I've been in the United States for two and a half weeks now, and I can't help but notice how different things are after my year in London. First, food tastes...different from what I remember. It's also massively larger. For example, all bread that I've eaten in America now has a distinctly sweet taste, whereas the bread I bought in London tasted like, well, bread. Sweet potatoes in America are at least 2 times as large as the ones I had in London, and they taste a bit like metallic plastic, if that makes any sense. Same goes with aubergines (eggplant): they're massive and taste a bit off.
In addition, food is extraordinarily more expensive in the US, at least where I've been doing my shopping: Stop & Shop. A tin of nuts at Stop & Shop goes for somewhere around $5, whereas the same amount of nuts at my local Tesco in London would have gone for anywhere from £0.80 to £2 (around $1.50 to $3.50). I've noticed this with just about every other food I've bought in Stop & Shop: Tesco wins out, even with the exchange rate.
I make it a habit to avoid the most common sweetener in just about every food in America, high fructose corn syrup, but even so, the strangely sweet taste is still there. It's disturbing, because it is a repulsive taste in bread, and I'm actually surprised that I was able to eat bread in America for so long without noticing the taste.
Is it psychosomatic? I admit that is a possibility, but at the same time, I still find the supposedly "fresh" vegetables I buy at S&S to be disgusting.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
An Open Letter to David Cameron
His eyes likely won't see this, nor will his ears hear of this from his aides, but I'm going to write it because it matters to me.
Mr. Prime Minister,
I'm not going to address your subservience to US policy, as I would typically do. I'm not going to talk about the iniquitous decisions you've made regarding the public services in the UK. I'm not even going to mention your party's eschewing of the EU regardless of the benefits it confers to the UK. Instead, this is personal.
I'm an Anglophile. From a young age, I fed myself a steady diet of British culture, starting with Harry Potter and continuing with Monty Python to the works of Charles Dickens and the daily morning cup of Earl Grey. That wasn't the simplest thing to do, as my father is an immigrant of Argentina (and was once deported from the UK years ago, or so he says), but I was luckily a self-sufficient kid in the ways of the Internet. I imbibed it like the holy grail it was to me.
Understandably, I wanted to go to a university in the UK. I was accepted to several, though I ultimately ended up at the London School of Economics, an extremely prestigious institution, as you know. I was overjoyed, I can tell you that. I had high hopes of obtaining a job, work visa sponsorship, and in good time, UK/EU dual citizenship with the US. Hell, I've even mapped out my dream retirement options: getting a cottage in Cornwall where I could grow vegetables in the garden, or opening a small, friendly pub in London called the Drunken Ass (with a donkey on the sign) where I could serve patrons a tall one without the annoying music or overbearing noise of a match. It would just be a place for friends to congregate and enjoy each other's time, except on karaoke Thursdays. That's a special day.
What's wrong with that dream? Like any other cherished photograph, it has chipped away with experience. I had several interviews in London, very good ones, I might add, but when the conversation turned to my work availability and visa issues, a dark, foreboding silence befell the room each time before I was told that my prospective employers don't do visas.
Here I am, back in the desolate suburbia of New Jersey where I passed through my adolescence in relative ennui, and all I can think about is being back in London. It's unfair to allow someone to become so enamored with a city and then tell them that, because they aren't a native, they haven't a chance of staying there. I'm not unique in this respect: other Americans from my Master's program are trying to stay and are riding out the extent of their visas (until January), after which point they'd have no choice but to return to the United States. I had the misfortune of having to move out of my flat, and since I had no job, there was no point in paying for an ephemeral hope of a job that would sponsor my visa.
I believe that the old visa rules, since you so dutifully decided that immigrants were "bad," dictated that students who obtained a degree with a UK university could stay for two years past their graduation. Now, it's six months, which is a troublesome time limit because renting a room or a flat for six months is harder than one might think.
All we want to do is work to improve both our own lives and the lives of those around us. We want to pay taxes, support the social system that you are so ardently privatising, and enjoy the cultural gravitas of England. Instead, you and your xenophobic lot are making it harder for even EU immigrants to come to the UK.
You're not an empire. You're an island that is part of a greater federal entity that is the EU. Give up the illusions of your past delinquencies and accept that you no longer have influence without the EU. What's more, without an influx of skilled migrants, you only hurt your own economy. If someone with an advanced degree wishes to work within the UK, why shouldn't they have the chance to do so? To keep jobs "British?" What of those who want to become British? Should they not have the same chance to do so?
Mr. Cameron, you're not unreasonable. Your surprising adherence to the Syria vote in Parliament shows that. I only wish that you'd realise that the UK is no longer in a position to exclude people who want to become a part of your society. We are skilled and we want to bring our abilities to you, whether we're doctors, or lawyers, or entrepreneurs, or engineers, or political strategists, or the like.
Don't punish us simply because we're not native-born in the UK or the EU. Borders now mean very little. If a migrant such as myself, who paid my £750 a month in rent (not including utilities, mind you) and my £17,000 in student fees, wishes to stay and live in the UK, what reason is there for not allowing me to do so?
I'll pay the bloody Council tax. I'll gladly pay into every single social service that deducts from my paycheck through taxes because those social services are integral to the functioning of the state. I'll work a terrible entry-level job that hardly pays above the visa minimum salary. I only ask that you give us, the lot of us who want to stay, the chance to do it. We aren't a drain on your society, like so many conservatives would say; that's anodyne and illogical. Why would we drain something we so desire?
Mr. Prime Minister,
I'm not going to address your subservience to US policy, as I would typically do. I'm not going to talk about the iniquitous decisions you've made regarding the public services in the UK. I'm not even going to mention your party's eschewing of the EU regardless of the benefits it confers to the UK. Instead, this is personal.
I'm an Anglophile. From a young age, I fed myself a steady diet of British culture, starting with Harry Potter and continuing with Monty Python to the works of Charles Dickens and the daily morning cup of Earl Grey. That wasn't the simplest thing to do, as my father is an immigrant of Argentina (and was once deported from the UK years ago, or so he says), but I was luckily a self-sufficient kid in the ways of the Internet. I imbibed it like the holy grail it was to me.
Understandably, I wanted to go to a university in the UK. I was accepted to several, though I ultimately ended up at the London School of Economics, an extremely prestigious institution, as you know. I was overjoyed, I can tell you that. I had high hopes of obtaining a job, work visa sponsorship, and in good time, UK/EU dual citizenship with the US. Hell, I've even mapped out my dream retirement options: getting a cottage in Cornwall where I could grow vegetables in the garden, or opening a small, friendly pub in London called the Drunken Ass (with a donkey on the sign) where I could serve patrons a tall one without the annoying music or overbearing noise of a match. It would just be a place for friends to congregate and enjoy each other's time, except on karaoke Thursdays. That's a special day.
What's wrong with that dream? Like any other cherished photograph, it has chipped away with experience. I had several interviews in London, very good ones, I might add, but when the conversation turned to my work availability and visa issues, a dark, foreboding silence befell the room each time before I was told that my prospective employers don't do visas.
Here I am, back in the desolate suburbia of New Jersey where I passed through my adolescence in relative ennui, and all I can think about is being back in London. It's unfair to allow someone to become so enamored with a city and then tell them that, because they aren't a native, they haven't a chance of staying there. I'm not unique in this respect: other Americans from my Master's program are trying to stay and are riding out the extent of their visas (until January), after which point they'd have no choice but to return to the United States. I had the misfortune of having to move out of my flat, and since I had no job, there was no point in paying for an ephemeral hope of a job that would sponsor my visa.
I believe that the old visa rules, since you so dutifully decided that immigrants were "bad," dictated that students who obtained a degree with a UK university could stay for two years past their graduation. Now, it's six months, which is a troublesome time limit because renting a room or a flat for six months is harder than one might think.
All we want to do is work to improve both our own lives and the lives of those around us. We want to pay taxes, support the social system that you are so ardently privatising, and enjoy the cultural gravitas of England. Instead, you and your xenophobic lot are making it harder for even EU immigrants to come to the UK.
You're not an empire. You're an island that is part of a greater federal entity that is the EU. Give up the illusions of your past delinquencies and accept that you no longer have influence without the EU. What's more, without an influx of skilled migrants, you only hurt your own economy. If someone with an advanced degree wishes to work within the UK, why shouldn't they have the chance to do so? To keep jobs "British?" What of those who want to become British? Should they not have the same chance to do so?
Mr. Cameron, you're not unreasonable. Your surprising adherence to the Syria vote in Parliament shows that. I only wish that you'd realise that the UK is no longer in a position to exclude people who want to become a part of your society. We are skilled and we want to bring our abilities to you, whether we're doctors, or lawyers, or entrepreneurs, or engineers, or political strategists, or the like.
Don't punish us simply because we're not native-born in the UK or the EU. Borders now mean very little. If a migrant such as myself, who paid my £750 a month in rent (not including utilities, mind you) and my £17,000 in student fees, wishes to stay and live in the UK, what reason is there for not allowing me to do so?
I'll pay the bloody Council tax. I'll gladly pay into every single social service that deducts from my paycheck through taxes because those social services are integral to the functioning of the state. I'll work a terrible entry-level job that hardly pays above the visa minimum salary. I only ask that you give us, the lot of us who want to stay, the chance to do it. We aren't a drain on your society, like so many conservatives would say; that's anodyne and illogical. Why would we drain something we so desire?
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