Since last time I wrote, Rob and I have moved away from England. And Thank GOD. Us Australian's are not designed to deal with a near constant drizzle that seems to be the deal in Britain.
Anyway, we've moved now, back the Czech Republic, which is the third time for each of us living here. The choice was made and implemented in about two and a half weeks, which has to be some kind of crazy record. It involved a lot of detachment about belongings and a lot of donations to the charity shop, a lot of cleaning and a lot of last minute jettisoning at the airport due to mis-judged weight of bags. And then 12 hours of travel. Bleh.
However, what I actually want to talk about is this: We're coming up to our one year anniversary of marriage tomorrow. Fate has conspired to put us back in the country where we got married, which is kind of nostalgic. And time has just flown by, one year has gone by faster than either of us expected.
That's not to say that it's been easy - I doubt that learning to live with a new person ever is - for one thing, you discover the nutty habits that the other person has (Bert puts back empty containers in the fridge and pantry, I talk and shout in my sleep). But beyond that shallow stuff, there's a deeper level to what changes. You stop functioning as a single person. Choices are almost entirely shared, and you learn how to consult in front of people with a well chosen look.
It's difficult to properly explain how things change. It's been a good year. A year in which we've moved house twice, country once, and struggled through bureaucracy the whole way, since the UK is under the collective impression that marrying outside your country is bad.
I think that we've been lucky in that the problems that we've faced have not come from within the marriage, and so consequently have strengthened it. The most important thing that I've really realized is that no matter how pissed you are, you turn to the other person for support. That's what they're there for.
All I can hope for really is that this next year will contain less outside challenges.
When I find the camera in the boxes, I intend to post some photos of the town. Till then, later days.
Tuesday 6 April 2010
Wednesday 13 January 2010
It has been far too long...
So, it has been a long long long time since this has been updated. Despite the best of intentions, other, more video-gamey pursuits seem to have interfered in the progress of this blog. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is amazing by the way. I pre-ordered it, and so received these gems as a free gift:
It's certainly one of the better games I've played recently. Bert seems to be enjoying it too, but is a little frustrated with me - I've hit the wall that I inevitably hit with Zelda games, where you know exactly how to solve the puzzle, but it's too damn hard! So I'm stuck on one of the temples, and I'm spending far too much time earning treasure in a mini-game. Hoo-rah.
Other recent game playing of possible interest:
Scribblenauts: Whimsical, but the controls were heinous enough for me to trade it in. Bowser's Story: I'm about a quarter or so in, and it. is. wonderful. Hilarious and well thought out. Worth a look for sure.
Sims 3/Sims 3 World Adventures: DON'T LOOK AT ME! DON'T LOOK AT MY SHAME! It's every bit as appealing as the other Sims installments have been, and every bit as overpriced. Annoying the living daylights out of me at the moment, since the new expansion is so buggy that I feel like I've payed 30 quid to beta test the damn thing.
House of the Dead - Overkill: Great little zombie shooter for the Wii. Feels like you're playing through a Tarantino film, but it is about as far from "family friendly" as you can get - swearing, sex references and gory violence make this firmly in the adult fare camp.
And, as always, the staple of our communal gaming - Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction: Now we're up to Hell difficultly level, and obsessing more than ever over item drops. I can recognize the sound of a ring drop from twenty paces.
Remember: The couple that games together, stays together.
So, in non-gaming news, Bert and I have moved to Bath. It's been great, much nicer than the fist fights and imminent knifings of Carlisle. The Baha'i community is bigger here, and I've been elected to the LSA, since they had a space. We seem to be settling in well, and have managed to set up a Ruhi Book 4 that takes place at our flat every month.
My sister came to visit over the Christmas break (and spent most of her time glued to my laptop, getting her fill of "The Sims 3") so we took her around to Stonehenge and other such historical sites. Stonehenge, is, I'm sure, magical and lovely if you weren't embittered by spending something like 20 quid a head to go and stand in the freezing cold with about two hundred other tourists who are also cold, but more vocal and obnoxious about this fact than you'd care for. All our photos of the trip have the same glazed over "I'm so goddamn cold" look emblazoned on our faces, but here's one anyway:
And on that note, I leave you with a well intentioned promise to actually update this thing.
It's certainly one of the better games I've played recently. Bert seems to be enjoying it too, but is a little frustrated with me - I've hit the wall that I inevitably hit with Zelda games, where you know exactly how to solve the puzzle, but it's too damn hard! So I'm stuck on one of the temples, and I'm spending far too much time earning treasure in a mini-game. Hoo-rah.
Other recent game playing of possible interest:
Scribblenauts: Whimsical, but the controls were heinous enough for me to trade it in. Bowser's Story: I'm about a quarter or so in, and it. is. wonderful. Hilarious and well thought out. Worth a look for sure.
Sims 3/Sims 3 World Adventures: DON'T LOOK AT ME! DON'T LOOK AT MY SHAME! It's every bit as appealing as the other Sims installments have been, and every bit as overpriced. Annoying the living daylights out of me at the moment, since the new expansion is so buggy that I feel like I've payed 30 quid to beta test the damn thing.
House of the Dead - Overkill: Great little zombie shooter for the Wii. Feels like you're playing through a Tarantino film, but it is about as far from "family friendly" as you can get - swearing, sex references and gory violence make this firmly in the adult fare camp.
And, as always, the staple of our communal gaming - Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction: Now we're up to Hell difficultly level, and obsessing more than ever over item drops. I can recognize the sound of a ring drop from twenty paces.
Remember: The couple that games together, stays together.
So, in non-gaming news, Bert and I have moved to Bath. It's been great, much nicer than the fist fights and imminent knifings of Carlisle. The Baha'i community is bigger here, and I've been elected to the LSA, since they had a space. We seem to be settling in well, and have managed to set up a Ruhi Book 4 that takes place at our flat every month.
My sister came to visit over the Christmas break (and spent most of her time glued to my laptop, getting her fill of "The Sims 3") so we took her around to Stonehenge and other such historical sites. Stonehenge, is, I'm sure, magical and lovely if you weren't embittered by spending something like 20 quid a head to go and stand in the freezing cold with about two hundred other tourists who are also cold, but more vocal and obnoxious about this fact than you'd care for. All our photos of the trip have the same glazed over "I'm so goddamn cold" look emblazoned on our faces, but here's one anyway:
And on that note, I leave you with a well intentioned promise to actually update this thing.
Sunday 17 May 2009
Immigration
So, last night, Bert and I went for a walk to clear our heads. It wasn't what we thought of as late at night - more like around 9.00pm-ish. Nor was it dark yet.
Apparently though, in the town we live in, that's no excuse not to be drunk on a Saturday night.
On rounding the corner, a door flew open in front of us and 6 or 7 people spilled out into the street, shouting and gesturing at each other. 2 men in the centre were going at it, hammer and tongs, one of them with a piece of wood clutched in his fist. (and there we were, about 3 metres away from walking into it...)
Luckily (we thought) there was a security guard station nearby for the local university. We ran over to tell them what was going on, and to ask them to notify the police of a domestic. One of them went to phone the police, only to discover that on a Saturday night, the police weren't answering their phone. The security guys also lamented that in other case like this where the police had picked up the phone, it took them up to three hours to respond to a call.
Great, so what you're saying is that I can live in this town relatively consequence-free? I mean, I couldn't rob a place, but if I wanted to hit someone, I could probably get away with it. Unbelievable.
Meanwhile, we can still hear the sounds of the fight going on, although the participants have migrated further down the road, and closer to our house.
The security guys went on to tell us that it was usually the immigrants of this area (I really wanted to contradict him on this, but the people in question weren't actually English-speaking). That they were always drinking and causing fights. This made me very uncomfortable, considering that Bert and I are both immigrants - the only difference being that we are English-speaking immigrants (which is not always enough to save us from racism either).
In fact, the kind of attitudes that you experience directed towards immigrants here is really unbelievable. It shocks me that I now live in a place that is so predominantly white that I'm different enough to be targeted. That even Bert is different enough.
Recently, Bert taught a lesson on debating to one of his classes, using the subject of immigration. Having talked to them about it the day before, he had an idea of which kids were already anti-immigration, and tried to take them out of their comfort-zones by asking them to argue as though they themselves were immigrants. This was met partly with flat-out refusal ("But I don't want them in my country") and partly with speeches about how immigrants were coming in and taking all the jobs - which, unfortunately, was met with applause from the other students.
This attitude is so deeply ingrained that it was impossible to even get them to stop and think about the other side of the argument.
I still don't know what happened with the fight, since in the end we just had to detour around it and go home. And apparently, according to attitudes, nobody else cares.
Apparently though, in the town we live in, that's no excuse not to be drunk on a Saturday night.
On rounding the corner, a door flew open in front of us and 6 or 7 people spilled out into the street, shouting and gesturing at each other. 2 men in the centre were going at it, hammer and tongs, one of them with a piece of wood clutched in his fist. (and there we were, about 3 metres away from walking into it...)
Luckily (we thought) there was a security guard station nearby for the local university. We ran over to tell them what was going on, and to ask them to notify the police of a domestic. One of them went to phone the police, only to discover that on a Saturday night, the police weren't answering their phone. The security guys also lamented that in other case like this where the police had picked up the phone, it took them up to three hours to respond to a call.
Great, so what you're saying is that I can live in this town relatively consequence-free? I mean, I couldn't rob a place, but if I wanted to hit someone, I could probably get away with it. Unbelievable.
Meanwhile, we can still hear the sounds of the fight going on, although the participants have migrated further down the road, and closer to our house.
The security guys went on to tell us that it was usually the immigrants of this area (I really wanted to contradict him on this, but the people in question weren't actually English-speaking). That they were always drinking and causing fights. This made me very uncomfortable, considering that Bert and I are both immigrants - the only difference being that we are English-speaking immigrants (which is not always enough to save us from racism either).
In fact, the kind of attitudes that you experience directed towards immigrants here is really unbelievable. It shocks me that I now live in a place that is so predominantly white that I'm different enough to be targeted. That even Bert is different enough.
Recently, Bert taught a lesson on debating to one of his classes, using the subject of immigration. Having talked to them about it the day before, he had an idea of which kids were already anti-immigration, and tried to take them out of their comfort-zones by asking them to argue as though they themselves were immigrants. This was met partly with flat-out refusal ("But I don't want them in my country") and partly with speeches about how immigrants were coming in and taking all the jobs - which, unfortunately, was met with applause from the other students.
This attitude is so deeply ingrained that it was impossible to even get them to stop and think about the other side of the argument.
I still don't know what happened with the fight, since in the end we just had to detour around it and go home. And apparently, according to attitudes, nobody else cares.
Tuesday 12 May 2009
Dating
To be honest, I don't know where to begin this. As a blog about Baha'i marriage, it's a little arrogant of me to assume that I can offer any real insights into marriage after a month, but this blog is more of a 'learn from our mistakes' kind of exercise. I wish we could say more, but we don't yet know what will come of this ourselves. (Ostensibly, this will be written by both of us, but since I'm doing the brunt of the typing here, I'm wording it in first person for convenience.)
Rather than beginning right away with the marriage, I'm going to use this post to go further back and talk a little about dating as a Baha'i. This is something that my husband, Bert, and I were especially cautious about when deciding to date – we've both noticed that there can quite often be an undue pressure on Baha'i couples (especially young couples) towards marriage. This is something that can lead to something that my husband refers to as the 'marriage-Baha'i' phenomena.
'Marriage-Baha'i', in a nutshell, is described by Bert as the following: Two Baha'is meet. They have so much in common-Baha'i. They go out to dinner-Baha'i. They see a movie-Baha'i. He's such a spiritual person-Baha'i. She has a beautiful soul-Baha'i. They get engaged-Baha'i. They have a wedding-Baha'i. They have a divorce-Baha'i.
Don't miss the point here, though – I realise that the above sounds quite cynical, but bear with me. Yes, sharing a religion is a wonderful thing in a relationship – but it's not the be-all and end all of forming a connection with each other. Nor should it be the complete sum of your relationship. You need to have more in common with each other, shared interests, similar goals and ideals, sense of humour – you get the idea. This seems obvious, but I've actually watched people (myself included) make this mistake while dating.
Bert and I were fortunate in this aspect. We met while doing service together at a Baha'i school, and were able to get to know each other by working with each other daily. This was a great eye-opener. For one thing, by working together in such a busy environment, you end up seeing how the other reacts to frustration or high pressure situations. We didn't just see this about each other, we saw many people around us in a similar situation, and had the time to get to know each person.
About six months into our friendship, I moved halfway across the world, forcing us to continue our friendship solely through email and phone-calls. While immensely frustrating to do, in the end, I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity it afforded us to really get to know one another. Not only that, but it gave us the opportunity to get to know each other privately, without everyone looking on and making assumptions, which would have put both of us off.
Not everyone gets this opportunity, and it is difficult when you feel that your every move is scrutinised. Rather like high school, really.
Ideally, I suppose, you end up in a situation where you can get to know people in a group, or through a professional setting. If it isn't possible, the point is to try and ignore those around you who are pushing you to get a move on, or even those who gossip about you. There's always those people. The trick is not to care.
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