and so tomorrow, we are off! the vistas of vancouver and adjacent whistler mountain beckon. someone at work was asking me if i was excited, and i have to admit, i’ve been downplaying this all in my head – mostly, i think because we have so many future plans pinned on loving vancouver that if i don’t, i’ll be devastated. i’ve wanted to go for so long, that i can’t stand to be disillusioned. so instead, i am pretending i don’t care, as a way of staving off a failure of hope.

in telling my colleague this, she said, “but jen! that’s so sad! you’re talking yourself out of being excited when the anticipation is one of the best parts!”

and she’s right, of course. i’m cheating myself out of the full experience. as they say: expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed.

but the rub in that, is that it’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy.

so from tonight, i am officially excited. i’m cramming ski clothes into an overstuffed suitcase, finally reading the guidebook, and loading up the ipod.

vancouver, here we come! blogging may be light for the next fortnight.

the main drag – a jagged gorgeous winter

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i know i’ve been quiet the past few days – a combination of being busy, and waiting with bated breath for our holidays. t minus 2 days and counting.

but in the meantime… i have finally applied for another job. it’s a difficult move for me – i feel like i have a lot invested in the place i’ve worked for the better part of the last 5 years, i feel very indebted. and in many ways, i still don’t have a lot of confidence in my job skills here in the u.k. it’s taken me a long time to learn the system, to not feel self-conscious opening my mouth in new situations, to begin to understand some of the myriad intricacies of the workplace, and in particular, local government.

but life is too short to spend 35 hours a week being miserable, and if you don’t do something about it, you are then complicit in causing your own misery. i don’t want to be responsible for that. i deserve better. even if i don’t get this job, i’m stepping out of the rut and moving on.

so, fingers crossed, and holding my breath. that’s what i’m doing today.

more tomorrow.

cake – waiting

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surprise, surprise – i got into the edinburgh marathon! considering i entered the random ballot, with thousands of others, i really didn’t expect to!

however i’ve not been training… and we’re going on holiday next week. so i’m not entirely sure i’ll have enough time to get ready by 25th may!

we’ll have to see how it goes. but i’d love to run it if i can. edinburgh is probably my favourite place in the u.k. next to london. and can you imagine the scenery??

plus, there’s no uphills

van morrison – come running

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5 years
4 visas
£3K pounds
2 citizenship applications
1 deportation

finally, irrevocably, amazingly… i am here. i am full fledged, and bonafide. i am a loyal subject of the queen. i am an insider. i am a voter. i am a complete and equal citizen under the law. i am someone who counts.

i am thankful and brimming with emotion.

i *am* british.

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today is the 35th anniversary of roe v. wade, the landmark u.s. supreme court decision which gave women the right to legally own their bodies and reproductive choices.

this year’s blogging for choice topic is: why do you vote pro-choice?

i vote pro-choice because as a 35 year old, i’ve never known a life *without* full reproductive choice. it has always in my lifetime been my body, my choice.

so when i vote pro-choice, i’m not voting for a candidate who supports maintaining a constitutionally protected law…

i’m voting to maintain control over my body. for me, it really is that basic, that simple.

long live roe v. wade.

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my pats are headed back to the Super Bowl, baby!! they are now one game away from an unprecedented 19 – 0 record.

the best part? i’ll actually be on the same side of the atlantic to watch it! (okay, in canada, admittedly, which doesn’t really care much about the nfl… but still!!)

it gets sweeter every year.

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no longer do you have to be reasonably suspected of committing a crime in this country to be stopped and searched. lawmakers propose that police carry out random breathalyser tests for any motorists.

Police can currently carry out a breath test only if a motorist has been driving erratically, been involved in an accident or committed another offence while driving, such as having a faulty tail light or speeding.

The proposed changes would allow breath tests to be carried out at any time, with roadside checkpoints being set up at points where police were confident they could catch lawbreakers.

and yet some say it doesn’t go far enough:

“Random testing of drivers is long overdue,” he said. “These proposals are a step in the right direction but to have greater impact all levels of police officer should have the power to test anyone, at any time.

this kind of mentality is so pervasive in this country – let’s treat *everyone* like criminals until they prove they’re not – that i sometimes can’t believe i live here. how long until this is extended to random stop and searches for knives, or i.d. cards? why not try teaching more responsible drinking habits (to the vast numbers of heavy drinkers in this country) instead of subjecting everyone to a needless invasion of privacy?

why is handing over one’s civil rights always seen as the easier route? i’ll never understand it. and i’ll not stand for it – not for long. not for me.

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kim and i met up for an afternoon out. we hit up wahaca for a late lunch and margaritas, then book shopping and a pilgrimage to the cybercandy store, where i spent nearly £20 on sweets from my childhood.

we weren’t allowed sweets or sodas in our house growing up, and as an early sugar addict, i had to get my fix. not coincidentally then, some of my earliest memories about candy involve stealing.

for example, the first time i tried stealing anything, i was probably about 7 and i had convinced my (younger) brother to stuff a roll of lifesavers in his underwear. we were caught at our bumbling attempts at subterfuge, and forced to spend a whole saturday composing letters of apology, then a further saturday presenting those letters to the stern store manager in person.

as a result, let’s just say we got very good at stealing, very quickly. we were, however, too scared to throw away the wrappers from our purloined contraband, so we stuffed all the incriminating evidence into my kid sister’s toy desk. i’m not sure whatever happened to those wrappers, or what kind of rap my sister ended up taking – being 5 years younger and a whole lot smaller, she was often easily “persuaded” to confess.

later, i became adept at filching money from my mother’s purse – just a few cents here or there. i would stop off at droughan’s drugstore – a true five and dime relic around the corner from school – and buy loose penny candies and lucky rabbits’ feet keychains in rainbow colours. of course, i couldn’t bring the rabbits’ feet home without arousing suspicion, so i left them at my desk at school, festooned around the back of my chair. but at the end of the school year when we had to clean out our desks, what could i do? i brought them home and planted them in my brother’s belongings. when my mother found them, she believed she’d finally caught my brother red-handed…and given the amount of trouble my brother was usually in, it wasn’t such a stretch of the imagination. once again, someone else took the blame for my illicit activities.

because sweets were so restricted in our house, there were no sugary sodas kept in the pantry. instead, there was always a two litre of my mother’s diet tab. back then it was flavoured with saccharine, leaving a bitter aftertaste in the mouth – but i didn’t care. i would slyly steal big slugs of it, slowly loosening the cap to avoid the telltale hiss. when the levels dipped too low, i’d have to top up the bottle with a little water. my mother must have known… but i never got caught.

and so standing in the middle of the candy shop, gleefully filling my bucket with nostalgic goodies, i can only conclude that my parents’ experiment with raising a sugar-free child failed spectacularly, and turned me into a light-fingered thief along the way.

probably not the outcome they intended.

new edition – candy girl

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had our friends kerryn and tracey round for dinner last night. as i haven’t cooked in a while i decided to do an all south african themed meal. we had:

bobotie – South African version of a curried mince pie topped with savoury baked egg custard

yellow rice with raisins – traditional accompaniment to bobotie

tomato and onion kachoomer – chopped side salad

cornbread

and for pudding, vetkoek - sweet fried dough with butter and jam

a few nice south african wines to go with.

i really wish i’d thought to take a photo of it. it’s always a little nerve-wracking cooking people’s childhood dishes, particularly where i have no real frame of reference. but last night three saffas testified to the authenticity of my recipes and cleaned their plates… i was well chuffed!

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yet another parent has asked doctors to electively amputate a part of their disabled child.

although the medical board has turned her down, it astounds me that she found a consultant who agreed to carry out the operation in the first place.

i’ve said a lot about this before in commenting on the ashley case. i really can’t put into words just how deeply this saddens and sickens me – the idea that we should be medically manipulating disabled people’s bodies to fit our own needs is like something out of a horror movie.

not only is it incredibly disturbing that we think it’s okay to perform operations on people who lack the capacity to consent simply to make things “easier”, but it’s even more unnerving that as a society we seem to think that a lack of capacity to consent is the same thing as a lack of rights.

we simply do *not* have the right to take people’s reproductive organs away simply because we think they’re too “messy” and they’ll never use them. if it’s not something we would consider for a 15 year old of average intelligence, it should not be something we consider for someone with a learning disability.

i’m not speaking from some kind of ivory tower here – i’ve changed the menstrual pads of many women with learning disabilities. i have washed them, dressed them, lifted them into and out of wheelchairs and on and off of toilets. and to those who say periods cause a “indignity” to disabled people who can’t care for themselves, i say this:

you only lose your dignity when people stop treating you with any.

you don’t get allocated any fewer rights the lower your i.q. score….but it would seem you get fewer people willing to stand up for them.

the new pornographers – my rights versus yours

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this is what i had for breakfast (courtesy of a colleague)

a red velvet cupcake from the american hummingbird bakery. delectable, with the best cream cheese frosting i’ve ever had in my life. with a strong, sweet cup of coffee.

heaven.

no better start to the day.

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i love my mum. i often complain that she never calls me often enough. however when she does call, she has a knack for doing so at inopportune times, like just as i’m getting ready for bed, or while i’m at the pub on a saturday night.

so when i was sitting down to watch my beloved masterchef (which is my television crack addiction) and the phone rang… i was sorely tempted to let it go to answerphone. sorely, sorely, sorely.

it was mum. with a rare afternoon off, she’d been thoughtful enough to pick up the phone and call her eldest daughter long-distance. because she is a good mother.

and the whole time i was talking to her, i couldn’t help groaning inwardly, knowing i was missing the drama and tension of the masterchef showdown.

we hung up 30 seconds after my programme ended.

yes, i know, i’m going to hell.

cake – no phone

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i finally got a chance to sit down and watch michael moore’s movie “sicko” – his scathing indictment of the healthcare industry in america.

and it is scathing. is it manipulative, simplistic and cheaply sentimental? of course. but that doesn’t detract from the single most pointedly undeniable fact: in the one country in the world which has enough resources to take care of every citizen, people routinely die from lack of basic healthcare and/or corporate greed by insurance companies.

once you’ve lived somewhere where healthcare is considered a basic human right – irrespective of age, employment, finances, medical history – you can never go back to looking at the madness of hmos and medicaid and insurance claims as “just the way things are”. socialised healthcare has its problems to be sure, but i would never want to live without it.

and as someone who once spent 2 months uninsured, praying fervently that nothing bad would befall me in that 8 week time period, i realised that probably the single biggest benefit of becoming a british citizen, is that i will never, ever have to be in that position again. no matter what happens to me throughout the rest of my life, i can always move back to the uk and receive medical treatment.

there’s a part of the movie where moore is meeting with american citizens who live in france, and they’re discussing the socialised healthcare there. and one woman talks about how she feels guilty that she enjoys the security of free healthcare, and the rest of her family who live back in the u.s. do not.

and i feel the same. i know people who’ve stayed at shitty jobs – the kind that make you cry every day – because they needed the insurance. i know people with serious health issues, who get bottom of the barrel care and are grateful for it, because they have no money. i know people who would never be accepted under any private policy because of their pre-existing conditions. i know people who’ve been pregnant and uninsured. and i feel guilty that i’ll never have to be faced with those problems.

it’s insanity. it is the sign of a terminally sick society when someone has to choose which severed finger they can afford to have re-attached, and which one they can do without (as someone at the beginning of the movie had to do).

and i’m so lucky it will never be me.

the star spangles – take care of us

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you know, i’ve not bought non-free range chicken (or any other non-free range meat) in about 2 years now. i didn’t want to contribute to the horrific industrial-style torture of animals.

but watching jamie oliver kill a dozen little fluffy baby chicks on television, because they’re male and therefore economically not worth keeping alive, has pretty much put me off chicken altogether for good, i think.

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although our television is usually on, i don’t actually watch it very often. even less often do i make the time to sit down and watch a specific programme… but for the past season i’ve found myself making a point of making time to watch “how to look good naked”.

at first blush, it looks like a standard makeover show – women unhappy with their looks getting professional advice and new haircuts. but what makes this programme unique and worthwhile, (rather than just another hour long advert for increasing the profits of the beauty industry at the expense of women’s self-esteem), is that the entire message throughout the show is *not* about changing how you look, but about changing how you feel.

yes, you read that right. there are no endorsements for plastic surgery, no discussions about dieting, not even a suggestion for healthy exercise. the women learn to feel good about themselves, just as they are – lumps, bumps, and all. throughout the programme, women of all sizes parade around in nothing more than their cotton underwear, and the climax of the show consists of a segment where the woman takes part in a naked photo shoot.

if that idea doesn’t sound like the standard recipe for successful television, you’d usually be right. in a day and age where reality makeover shows find success by focusing almost exclusively on making people look younger, thinner, and artificially enhanced, the idea that you can be beautiful without changing a single thing – that in fact you already *are* beautiful and just don’t know it yet – is so singular as to be revolutionary.

part of the reason i love the show, is that it makes me feel happier and more confident in my *own* body – and i would hazard to guess that its popularity is based in working exactly the same magic for others. there’s always a huge smile on my face at the end of the show when the woman (who sometimes hasn’t even let her own husband see her naked) is strutting her stuff in her altogether in front of a giant crowd of people – there is something so uplifting about seeing a woman full of spirit and self-assurance, it *is* beautiful. and granted, there is still some emphasis on makeup and “foundation garments” as part of a way to enhance one’s overall appearance, (so it’s not entirely free from the conventional standards of beauty) but the overall motif basically boils down to this: looking sexy comes from feeling sexy, and feeling sexy comes from loving your body just as it is.

and while it is depressing to realise just how many of the shows out there make money by making women feel bad about themselves based solely on their appearance, it is unbelievably exciting to see a show that radically departs from that formula by making women feel good about who they are inside, irrespective of body size or shape. to me, that’s television worth watching.

i’ve recently discovered that there’s a new spinoff version of “how to look good naked” for the states. let’s hope it’s the start of a trend.

bjork – big time sensuality

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j: your cat left a present for you in his litter box…

me: (unimpressed) oh he did, did he…

j: now he is using toilet paper…

me: (shoots him a puzzled look) toilet paper???

j: … a.k.a. *his tongue*

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ha ha ha ha ha!!!

for those of you american readers who don’t know, jeremy clarkson is a controversial, opinionated tv presenter and columnist… the uk’s version of bill o’reilly, if bill o’reilly was a more civilised form of neanderthal who drove racecars. he’s recently published his bank details in a column in response to the government’s loss of data on 25 million people, in an effort to prove it was much ado about nothing.

he’s got his comeuppance now.

Gobby TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has been forced to reverse his position after he lost money after publishing his bank account details in a newspaper column.

The Top Gear presenter rather rashly published his account details in a column in The Sun to back up his claims that the child benefit data loss furore, which resulted in the loss of unencrypted CDs containing bank details of 25m people, was a lot of fuss about nothing.

Clarkson published his bank account number and sort code, along with clues to his address, insisting that the worst that could happen was that someone could pay money into his account.

Days later Clarkson was forced to admit he was wrong after an unidentified prankster set up a £500 direct debit from the presenter’s account in favour of charity Diabetes UK, the BBC reports.

“The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again,” Clarkson said in a column published in the Sunday Times. “I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.”

Clarkson, never one to shy away from colourful or controversial commentary, is now hopping mad over the data loss. “Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy,” he said.

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There’s been a lot of discussion about the upcoming presidential elections on a forum I am a member of, ever since the Iowa caucus results this week. And to this point, I’ve found myself shying away from jumping into any particular camp. I feel like I’ve been fairly disengaged from the campaigning thus far – which is probably not a bad thing, considering there’s still 11 months left to go. But I’m at a point where I want to feel like I have an idea of who I’d put my vote behind, if I had to choose.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about this the past few days, and doing some background reading. Unfortunately, I’m a bleeding heart liberal and pacifist (I know!! shock! surprise!! pick your jaw up off the floor!! ) so the only candidate whose platform really jibes with all my own personal views is Dennis Kucinich… who won’t make it out of the first round of primaries. He’s the only candidate I could ever enthusiastically support as a champion of my brand of peace and social justice.

Which leaves Clinton and Obama – both extremely intelligent, diplomatic, capable people, who I think could restore some international good will. Who could probably surround themselves with smart support and reasoned experience to make up for their own lack thereof.

Til recently, I suspected that I’d probably end up voting for Hillary – while I’ve never been happy her more centrist views, she has a commanding Thatcheresque quality about her. She’ll never give people the warm fuzzies, but I thought, “Okay, she seems like she could run a country, even if I might not like the way she’d run it.”

And disappointingly, both of them refuse to take a stand against the death penalty. Both of them have refused to support gay marriage (or alternatively, taking the state out of marriage entirely and giving everyone civil unions). Both of them have voted for the Mexico/US fence Both are staunchly pro-Israel, though that’s completely unsurprising (i’m not anti-israel as much as I’m against blindly supporting a country and leadership which has plenty of its own failings).

More worryingly, Hillary has said stated that she believes national security always trumps human rights – which is how we ended up with Guantanamo Bay. And she supports making flag-burning illegal – something which to my mind, directly seeks to undermine the most fundamental principles of the First Amendment.

So I think I’m beginning to lean towards Obama, for a few salient political reasons (he supports a guest worker programme [on of the only things I have ever agreed with Dubya on], he wants to begin ending our involvement in Iraq *now* as opposed to some nebulous future date, his anti-lobbyist stance, and his belief in a tolerant, religiously diverse nation/government which does not seek to impose its religious beliefs on others [and perhaps I believe this more since his father became an atheist and his mother was "spiritual but skeptical of organised religion"])… but mostly because I’m beginning to realise I want to believe in somebody’s enthusiasm.

I know it’s just my wide-eyed idealism shining through. But I think more than anything else, what I really want is to believe in somebody that believes. Someone who is really passionate about their vision, someone who wholeheartedly thinks that they can effect change. I’m tired as hell of cynicism and jaundiced opinion. I’m tired of backpedalling and non-committal evasiveness. I want some backbone and outspoken resolution. I want someone who refuses to pander to influence. I want to have someone speak with conviction and have people believe it. I want idealism and optimism and someone who can make me hope again. I want something that resonates.

I once heard Ralph Nader say that unless people start voting for leaders they want and believe in, instead of against people they don’t want out of fear and cynicism, the system will never change. I’ve really taken that to heart – since the 2000 elections, I have made a conscious decision to stop voting out of the the “least evil” principle. And while many would say that means that I am “wasting” my vote by sometimes voting for people who have no realistic chance of winning, it’s the only basis on which I want to engage in the electoral process anymore.

If I can’t vote from my heart, I don’t want to vote at all.

I’d love it if Kucinich ran as a 3rd party candidate so I could vote for him. (And if Hillary gets the Democratic nod, I may just have to write him in.) But in the absence of that unlikely ballot scenario, I think I want to be able to vote for someone who has the audacity to hope.

Because if you’re not going to vote for someone you *want to lead the country*, what the hell is the point?

Count me in.

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this expat experience is always unfolding, always new, in ways i never could have anticipated.

i had a lunch date with an american friend of mine this afternoon. she’s in the process of getting married, moving over, changing her life upside-down to be with the man she loves. and as we’re friends of a newish sort, much of the conversation ended up gravitating towards what it’s like to undertake such a monumental leap of faith. the kind of courage it takes to throw yourself into a new environment, with only the solid assurance of your own capabilities to rely on. and she was talking about how it is both an exciting and scary prospect, in equal measure – which is true, of course. but in my attempts to reassure her that it’s not really as frightening as it seems once you are actually in it, doing it, i realised that i’d forgotten just how overwhelming a prospect it once was for me too. i was sitting there blithely glossing over just how hard it can be to make that leap – to believe not only in the uncertain future, but to believe in yourself and your ability to embrace whatever unforseen things that future may hold. to commit to that future with everything you have in the present, and to commit to trusting in yourself with your whole heart.

it’s not easy. in fact, it’s damn hard. to pretend that it’s not, is to invalidate those feelings – those conflicting, exhilarating, anxious, happy, terrifying feelings, that every expat has had.

it’s only because i’m able to look back on that time from the place i’m at now – secure in the knowledge that whatever i was feeling then, i made it through somehow – that those emotions and memories have faded. because it wasn’t easy – not at all.

but it’s good to be able to say now, with sincerity, that it also wasn’t as hard as i thought.

and that one day, she’ll be able to say the same.

motion city soundtrack – everything is alright

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so the office i work in is predominantly professional women. we’re talking social workers, managers, psychologists, speech therapists, etc. all educated, well groomed, well dressed women.

and yet, when i went into the women’s restroom today, and entered the toilet stall…

…there, on the toilet, *behind* the lid hinge, where the porcelain abuts the wall…

…was a small, unmistakeable, perfectly formed turd.

which means one of those educated, well groomed, professional women… is not properly toilet trained.

i just had to tell someone.

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i’ve been laughing all day at the dire weather warnings over a predicted 4 cm of snow (2 cm in london). headlines in yesterdays evening papers screamed about the “travel chaos” that would ensue, warning that by rush hour this evening the nation would be held hostage in the grip of a few snowflakes. everyone eagerly anticipated a snow day on friday.

and what has materialised? almost less than nothing. as usual, the scottish highlands got a little. a few other northern areas got “drifts of up to 4 cm”.

newsflash: 4 cm is not, by any stretch of the wildfire imagination, a “drift”.

for purposes of comparison, boston got more than 2 feet of snow in december alone.

sometimes life in london is sublimely absurd.

the gris gris – winter weather

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