Spit, Shoes, and Austin

Austin Skyline at Night
Photo by LoneStarMike

I'm writing this from Austin, Texas. I grew up more or less in Texas and it's been 26 or 27 years since I've been back. I'm only here for three days where I'll be speaking at a conference, and while I'm looking forward to seeing some of my professional colleagues again, I'm really looking forward to meeting some family members I've not seen in years (or in some cases, ever). I'm also craving Tex-Mex cooking. I've not had proper Tex-Mex in a long time and in Europe it's almost invariably rubbish. As I explain to my European friends who tell me that they don't like Mexican food: "you've probably never had it."


That's my long-winded way of saying that my posting is likely to be disrupted this week and possibly the next (where I'll be in Portland, Oregon). I'm joined by my wife and daughter and our daughter, though only 28 months old, handled the flight from Paris wonderfully. Our schedule's a bit off, but we'll survive.

In the meantime, you might find this blog post interesting. I'm quite enjoying what I'm reading on that blog and that particular post has a cartoon about how while Westerners find the Chinese habit of spitting in the street disgusting, the Chinese often find it equally disgusting that most Westerners are willing to wear their filthy shoes in the house. There's also this lovely post about censoring blog posts. As an expat, the author explains that she tends to avoid sharing some of the more difficult aspects of living abroad and I suspect this is true of quite a few expat blogs. We're almost like "un-news": we focus on the good stuff rather than the bad stuff. (I tend to not share too much personal information on my blog, but I do try to cover the bad aspects of moving abroad because, hey, you have to know!)

So if my posting schedule is too erratic, read through the Expat Lingo blog. It's quite nice. She's currently in Hong Kong and getting an Asian expat's view might nicely offset my primarily European one.