“How Are You?”

Posted on October 28, 2016 by abroadintheusa

Yesterday, while out shopping, I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen in a while. “Oh, hi!” she said, with an enthusiastic grin, “How are you?”

I automatically answered: “Great! How are you?” And we launched into a quick catch-up chat.

Now, to Americans, there is nothing unusual about that first greeting. But in Britain, it would go something like this:

“Hey, you alright there?”

“Yeah, mustn’t grumble,” implying we both know full well that there’s a whole world of complaining and woe that could be unleashed, but I’m holding it back because we both know it wouldn’t do any good.

Americans don’t really want to know “how you are” and if you answer with anything other than “fine!” or “great!” they’ll be flummoxed. It took me years to figure that out; why do they keep asking me if they don’t really want to know?

In fact, if you bump into someone in the shops and don’t want to get stuck in a conversation, the fastest way to get rid of them is to answer their “Hey, how are you?” with something like “Well, actually, pretty awful; my dog is sick and the water heater crapped out again…” The other person will likely beat a hasty retreat. On the downside, the whole neighborhood will quickly peg you as a thoroughly unpleasant person. Unless that’s the image you’re going for, it’s better to just learn the correct response.

It’s actually really nice to assume you should always greet someone with a smile and “Yeah, I’m good!” But honestly, even after all these years, it still feels somehow dishonest.

It goes back to that Fundamental Differences thing; Americans are essentially optimistic, while Brits are quietly expecting the worst [Fundamental Differences: Britain vs USA].

I’m still working on it.

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The U.S. Presidential Election.

Posted on October 25, 2016 by abroadintheusa

A friend asked me a few days ago why I haven’t said anything yet about the U.S. presidential election. Frankly, I’ve been trying to avoid it, but here goes.

The Trump Phenomenon

Back in the summer, a visiting relative from the U.K. cried out, almost as soon as she walked in the door: “Trump! What on earth are you people doing with Trump?!” Believe me when I say a hefty chunk of the U.S. population is similarly appalled. Every time you think he couldn’t get any more outrageous, something else happens.

Trump is the limbo-dance candidate: you just keep wondering, how low can he go?

For now, I’ll just point to the two best pieces I’ve come across on this subject, both in the October 15th 2016 edition of The Economist magazine. In addition to a three page special briefing that talks about Trump as “a self-described sexual predator, [who] has violated his party and America”, the Schumpeter business column in the same edition perfectly sums up the business of extreme media: “the entrepreneurs of outrage and barons of bigotry who have paved the way for Donald Trump’s rise.”

While the rest of the world has only woken up to the craziness of the Republican candidate in the last few weeks, the whole circus of the U.S. presidential election actually kicked off a full 18 months ago, when the first of the candidates started to announce their intention to run. Yes, MONTHS.

It’s like a perpetual motion machine that sucks in vast amounts of cash and at the end spits out something usually utterly insipid (Dukakis?) but, occasionally, truly historic and inspiring (Obama).

The Presidential Electoral Process

My first experience with this circus was the 1988 race, which ended up pitting Democrat Michael Dukakis against Republican George H. W. Bush. At the time, I was a graduate student studying political science, and here was a real, live presidential race! I breathlessly assumed I was about to experience the very pinnacle of the democratic process, so I followed every poll, every candidate, every press release.

(This is now going to get a bit technical, so unless you’re fascinated by politics you should probably skip the next five paragraphs.)

Being a proud “liberal” in the American sense (which these days seems to mean anyone with political leanings to the left of Genghis Khan), I paid the most attention to the Democratic race, from the run-up to the Pennsylvania state primary in late April, through the party convention in mid-July in Atlanta, and on to the final vote on November 8 (coincidentally the same date as this year; per the constitution, the presidential vote is aways held “the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November”). At one point there were a total of eight Democratic candidates that year, briefly dubbed “Snow White and the Seven dwarfs” by the media. At the end of the day, Bush ended up with 53.4% of the vote — which translated into 426 electoral votes, with Bush carrying 40 of the 50 states.

And this is where things get complicated. The hoopla all focuses on the vote on election day, but the U.S. president is actually chosen indirectly — on November 8, we’re really casting a ballot for the members of the Electoral College. These people, in turn, cast a direct vote for the President and Vice President, who need an absolute majority of 270 to win. Each state is assigned a number of electors equal to the size of its delegation in the two houses of Congress, combined. So Pennsylvania, where I now live, has 20 Electoral College votes; California is the biggest prize with 55; Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming are among the states with the minimum number of 3.

But it gets better! The role of the Electoral College and its procedure is laid out in the U.S. constitution but the manner of choosing those electors is determined by each state legislature — and there’s no common way to do it. Of the 50 states, 48 have a winner-take-all system — so whichever candidate gets the largest share of the vote in Pennsylvania will get all 20 of the state’s Electoral College votes. (Maine and Nebraska use a proportional representation system to divvy up the votes; I warned you this would get technical.) The various electors then meet in their respective state capitals on the same date in mid-December and cast the vote for president. It’s quite possible to win the largest share of the popular vote, but lose in the Electoral College — or vice versa.

Yet even before we get to all of the final voting, there’s primary season to get through first. This is the process by which each of the parties chooses its candidate for the election. There’s actually nothing in the U.S. constitution on how a political party should go about holding primaries (in fact, there’s nothing in the constitution about political parties at all — can you imagine what John Adams would make of Trump?). And this being a federal political system, the process of choosing candidates actually varies by state. I’ll spare you the details.

For the 2016 presidential election, we started with six Democratic Party candidates, which had been winnowed down to three by the time of the first primary — the Iowa caucuses on February 1. By the time of the Pennsylvania primary on April 26, we were down to two. The final primary votes were in South Dakota on June 7 and the District of Colombia on June 14. That’s a four-and-a-half month process just to choose the delegates to each party’s national convention, who in turn choose the party’s candidate — and all of this is reported, analyzed and “spun” in the local and national media. Ad nauseum.

The winner is finally sworn in on Inauguration Day, which this time around is January 20, 2017 — a full 21 months after Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy on April 12, 2015.

Expensive and Alienating

The cost of this circus is staggering. According to the statistics portal http://www.statista.com, a total of just under $211 million was spent on the 1988 presidential election; by the 2008 vote, spending had jumped to $1.7 billion. And this is just spending by the individual campaigns; it doesn’t include spending by various interest and lobbying groups on behalf of candidates.

All of which might explain why a political science student would find this whole thing so fascinating — but also perhaps explains why voter turnout in America is so stunningly low. In 1996 a mere 48% of eligible voters bothered to cast a vote; even in 2008, the year of Obama’s historic election, turnout was just 58% of eligible voters.

You have to go all the way back to the nineteenth century to get European levels of turnout (the University of California, Santa Barbara has a great online database on presidential elections, with enough data to keep the biggest election-nerd happy: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu).

Is It Getting Worse?

This is my eighth presidential election, and my fourth as a voting citizen. And I really do think they’ve been getting more and more odious; I can’t imagine a serious candidate getting away with Trump’s outrageous assertions back in 1988. Is this because the news cycle is getting so much shorter, so people just forget the egregious comments so quickly? Is it because the media has to generate ever-more outrageous commentary to get attention in this age of information saturation?

It’s so easy to compare this 21 months of torment with the process in the U.K. — in the 2015 general election, parliament was dissolved and the campaign began on March 30; the vote was held May 7; and the new parliament assembled on May 18. That’s seven weeks, start to finish. And political party spending reportedly came to about £40 million (that’s about $49 million at the latest exchange rate).

But, of course, the two countries are very different, starting with a presidential vs. a parliamentary political system. The crazy circus that is the U.S. presidential election has its roots in history — a vast country where even at the time of the original 13 states, it took days for people to assemble and cast votes, and where the separate states were jealous of their independence and their power, making the whole Electoral College thing seem like a good idea at the time.

And so weary American voters approach the finish line of this epic marathon. I’m not going to say the whole thing is better or worse than any other version of governance (hereditary monarchy, anyone?). But there’s a reason why “Meteor 2016” has been a popular car bumper sticker this year.

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Divided By a Common Language

Posted on October 17, 2016 by abroadintheusa

 

It was likely George Bernard Shaw who, sometime in the early 1940s, first coined that phrase about Britain and America being divided by a common language. (I actually thought it was Winston Churchill until I looked it up.)

Whoever said it first, it’s impossible to write a blog about being a Brit in America without saying something about language differences. In fact, you could probably do an entire blog on nothing but the differences between English English and American English.

Chips, Pants and Bandaids

We all know the obvious differences: crisps are chips, and chips are french fries. Pants are underwear, and trousers are pants. The pavement is the thing you drive on, not the thing you walk on (that’s the sidewalk.) Biscuits are cookies, and an American biscuit has no translation (it’s sort of a cross between a savory scone and a bread roll, served smothered in gravy).

But there’s a dictionary’s worth of less-common word differences: an aubergine is an eggplant, and a courgette is a zucchini (and knowing that makes some recipes a lot easier to interpret). If you’re shopping for towels and such, don’t ask the sales person where you can find the flannels — she’ll wonder why you’re in the bathroom section of the store when clearly you’re looking for brushed-cotton shirts; the word for flannel is washcloth.

An English relative was recently volunteering at a concert here in the States, handing out badges. The Americans working with her quickly told her “no, they’re called buttons.” “Oh? so what’s that doing up your shirt then?” “Oh, that’s also a button.”

If your kid is playing at a friend’s house and scrapes his knee, don’t ask the friend’s mother for a plaster. The kid could bleed to death before you both figure out that what you actually need is called a band-aid. And no, the children do not need torches to see when they go out trick-or-treating on Hallowe’en — unless you actually do intend to send them door-to-door waving a long pole with a burning chunk of pitch-soaked cloth at the end — what they need is a flashlight.

For some reason, I still forget which word I’m supposed to use in this country to describe the storage space at the back of the car. “Hello love, just throw your bag in the…er…” By the time I’ve figured out it’s called the trunk, not the boot, the college kid I just picked up at the train station has his bag stowed and is already settling into the passenger seat of the car, giving me the “are you OK?” look.

Incidentally, that same kid had a great time on a visit to the UK a few years ago, bonding with his English cousins over swear words. “Do you guys say…?” “What’s the worst thing to call…” He was gleefully planning to tell one of his teachers to “sod off” once we got back home, until I pointed out that if she had any familiarity with British swear words, he’d spend the rest of the year in detention.

Spelling surprises

Again, we all know that American English leaves out some letters: labor not labour; color not colour. Spell-check will automatically substitute the letter Z in words like realize (see, it did it just there…). And while I think of it, don’t forget, it’s pronounced Zee not Zed. The creature at the zoo is called ZEE-brah not a zeh-brah; but don’t worry about how to pronounce zebra-crossing, they don’t exist over here.

The spelling changes can make for a subtle shift in pronunciation: the English “jewellery” gets shortened to jewelry and loses a syllable (and yes, the only way I could get spell-check to accept the English spelling was to put “jewellery” in quote marks). Sometimes the pronunciation shift is not so subtle: the American aluminum (al-LOO-mi-num) sounds much uglier, I think, than the English aluminium with its extra syllable (al-lew-MIN-ee-um).

And while we’re at it, even the rules of punctuation are different here in the States. I’m not going to do a grammar-nerd rant, but here’s just one example: this “.” is called a period, not a full stop, and if you end a sentence with a quote, that period goes INSIDE the quote marks, even if it wasn’t part of the original quote. So now you know.

What does THAT mean?

After three decades here I forget sometimes that the American words I’m using are meaningless — or mean something very different — to a Brit. If you’re in the States, sitting in the bleachers is fun (the cheap stands at a sports stadium); a fanny pack is just a nerdy bag you clip around your waist to hold keys and cash; and it’s not gross to call someone spunky (it means lively or perky).

And then there’s the words I just can’t bring myself to say, not without shuddering. Every time I’m forced to say “pantyhose” instead of “tights” I feel queasy. Don’t know why, I just loath the word “pantyhose.” You can ask for tights in a shop, but you’ll end up with something thick and opaque in an odd color that works if you’re a kid or a cool twenty-something, but definitely doesn’t look right with a professional skirt-suit.

And this thing hanging from my shoulder? It’s called a handbag — not, as the Americans like to say, a pocket-book. In general, the American word is simpler and more direct than its English counterpart. This is one of the exceptions — ‘handbag’ is a straightforward piece of description. I have no idea where ‘pocket-book’ came from. Americans do use the word handbag, but usually they say purse or pocketbook — if you say handbag you’ll very quickly get sucked into the dreaded “oooh, where are you from?” conversation.

Of course, it goes both ways. One of my English nieces recently posted something on Facebook about going conkering. I had to translate for her American cousin: no, she’s not planning to invade somewhere, she’s looking for conkers, that’s horse chestnuts. Then I started to explain what horse chestnuts are; but as soon as I launched into a discourse on the fine art of playing conkers he gave me the “what planet are you from?” look and changed the subject.

Even after all this time, I still get surprised. Giving directions to my youngest recently, I told him to turn anti-clockwise. There was a long pause. “Mom, what the hell does that mean?” “You know, anti-clockwise? The opposite of clockwise?” To my surprise, he burst out laughing. “You mean COUNTER-clockwise? Who says ANTI-clockwise?!” Sheesh. Next time I’ll say widdershins and really confuse him.

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American Children: Be Seen, Be Heard, and Play a Sport

Posted on October 13, 2016 by abroadintheusa

I seem to have raised two thoroughly American sons. One likes marmite and the other is a Dr. Who fan; they both have British passports; and they may be the only kids in the area who understand the word “loo.” But, they are American through and through. Which means they assume they have a right to be both seen and heard; and they join teams — lots of them.

Children Should Be Seen and Heard

Americans love children. Well, most human cultures do but in the States it takes on a whole new dimension. Even quite fancy restaurants will have a “kids’ menu” and booster seats, even high chairs, for the little ones. “Family fun days” are everywhere and even venues in Las Vegas, the epitome of risqué adult behavior, claim to have “family events.”

About the only place I’ve found that wasn’t kid-friendly was public transport. Local buses, trains, and (in the big cities) subways are a nightmare to maneuver through with a stroller (push chair) or a walking toddler. Then again, most suburban families drive everywhere.

In addition to being seen, kids also expect to be heard. In general, they are actively encouraged to ask questions and to be outgoing. This must be a particular shock for anyone who’s emigrated with their children from a more deferent culture. It was certainly a shock from the other side of the desk, when I was a graduate teaching assistant at a university.

I’d expected a room full of superficially-deferent 18-year olds who expressed their disagreement or displeasure with eye rolls and maybe the odd snort. Instead, I was faced with students who assumed they were supposed to speak out in class and have a debate with the teacher. To say it was a surprise would be an understatement. It was terrifying. Eventually I grew to love the challenge of real give-and-take in the classroom, but I had to do some fast adjusting.

And although America celebrates and encourages individualism, where its children are concerned this is a nation of joiners. I don’t know where the stereotypical “overweight couch potatoes” live but I’ve yet to find any among the youth of the suburban east coast. Kids here are encouraged to join in and to be active. The answer to “and what does YOUR child do?” is not supposed to be “homework and lounging about with their mates.” The sheer range of after-school activities at all age levels is downright overwhelming — from various sports and chess clubs, to high school debate teams and model UN.

In sum, you don’t often get the slightly-reserved public diffidence of the average Brit. Which must be a bit rough if you’re an introvert.

American Children Play Sports

Yes, sportS. Here in the States the word is a plural — not a grudging single-case noun to denote an activity that may occasionally involve some sweat and is an add-on to the day. Nope, a definite plural, the word “sports” invokes a panoply of activities that are essential to producing a well-rounded American child. It’s like the “playing fields of Eton” ethos democratized and writ large. For Americans kids, sports are everywhere, both in school and outside.

Most of the kids in our neighborhood seem to be involved in some kind of school and/or private club sport, whether it’s football (i.e., American football), swimming, track (running), basketball, soccer (i.e., football), dance, karate or tennis. My oldest loved almost anything involving a ball (except cricket, which he tried once on a visit to England and pronounced “boring”). So his childhood and adolescence revolved around football, soccer, basketball and baseball, for both school and private teams. My youngest found his niche in the world of dance — hiphop, lyrical, modern, jazz, ballet, tap — and is at the studio 15-20 hours a week.

I’m sure there are also plenty of English kids who spend hours a week pursuing a favorite sport — but it’s the ubiquity of it in America that takes some getting used to. Sport is not seen as a hobby or an add-on — it’s assumed to be an essential part of growing up and living the great American dream. And they start young. Every Saturday in the autumn, suburban school fields are full of 5-year olds trying to kick soccer balls on quarter-size pitches; in the spring they’re swinging at baseballs placed on top of T-ball poles. I’ve seen kids as young as four competing in dance competitions or practicing at the local karate studio.

And that ubiquity extends all the way to university level. Every one of those suburban parents cheering from the sidelines/auditorium benches is quietly hoping that their kid will one day win some form of sports scholarship to help defray the staggering cost of attending an American university.

Seeing athletic skill as a means to an education is quintessentially American — it feeds into the “if you try hard enough you can do anything” ethos. The fact that for many kids it’s also the only way they’ll ever be able to afford that education is also quintessentially American.

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Choices

Posted on October 10, 2016 by abroadintheusa

One of the things most expats in the USA quickly notice is the ubiquity of choice: whether it’s types of breakfast cereal, what options to add to your new car, or the size of a restaurant menu, America is all about Choice.

Take the typical restaurant order:

“Do you want soup or salad with that?”

“Just the salad please,” you say, thinking it’s the end of the discussion. But no, there’s more!

“What kind of dressing? You want the regular or the reduced fat? On the top or on the side?”

You have to fight your way through a small blizzard of choices just to order something to eat.

Too Much Cereal

Like a lot of expats, my own first encounter was in a suburban supermarket — the cereal aisle, to be precise. I’d been in the States just a few days and my friend’s mother took me to a local supermarket to pick up food supplies for my dorm room. I rounded the corner of one of the aisles and my steps slowed as it dawned on me that the entire aisle, on both sides, was nothing but cold cereals. The sheer range of choices, all with neon-colored boxes and bizarre names, was overwhelming. I froze. How was I supposed to pick one thing to eat for breakfast every day when there were so many choices?

Eventually I realized that a lot of this choice is an illusion. Look closer at those cereal boxes and you see that they’re pretty much all variations on the same few ingredients (overly-processed wheat and/or overly-processed corn, slathered with corn syrup).

Choice = Abundance = Freedom?

Americans seem to equate choice with abundance; and certainly one of the markers of poverty in this country is how quickly a person’s choices get limited, not just on what they can afford but down to the range of foodstuffs in the local shops. That mile-long cereal aisle is very much a product of suburban affluence.

At the extreme, Americans can seem oblivious to the fact that this constant demand for more choices leads to an excess of consumption with some pretty dire economic and ecological consequences for the rest of the planet. America is not alone in this, of course, but it’s more overt here. ‘Gas guzzler’ SUVs (petrol-hogging four-wheel drives) are still everywhere; telling Americans that they need to curtail consumption for the sake of the greater good is never going to resonate.

At its best, the American obsession with choice is part of the ethos of individualism and is bound up with the belief that everyone has a right to demand better; Americans don’t like to “settle” for what happens to be on offer, they look for more. But this also means that no politician or advertising exec can risk being portrayed as limiting choices; saying something like “if you forgo that product/lifestyle everyone will be better off” is the surest way to doom a policy proposal or new marketing idea.

And the choice obsession can sure throw up some bizarre consequences. Remember the 17 candidates initially running for the Republican ticket in this year’s presidential race? All that choice, and look who we ended up with.

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Americans Love an English Accent

Posted on October 6, 2016 by abroadintheusa

America is pretty much the only country on the planet where the sound of a British/English accent almost always gets an immediate positive reaction. I’ve lived here for more than three decades and strangers still pick up on the accent right away (even though British family and friends reckon I sound “like a bloomin’ yank” but that’s another story).

I’m so used to the positive reaction now that it can be a bit of a shock when it doesn’t happen. When I gave a work-related talk to clients in Sweden some years ago, the reaction was faintly-amused tolerance; “ah yes, the English…” Most Frenchmen can barely disguise the vague sense of disdain. And I once met an Egyptian who became downright hostile as soon as I opened my mouth (which could also be the reaction an English accent would get in certain neighborhoods on the south side of Boston but I’ve never had the guts to test this).

Where Are You From?

Sometimes Americans get a slightly dazed expression, the eyes widen and I have to repeat myself two or thee times before what I’m saying sinks in. This is why I’ve learned to practice a certain form of avoidance; when ordering food, never ever ask for tomato (toh-mah-toe) in the sandwich or the wait-person will freeze up, you’ll have to repeat yourself three times, and the sandwich order will turn out wrong. Better to just get it over with, say “tah-may-doh” and add a silent plea to the ancestors for forgiveness.

It’s not that Americans are not used to hearing an English accent; there are plenty of Brits on TV and half the Hollywood villains seem to sport an upper crust English drawl. But for some reason, unexpectedly hearing one from a live human seems to short-circuit the brain.

Other times, people almost start cooing; you can see the images of Downton Abbey and tea on the lawn dancing behind their eyes. This is usually accompanied by a little gasp and a cry of “oh, where are you from?” This can be charming in a social setting but downright annoying when all you’re trying to do is order something at the local deli counter. Because the next steps of the conversation go something like:

“Originally, England.”

“Oh, which part?”

“Leicester” … blank look … “It’s pronounced Les-tah but spelled l e i c e s t e r.”

Until fairly recently this was just greeted with a beaming smile, and maybe some comment on how cool it is that stuff is pronounced so weird in England. Now it usually elicits either, “oh, is that the place where they found the bones of that king?” or, more often, “is that the place with the soccer team who won some big award that no-one expected?”

And being still an Englishwoman at heart, instead of growling I smile politely and nod (and say another silent plea for forgiveness for not smacking someone who calls LCFC ‘a soccer team’). Eventually you get the sandwich, but it takes a while.

The Right Kind of Accent

Still, this positive reaction can come in very handy in the professional world. When I was working for a large global financial services firm and giving client presentations, I’d turn the accent up a couple of notches toward Home Counties Received English. Clients and contacts seemed to immediately assume this meant I knew what I was talking about. Older people, particularly women, would almost start drooling — I’m not sure they heard a word I said but they always remembered me at future events.

Americans mostly assume that all English accents sound the same — not surprising when the examples they’re exposed to are from shows like Sherlock, Agatha Christie mysteries, and good old Downton. But the sheer breadth and depth of regional English accents would totally flummox most Americans. Someone with a broad regional accent would probably get the dazed expression a lot. I once caught a late night broadcast of the TV show “Dance Mums” that was based in Liverpool; it came with subtitles.

Americans have regional accents too, of course, but the sheer linguistic variation between Maine and Texas just isn’t that great and you have to travel hundreds of miles to hear the difference (although I did once encounter a tour guide in Missouri whose accent for some reason totally baffled me; I understood perhaps half of what she said).

After spending years in London and now the States, my own accent has morphed into something generically southern England — I’m not sure the positive reaction would be the same if I still sounded ‘right Lestah.’ Early on in my American life, people would ask if I was from South Africa, or even Australia. That doesn’t happen any more. I guess I’ve learned to stick to “the right kind of accent.”

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