- Friday, August 21, 2015
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Being an immigrant is quite a unique experience with its own set of problems. I made a short list that any immigrants might relate to:
- Wednesday, August 05, 2015
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A list of things British do that I find weird, unusual or just funny:
- Put milk in their tea.
- Carpet their bathrooms.
- Hot & cold taps.
- Having a bag of crisps with lunch.
- The authentic British way to prepare vegetables is to immerse them in boiling water for a fortnight.
- Temperature is in celcius, speed and signs in miles, food in grams and kilograms. Makes perfect sense.
- They don't rinse the dishes with water after using washing up liquid.
- They talk about weather. All the time.
- "Alright? Yeah, you?"
- Public schools are actually private schools.
- National panic over 1 inch of snow.
- Talk about Europe as if they’re not in it.
- Wednesday, July 29, 2015
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As many of my readers might know already, I'm originally from Lithuania but after I completed my secondary education, I moved to UK and have been living here for 6 years. Many immigrants face the same problems and situations, but some problems would be more unique to smaller Eastern European countries. So I do get asked where I am from quite a lot. Would be quite interesting go keep a tally to see how often that happens. Anyway, the conversation usually goes like this:
them: so where are you from?
me: Lithuania
them: ~blank stare. silence. ~
them: so is it near <insert a random Eastern European country that is not even close to Lithuania>?
me: no...
Sometimes I bother and explain where it actually is and yes, we have our own language and it's not Russian.
Today I had a special case, they asked me if it's near Romania, I said no. Then they called Romanians thieving peasants. I was shocked, why would you say that, why would you say that. I'm used to ignorance but not so much open racism and assumption that others would agree with such a ludicrous statement.
Sometimes I think I should just come up with absolutely random country and see if my experience is any difference. Maybe I should come up with a country that doesn't even exist. That would be interesting social experiment.
- Tuesday, July 15, 2014
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During the first week at university, one of the lecturers warned us international students about the panic and chaos that two snowflakes can cause here in UK. It wasn't far from true. A few centimeters of snow and everything stops here, everyone looks at snow as if it was evil. Common, it's just snow. Deal with it! It was funny at first, but now it's just bloody annoying.
The big freeze started in November and today was the first time I saw some pavements being covered with grit. So far haven't seen any other effort to make this situation better in my town. Last friday, my bf's journey from work lasted 6 hours instead of 1. Again, it was more because of the fear of snow and ice than the actual snow and ice. I was at work when it started snowing for the first time t hsi year, a colleauge was afraid to be snowed in. She actually feared she will have to spend a night at work because of no more than 5 cm of snow. and she lives 30+40 minutes walk away. Jeez.
Apparently, it costed 4bn pounds to British economy so far. and the argument for not buying enough equipment to deal with snow is that it might cost too much, especially because it doesn't snow that often. maybe, it's time to change this view.
- Monday, December 20, 2010
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