time in Edinburgh and couldn’t pin this behaviour on the Scottish due to there being tourists all over the place and it being a larger city as well.  Now I live out in the Scottish country and, honestly, I feel this behaviour is even more on display than in the city.  I know that there are plenty of people in the States that would fit this description just as well.  My issue is that it feels much more normal here for people to act in this manner than it ever did in America.  I see it all the time.  I can count on the shopping experience to be the same each and every time I go out, just as I can count on there being an anti-windite on every bus I board.  It grows a little more tedious every time…