ExPats

ExPats (c)

By

Michael Casey

I just looked at the Stats and it gave me an idea straight away, so it’s your own fault for what I'm writing right now. 8.30pm let's see when I finish. So you are all ExPats reading my stuff, Russians in USA reading my Russian Translations, Koreans reading my Korean Translations still in the USA. And on it goes, even some reading English in England or English in the USA.

What makes ExPats so different, so Special, well in their own mind anyway. ExPats are the True Believers, they are better than the originals, Greek Americans are better than Greeks, and Italian Americans are better than the real Italians in downtown Rome. That’s what I mean by True Believers, nothing to do with any Religion, that’s the thing about English you can use words to mean what you want to mean.

They are ingredients, just as an egg is. It’s when idiots deliberately misunderstand to promulgate, their own ideas and not the facts on the page, that’s when you get trouble. See I used a big word then, PROMULGATE, I hope it translates well into Russian or any other language I may post it in.

But I nearly side-tracked myself, you can have a beer and a sandwich with Uri and the boys down the weightlifting gym and discuss it. As for me I’ll get back to ExPats, can you tell Lech to stop picking his nose, I’m talking, yes I know he has a big nose, but we haven’t got half an hour.

Now I’ll get complains from Nose Surgeons about teasing Lech, you just cannot win, everybody has an agenda, I’d love to have an agenda myself, it’s a kind of fast car like a Ferrari, go look it up in a dictionary, page 789 of the Oxford English Dictionary for Misspellers, 7.99 on Amazon.

Where was I, yes ExPats, the ExPat left their country for a better life abroad, whether it was the sun, the sea or the sex in some foreign place. Whether it is Spain or USA or Australia, or any other place you can think of. In Lethal Weapon Danny Glover wanted to emigrate to South Africa, nowadays some may want to emigrate to North Korea, if you have a thing for Parades. But I’m side-tracking myself again, the point is you are living the Vida Loca someplace else, so you are very happy, but you long for or even pine for your Homeland.

So how do you compensate for being in a Foreign Land, easy you pretend to be in your homeland, so you paint your house in the National Colours of your Homeland, even if it is 3 or 4 or even more generations ago. If you are in the USA naturally you’ll  have a flag post outside with the largest possible flag of the USA too, just to prove you are a USA citizen. You’ll also have 10 guns of military grade too, you are a true American after all.

Though you live as if you are still in little Italy/Greece/Korea and any other 10 countries you can possible think of. You keep the Language pure and slap your cousin if he speaks Japanese or English or whatever the native language is of where you are now living. He must speak the language of your mum or grandfather or whatever generation it was when you first came to this foreign language. So You keep Japanese/English or whatever, pick your own group of languages. You speak the original mother tongue and not the language of your adopted country.

Language is the mother’s milk that keeps you Special, it makes you proud, so you may have Shamrock all over your bedclothes or shirts that you wear. They could be Welsh dragons, or Heather on everything. Or you wear Bruce Lee emblems on everything. Whatever it is, it represents to Image you have of your homeland.

 It could be a Tee shirt with a man falling over holding a bottle of Vodka, now would that be Polish or Russian or Ukrainian? Now immediately those 3 Nationalities hate me Until I remind them, a REAL Polish/Russian or Ukrainian would not fall over, they are real men who can hold their Liquor. So it must be a fake Tee shirt from the Czech Republic. Ok that was just an Example.

Some people are so touchy about the Homeland, they don’t live there, they chose to move away, they haven’t been there for 4 or more Generations, so why are they so touchy? Now that is the big question. It’s like Christmas, people want to pretend they are nice and want goodwill to all men, but they’ll kill that SOB if their neighbour parks one inch over their parking space outside their house.

So really Expats are living a dream, they want all the benefits of their new country, the sun, the sea, the welfare, the food, the education  system etc, or the decent football teams, or even the best violent Ice Hockey, now that’s why the emigrated to Russia/Czech/USA, or Canada, you kidding me Canada, though the film Goon about ice hockey was  very funny.

Whatever reason it was/is people are living somewhere else, but they want to pretend they are still at home, so they don’t get homesick. A little bit of home stops the homesickness. I can remember in the 1970s my mother was so utterly homesick, I can remember it so well, I could cry if I gave you all the details. So in 1973 she went back Home to Kerry with her sister and my sisters. Me and dad went too, 6 months later at Xmas, instead of revising for my mock exams, I did pass them, and a year early.

The pretence, or rather the treasuring of the old ways stops them from being forgotten and being neglected in the new world. However when you go back to the old country, you soon discover that you have been living in a bubble. The memory you have been treasuring is not the reality, you have created a relic and are living in it.

Now I’m throwing these ideas at you so you can look in the mirror and see if I’m right or have I just been a Devil’s Advocate. Time and Tide waits for no man, remember I am the son of Kerry Immigrants, my parents came in 1944, the war was still on, D Day had not begun. My own wife is from Shanghai, so I hear Chinese every day, and my 2 daughters are bilingual, even Totoro our cat is bilingual. So I live a two culture life and I can see how my multi-national neighbours live, I taught English as a 2^nd language to 3 different Nationalities too, so I hope you’ll see I’m not just Pontificating, see I slipped in another big word too.

In the end it’s not the flag you wrap yourself in, be it an old flag or a new flag. It’s how  you love your neighbour as yourself, will your neighbours bring you food and look out for you because they see you as being like themselves though culture and language are so very different. You the Native are being loved by the Samaritan newcomers.

In Gran Torino you have a film about “love” across Cultural divide, it’s a good film and Clint Eastwood’s highest grossing believe it or not. So to all my Russian, Polish, Ukrainian and even Czech readers, the Tee shirt I mentioned  with the man falling over drinking your vodka, it was Clint Eastwood, because as we all know he’s just a girl who can’t handle his vodka. Luckily I’m in Birmingham or he may just pee all over me. 

9.45 so 1,15 to write this