Category Archives: Expat Life

Self-indulgence

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I have the place to myself for two weeks: I can eat what I like, I can cook whenever I like [earlier than usual], I can watch shows on TV that I like, I’ll have no distractions, no obligations, I’ll have all the time in the world, I can be me… So I promised myself to cook Chinese over the weekend, simple but beautiful and tasty dishes: egg fried rice and fish. And I’ll finally bake that chocolate cake next week which has been on my mind for a while already. I’m gonna indulge myself and treat each and every one of my six senses [yes all six *hehe*].

I also decided today that I’m gonna book afternoon tea for my birthday. Why? Because I deserve it and I want my birthday to be special this time. But that’s not the only reason, I want to try all the wonderful things this country has to offer and especially things that are cultural, from pub grub to afternoon tea at Claridge’s. Last week I went to another car boot sale, MvdM., CS. and AS. came along as well and it was fun to have a look around. To me it’s about the atmosphere, the chatty friendly people, joking about the things they sell, their happy attitude.

It was cold that day so two hours later we went to the local greasy spoon/caff to have a proper breakfast. One that would normally serve a quick recovery from a decent hangover. I don’t like greasy food that much and I try to eat as healthy as possible but I really can’t resist a nice breakfast twice a year. My birthday was mentioned and I told them that I would really like to have afternoon tea that day and I asked MvdM. if he ever had one. MvdM. moved here about eight years ago but never had afternoon tea. How can you not have had one in all those years?

So this is why I decided to have it for my birthday and since you need to book twelve weeks in advance I will call next week to make reservations and make sure that I’m allowed to take pictures [not allowed at the Ritz, yes silly…] I want pictures of cakes, pastries, scones and sandwiches. And hopefully tea will be served in beautiful flowery tea cups with shiny golden rims. According to the Claridge’s website the introduction of afternoon tea, a quintessentially English tradition, is credited to Anna, Duchess of Bedford, in the early 19th century.

Now that was your history lesson for today. I’m off to call my mum, she sent me a pretty card last week and to my surprise I found a copy in there of an article that was published in a well-known Dutch magazine. An interview about her… my mum in a magazine. I can’t help but feeling proud and it made me realise that I miss her. For now I’ll leave you with a picture of lunch that I prepared a while ago: smoked salmon and cream cheese soufflé with crispy garlic/red onion bread [own recipe with secret ingredients: it’s in the details baby *hehe*].

All this talk about food makes me hungry… :D

I so want this tea cup… ‘only’ nine pounds each

Lunch…

About Expats

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There’s something about certain expats that seems to push the wrong button at times. I’m registered with a few of these expat websites and every now and then I’ll pay them a visit and click links of other expats living either in London or Amsterdam [or elsewhere]. Just out of curiosity and in search of a bit of entertainment. This is how I met a few really nice people online who can be found in my expat list below. I started reading their blogs because there was something nice to read, a positive, friendly and non-quitter attitude.

Of course expats have a right to complain about certain things in their host country but when a person is only slagging off each and every single aspect of the host country then it causes question marks in my head. Especially if it is about the Lowlands or about the UK. I’m not patriotic, I left the Lowlands for a reason but I wouldn’t say it was that bad as some would want us to believe, same here in the UK. I feel that if you decide to move, you should adjust to the host country and try your utter best to integrate.

I read several blogs and was surprised to see how some are capable of posting one nasty complaint after another about the host country and praising their home country like it’s paradise on earth. Time for a wake-up call perhaps? I’m tempted to leave a comment asking why they don’t go back ‘home’ if they hate it that much, but I contain myself *most of the time*. Over the weekend I ended up on this website of an American family who’d moved to London, I read a post about Halloween written by the mother.

What struck me was that she was slagging off the fact that people in the UK/London, don’t celebrate Halloween, they were called mean because they had signs on their door letting people know that they won’t answer it. Question that pops up: what’s wrong with honesty…? It was then implied that Halloween was typical American; the Brits could learn a thing or two. Now this is where I start to feel the button being pushed… It was the tone in that post accompanied by a picture of the sign mentioned above.

It’s the arrogance: not everything in this world is American or about America you see… If she would’ve known the facts she should’ve said it was originally an Irish celebration, which is older than the history of the USA. *Ughh* I can’t really blame her though, Europeans tend to leave the kind of heritage information out that goes back more than two generations, that’s because we have a history that extends way beyond 1776 and we most certainly don’t feel the need to keep reminding everyone with each possible occasion.

There also seems to be an extreme gap between those expats who only need to follow hubby’s well-paid career path and entertain themselves [see example above] and those who made an independent decision to make the move, which clearly shows a divergence in attitudes and people, but perhaps that’s a different post altogether.