Baby (erm Scotland), Please Don't Go

Hiking in Glencoe, 2009

I'm just returned from a glorious 4-day stint in Tasmania, but more about that later. The upcoming Scottish independence referendum has been much on my mind lately. I lived in Scotland for four wet, windy, wonderful years and while in Tasmania this week, I was seeing Scotland at every turn.

Tasmania and Scotland share more in common than just good looks. Both are occasionally forgotten outposts of a larger nation. Tasmanians talk about the 'mainland' and 'mainlanders' much the way Scots frequently talk about their southern neighbors - with mingled disdain and reverence.

Both are places where it is truly possible to leave the hubbub of modern life behind. You can still hear snatches of Gaelic in the highlands and islands of Scotland and Tasmania has no international airport; it is the kind of place where you can still rock up to the airport just 15 minutes before departure.

These are all wonderful things; and Tasmanians and Scots alike are justifiably proud of the beautiful, unique and quirky place that they get to call home. But they are also an integral, and I dare say essential, part of a larger collective. Australia would not be Australia without Tasmania, much as I find a United Kingdom without Scotland unfathomable.

I find it upsetting enough that England, Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland maintain separate teams in the World Cup and Commonwealth Games (but not the Olympics - please someone explain?!?) And that is just sports that I don't even care about; I can't imagine how upset I'd be by an actual divorce.

I have sympathy for the independence movement - I don't like the Tories much either. But I can't help but feel that this is largely what this vote is about or has become about; it's an anti-Tory referendum. It feels a bit petulant, a lot of people south of the border don't like Cameron & Co. and still bear the same scars of Thatcherism.  The vision of an independent Scotland spun by the left-leaning, socially-minded Scottish intelligentsia (see wonderful article by Irvine Welsh) is alluring, if hopelessly romantic, overly optimistic and disconcertingly quiet on the issue of currency and economy.

St Andrews

And further, the values, hopes and ambitions espoused by the gentle left are hardly those of Alex Salmond and his cronies who will, in fact, inherit the throne (so to speak). The political difference between the entrenched Labour elite and Alex Salmond's SNP is nothing more than the location of an office in Westminster versus Edinburgh. In an independent Scotland the new politics will quickly become the old politics; Alex Salmond is already taking Rupert Murdoch's phone calls.

I'm not an economist (by any stretch) and I want to keep this light, but suffice it to say that the economic nirvana envisioned by the Yes Campaign will be difficult (impossible?) to achieve whilst tethered to the her majesty's pound and their Bank of England overlords.  Paul Krugman put it rather more eloquently (and in far more detail), but the gist of it was, currency control is everything, just think about the state of the Spanish economy . . .

We left Scotland just as Alex Salmond was becoming a household name - North and South of the border. I think he is smart, sly and has masterfully manipulated the unpopularity of a Tory government for his own political ends. I have no personal stake in this vote and we left Scotland nearly five years ago now; but aside from my home town, it is the place I've called home the longest.

My husband is a half-caste (firmly in the 'No' Camp and proud of his Scottish heritage) and we're both graduates of the University of St Andrews. At 601 years it is third oldest university in the English-speaking world and pre-dates the Union of the Crowns by nearly 200 years - clearly Scotland was doing pretty well before they wedded England and I see no reason to think that an independent Scotland would not eventually succeed. But, I do think the post-independence road will be much harder than many are prepared to admit.

Regardless of which way Scotland goes next week, I wish Scotland nothing but success and prosperity, but I do hope they decide to stay.

24 hours in London

Having survived the 13 and a half hour flight from KL to London, my re-entry into the western world for the first time in 417 days went pretty smoothly.  Even Heathrow was kind to me and I was through immigration and had my bags in 30 minutes.

I hopped on the wildly overpriced ($30.70 for a one way-ticket) but super convenient Heathrow Express and 15 minutes later I was at Paddington Station.  A quick glance at the Tube map (Bakerloo to Victoria - how could I have forgotten?) and I was bound for Brixton - a trendy London borough which had a bit of reputation the last time I hauled out to South London (2003) that is known for it's Afro-Caribbean flavor. Gentrification has set in the last 9 years and now it's one of the trendiest, most diverse and almost affordable places to live in London.

Like other major cities around the world, Londoners are not particularly famed for their friendliness. But in the nearly two years since I was last in the UK, I had completely forgotten about that unfailing, unrelenting habit British people have of saying 'please' and 'thank you'.  (In Malaysia, you simply get 'can' or 'cannot' in response to virtually every question - or statement.) I had also completely forgotten about the British love of forming a queue.

My route to Brixton involved a change at Oxford Street - London's premier shopping district - at 6:00 on a Saturday with only three weeks until Christmas.  I was gobsmacked by the orderliness of it all.  Anywhere in Southeast Asia (Singapore excepted) this would have resulted in a massive free for all - pushing, shoving, elbowing, stomping on feet - but instead people waited patiently for passengers to exit (what a concept!) and then in an orderly fashion we crammed ourselves into the carriage, while others waited patiently on the platform for the following train that was just a minute or two behind.

It was bliss. I can't remember the last time I felt that relaxed on public transportation!

I arrived in Brixton and met up with my dear friend and hostess, Rachel, and we set off for a delightful little restaurant called Honest Burger in Brixton Village (If you like a good old-fashioned burger, a touch on the rare side with delicious toppings such as cranberry relish, fried camembert, watercress and poppy seeds - this is the place for you.)

Our walk to Brixton Village brought me face to face with a crosswalk (or to be a Brit about it, zebra crossing).  We approached the crosswalk and Rachel just strolled into the street.  I remained glued to the pavement, braced for Rachel's swift and sudden demise by a car careening down the street at approximately 200 miles an hour.  She got across, I looked up, noticed a car waiting patiently for me to cross and she said, 'what the hell are you doing?' It all came rushing back, and I thought to myself, 'I could play at the this zebra crossing all day.  It's amazing.'

My 24 hours in London went by all too quickly, and now I'm in Chicago - London's chief rival for my affection (London or Chicago, I can never settle on a favorite)..

Anyway, since my return I've been maintaining a list of wonderful things I've forgotten about and/or previously took completely for granted:

• toilet paper
• dry bathrooms (with no muddy footprints on the toilet seat)
• real napkins that are not made of tissue/toilet paper
• knives in restaurants
• large gaps between cars travelling at high speeds
• a strict adherence to red lights and other traffic signals
• a complete lack of illegal parking
• people who walk at an acceptable speed (no Malaysian shuffle here!)

In short, I don't mean for this to sound like some anti-Asia rant, it's just really, really good to be home. 

Oh and for the record, I am completely embracing the cold weather.  It's so refreshing.

Weather woes

So Facebook tells me that there is a bit of a heatwave in the Midwest.  Welcome to my world.

Coming from a place that truly has four seasons, it is the birthright of Midwesterners to complain about the weather. Winters are wiled away dreaming of swimming pools, fireflies and the scent freshly mown grass.  Come summer you yearn for that nip of crisp autumn air, hot chocolate and the first big snow.  Then there is March, everyone hates March.

I have now been 'seasonless' for 7 years.  After five years in the UK (four in Scotland and one in England) I can say with confidence that the tales about bad British weather - are not nearly dramatic enough.  It's awful.  I had been to the UK twice before I moved there, but only for a total of a few months time - not long enough to grasp how truly miserable it really is.

Don't get my wrong, I am an Anglophile through and through.  I love the UK.  In many ways it offers a much higher standard of living than the US (excellent healthcare, 39 weeks statutory maternity leave, and 28 days minimum paid vacation), the food is far better than its reputation allows, they have fine ales, the people are generally charming (hell, I married one of them) and it's full to bursting with history, culture and diversity.

But, there is the weather.

The Scottish tourism board says it rains 250 days a year (yeah right, more like 350).  On the rare occasion it's not raining there are the days where it so grey and/or so windy as to make no difference.  It never gets warm enough to wear shorts, the North Sea (on the east coast where I lived) remains dangerously cold year round and in the winter it is pitch black by 4:00pm.  On a nice day there is potentially nowhere nicer on the planet, Scotland is gorgeous, but you might only get 10 days like that in a year.

England is only marginally better.  It doesn't get dark quite so early and you might be able to justify breaking out a pair of shorts once or twice in a year, but the seasons don't really change - British weather is really one long extended spring followed by a long extended winter.  On the rare occasion the weather does change - panic and chaos ensue.

Two years ago at Christmas the UK had a cold snap.  My husband was in the air - en route to London from Malaysia when the snow started falling.  I lost him for two entire days.  Heathrow was closed, the other UK airports were either closed or didn't have runways big enough to cope with an A380 (the Airbus jumbo-jet that carries 500+ passengers).  They eventually landed in Paris, the airline tried to send him back to their base in Dubai.  After 5 hours of queuing he finally managed to get Eurostar tickets and a train to London.  After 56 hours of travel, he finally managed to call me in Chicago to let me know he was alive and that Don Quixote had nothing on him. Meanwhile, this is how Heathrow was dealing with the snow:

So when we decided to move to Malaysia the weather was potentially the single thing about which we were most excited.  Just a couple hundred miles from the equator, the weather here really does never change.  The amount of rain varies a bit throughout the year, but the temperature generally peaks at between 93-97 degrees everyday, it rarely dips below 80 even at night and the humidity is always high.

When we first got here the novelty of the hot weather was such that we spent every moment we could outside.  Now we've gone a bit native and generally agree that it's too hot to go outside.  Don't get me wrong, I love the weather here - and maintaining a wardrobe for just one season is brilliant - but it's amazing how quickly you take things for granted.  In no time my Midwest roots will get the better of me and I too will be yearning for cold and snow.

So, a bit of free advice - enjoy this heatwave while it lasts.