Everything seems so much more familiar now. A taxi to work during a tropical thunderstorm; cheap food from a hawker centre; dinner al fresco in 30 degree weather (in November!)!; living in a condominium complex with a swimming pool; flip-flop wearing iPhone zombies everywhere.....
But every now and again we are reminded that we are truly living in a different world. It's a world that doesn't conform to my British values in body space and bodily fluids.
So on the bus to work you may get the occasional cough in your direction. Ok, it's not pleasant but more driven by the aircon than illness. I can live with it. The people that stand close to me, in a position such that my hand, holding the plastic hand rail above, is gently brushed and caressed by their hair, I could do without. It's a level of intimacy that I'm not looking for and don't really enjoy. As the buses lurch forward or stop suddenly the hand rail moves, I move, and occasionally they get a tap on the head from the plastic hand-piece. It may take a few goes, but that normally shifts them; but why....why stand there in the first place? Do they need closeness from strangers in the morning? Why invade my body space?? I don't get it. I just don't get it... does my reaction surprise you? Is it an over-reaction from where you are sitting? Maybe it is, maybe it's the culmination of all the little things that are also familiar, but that are deep within me reacting together, fermenting, as my reserved Britishness is faced with an onslaught of non-British standards and norms.
The taxi driver eating food, spitting pieces he doesn't like into a bag; the middle aged woman belching loudly and openly in the bank queue in the morning; the receptionist clipping her toe nails while talking to me; the old man on the bus pulling bits of skin off his feet on the journey home in the evening. Each of these amazed me in their own way; maybe they change you, they build together a wall of expectation until when you see something else that would on the first day here have made you recoil in horror then it's not so bad, just another familiar-yet-not-familiar part of living in another world, another culture. And then you crack and in a mad Brexit-like over-reaction you imagine a line has been crossed, enough is enough, you must take back control! Why do people not watch where they are going? Is it so fucking hard to stand up and move out of the way to let someone get off the bus without having to climb over you? Why do strangers brush their hair repeatedly on my hand!! ENOUGH!!!!
Last night was a night that reminded us that we are not there yet; we maintain the ability to distinguish according to our European norms. As we sat at the bus stop waiting for the number 75 to take us home after a lovely pizza, aperol spritz, wine, salumi and cheeses, an evening with Italians and expats, we found ourselves with a very small and skinny gentleman, clearly the worse for wear. Perhaps a taxi home would have been quicker, but the weather was good, the bus option would take 15 minutes, it was fine. The man took a seat near us, and started to blow his nose. One nostril at a time. Onto the floor. Roberta left at nostril number one; I wasn't sure if she was starting to walk home, given how quickly she moved some distance away. She told me later she was about to throw up, and needed space from seeing what he was doing (he had also started wiping some errant snot on the seat as he clearly wasn't having great success in bypassing his hand completely, and didn't have any tissues). So she missed the nasal and pleural phlegm excavation that followed. We concluded our journey variously laughing and feeling nauseous at what had just happened.
So there you have it - we are still British, Italian, European. Familiarity doesn't yet mean acceptance. We can let out the anguish at things that are not as we would do, behave, and so vent our feelings, postpone our own Brexit moment. It would be nice if we had more people with whom we could discuss our daily observations; we have accumulated many great topics for those lunchtime chats in the MH canteen. Also might be a sign that bus travel is not for us, and we need a car. Our own personal travel space. Something to look into...
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