Top Tips For the Ex-Pat Wife

'Tis the season to be jolly, and just like one of Santa's little helpers, I like to be useful.  So for anyone seriously thinking of emigrating to the US, here are some more of my personal top tips for surviving life as an ex-pat wife in Southern California.

(1) Alcohol.

Consume lots of it and suddenly things don’t  look too bad at all.  On the other hand too much and things look a lot worse than they really are.  The ideal is to reach the happy medium.   Another top tip regarding alcohol – don’t take a teenager on a wine tasting tour of the Napa Valley.  We learnt that valuable lesson early on.

(2) Overcome Self Pity.

Definitely not helped by over-indulging in Number 1. Cries of “you don’t understand!” and “it’s alright for you – you go to work, school etc”  to the rest of the family will go unheard and will not provoke the reaction you require.  This is not because they don’t sympathise, it’s simply because after a while they get fed up of hearing it. Knuckle down and get on with it – you signed up willingly for this so you only have yourself to blame. 

(3)  De-sensitise. 

Develop a rhinoceros-like thick skin and learn not to take things personally - you will get knocked back and rebuffed especially when it comes to finding your feet and  forging new friendships.  Toughen up. Even a trip to the local supermarket used to reduce me to tears because I couldn’t find what I wanted on the shelves and I convinced myself the store manager was refusing to stock items to spite me.  Now I accept that’s just the way it is – just like I accept the  check-out assistant doesn’t really want to be my new BFF.

(4) Grab the Opportunities.

Following on from Numbers 2 & 3 once you have developed an inner and outer strength you can cope with anything.  Look on the bright side and find all the positives about your new lifestyle and homeland - the chance to explore a new country, experience new things, eat new food, meet new people, create an entirely new personality...

(5) Don’t give up.

There will be times when it will be very tempting to pack a bag and head for home but resist.  Be patient.  Any textbook ever written about immigration will stress it takes at least 12 months for a new country to feel like home and this is so true.  Culture shock will wear off – you do eventually develop immunity. 

(6) Keep in touch.

Even though it is important to integrate yourself into your new surroundings, you do need to maintain relationships with the folks back home.  Not only will this help to keep you sane but one day you might want to go back and need a place to stay.

(7) Play up the good bits.

Ever wanted to be the envy of all your old friends? Now is the golden opportunity – there must be some parts of your new lifestyle you know will make them dead jealous so brag about it. Your friends will then remind you how lucky you are.  Eventually you will agree. 

(8) Keep motivated.

It’s very easy to give in to apathy.  Even if you aren’t legally entitled to work,  which will certainly help with the envy issues in Number 7, you will need to keep yourself occupied.  Although like much else in America voluntary work is wrapped in bureaucracy, persevere and you should be able to find something to suit.  Failing that, take up a new hobby or master a new skill -  becoming an expert at procrastination doesn't count.  

(9) Count your blessings.

Are you healthy? Good, because America is not the place to be sick. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is a financial necessity.  Exercise regularly - endorphins are good for you and they're free.

(10) Develop a sense of humour.

Even if you didn’t have one before you will need one now.  Keep hold of it at all costs.

And if all else fails?  Start a blog.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 

The Big Clear Up

Nature has bitten back with a vengeance. More than two weeks on from the big storm and Pasadena’s clear up effort continues.  More than 75,000 homes were without power for five days.  Ten days later there were still houses waiting to be re-connected and complaints about inefficient utility companies and lack lustre responses abound.

Pasadena’s Rose Bowl stadium has been designated as the tree recycling depot – there will certainly be no shortage of logs for those winter fires and the Southern Californian mulch mountain is growing daily. Re-cycling is not a particularly popular past-time in the US and there is a noticeable absence of homeowners loading up their own cars with tree debris – they prefer instead to sweep it out into the road where it remains in large mounds presumably awaiting collection by the city council or the posse of Mexican gardeners.

This doesn’t altogether surprise me – here in affluent Pasadena very few homeowners will ever cut their own grass, wash their own car or clean their own loo.  Hardly surprising then that there is a distinct lack of residents gathering up their own leaves.

It also appears to be perfectly acceptable here to leave your rubbish out on the street  and rely  on someone else to cart it way. I regularly see abandoned three piece suites, the odd chest of drawers or a box of old books or children’s toys out on the sidewalk – we’d call that fly tipping in the UK and would receive a hefty fine. Here you just dump your stuff and hope that someone else will walk off with it. Rather surprisingly it’s a system that does actually work – as long as you don’t mind your neighbourhood looking like a junk yard for a few days.

Driving has become even more of a hazard than usual. Palm tree fronds and fallen branches still litter many roads and new chicanes appear daily around the accumulating garden waste burial mounds.  Traffic signals and street lamps are still down.  Major road junctions are functioning as chaotic twelve way stops and many drivers appear to have lost that rather elusive American common sense gene altogether.  Rather than co-operating in an orderly fashion most of these junctions are complete free-for-alls with accidents occurring on a daily basis.  So even if you were lucky enough to avoid being hit by a falling tree, there is a every chance now you will be hit by another car.

All this chaos is just the result of one night of heavy wind.  I don’t know if it was simply a question of being taken unawares, a lack of co-ordination, or even  lack of co-operation but the clear up is not going well. Heaven help California when there really is a big disaster – like an earthquake.  Ever since we arrived here and experienced our first minor earth tremor public service adverts have regularly appeared on TV reminding us to be prepared for the BIG ONE and to make sure we have our emergency disaster kit to hand - bottled water, dried food, batteries, torch, urgent medical supplies. Maybe a rake, wheelbarrow and large dose of community spirit would be good things to have on standby too.

A Blustery Day

We don’t get a lot of weather here in Southern California.  It’s basically dry, calm and sunny 90% of the year.

 This does make meteorology a rather unremarkable and fairly predictable career,  so naturally the local weather guys have learned to play up their roles a little bit.  When there is a slight variation to the norm it becomes a major event; a slight breeze and  a wind advisory is issued; coastal fog mixes with city smog to become the “marine layer” and a rare day of rain is a major storm.  

This week however, we had  genuine excitement in Pasadena because we actually had some real weather.  Santa Ana winds are a Southern Californian phenomenon that occur every Fall – usually hot dry winds famous for fanning the flames of those forest fires that regularly threaten celebrity homes up in the Hollywood Hills.

A wind advisory is usually issued for anything over five miles an hour which is hardly likely to  ruffle that immaculate Californian hair, so when this particular Santa Ana wind advisory was issued, nobody took much notice.  Batten down the hatches, said  Barbie the TV weather girl; tie your patio furniture down announced her team mate Ken.  Oh yeh?

Come about nine o-clock in the evening I noticed it had got a bit noisy outside; the palm trees were flapping recklessly about as the first of several sun loungers took off across the pool. Gusts of wind continued to rock the building all night. At seven o’clock the next morning Pasadena looked decidedly worse for wear. Local news reports told of blocked roads, broken power lines and numerous cars and houses all damaged by a positive plethora of falling trees.  Gusts of up to 90 miles an hour had been recorded in the night and a State of Emergency had been declared.  To the teenager’s delight  all schools were closed.

Fortunately there were no stories of human injuries or fatalities – remarkable really considering the number of trees that had actually come down.

So why so much destruction from a few gusts of high wind? Apparently a lot of it was to do with shallow root systems.  Rather unsurprisingly a lot of the trees growing up through Pasadena’s concrete sidewalks, and artistically planted on those nicely manicured suburban front lawns are not native to California.  The natural landscape in the foothills area is “chapparal”, Mediterranean style heathland dotted with low growing drought tolerant evergreens. 

As a non-native species myself I fully sympathise with these imported trees who find it so hard to put down roots in the inhospitable Southern Californian environment.  Planted to make the place look pretty and forced to survive on a supply of water derived almost entirely from domestic garden sprinklers, even in winter these deciduous trees have retained a fair amount of leaves  making them decidedly top heavy.  A stronger than normal puff of wind and over they go, taking half the sidewalk with them.

So whilst the city of Pasadena sweeps up; the insurance assessors and lawyers get to work, and the Mexican gardeners rub their hands together with glee, what  lessons can be learned from this catastrophe?

There’s no point re-filling those gaping holes in the street and on those manicured front lawns with yet another ornamental cherry tree.  It might sound too obvious, but my advice would be go native and plant a tumbleweed.

Black Friday

It’s not often I make a comment that America has got something right, but when it comes to shopping, having major retail sales before Christmas rather than after definitely makes sense.

The day after Thanksgiving Day is known as Black Friday.  This is the day when major retailers go into profit after 11 months in the red.  This is the day America hit the shops.

There was a bit of a fuss this year because some shops were actually planning to open their doors at 11.00 pm on Thanksgiving Day rather than waiting until one minute past midnight on Friday.  I don’t know what it is about opening a store in the small hours that makes everyone think they have got even more of a bargain than usual, but the psychology works.   If you want to grab a deal, you have to be there – it’s the early bird that gets the worm.

And some early birds certainly got more than they bargained for this year.  Along with news reports of police using stun guns on shoplifters during the opening frenzies, one woman was apparently arrested for pepper spraying her fellow bargain hunters to get them out of her way.  She was referred to by the newsreader as a “competitive” shopper. Disabling your rivals with a noxious substance competitive? Where I come from you'd call that cheating!!  

Americans do like to shop and they do like to think they are getting good value for money.  They lovingly collect hoards of “coupons” – discount vouchers which regularly appear in the mail box or come with the Sunday papers.  To me the word “coupon” conjures up connotations of war time ration books and a world of frugality – here it is exactly the opposite.  Coupons enable you to spend, spend, spend.  

The idea of being able to buy all our Christmas presents at discount prices was certainly very tempting and late on Friday afternoon we took a stroll to our nearest Macy’s store.  Elbows at the ready I was disappointed to discover the store itself was surprisingly deserted, although the shop floor did resemble the remnants of a rummage sale.  We did bag ourselves a couple of bargains but to be honest Macy’s is one of those stores that is always issuing “coupons” and having discount sales.  Canny shoppers can always get 10 or 20% off and it does make you wonder if anything is ever sold at full-price.  Again it’s all about the psychology.

After Black Friday comes Cyber Monday.  For anyone crushed in the stampede or too busy rubbing toxic dust out of their eyes to grab the Friday deals, Cyber Monday is the day to go on-line and double click on e-bargains galore.  Apparently it is the busiest day of the year for internet shopping, and the only hazard  would appear to be a mild case of RSI. 

Personally I think all this consumerism brings out the worse in all of us, and whilst I may be too late for this Christmas, I’ve told my family in the future we need downscale and economize.  Maybe just a small can of pepper spray will do the trick next year.