Twilight

With a title like this, someone might expect me to write about a bad quality teenage saga. But no. I want to write about those two hours or so, from around 10pm to around midnight in which there is still some light here in Edinburgh. Basically, Edinburgh is so far North that in Summer days become really long. Even at that time of night in which it was suppose to be pitch black, we can still see shades of blue in the sky. It's very beautiful!

Blind checks

A couple of months ago, after passing in the X-ray in Edinburgh airport, I was asked to show my ID in a random check. 

I thought that was strange. I have to admit that my idea was "why on earth would they ask me, a white, light-haired, blue-eyed guy wearing a suit and with no criminal record?" I know this thought sounds quite racist. It sounds like I consider to be above suspicion... How politically incorrect can it be? 

As such, while showing my ID, I decided to ask the officer the reason for that random check. The answer came while he was trying to choose which of my names to put on his records: "it's just a routine check!" 

Now, this wasn't a satisfying answer for me. I would guess that in a routine check they should be asking the ID to those individuals with a more suspicious look. Risking continuing to be politically incorrect, I have to admit that my thought was that a light-haired, blue-eyed guy in a suit and tie and Oxford shoes  was not the first guy one would usually consider suspicious. So the next question was: "routine checks are good and necessary, but why me?!" This was said in a tone that also expressed a little bit of a "look at me! do I look like trouble?"

The officer had to control the smirk on his face while answering my politically incorrect question. He said something like "the choice was perfectly random, anyone could be chosen", etc.. Even though he said this in a matter-of-fact tone, he kind of stressed the "anyone" part.

I remembered this today while reading a letter of a guy from Muslim background to the Minister for Justice in Sweden. He was complaining how he always felt surveillance to tight whenever he went into a shop. Or how police always looks at him more suspiciously than they do at "traditional Swedes" (read the light-haired, blue-eyed ones). And even how once he was taken to a police car for no reason and kept waiting for 20 minutes before being dismissed without an apology.

Next time I'm asked for my ID, I promise not to complain. I promise not to ask "why me?" I promise I will be happy that I may even consider such control to be strange.

Holidays

Coming to Scotland was a bit of a cultural shock! Not because of the weather, one only needs to wear more clothes. Also not the food: dumplings and noodles might be awesome, but haggis is no second to them (I do miss a good weekend yam cha, though).

What is really shocking here is the lack of public holidays!

Before I moved to the UK I was living in what is perhaps the most “holidayed” territory in the world, Macau. I guess the reason for this is that Macau was for 450 years ruled by two of the peoples who enjoy having public holidays the most: the Portuguese and the Chinese.

So, basically, nowadays there are many kinds of holidays in that small territory. There are Chinese political holidays, like the day of the establishment of the PRC but also religious holidays that were abolished in China with the Socialism, such as the birthday of Buddha. There are Chinese traditional holidays such as the day to sweep the graves, the moon cake festival or Chinese New Year. There are also the Catholic holidays, inherited from the Portuguese, such as Christmas, Easter, Our Lady of Conception or the day of the faithful departed (which is actually not a public holiday in Portugal because the day before is, the all saints day).

With all these holidays and with low cost flights to so many places in Asia departing from Macau, one of the main hobbies in the city is to plan trips. To me, this trip planning was already natural: browsing the calendar for the next holiday, check how many days off I needed to take to “bridge” it to the closest weekend, check promotions of low cost companies, look for friends who hadn't gone to that destination (an increasingly challenging task, as everyone was doing the same) and finally, book the trip and buy the fake lonely planet guide across the border, in Zhuhai, world’s capital of fake stuff.

The United Kingdom could not be more different! In this country most holidays are just in the calendar, they aren't for real. In the 1^st of May, for example, no one would notice there was a holiday going on. In St. Andrew’s day, the Patron Saint of Scotland, everyone was working. A lot of other holidays appear in my calendar but they’re just another day with no difference whatsoever to working days…

Well, this is actually good, because now my financial situation would not allow me to travel as much as in Macau and I would feel miserable if everyone but me was doing it!