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December 06, 2004
Salida
Probably I can blame Fill for my decision to leave England for good. He’s on leave for the next few days, however, so hopefully I can have reached a concrete decision by the next time I see him. Failing that, I’ll have decapitated a few people.
For the erratic readers of these websites, Fill (Filipe) is my sole friend at work. We swap jokes which Dominic says should never see the light of day, and spend our fag breaks moaning about our jobs. When I’m standing at London Bridge or Waterloo East, waiting for my train home, I’ll still be chuckling over the day’s jokes.
It was never my plan to stay in England for this long. The last time leaving was a reality was four years ago, but I chose to stay as I didn’t feel I could just run away, no matter how easy it may have been then. I’ve known ever since, however, that I would leave, if not where to and when. My goal has always been to return to Mexico, and now seems to be the ideal time to do that.
I’m not running away any more. No doubt I could stay for Sammi and Ana, the only two who care about my thoughts around leaving, or maybe who are still awake at this hour, but I can’t get away from this feeling that living in London is a lot like having your heart ripped out from your chest and trampled on constantly till it finally gives up beating. My life is about caring for others; I can’t do a whole lot if my heart is bruised beyond repair.
I’ve spent this weekend wandering around my flat, observing what I have, and seeing packing crates at all times. When I don’t see the packing crates, I see sticky labels, either noting what’s to go into storage, what’s to be shipped, what’s to go with me. My mother has always been sensitive about my having a piano, and she told me earlier under no circumstances should I risk shipping mine; it’d be easier to buy a new one. The only things I forgot to notice were my plants – the eighteen plants in the kitchen, the five seedling trays in the living room – hopefully I can persuade Sarah to give them a loving home. I can’t believe I didn’t even think about them earlier, but they’ll ultimately be the hardest thing for me to leave, along with the rest of my garden.
There are three reasons behind my thinking of leaving, regardless of the contributing factors, the largest of which is called Gina; I can’t rent out my spare room, I’m probably going to be losing my job; I hate the lifestyle London expects me to settle for.
Two years ago – a few months after my aborted move to Dublin – my plan was to move to Paris. I love Arabic music, dance and literature, so why not? I got offered a job here in London the same day I was all set to apply for jobs over there, and that job probably has the most to do with why I’m thinking of emigrating.
I can talk till I’m blue in the face and choking, but I’ll still probably never be able to explain the Project’s culture, much less what it meant to me, as a stranded half-Mexican without family. It became my family. My colleagues meant more to me than my own friends did. I didn’t question it. And then my contract came to an end. In three weeks at Lewisham, I made friends with all my colleagues, and with three of them in particular; in four weeks at the RCN, I’ve learned to despise everyone I share an office with, and have decided to revert to heavy metal to help me get through each day. I’ve listened to Egyptian and Algerian pop for ten years; this is serious regression for me.
Ultimately, however, this isn’t what I signed up for. I may have a lovely flat, but zero quality of life outside of it. I loathe my job, regardless of what I get paid to swap jokes with Fill. I’m violently phobic about being cold, which means that, apart from shivering outside on an hourly basis while at work, I’ll do all I can to avoid stepping outside for the next few months.
Most of all, however, the Mexican within is sobbing. While on the Project, I could have my sixteen plants, eighteen boxes of herbal tea and ready humour; now I’m expected to sit in a silent office and not spend too much time in the other office where people at least talk to me. I joked to Fill a few days ago that, as I’m spending so little time speaking to others, I’m having to make up for lost swearing time, but in reality, it’s my job and those outside of it who make me want to swear without ever stopping. The last time I ever felt like that was when I lived in Nicaragua, and although I don’t see the connection, I’m still startled by it.
My job is only one of the factors. For the most part, I’ve created a really lovely home for myself, only nobody wants to share it with me. At the end of the day, however, I don’t want to pretend to be someone I’m not. My main motive in staying in London this long was to track down Eric, and now that I’ve found him, and shed most of my Fuerteventura friends along the way, there’s nothing left to keep me here.
Margarita always said that you should leave a party while the energy was still high. I’ve got years’ worth of good memories of living in London. For the most part I don’t regret having lived here, even despite the harsh lessons it’s taught me. But despite my wanting to move to Paris, Spain or Holland, I know that all I really want is to move back home, somewhere I’ll feel less foreign, where I’ll have to waste less energy defending myself. Somewhere, where, as in ‘Insomnia’, I won’t even have to question my right to be standing there, whereas if I was in New Cross, I’d be looking around anxiously to see who was creeping up on me. I’ve said it before: I don’t like the person I become when I live in England.
I just wanna go. I don’t know how much use I’ll be to Ana and Sammi if I’m a continent and multiple time zones away, but that still wouldn’t be enough to make me stop thinking of them, much less of my Project friends. I so dearly want a Christmas lunch or dinner with Jenny, Laura, Rahat and Matt, but I do have to accept that the strangeness over my leaving may never make that possible.
It’s not even those few. Just as, at the time, my last boyfriend seemed to be the best and worst relationship I'd had, so was the Project my best and worst job. I should have emigrated then, no matter what; I should have accepted that I’d never find another workplace where I’d feel so much at home. Perhaps I want to leave because I’m no longer with them. Maybe I just feel that I’ve learned my lesson, and that I’m beyond sick of suffering.
Posted by chantal at 12:37 AM | TrackBack
December 05, 2004
Insomnia
Actually, not so much a case of insomnia as the combination of a very early night, and then finding myself very wide awake four hours later.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking so hard about Central America and Mexico lately, especially today when I’ve spent most of the day mulling over the reasons and practicalities of moving back, but I’ve been finding myself putting my book to one side over the last hour, and stepping back to the nights where, around this time at night, I’d find myself standing outside some truck stop on an overnight bus journey.
The roads are so bad over there, few buses dare to travel at night. The only two routes I’ve taken where they’ll take their chances are in Mexico, and travelling between San José in Costa Rica to Panamá City. Nearly four years ago, the typical half-hour (most of which would be spent waiting for the border crossing to open, and chatting with the money changers) of crossing from Nicaragua into Costa Rica ended up taking the whole day, and my mother and I managed to get seats on what was probably the last bus of the day down to the capital.
Because of my archaeology work, because of being a compulsive wanderer, because of whatever reasons I’m too sleepy to think of right now, my trips back to Central America always involved numerous lengthy bus rides up and down the continent. These are the kinds of journeys where it can take half a day to travel less than a finger’s width on my large-scale map in my hallway. Where, if you religiously take the first bus of the day and keep travelling till the last, it might only take you a day and a half to cross a country. The local buses stop frequently, with vendors surrounding both sides of the bus, selling randomly-coloured liquid in plastic bags and various edibles. The larger buses – the long-distance, or international buses – have their allotted scheduled stops, however, and that’s what I’m thinking of now.
Normally I try to avoid taking the Pullman buses, as they reliably make me feel violently ill, however they’re the only buses which leave you standing outside cafés in some unknown stretch of road for about half an hour while the driver works his way through a three-course meal.
Also, normally I love cities by night, as their character and feel change so completely. I’ve spent countless hours standing by roadsides waiting for the driver to finish eating, but something about this time of night reminds me of those nights spent doing much the same at roughly the same time as now. Though Central American culture is very external, by now, the streets would be deserted, the wicker chairs and tables brought back inside off the pavement, the doors shut and bolted against the night. Standing outside in the muggy warmth, maybe seeing only one or two lorries rush past in that half-hour, time seems to take a fag break; the emptiness of the space I’m standing in and looking at feeling so peaceful despite the sleepy cheerfulness of my fellow passengers in the café behind me. During the day, time resumes its work, there are more buses queued up, more passengers standing beside me, more things clamouring for attention, and it’s hard to regain that absorption of the view.
In my mind, it’s four years ago, and I’m on that late bus down from the border. I’m travelling with my mother, my harp, and a family of three who don’t speak any Spanish. Next door to the café, there’s a vegetable shop. Looking over the Pan-American Highway, known as the Interamericana in Costa Rica, but otherwise a country lane by English standards, I feel a peace, a relaxation, a groundedness I rarely get elsewhere. I could stand there for hours, knowing that that’s where I want to be, where I need to be, especially to accumulate what I need to make sense of my life in England away from there, but I know that the bus will be leaving soon, that there are those who need me.
There are so many reasons I love and miss Central America so very much. Because of my habit of cross-country travelling, I’ve seen most towns and cities by late night and early morning. But, as the bus terminal described in ‘San Pedro Sula Dreams’ is one of my enduring daytime memories, by whichever twist of fate, standing outside a bus stop-off is one of my strongest nighttime memories of all the places I’ve been to or lived in, and one of the very few which give me the greatest sense of belonging.
Posted by chantal at 05:14 AM | TrackBack
December 03, 2004
The Hot Chocolates Don’t Work
I’ve never had such a bloody awful day at work. Ever. It was so bad that I couldn’t leave my desk, as I’d storm out of the office if I did; if I went outside for a cigarette, I knew I’d never return. Admittedly, when I finally trusted myself enough to go for a cigarette, I realised it was too cold for me to go any further than back into the office at top speed.
About fifteen minutes later, Fill emailed me for a fag break, and told me he’d heard a rumour (albeit from a completely unreliable source) that I’d be losing my job in a week.
Anyone who reads either of these sites will know that Central America is very much on my mind these days. I’ve spent half my life juggling England and there, and I’m worn out. I don’t have what Gina has – any links with any Latino communities, indeed any connection with Central America besides my regular contact with my mother – I just have my flat, a few scattered friends, and still more scattered plants. Piles of adored ex-colleagues. Also two harps, two guitars and a collapsible piano. It may have taken me over a week to pack up my desk on the Project; I imagine it will take me far longer to pack up my flat. I’ve no doubt that the very few who have seen my flat will more than agree.
So there was that. Homesickness, meeting Gina, no flatmate on the horizon, failure to book flight home, the possibility of losing my job.
A very classic Freudian slip there – I actually wrote ‘the possibility of doing my job’. My day started with seven emails, with me dancing to Cheb Mami and singing ‘An Englishman In New York’ but trying to cram in the words ‘I’m a half-Mexican in London’. It doesn’t quite work.
You all know that I passionately loathe my job. I have spent two days this week swapping jokes and silly websites with Fill, and spent the other three days itching to rip off the heads of the people in my office, my boss, his boss and Rebecca being foremost. He’s off now till Wednesday, and I’ve promised him at least three headless corpses on his return. At some point this morning, I realised what a complete bloody joke my job is. I’m a database programmer (now). This job just seems to consist of dumping data into databases and extracting statistics. I spent over an hour fiddling with Windows Explorer, flicking through thirteen folders with about 50 dbf files in each, none of which actually contained anything even vaguely resembling useful information. I actually felt physically sick at the thought of having to consider approaching any of those files (as opposed to the effect of the two hot chocolates I’d drunk earlier in rapid succession). I realised that my job would never be more than any of this, that even though my job title, according to the org chart my boss’s boss printed off for me on my first day is ‘developer’, I’m never going to develop anything besides homicidal tendencies and an unhealthy rum habit. I’ve tried to limit myself to one lunchtime pub trip per week. I’ve gone to the pub three times this week.
So that hour spent flicking through Windows Explorer was my attempt to appear to be working while despairing intensely.
After Fill told me the gossip about me, I decided I should do some work, at the very least to cover up the two days of doing sod all. More like four weeks (I’ve now been there for four weeks) of doing sod all. If they really do want to get rid of me, at least they won’t be able to say it’s for lack of productivity.
I have two new data sources to work with, mobiles and work extensions. The work extensions are the mass files I mentioned earlier; to date, I’ve spent about a whole day trying to hack into the mobiles data. I spent about half an hour today baffled by the fact that there are 12 calls logged against my extension despite my never having used the phone yet, then returned to the hell of the mobiles.
The first hurdle was the data2.msi file. The file which baffled the Network Rail IT staff for weeks, and the one which determines whether or not I can actually open the sodding databases. Without this one wee file, my computer decides that the database isn’t actually a database, and returns to its nap. It then took me another hour or more to store another missing file in a location I couldn’t copy to – I couldn’t copy the database off Terminal Services, nor the missing file to TS. I gave up, and tried to access the front end. Its command on load is to maximise, so if you’re using a wee little TS screen, all you get is an error message saying that it’s closing down as it can’t maximise. Even when I maximised the TS screen later on, I was still plagued by requests for about nine missing files multiple times before it could complete any function.
I forgot to say that I popped over to the other office to drop off the Christmas Lunch menu – I’d planned to say something gloomy like I’d rather be painfully tortured than go, but then I realised that going would be in itself painful torture. Fill was on his way to the canteen; I needed to speak to ND about that dratted msi file, and it turned out he needed to speak to me too about restoring a backup of a SQL Server database. Apparently it’s yet another of those things my predecessor did which I’ve never so much as heard of before. He summoned an Asian woman to help him eventually, but sitting on a desk watching them was like sitting through a reenactment of Dumb & Dumber.
Fill was in my office when I returned, logging into the PC next to me (also the one nearest to Rebecca, poor thing). Given how much time we’ve spent slagging off our jobs, and how much I was suffering by that point, it was painful not to be able to say anything as most of the helpdesk lot were at their places.
Back at my desk, I pointed the sodding Windows Installer at the msi file, at which point it promptly asked for another, without a browse option. Even if I could create the necessary filepath, there still wasn’t any way I could copy the bloody file over to resolve the issue. It was around then I started swearing and bashing my forehead against the desk. As the main issue was about the lack of a proper Access installation on the relevant server, I decided to access the server through Explorer – and found that it was password protected.
At that point I started swearing loudly.
At the same time, Rebecca opened her mouth. Her two dramas of the last few weeks have been being ill, and flat trauma. She moved into a new flat a week ago, and actually arranged for a police escort from her previous flat of four days. The new landlord wants a character reference. So Rebecca’s writing it herself. I tried pointing out to her that she’s completely invalidating the point of a character reference, and with nine other people in the office, surely someone else can write something for her. Lead balloon. I muttered to Fill ‘I’ve got to get the fuck out of here’, and passed him a note saying – referring to an earlier email – ‘Your first guess was right. This has got to be a nightmare. It can’t not be a nightmare.’ He was on the phone; I grabbed my stuff and headed to the nearest pub.
I only had two hours left when I returned to the office, or two and a half hours, as it turned out. On my second day, I brought in my CD collection, and sprinted over to John Lewis once it was open to buy some new headphones. Ever since, I’ve spent all my time listening to music very very loudly. On the Project, I’d turn my music off whenever people talked around me; normally I don’t bother any more, as I know the conversations around me will only make me all the more depressed, but I saw my boss and his boss talking, and turned Khaled off to hear them discussing a new starter. Although they dropped their voices after a bit, and the rest of the room got noisier in that time, I still heard more than enough. But still, not enough to know whether or not it was my job they were talking about. But I still heard them discuss how well this new person would fit in, how well they would adjust. I’ve already asked once to move out of the office. I spend all day listening to music, looking as though I’m being tormented by unspoken evils. I learned quickly that apart from a couple of people who barely speak to me, I despise everyone in my office, and I’ll jump at any excuse to not be there. I’ve been sacked often enough by very flimsy excuses, which of course makes me all the more paranoid.
I do know that I always loathe returning to England in January. I almost missed my flight back a year ago, and probably this time, I’ll try a hell of a lot harder to ensure that I do. But I’ve wanted to leave England for a long time, since long before I tried to move to Dublin. Fill asked me earlier what’s stopping me, and in reality, it’s simply the logistics of packing up this flat.
Posted by chantal at 10:36 PM | TrackBack
Enchiladas All Round
Okay, so I know that there’s lots and lots of Mexicans out there. And that at least lots of them end up with European women, and produce half-Mexican children like me. My mother’s met several; I met my first one tonight.
Again with the pleas of being painfully tired, but I can’t not write about it. Last night, AMP’s Swan Lake was on, followed by Enter The Dragon, I chatted to Sammi for about an hour, all of which made me glow for most of the evening. Chatting to Gina has been like having a mirror talk back to me and affirm that I’m completely normal. And, most importantly, that I’m not alone.
When I worked in the Arts Council, a few years ago, I was told that Latinos were such an ethnic minority that they didn’t even classify as an ethnic minority; therefore, apart from the odd guy hitting on me on the bus home, I’ve not met any other Latinos while living here in London, whereas Gina has lived here for four months now and seems to have a firm circle of Latino friends already.
Although my only friend at work is Portuguese, as you’ll know, I’ve been having a hard time lately reconciling myself to an unspoken expectation that I’ll be more English than I could ever be. I’ve been more specifically homesick than I’ve been for years, and have spent the last few days questioning what it is about me which makes me Latina, and what is so un-English about me. It’s extremely rare that any of my English friends make me feel like that, make me feel I have to question myself, even doubt myself.
So, this evening, Gina turned up, saw the Mexican and Guatemalan rugs in the bedroom and told me she was half-English, half-Mexican, from Mexico City; I told her I was half-German, half-Mexican, from Puebla. After chatting for an hour, she said she couldn’t see the slightest shred of German in me. I spent most of the hour in shock at meeting someone so much like me; I’ve met full-blooded Mexicans before, but as a rule, they don’t tend to have much opinion of half-bloodeds like me.
Christ, I can’t start to describe it. Nearly six years in this miserable, godforsaken country, alone, settling for being thought of as odd or just weird, but always alone. The closest I’ve met to a kindred spirit till now has been Ana, Colombian by blood but a Swede by upbringing. Gina’s upbringing has been the opposite of mine; whereas my brother and I were raised in England for the sake of education and opportunities, with regular trips back, she was raised in Mexico, with frequent trips here, specifically because her mother refused to spend any more than very brief trips to England. I’ve been raised away from the culture I feel the most affinity with; she seems to have the ideal arrangement of having been raised in the culture she feels the most strongly towards, and occasionally visited the other one, but never risking a conflict between the two.
I don’t want to gush, but it was so great to chat with her. I know full well that the last few years in London have changed me a lot, but that I still long for who I become when I return home. I really do hope I didn’t run on excessively with her, but mostly what we talked about is how to adjust to living in an English city when we’re so blatantly not English. At Network Rail, I was the office oddball. My own mother calls me weird; her friends, and friends of her friends call her weird. Why’s that? Probably because we’re more full of life than the average semi-comatose Englishman. Maybe it’s that we feel while others suppress. Or that we’re not afraid to enjoy ourselves. When I told her about my current work situation (she all but guessed that Fill is Portuguese, she knew he had to be a Latino), she said that of course I couldn’t survive there as I’m a Latina. My (Indian) boss thinks it’s fully acceptable to stick me in an office full of people who don’t talk (apart from one whose tongue I desperately need to rip out) and refuse to even tell me what my job is, much less give me work to do, whereas a complete stranger can understand immediately how it’s killing me. I didn’t need to even explain my Network Rail or Lewisham friendships, she just knew straight away what kind of work culture I needed, and that I clearly wasn’t there.
I’ve just spent half an hour falling asleep on the phone to Sammi, so I should finish this while I’m still vaguely awake enough to post this on both websites.
In 29 years, apart from a particular Dutch musician, and of course my mother, I’ve never met anyone else like myself before. I’ve never met anyone who understood me so automatically simply by recognising my background. I’ve lived in Honduras, she’s visited it; I’ve visited Mexico City, she’s lived there; I’ve lived in Guatemala, she wants to go there. For pretty much all of my friends, the first they’ve heard of Central America or Mexico is through me. Nobody else has ever seen my map of Central America in my hallway and made any sense of it, much less of its yellow tags. They see my rugs and wall-hangings, and they just think ‘colourful’; she knows the artesan market where I bought most of them from and most of my ceramics, also my dancer friends in the zócalo who I always meet up with every time I’m in Mexico City.
I’m just feeling so exhilirated to feel, well, so vindicated at last. The problem with living in England is that English people seem to enjoy treating foreigners as a freak of nature; I’ve finally met someone who has the same cultural crossovers as me, the same mix of backgrounds, and, like me, who doesn’t feel any less of a person for it. We talked about our own, and our parents’ situations – both of our mothers being the Mexicans – about how European men expect their culture to take precedence over our own. We’re half-Latina, and there’s nothing at all wrong with that. If they can’t accept that, or meet us more than half-way, then that’s their problem. But nothing in me will let the non-Mexican half be manipulated to other ends.
Having met another like me, I’ll go into work tomorrow with a huge ‘screw you’ attitude, and hopefully spend the rest of the day exchanging jokes with Fill. Large apologies to everyone else I don’t get to email as a result.