Scottish Referendum through the eyes of a “local foreigner” I

I am a foreigner living in Scotland. Well, to say the truth I’m not totally a foreigner: I am an EU citizen and the UK is in the EU, so I’m a citizen of this greater union I live in. Because of that I’m given the right to vote in the referendum.

And here I find two different opinions among the other “foreigners / not so foreigners” on this respect. On the one hand there are many who say they will not vote because this is a matter that concerns only the nationals. There are many others who see voting in the referendum as part of the duties towards the country they live in. I am much inclined to agree with the later ones.

There are many reasons why the treaties of the EU established EU citizenship and a right of all citizens to vote for some elections in the other member states. If there is freedom of citizens to establish themselves in other countries (and therein pay taxes), it is only fair that they should be able to hold local politicians accountable for their decisions. Besides, it is considered that the future of the territories they live in is also of their concern.

I add another one. This is a less political or practical reason and more emotional one. We, foreigners, may very well love the country in which we establish ourselves and to want the best for it. For this reason, we may want to share the responsibility with the nationals for important political decisions.

For these reasons, I chose to vote in the UK for the EU elections. With this, I lost the right to vote in the same elections in my own state of nationality. For the same reasons I will vote in the referendum on the 18^th of September. And I will vote with the best interests of this country at heart… Just as any national should.

Future of the UK and Scotland

Yesterday around 200 people got together in the Old College to talk about the white paper made by the government of Scotland. It's already impressive that this amount of people would choose to spend most of its St. Andrew's day talking about politics. But even more impressive was how well the debate went and how obviously interested people are in reflecting on the issue before making a final decision in 10 months time.

I know that's how Democracy should be like. Unfortunately, it's so rare that it really is like that. So often people don't care about getting to know more about the consequences of their vote. That, of course, when they do decide to vote... So this event was refreshing and gave me confidence on Scotland's future: in or out of the UK.

In the morning we had five academics' thoughts on five different questions. Would Scotland be wealthier? A fairer more equal country? Safe in the world? Greener? And what kind of Democracy would it have? In the afternoon we had five other academics who, assuming a yes vote in the referendum, reflected on dividing assets and debts, EU membership, role in the international community, currency union and constitution.

Both panels were followed by debates with people with different opinions and from distinct professional and political background. In the morning there was also a period of audience discussion. Unfortunately, the gadgets they provided for the audience to vote were not working very well but the discussion was still very lively. Another unfortunate fact was that there was a fire alarm in the afternoon that made us all freeze outside for one hour and loose the time for audience discussion. These two technical malfunctions still could not cast a shadow over how great the exchange of ideas was.

Congratulations to the organization and to all the participants! (uops, this last one also includes me...)

Things that only a Brit would say... II

You meet someone in the street, exchange a few words until time comes for farewell and your British interlocutor tells you: "catch you later!" 

Catch me! Will you be chasing me? To do what once you caught me? Is that a threat?

In fact this only means "see you later!" So why don't they say "see you later"? Britishnesses...

Things that only a Brit would say... I

In reply to your question: "how are you?" you get a "not too bad!"

Not to bad!!! The first time I heard this my immediate reply was one of commiseration: "why? what happened? is there anything I can do to help?"

In fact "not too bad" in this country means "good". Go figure... 

Prestige... Do you still remember?

Can you still remember the accident of prestige? Well, it was 11 years ago and it was one of the worst petrol spills in Europe ever. After all this time the criminal court in La Coruna (Galicia), finally came to a decision. Everyone involved was innocent of any crimes.

What do we learn with this? That to not comply with safety navigation norms in order to save some money is ok. That to severely harm the environment is not that serious. That to prevent entire communities of fishermen from working for months in a region that greatly depends on fishing is just bad luck. 

Well, the environment is not that important, right? If we completely destroy this earth we can always move to Mars... What? Mars does not have enough O2? Well, our planet will also soon not have much, so what's the difference?

Rum...maging Denmark

That´s what the Danes say...

Living room window

Saving the best for last... The best view, of course!

The living room window has a superb view over Arthur's Seat. For those who never visited Edinburgh (shame on you), Arthur's Seat is a pick in Holyrood Park. From it, the visitor can have a superb view over the city. In this photo, Arthur's Seat is the one on the right.

This window gets a lot of sun in the morning. When there is sun, of course. Which clearly was not the case when I took this photo... It also leads to the street, overlooking one of the main streets of Edinburgh: Clerk Street (locals read Clark).

Even though this is the window with the best view, I don't have a funny story to tell, like the bedroom window's nor did I ever took long to contemplate the people outside, like I did with the kitchen window. Maybe people who say that beauty isn't all that important are right. Or maybe not...

How many days?

In the post office, after posting a registered letter to Singapore the lad behind the counter tells me:

- Forty five days to arrive.

I, obviously surprised, answered with shock in my voice:

- Forty five days to arrive!!!

The lad replies:

- Forty five days to arrive.

No wanting to believe this outrageous number, I reply:

- One month and half for a letter to arrive in a city that has daily flights from London! In that case I don't want to send it from here! Give me back the letter!

Given that tomorrow I'm flying home, I intended to send the letter from there. I'm sure our postal service would be more efficient than 45 days with the royal mail. The lad decided to speak really slowly:

- T h e - l e t t e r - w i l l - t a k e - f o u r - t o - f i v e - d a y s - t o - a r r i v e.

- Ahhhh! - I replied with relief - Why didn't you say: "the letter will take between four and five days to arrive" in the first place then? Are you afraid of using extra words? It wouldn't stress your vocal cords too much, you know?

Mental note: I won't use that post again!

Polish adventures

Next to my house I have a wee Polish food shop. Sometimes I go there to buy bread and I end up being adventurous and buying something else. Why adventurous? Because everything is written in Polish and I can only vaguely imagine what I'm buying.

Today I decided to buy something that looked like a pate. At least it was certainly something to put in the bread because there was a picture of the thing spread over a loaf of bread. The thing was called Smalec z ogorkiem malosolnym. This sounded like an innocent enough name, right? Well, not really... The thing is almost pure lard! That exotic people from across the iron wall spreads lard in the bread!

Now, I can't exactly say that I loved it at first bite. However, I'm not the sort of person who throws away food which means that by the end of the jar, I will probably be a fan of spreading lard in bread. And I will have gained a few extra kilos as well...

Joys of being adventurous!

The bedroom window

I know that yesterday I wrote that the kitchen window was a bit plain and without much of a view. Still, compared to the one in my bedroom, that view is amazing. This is due to the simple fact that my bedroom has no view. I mean, if there's a window, there's a view, but the only thing I see is the next building on the other side of a narrow alley. 

Now this seems boring, right? And for more than one month from the time I moved into this new house, I thought that was the most boring window in the world. But this changed on a night a couple of weeks ago... Now it's the time for those of you who think that only perverts peep at their neighbours to stop reading this post so you don't think of me as a pervert.

So, this was the night from Saturday to Sunday. I woke up a bit after 4 am in need of a visit to the loo. When I went back to bed, I could hear house music from the street. Now, there is no bar or club near my house, so I thought it strange and went to the window to check what it was. As soon as I opened the window, I realized where the music was coming from: the neighbour from across the alley. 

The neighbour was a 20-30 years old guy wearing nothing but black boxer briefs and dancing in his room. Dancing a sort of strip-tease dancer or something. Politically correctness would advise me to call it exotic dance but I didn't find it exotic, just absolutely hilarious! So I, who wanted to go back to sleep, laughed so much that lost all the sleep I had and spent the rest of the night watching episodes of "how I met your mother". 

Well, to be fair to my neighbour, I laughed because I thought it completely crazy for a guy to be dancing alone in his room at 4 am on a Saturday night (they invented disco-clubs for that). But when I was laughing, I realized that there was a girl with him in the room and I stopped laughing... Somehow this seemed less funny and more of a national geographic sort of thing: "the male human dances to show his physical prowess and attract the female." This means that my neighbour is not completely crazy. He just deserves to be part of some human life documentary by Sir David Attenborough.

Well, one good thing came out of the rest of the night watching "how I met your mother". I stopped thinking that my bedroom window was the most boring window on the face of the earth. But now I will certainly never open it again when I hear music in the middle of the night. After all, a PhD student needs more to sleep than to watch American TV shows.