How to get out of Pakistan

Traveling in certain areas of the world is a challenge. Getting in and out of NYC or Paris is a piece of cake. Getting in and out of places like Islamabad or Harare give the impression you live at the end of the world. To fly from Islamabad to our small unknown little town in Upstate New York is quite and adventure. My recent trip for home leave (as can be expected) was no exception.

Leave Pakistan. This is easy. Get on a plane. Yet flights fly at strange hours and our flight left at 4am meaning getting to the airport at 2am which is less then ideal but we refrain from whinging. The nearest accessible hub from Islamabad is Dubai which is where we take our 3 hour flight to.

Kill Time. Emirates is famous for long layovers and travelers are destined by airline to spend hours in the Dubai airport. The terminal has certain areas where passengers informally congregate on the floor attempting to sleep off the layover and jetleg. We had hotel vouchers so we spent part of our 18 hour layover sleeping in comfortable beds in the city. The rest of the time we spent on a desert safari tour, the highlight being driving up and down sand doons. A BBQ dinner, camel rides, Arabian dancing and 4 cans of Pepsi all enjoyed in the desert round out the evening before heading back to the airport for our midnight flight to Amsterdam.

Enjoy European Perfume. After the 6 hour flight from Dubai on Dutch carrier KLM, you arrive in what I've nominated Europe's finest airport, Amsterdam. It's organized beautifully, has a distinguished non-chaotic sophistication and is a delightful place to kill a little time, or 3 hours to be exact. One of the most important stops in the terminal is the perfume shop, and after sampling the latest labels touted by Kate Winslet and Sarah Jessica Parker, spraying on the tester to cover the famous traveler's scent touted by cross continental travelers.

Prepare, for the worst. Immigration into the United States is unpleasant, sometimes mean but that's just the way it is (ie. you've got to deal with it, it's the world we live in). We make our American entry in Detroit since our carrier is Northwest, we've been doing Detroit for going on 6 years and know it well. After the decently painless immigration process, we fulful the tradition of a McDonalds snack at a gate across from a mammoth screen TV blaring Americans news in American accents. There's a shuttle service which runs the length of the terminal, which my bros and I ride back and forth to kill time.

Puke bag. The jet from Detroit to our upstate New York home often induces "motion discomfort" as the end of the epic journey arrives. It's an hour long flight which everyone without a doubt sleeps through because they're exhausted.

The end arrives. It's not a bad trip and now with personal TVs on the flights, it's easy to catch up on the latest movies and music so the flight time goes by fast. It's a long trip though and when you finally arrive you're dirty (maybe sandy from the Arabian desert). When you crash on your bed finally home, it can almost seem worth it.

How to Classify Stare Tactics

Recently Hilary Duff released a song titled "Dreamer" telling the saga of her personal stalker. "Don't you have better things to do with your life, then hang around and stare at me and complicate mine? Your eyes must burn so bad 'cuz you haven't blinked, you and me will never be if that's what you think." This had to reminded me of another inevitable factor of life overseas. You're stared at...constantly. When you don't fit in, you obviously warrant a few decreet looks. In certain cultures, you warrant a very open look. In others, your "other-ness" deserves X-ray vision stares. I have learned there are several different ways of being stared at.

The French Stare; The French are very clever, they've mastered the stare. I occasionally got the obvious three second run down from other girls who judged my hair down to my shoes (it's a global fashion hub, what else?). The French know how to get a good look at you in such a way that you don't know it. I knew I was being stared at through that strange sixth human sense, but they were masters at hiding it and moving on before you pinpointed who it was. The only exceptions are girls hanging off their boyfriends and want you to clearly understand they are somebody because they're with somebody. Response? Live you're life, just ignore it, you'll rarely pinpoint the person and it's not aggressive.

The African Stare; The African stare can be generally applied to the continent. After living in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia (and visiting South Africa and Tanzania) I found stare tactics were more or less the same. People stare, openly and unashamed in curiosity. Sometimes it seems people fall alseep watching you. Infrequently you can even stare people down and they'll look away amused you were so obviously annoyed. Other times they'll plant their hands on their hips and follow you with your eyes as if you were a novelty. Response? Pretend you're either Posh or Becks, if you're treated like a star, pretend you are a star and play the part.

The American Stare; Like all good little American kids, I was educated in what was acceptable, "Don't stare! Don't point! It's rude!" However, when I got older I realized we stare, a little bit. We don't flat out gape because like our parent's taught us, it's rude. But we discretely cast eyes over our shoulders and get a good second look. Unlike other cultures, we bounce our eyes when we're finished as it's embarrassing to be caught staring. The acquisition of a second look is common, especially common in my dad's upstate New York hometown where everyone knows everyone and are quick to notice you're an oddball. Response? This staring is easily ignored and if you take it personally, it's wise not to leave the United States.

The Chinese Stare; During my encounter with China which spanned two years and began 10 years ago this summer, I was rudely thrown into the worse culture shock a child could discover. We were mobbed, people were so excited to see us but it was overwheming. My cheeks were pinched, my hair was pawed through, my nose was pulled, I was petted and cooed over along with my three siblings. Granted I was 9 years old but the Chinese have little idea of personal space and privacy and have no problem reaching out and touching you, even as an adult. It's very friendly, but not something Westerners will know how to stomach. We placed a sign on my baby brothers strollers saying in Chinese "Please don't touch my baby thank you," as if he were a zoo attraction. Response? Don't go outside, hibernate, learn the "off hours" or don't go.

So how does one deal with "dreamers?" Basically, learn to be an attraction. Don't be mean and unfriendly, and if it bothers you, don't go outside. You can try to blend in, you remain friendly and you remind yourself "Well I did move here so I guess I'm asking for it!"

How to Write a Memoir

Some dude's memoirs. He got the memo, nothing grand, just the memories.

Memoirs are a vague concept but there’s a general understanding everyone should write one at some point. Another understanding is that future generations will want to know about our lives and worlds therefore we must solidify our world for them. But today flipping though travel journals I put together several years, I’m so glad I made them! I value those journals hugely thus I deduct that...memoirs and journals are for me as much as anyone.

Writing a memoir seems like such work. No one has the time for that! And when you’re still in college, the old age decided to writing a memoir is decades off. Still, memoirs are for everyone and everyone should be a letter effort into preserving their memories.

1) If it was significant, write it down. If something important happened or you were delighted by something, write a short paragraph about what your impressions were. It’s easy to save it to a Word document or put it in a notebook. One day you can paste in the facts, the first impressions are priceless.
2) Save old emails. I’ve done this for years. I copy the the generic sections "I did xyz and thought abc about it" and paste it to a file on my computer for future journal material. In emails you write out what you visited, what you ate, who you saw, nearly everything! You can cut sections out of emails and paste them in your journal, or use them as a base and expand on them.
3) Just do a travel journal or a month journal. Write down what you saw on a trip or what you did for a month, just a tiny window on life, nothing huge!
4) Keep photos, postcards, ticket stubs, letters, newspaper clippings, bits of life. You’ll want to have those in your memoirs and for the memories. You can paste them in a journal or like me, keep them in a box.
5) Try a blog (obviously)!

This is just for starters. Memoirs need source material so give yourself lots of material to source from and remember, you’ll want those memoirs as much as anyone else one day. That one day can even be the next year!

How to Talk “Nomadically:” Part I

There are a few inside words overseas dwellers use. We’ve got our own secret lingo we ramble off with other overseas dwellers often unaware that anyone else hasn't a clue what where talking about. When returning to home cultures, we closet nomadic lingo until returning to overseas life. I’ll share the linguistic theory behind a few well known clichés.

TCK: Third Culture Kid. This is an extremely common acronym deserving first place in our linguistic lesson. I identify myself as an ATCK; adult third culture kid. I’m American, but I’ve got a lot of other cultures mixed in but I’m hardly French, Kenyan or Chinese. I was raised in a “third culture.” This word is relatively new to the docket originating from the popular book, “Third Culture Kid Experience.” It was indirectly coined to include all kids whose parents worked in the humanitarian sector, businesses, and diplomacy. Traditional terms still exist such as “MK” (missionary kid) or military brat.

Expatriate: Most the time it’s just “expat.” The origin of this word refers to a patriot (citizen) who is living outside his own country. Whatever your nationality is and wherever you end up in the globe, if it’s not you’re home country, you’re an expat.

Global Nomad: A global nomad is simply someone who moves around….a lot…globally. This term is used in book titles because it sounds cryptic and mysterious. Global nomads generally have a home, but it takes them several minutes to remember where it is.

Chameleon: We all know that chameleons have the ability to change color and blend into any environment. It’s much the same for expats and specifically TCKs who subconsciously develop the ability to slide into a culture, picking up the norms, taboos and language. A proper chameleon typically resides in a country where his ethnic origins also blend in. Infrequently the noun is used as a verb...I chameleoned, you’re chameleon-ing…

Bushy or Bushie: This is an African expression. "Real" missionaries in the traditional understanding are bushies. It’s a term applied to expats living in the bush far from suburban capitals making their own yogurt and letting the toddler run naked in the dirt with village kids. “Oh you were a bushy,” and “She is so NOT a bush girl” might pop up in the right circles.

Stareist: This is really just a family term but I’ll throw it in as a bonus. We coined it ourselves to properly accommodate individuals of our host country who can't seem to stop staring at us. "There's a stareist on the left there," "Heads up there's a group of stareist coming up so look like you're talking to me."

Those are the main ones, but they’ll dawn on me as I’m drifting off to sleep tonight so a second installment will arrive…someday.

How Survival Became Popular

I love the concept of survival as I've expressed through many blog postings. Survival speaks a lot about a person. You learn about yourself and what matters most to you when it seems in jeopardy. For many people, survival becomes an obsession like an extreme sport. I consider myself a survival addict, but in a different sense given the many fantastic situations and circumstances I get to survive.

Popular culture also loves survival which is ironic when we consider how attached we are to our posh lives. We have have Lost (ultimate survival, how tempting), Survival (try and...survive...basically) American Idol and the dance/talent/modeling shows (surviving the ridicule of other Americans), Gray's Anatomy and House (who's going to surviving being cut up?), Desperate Housewives (surviving marriage and other...things), Alias (spy survival) and finally CNN (can American conservatism survive liberal bias?). We like to survive, we have a history of surviving which we're proud of and we like to think we can, and so we try and watch others try.

Life overseas is survival of the fittest. Avoiding food poisoning is a glorious achievement in itself and avoiding other maladies such as malaria, Ebola and Japanese encephalitis is a bonus. To create contraption like clothes lines, fixing washing machines, or door stoppers with the bare necessities such as bricks, duct tape and clothes hangers, proves you have outsmarted the elements and you have the self-satisfaction of doing it yourself. You can be as brilliant as Christopher Columbus was in his American discovery of 1492.

It's not really just survival, it's the willingness to adapt. Life is about adapting to changes; from childhood to high school, from high school to uni, from uni to job, from two door truck to the mini van, from house to house and city to city, change to change. It's about having a good attitude about change, accepting the changes for what they are and deciding to have a good time. It's about deciding you won't just survive, you'll thrive. That's survival for the fittest, simply deciding that circumstances don't have to define you. Then you're fit to help others still learning to adapt.

We love the dramatic because...well...drama is cool! But the only thing stranger then fiction is reality and seriously, getting stuff to work overseas can be pretty dramatic!

How to Watch a Bollywood Movie

Bollywood is one of the best kept secrets of the Orient. It’s India’s own Hollywood. The multibillion dollar Indian filmmaking industry has been turning out original cinema since the mid-30s but is distantly non-western. Modern Bollywood films have been accused of going western but the very nature of Indian films can’t possibly allow such alterations. There’s no easing into it, you get dunked and you get wet and you wonder what on earth just happened. I’ll pass on a few tips I’ve picked up since arriving in Pakistan.

Dig in deep. The movies are always about an hour too long. Accept it and bring as many snacks and beverages you will need to cover the length of time.

Expect dancing. Dancing is to Bollywood what thunder is to thunderstorms; it’s mandatory, frequent and intense. In a perfectly serious moment characters will break into a wild dance routine. The main characters change clothes and location randomly singing though a crazy song for up to 8 minutes in completely implausible situations. Central to a film is the “item number” where a very hot chick performs (for lack of a better word) a very sexy dance; both the chick and number having nothing to do with the film! Rarely does the dancing have anything to do with the story, it’s simply the trademark to Bollywood and it’s really the best part of the movies! Bollywood stars such as Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai are hugely successful like George Cloony and Angelina Joli, except Khan and Rai can dance, really dance.

Look for crazy plots. Bollywood produces drama but the majority of films are dancing comedic musicals. They’re meant to be funny, and to reach the biggest box office numbers possible and average over 10 million a flick. The movies are very colorful from the outfits to the settings. The dances are choreographed so all the girls will be wearing blue and the guys yellow and the colors often set the mood of the scene. Most the films are in Hindi with English subtitles but English being the cool man's lingo, is thrown in randomly.

Be grateful for morals. Bollywood prohibits kissing so there’s rarely innuendo and the worst you’ll see is a big hug after a hugely emotional scene. Clubs and discos are favorite setting for dance sequences, but that’s about it for the drinking/partying. Albeit, India is a Hindu culture so there is the caste system but the films like to play up the best of India and are distinctly modern. They’re hopeful films, in keeping with the younger Indian belief that the future is bright before India.

Don’t call it cheesy. Bollywood films are never cheesy. They can be crazy, the story may be improbable, the dances can be far fetched, the girls are always knock-outs and it’s too long but hey! You don’t find it just anywhere so appreciate the differences and no whinging.

How an English Accent goes Further

Another thing I've learned from my extensive travels in bizarre parts of the world is that the English accent reigns. We’re not speaking of the Irish, Scottish or any other twisted sounds from that little island. We are speaking of BBC English (although Posh and Becks have lowered the standard). It's globally recognized as the most attractive, the most desirable and the most coveted way to speak. Take a look at the lineup of British faces in Hollywood who are drooled over every time they open their mouths.

If you ever get the hang of faking it, do use it. Americans are not the most popular people and it’s better to associate yourself with another location. The British aren’t typically very popular either but that’s okay, they’re just quirky and are allowed to be quirky, or so the feeling goes. At any rate their accent is legendary for its charm and appeal and also easily confused with Australian, and Southern Africa accents. In South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Zambia, I was just another white African. Also, children in schools in Kenya to China learn British English in schools so they are familiar with that flavor of English (even though everyone watches American TV). Either way, my time tested belief is that an English accent gets you further because 1) I have to repeat myself much less. 2) I get so much more respect. 3) I don’t get asked very loudly in awkward situations if I’m American.

Now I tell people I’m from Zimbabwe, in some places being a loud American isn't the best thing and so while we don't lie, we learn to be quiet and blend it. I did come from Zimbabwe, it’s completely true and I am a newly converted rugby fan. And if changing an accent gets you further, do it!