The Dirty Immigrant Test (that I was nearly kicked out of)

 

I have a confession to make, and it may surprise you.

*clears throat*

I… am a dirty immigrant.

Yes, yes I am. My husband is an immigrant. My children are dirty immigrants and even my sister is an immigrant in yet another country.

“Oh. But we don’t mean you when we talk about how much we hate immigrants and how they singlehandedly ruin our great country.”

It’s not difficult to figure out which immigrants they do mean then – you usually just have to keep quiet and listen. Or hand the person a shovel to help with the hole they are digging themselves into.

We once stayed near good friends close to Bath, England, at a lovely little B&B cottage in the country. The breakfast was lovely and as the charming, elderly owners filled our plates with scrambled eggs the topic of immigrants came up (as it does over orange juice, apparently) and how they are ruining Britain. My husband coughed and made his accent more noticeable – they were oblivious. The woman asked us where we were from and my husband answered London.

“No, where are you originally from, dear?”

“Canada.”

“Oh! Lovely country! London is lovely too, well it was, before all the immigrants took the place over.”

“They’re here too now,” the man interjected, “they’ve taken over Little Crossing now as well. Filthy immigrants and their gangs of purse snatchers – the lot of them should just be sent packing to where they came from.”

“Um… we are immigrants.” Offered my husband.

“No you’re not. You’re Canadian.”

Well then.

We’ve since gotten used to the blatant racism and vile ignorance that most people display when discussing immigration in any country or context – they don’t mean us. Of course not. Just people that don’t look like us. But regardless of this we are still treated as ‘dirty immigrants’ and even have the deportation letters for myself, Paul and each of the girls to prove it, sent accidentally when the Home Office had cocked something up.

Many people don’t realize that immigrating to another county isn’t a simple matter of making a decision and getting on a plane. That other country has to actually want you – and this is hard to come by. Visas are a necessity of life, and we have, in the five years we have lived here, spent just over £12,000 on visas alone for a family of four. Should we wish to get citizenship in another year it will be yet another £4,000.

(that's $27,000 USD in six years, paid to the UK government just to be here)

And our families wonder why we still rent.

To add insult to financial injury, we have had to pass the dreaded Life in the UK Test of the United Kingdom – a test of 24 random questions about British history, politics, sporting heroes, literature, culture and laws. These are important, critical things that one must know in order to integrate into British society.

Such as at what age Victoria became Queen. Or at what age children can start on alcoholism. 

These questions made no sense to me and have so incredibly little to do with actually integrating into British society.You know what makes me a good British person? I'm nice. I help people, often going out of my way to do so. I don't drink, but I keep that a shameful secret. I don't like football but I'll watch it if I have to. And I believe in what this country stands for, as well as my own. 

But nooooo..... it's clearly more important to know that Scotland got its' own parliament in 1999. 

Clearly.

So we went for the test - which we had to pass before spending this new ridiculous amount of money on more visas to stay here. 

The testing centre was terrifying. A tiny computer learning centre in Harrow, London, surrounded by pawn shops, chippers and chicken shops. We didn't really want to touch anything and the waiting room reeked of cat pee. The room quickly filled for our allotted test time with Americans, Indians, a Saudi Arabian woman, a Chinese woman and another Canadian - all looking nervous and anxious to get our tests over with. 

We were corralled into another room full of computers that smelled somewhat less of offensive cat urine and were given our instructions. We were not to talk, for any reason. Our ears were checked for blue-tooth systems. Our phones were checked. Our bags were stored away and we were silent - waiting for the test to start.

The Chinese woman looked distraught, signalling to one of the test invigilators.She tried explaining in broken English that she couldn't see - she had forgotten her glasses. She could barely see a thing - but the invigilator didn't understand her.

She switched to Chinese, frantically explaining that her glasses were just downstairs, she just had to get them. The invigilator wouldn't let her leave, and both were getting heated and upset with each other. I looked at Paul - he was shaking his head at me as if to say 'don't do it'.

I did it. I had to.

I turned to the distraught women, interrupted them and in Chinese asked the woman what was wrong, translating for her to the invigilator. 

Both the invigilator and the Chinese woman were shocked into silence. NOBODY in that room was expecting me to suddenly speak Chinese. Me, the tall and very white blonde woman there with her very white husband. Western people and Chinese language don't usually mix.

The Chinese woman was the first to recover from her shock and jumped into the typical 'how do you know how to speak Chinese?' spiel that I hear so often. I told her it didn't matter, we weren't supposed to be talking in here and let's just help her and then take the test. The invigilator recovered and scolded me, in front of everyone, that we weren't to speak to anyone in the exam room. I apologized and turned back to my computer screen, waiting patiently for the test to start.

The two of them started fighting again, until the invigilator who had just scolded me then asked me to kindly help them to translate.

So to the awe of everyone in the room, I translated for them until the Chinese woman's glasses were retrieved. The invigilator then thanked me but scolded me again for speaking in the testing room. WTF lady, make up your mind!

I then spent the rest of the test muttering to the Chinese woman beside me to shut up, we can't talk - as she wanted to know where I was from, why I spoke Chinese, what the answer to number one was... 

Paul was right. I should have just kept quiet - like a good dirty immigrant.

Author's Cave - Celebrating Indie Authors!

So I am officially an Indie Author - which although infinitely cool is also infinitely intimidating. I've entered a world in which I have absolutely NO idea what I am doing. However, there shall always be strength in numbers, so I've joined The Authors Cave.

Part of this is an annual 'Blog Train' -  in which we use our blogs to showcase other Indie authors within our group - some of which have written some really fantastic stuff!

So here is my intro to the Author's Cave Blog Train

This is my book! It feels SO crazy to say that! Links to info about Prescription for Disaster are above and on the side - and I sincerely hope that you too can appreciate the funny side of falling apart.

3 Sentences about myself:

I'm a Canadian living in England, but I've lived in China, America and Hong Kong, so far. I'm an absolute magnet for disaster and I really have no shame - so I write about my experiences in mayhem. I like to write, but I love to make people laugh and to tell a good story.

Three years ago I was diagnosed with a rare disease - which tends to propel a person toward some serious doom and gloom. I spent ages looking for a positive, uplifting and funny book about the experiences in hospital of people who were there all the time like me, but I couldn't find anything like it - so I wrote one. It's been out for only two months but so far hundreds of people are laughing - hard, and feeling better, even if just for a moment. 

And that is all I ever wanted.

The first three words I would use to describe myself are:

Driven, Optimist and very, VERY unlucky (I've actually been hit by lightning)

I am currently working on this project:

A similar compilation of my adventures in China - more adventures in mayhem and misadventure!

My favourite thing about Author's Cave:

This is a group of established authors that tolerate my general ignorance and idiocy with a smile. Very helpful and supportive - plus they actually know what they're doing whereas I'm just going at writing and publishing my books like a dyslexic bear typing with oven mitts on. I have NO IDEA what I am doing but they nudge (punt) me in the right direction.

Here are three more books from the Author's Cave that you might enjoy!

 See how these authors answered the same questions!

Kat Miller

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6512304-caring-for-curly-hair

Claudette Alexander

http://claudettealexander.com/blog.html

Jalpa Williby

http://jalpawilliby.com

The Taser Incident

I met my step-sister Christine when I was 12 and we positively loathed each other.

To be fair we were exactly the same age and were suddenly mashed together into the same house in the same bedroom in the same school in the same grade and with the same friends.

As it turned out, I had a twin in Christine. Her humor, her laughter, her magnetism for disaster and mayhem was exactly like mine. We competed with each other constantly. 

We were nerds together (summers spent having RL Stine novel speed reading competitions in a tent in the backyard. We weren’t allowed to live in the house in summer).

We were idiots together (who can make it across the river on foot in late Spring first? We both nearly drowned).

We were terrified together (chased into traffic by a rabid squirrel, and there was always the ‘tent incident’)

and we were social outcasts together (there may have been a skunk incident in junior high).

So when I up and decided to randomly move to China at the age of 20 there was nobody in the world I would have rather come with me.

And so, together, Christine and I moved to China.

We are both the type that strange things just happen to, always have been. We had so many adventures in China together and afterward when she had left (China pretty much gave her the boot), more than enough to fill my next book.

We were living in Shenyang, Liaoning (up by North Korea) back in 2001. At the time it was a city of 13 million people and only 900 foreigners – 750 of those being from Korea. So the rest of us stood out quite a bit and more or less stuck together. Back then there was a single foreigner bar in Shenyang (Sophie’s) and although Christine spent a lot of evenings there I couldn’t really go because, well, I employed more than half of their western clientele (long, weird story) which made it awkward as well. Trust me, the boss wants even less to drink with their employees as the employees want to drink with their boss.

Anyway, Christine used to go to the expat bar in the evenings pretty often, as you do in China, as there was absolutely nothing else to do, and some of the guys there were worried about her walking home at night by herself or taking taxis alone so late at night. Being not gentlemanly enough to walk her home but gentlemanly enough to care they did the next best thing and bought her a police grade taser gun.

It was a little purse sized, hand-held taser in which you push a button and blue lightning arcs out, dancing back and forth between the protruding metal nodes on the top. Being China these weren't exactly common, but you could pick it up at the same store that you could buy police vests, helmets and cherry lights for your car.

I miss China. 

Anyway, she had come home to our apartment late one night, having had a bit to drink and was hanging out in her room about to have a cigarette, but couldn't find a lighter.

I’ll give you a minute to guess where this is going.

She searched everywhere until she fumbled upon the taser in her purse, taking it out and giving it a good look. The lightning was electricity, surely that would light a cigarette? Now, having had a bit to drink certainly helped her extreme lack of judgment, but her just being her is what led her to PUT THE CIGARETTE IN HER MOUTH and then try to light it with the taser like you would a standard lighter. 

She claims that she woke up on the other side of the room having effectively tasered herself in the face.

Now, the instructions (once translated) explain that a one second pulse is all that is required to bring an assailant to their knees. A two second pulse and they will mostly likely wet themselves. A three second pulse and they will be rendered unconscious. It is, according to Christine’s experience, not possible to control the amount of time you are holding down the button when you are simultaneously electrocuting yourself in the face. Somehow her violent launch across the room and subsequent flopping around dislodged the taser from her grasp and it stopped, leaving her unconscious on the floor.

It gets worse. 

When she woke up SHE DID IT AGAIN, the exact same thing again, desperate for a cigarette - and this is how I came to find her upon hearing a bloodcurling scream, facedown on her bedroom floor with the room reeking of burnt hair.

I then confiscated her taser, but the adventures with it did not end there.

Years later, my husband Paul (then boyfriend), found the taser in an old box of mine at our apartment in China, long after my sister had left. I had forgotten about the thing, never having had cause to use it. He, being a typical guy, had a bit of fun lighting various things on fire with it, always being too much of a wuss to ever try it out on himself.

He did discover, though, that the taser had an additional feature he had never asked me about - a small red button down by the base.

And this is how my husband maced himself in the face by inadvertently pressing this red button while aiming the nozzle at the fan in our bedroom.

The Darwin Awards are strong in my social circle - it keeps life interesting.

Shooting the messenger... with a bazooka

Have you ever tried to help a stranger and then IMMEDIATELY regretted it so badly that you leaped onto a train just to get away from them?

This was my morning commute. I think I actually met the worst person in the world today.

I'm a Londoner. It has taken me many years to become a proper Londoner. I have perfected the art of reading a book while walking during rush hour. I always stand on the right and have no patience whatsoever for people that use large maps on crowded streets. I loathe the constant stream of tourists throughout the city with their loud accents and unseemly habit of *gasp* talking to strangers. 

We're Londoners. We don't do that. 

But I am, sadly, still quite Canadian as well.

I had made it this morning to Tottenham Court Road, a major underground station in central London and had descended further levels to get to the Northern Line, the line I needed to then get the single extra stop to my office. I traipsed through the corridors among the usual mass of London commuters, all of us wearing various forms of black and glued to our Kindles and paperback books as we marched through halls we had memorized, like well dressed sleepwalkers.

We came down a final set of stairs to the lower platform at a divide - south to the left and north to the right and I turned, reading my book, onto my usual route but was jerked from my commuter trance by a hysterical American woman with a suitcase, standing directly in everyone's way as they came down the stairs and moved around her without making eye contact.

That wouldn't be British.

She was crying and wailing, clearly lost and clearly in a lot of distress. I wanted to go on, I was already having a crappy day of a crappy week and urgently needed to get to my office. But the Canadian in me, or just the overly nice person in me, won out. 

I took a deep breath, folded the page of my book down and resolutely walked back over to her, against the crowd and quietly said "Hey, do you need some help?"

"Yes! I just got beat up by an old lady and I don't know where I am and there are no ****ing maps in this ****ing place!", she shouted in my general direction.

Ah crap. I really should have just kept going.

"Okay. Well, that sounds rough. Where are you trying to get to?"

"An old lady seriously just BEAT ME UP for NO REASON and I don't know where I'm going and nobody is helping me!"

"Okay. Well. I'M here helping you, so where is it you would like to go?"

"She BEAT ME UP!!! And nobody did anything!!! And I need to get to the Tate museum!"

Already we had a crowd. British people were backing away from us and looking at us over their books and Kindles. A blonde woman in a tight bun stared at me with her mouth open - probably in shock that I hadn't yet clocked this crazy tourist. They were certainly too smart to get involved.

"Do you mean the Tate Modern Museum? Because there are a lot of Tate's."

"OF COURSE I MEANT THE TATE MODERN!!!!"

Alright. Fuck me sideways this woman was insane. I couldn't leave now, she might attack me. Okay. Just get her to a map and be done with it. Karma will owe me BIG TIME.

"Ah. You need to get to Waterloo I think. It's not on this line - "

"HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHICH LINE IT'S ON?!?"

"Okaaaaay. Let's find you a map."

And so she followed me down the platform to a large tube map where I talked her through the route she needed to take. She wasn't listening. Obviously she wasn't listening. Her shoulders were heaving and she was crying and you could practically see smoke coming out of her ears. I tried the gentle approach:

"Hey. Are you going to be okay?"

And she exploded.

"How could I be okay?! A woman actually BEAT ME UP! There I was, just standing there to get onto the train and it was so busy and she wouldn't get out of my way so I could get on, even though I clearly had a suitcase, so I pushed her out of my way and said 'get the **** out of my way'..."

As though pushing someone and swearing at them is a totally normal and appropriate thing to do to get onto a train somehow? 

"... and then that b*** turned around and kicked me in the leg and then punched me in the face!..."

I gotta admit. I was kind of rooting for the old lady at this point.

The American Psycho continued shouting at me

"... and then she called me a f***ing c*** and a wh*** and a b**** and then kicked me again and then she pushed me away and got on the train and it left!"

Oh my god I was wishing the violent little old lady was there right then to save me. I was so horrified by her shouting and uber loud profanity that I stopped her right there, put my hands up and pointed out that hey, I didn't beat you up. I'm here trying to help you.

She exploded again - shouting that "Why did I ask her what was wrong then?!?"

It was at this point that I started trying to back away, but my fellow Londoners had formed a semi circle around us, not getting close enough to get involved but not so far as to miss the show while they waited for the next train. The bastards. I should have been one of them.

I was in too deep now, I couldn't escape. So I calmly suggested that she contact the police, to her violent shouting retort that they couldn't do anything, the (insert excessive use of offensive expletives) woman had already left!

I pointed around us to the abundance of CCTV cameras, telling her quite calmly that this was one of the largest tube stations in the city, there are cameras everywhere and special transport police upstairs - they would be able to help her out better than I can.

Did I get a thank you? An 'oh that is so kind of you, thank you?' A 'thank you for missing your own train just to help me?' No. I got a

"FINE! TAKE ME TO THEM THEN!!"

Yeah no. F*** that crazy lady, you're on your own. 

I literally backed up and jumped onto the packed train that was about to leave, the crazy irate American woman with the suitcase screaming behind me into the closing doors. Everyone on the train saw. People that had been on the platform were also on the train sardined around me as we clung to the ceiling handles and watched the platform pull away. They were all looking at me.

So I cleared my throat and in my best British accent (so as not to let people think that I had any commonality with the American Psycho) said

"Well, I guess that's what you get for taking a suitcase on the underground during rush hour. The nerve, right?"

Sigh. No matter how bad my day is, at least I'm not her .

Or her family or friends. Yeesh.

My mother in law and her Chinese prostitute

My mother in law hath cometh for the summer -  Part 1

I kid, I kid. Actually, my mother in law is pretty great. The moment we need her she is on a plane from Canada to the UK and she has welcomed me into her family more wholeheartedly than I thought was ever possible. 

Doesn't mean we don't still have our moments though. She's a mother in law and I'm a daughter in law and the laws of nature are not to be messed with.

I was recently reading a forum post in which women were sharing their most embarrassing moments in front of their inlaws. There were some good ones in there, accidentally flashing the father in law, sending sexts to your mother in law accidentally and a pretty good story involving a spider and a vacuum. 

I figured I would throw my hat into the ring with two stories - both stories which should have stopped my mother in law ever travelling with me again - but she's a pretty strong woman and not too much can properly faze her. 

Back in 2002 my husband and I were living in Northern China, and my mother in law had come to visit. 

We had been living there for about a year or so already, but my Chinese still wasn't actually very good yet (although I certainly thought it was). I was able to get by just fine at work, on the street, in shops, restaurants, on trains... so clearly I was practically fluent.

My husband's Chinese was somewhat limited to ordering beer, rice and sweet & sour pork (the necessities) though he could understand quite a bit more than that.

So my mother in law had arrived and we took her to Beijing to see the sights, staying in a hotel there. Now, we had been living in the North of China for a very long time and went a little bit nuts on the wide array of western food available in Beijing (Subway). I think we ate every meal at Subway for three glorious days of sandwiches without sugary bread and real lettuce. The novelty was amazing, but wore thin once we got back to the hotel. The piping in China isn't meant to take flushing toilet paper and so the western toilet in our hotel plugged. Badly. 

This was not something that could be fixed ourselves - clearly a plumber was needed. Alright, I can totally do this. I sat down on the bed and picked up the hotel phone - the one we had unplugged earlier in the night once we had tired of the constant 'you want massagee? You want roast duck? (wtf?)' phone calls. I plugged it back in and dialed 0 for reception, speaking to the woman at the front desk completely in Chinese to explain our predicament and order a plumber to the room. 

My husband and mother in law were impressed. Epic daughter in law win!

And then they asked me what I actually said. 

I told my mother in law that it was actually very simple - my vocabulary isn't that  large yet so I fill in gaps where I can, but I usually get the message across. I'd said something along the lines of:

"Hello. This is room 214. I have a problem in my room and need a hotel man to come here to help me. It is not difficult, is a small problem. But I need a man quickly, a strong man. Does the hotel have a man that can help me?"

My husband was the first of us to catch on, and retreated in silent giggles to the back of the room to await whatever was coming to the door. My mother in law still thought I was brilliant.

That was until there was a knock on the door and my husband muttered "I don't think they sent a plumber". Mother in law and I opened the door to find a tall, half naked Chinese man with an oiled chest leaning provocatively up against the doorway.

Oh. My. God. I had ordered us a male prostitute.

I turned bright red and burst out laughing, apologizing to the poor guy and absolutely dying of embarrassment. My mother in law didn't even have words, she just backed into the room laughing to join my husband on the bed - both waiting for me to somehow deal with the prostitute and the toilet in Chinese. I took the gigolo by the hand and led him into the bathroom, pointing at the plugged toilet and explaining with a mix of language and charades what the problem was. He finally understood and left - a plumber arriving a few minutes later, laughing his ass off.

We left him to it and laughed all the way to Subway for dinner.

She's still not quite forgiven me for that one, and I have an entire summer to do something worse to replace it in her memory.

The stand up comedy class of despair and sadness

That. Was. AWFUL. It was horrible. That was so bad that it was absolutely hor-awful. That class was a dumpster fire of confidence shattering atrocity.

It started out alright, despite me getting more lost inside the building than in finding it. Some sort of BBC music studio with a pack of teenage girls outside trying to get a glimpse of someone famous – that clearly wasn’t me. They all watched silently as I meekly wove my way up to the doorman to ask if this was the right place, I was here for a class. Which class? he shouted. I didn’t want to say in front of all of those people. They might think I’m trying to be funny or something equally humiliating yet… oddly accurate.

"Um...I’m here for the 6:30 class."

"Which one? The dance class? The singing class? Or the stand-up comedy class?"

Did he have to yell?

I was ushered in and brought to a waiting room upstairs. A small triangular room with six brightly painted doors and all of the furniture huddled in the middle of the room. Two women were already there – one seemed to be drinking a Japanese alco-pop of sorts and offered some around.

I stupidly declined.

Ten minutes late our teacher walks in, takes attendance (there were three of us) and informed us that we were waiting for one more. Shouldn’t be another ten minutes or so. They never showed – probably wise.

The class started with an introduction as to who we were and why we were all here. I explained that I had written a humorous book on chronic illness, to which the older woman replied “Illness isn’t funny.” I was clearly off to a great start. That woman was here to share her performance poetry and the other was a young female that described herself as a ‘journalist-blogger-writer-singer-artist-alcoholic’. But not in a funny way.

In a sad way.

The instructor moved us from topic to topic and taught us some basic writing exercises, which I enjoyed immensely, though when it came time to read out what we had written I panicked. What if nobody laughed? What if even just in this I fell flat on my face? Oh crap I never should have come to this thing. I should have just gone home, eaten soup and prepared for my business trip tomorrow. Okay, okay. What’s the worst that can happen? I looked around the room to the other two scribbling furiously and the teacher checking Facebook on her iPhone. This was a stand up comedy class – surely if anyone these people would be supportive, right? So that’s what I did. I was supportive.

Their turns came and I laughed at their awful material – confident that they would then at least in turn laugh at mine.

They didn’t. None of them.

Crickets.

Oh my God that couldn’t have gone any worse. I then got the pity prompt from the teacher but I shook my head, having trailed off in my story to a whisper and a pathetic redirect back to one of the other students. They felt pity for me. It was the absolute worst outcome conceivable. 

And then it got even worse.

The young girl had a very noticeable black eye. I would have milked that for all it was worth material wise and figured she was about to do the same when the teacher asked her about it – she started to explain about falling off her bike and I laughed. Finally something in this room was truly funny! Here we go!

She stopped and they all looked at me. And I kid you not, in a stand-up comedy class the three of them turned to me and said ‘that’s not funny, she could have been seriously hurt!’

What the hell kind of alternate universe was I in?!?!!

It continued this way, nobody even giving a polite guffaw at my stuff while I snorted and laughed at their unintentionally funny build up to a weak punchline when really, the build-up could have been quite good.

That killed me. My confidence was shattered and I was left wondering if I had ever said anything properly funny in my life or if people are just out to humor me.

My tinfoil hat of paranoia was now fully in place as I watched the class, checked out and resigned to just sit it out until we were freed – as strangers tromped in and out to use the bathrooms. Oddly enough they all seemed to go in one door and come out on the other side of the room completely but I was the only one that noticed this. Or commented on this. Also apparently not funny.

What was funny, apparently, was complaining. Complaining about people, misogyny (?), tourists, travel cards and sex. It just wasn’t my style. And so I sat there, declining to jump up and play improv games in which you try to out intimidate the other person. I declined moaning about my husband’s inadequacies and I vowed to never, ever, EVER do this type of thing again.