Coronavirus II: Surf's Up
While a lot of people here were in a hurry to travel and soak up the remaining days of summer, I spent most of my time indoors. I actually don't even have tan lines this year, and I have now typed the word "immunocompromised" so many times in the last few months that my autocomplete now has a lil soft spot for it. Being Type 1 meant I had to practice social distancing and isolation regardless of the amazing send off from the Charles Bridge. My immune system is different and easily compromised. I was still wearing a mask on public transit and indoors even though it was no longer required. Sometimes I had some pride about it. I'm being the good example in a sea of bad examples! More than a few people back in the US have messaged me to find out how the Czech Republic has been handling the coronavirus. And it didn't matter how good our numbers were at the time; I always responded with "poorly." I'd like to not die, and I didn't need government regulations in place to tell me to stay safe, but apparently most people did. It was almost as if feigning normalcy and ignoring the presence of any virus was universally welcomed. Some people still experience an incredible amount of disdain when a mask policy is enforced upon them.
Bleach Mode
Last post of the decade! WooOoOOOoooO!
Nope. That's not what this is gonna be. Life didn't really get better, it just got different. The last two entries here were super depressing so hopefully some kind of a yearly wrap up will bring out the better instances of 2019 instead of the two that really destroyed me.
In 2019, I only had to go to immigration one time. One. Time. Last year I think I had to go eight or nine times to the decrepit little office on the outskirts of Brno where the clientele mostly looks like the third class cabin from the Titanic. Lots of phrase books, interpreters, people getting handcuffed, some people who just said "fuck it" and went down with the bureaucratic ship. After solidifying my position with IBM, I got to drop off my contract with a shit-eating grin and not care so much that I was getting yelled at in Czech. Again.
Getting yelled at in loud Czech is a common facet of an immigration office visit. Most employees there can actually speak English, but they won't. Passively armed with the pseudo-Czech I know, I was able to slide my IBM contract under the glass and give a woman who has zero time for me a quick smile. Pieces of paper were stamped and I signed where I was pointed to sign and I left. Twenty minutes, in and out, and I'm good for another two years. Usually this process takes a lot longer.
I'm not going to say my position at IBM is easy. The job itself is actually quite simple, but the communication with my team and other technical teams based around the EU can be challenging. I spend my time double, sometimes triple checking the phrasing of emails or the instructions on a task just to make sure the air quality of my snark is perfectly clear. A lot of my time is spent in Excel or IMing other folks on my team because we all have our headphones in but refuse to have a real conversation with the person sitting across from us. I really can't complain. I have good relationships with my superiors and I've only been late once in the last 11 months. I'm a 10 minute bus ride from the office and I can work from home two days a week if everything isn't really crazy, but January 2020 is going to be really crazy.
I also got to visit Seattle and Tucson in November like I did last year. I'm the only one on my team not taking any vacation during Christmas so instead I took two weeks during my birthday and Thanksgiving to go home. This trip was fraught with travel-inducing headaches but I was able to schedule time with the people I wanted to see and I got to headline my first club back home. I think when I come home next year I'm going to try to record my first album, but that's gonna depend on how much stage time I can get in Bratislava or Olomouc or wherever I end up performing beforehand. I have the material, but like last year, I was spending a fair amount of time on stage figuring out what jokes actually worked in Bratislava but not Portland, OR. I have a new closer in the US, but not in Brno unless I want to waste time explaining who the Zodiac Killer is (or isn't.)
In Tucson I spent time with my dad, step-mom, and uncle for some nuclear family time. My uncle gave me my favorite gift and it came with an unknown story. Before getting a job building Boeing planes during WWII, my grandfather practiced his machinery skills with small projects. He made a silver ring in an Art Deco style that my uncle has had for a number of years, and at Thanksgiving he passed it on to me. I haven't taken it off since I got it. In a way it's incredibly reflective of my grandfather's personality: simple, nothing flashy, but purposeful.
When I returned home to Brno, I came home to Gossamer, a cat I adopted in May after Patrick died. Gossamer's very different but equally cheerful and entertaining. His name was initially "Ragy," translating to "rags" in Czech. I sat around with him for a day before deciding on Gossamer, the delicately named big red hairy monster from Looney Tunes. He's a younger cat, definitely in his terrible twos. He's got a lot of energy but he has calmed down to snuggle since the weather got colder.
The woman who fostered him got him fixed and cleaned up and medicated after he had been on the street for an undetermined amount of time. When he was found at my neighborhood Tesco, he looked like he had just gotten sober so I knew we'd get along. She thinks he's a flame-point ragdoll because of his markings and serious floof and size. It's hard to imagine such a cat to be alone on the street. I'll never know his full story, but some people I've talked to actually don't think he was homeless and that perhaps he was abandoned, or a family moved and didn't take him. It makes me really sad to think about, but I'm happy I can give him a good life and all the little crinkled up paper he can handle.
Right now I'm writing this and Gossamer is playing with his new favorite toy, a condensed ball of his own hair. He's a little crosseyed and it makes me chuckle. He can't not look like that. Sometimes I ask him if he's a nerd and he has to look at me with his goofy expression. He's an amazing cat, a good companion. He likes stealing my glasses off of my face, headbutting me, and waiting outside my shower to get little drinks out of my drain.
One thing I'm going to try to do more in 2020 is travel because I'm a white woman in her 30s. It probably sounds ridiculous for a person living in Europe to say that, but it's true. Most of the travel I did this year was mostly little 18-24 hour trips for comedy, there and back in one night. These were mostly jaunts to Poland, and while I love Poland, I was technically at these places for work and wasn't taking the time really needing to relax or experience anything culturally significant. So I put down some money, something I hardly do because I'm...what's a good way to say this, thrifty as fuck, and I bought at ticket to Pearl Jam and the Pixies in Italy next summer.
After doing some research, it turned out the show at the Ferrari autodrome was the cheapest option because all of the tickets are general admission. The shows in Vienna, Budapest, even Krakow were more expensive and they didn't give me the option of exploring uncharted territory, so off to Bologna I'll go next July. I'm happy because I'll be doing some traveling just for me. Not for stand up or holiday obligations, but just for me. The concert is on a Sunday night so I'm debating about taking the whole week off and doing some exploring in the Balkans or something. I dunno, I have six months to figure it out but that doesn't mean I can't start the incessant, impulsive planning meant for late spring.
Now that I have some decent job security, I've been able to be more flexible with my appearance. I spent half the year platinum blonde and half the year bright pink. I got my hand tattooed and I put my septum piercing back in. I'm basically the person 23-year-old Liz wanted to be. I honestly don't notice myself looking that alternative except for when older Czech people stare me down with the same eyes that have witnessed multiple political revolutions. My look definitely isn't conducive to the semi-conservative atmosphere in Brno. In Prague or Vienna, I'm more anonymous, part of a seamless crowd. Now if I see people staring at me, I stare back at them because I'm no longer a shy, language-less foreigner.
So here's the official nonsense count for 2019:
Three notebooks/jokebooks
Six pairs of headphones
Two vaporizers
Three hair colors
Two bouts of serious depression
Six flights
One break from Facebook
Seven countries visited
Two new medications
Eight phone chargers
Five vet visits
Three books read
One minor heartbreak
Two refrigerators
Two new flavors of Skittles
One political demonstration
Zero hospital visits
Pretty good overall. The 2020 election will most likely decide where I'll be spending my time in 2021. But if I have to stay here, it's not the worst thing in the world. I'd actually prefer that. In terms of "resolutions," which aren't really resolutions but a romanticized list of things I'd like to accomplish once I get my shit together, there's only a few:
Write poetry more regularly
Pay more attention to gut instincts
Take some kind of Czech language course that isn't just Slavic memes
Continue good control of my blood sugar and a1C (6.3!)
This isn't too crazy of a list. I think I'm intentionally setting the bar low knowing I'm in a funk right now and I've yet to come completely out of it. I have the whole year to work on it once we stop hibernating.
You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
[Spongebob narrator]:
Ahh, the first post of 2019.
I'm a week in to my new job at IBM and OH HOTDOG is it different in a lot of good ways. I haven't had an actual committed schedule since October and once again I've turned into that semi-responsible person who cooks their lunch the evening before. Sunday evening food prep has reminded me I can't cook at all. I mean I can. But it's a real grab bag of "frugal fusion" since I'm not getting paid until next month. I've been freelancing on the side to help pay for my morning muffins, but I'm happy to be in an environment that isn't up my ass as soon as I walk into work.
To be blunt, working for AT&T was a fucking nightmare, a just a huge fiery butthole of furious idiots who faxed us copies of gift cards as a presumed form of payment, ran over their dropped telephone line with a lawn mower, or fought with their sister-wife about if Big O Tires offered a cheaper tire rotation than Les Schwab. I originally got hired to become a manager, but I was moved onto a team which was led by a woman who turned out to be vehemently anti-American. I've encountered some misogyny in the workplace, but never before from a woman. Our small team consisted of some folks from India, Scotland, Bosnia, Australia, and Azerbaijan. It was mandatory to speak English at all times, even if it wasn't your native language and I was one of three native speakers on my team. My manager would often coo and blubber over the two Scottish guys, who were polite and soft-spoken on the phone.
I was the only American who was actually speaking with other Americans, and as a result, I was often told by customers south of the Mason-Dixon that they were so happy to talk to an American, or "someone they could understand," or "someone on shore." I had the easiest time of anyone doing tech support because I was helping people I understood and they understood me. There was even a number of agents we could transfer the customers to if they wanted to speak to someone between Canada and Mexico. One of the education modules I had to complete early on was about the NFL and college football because half the calls we received between September and January were about bowl games and schedules which hasn't exactly branched out into the European mainland. But this ease wasn't pleasing anyone. With the full use of my vocabulary, idioms, and nuances unknown to the ESL student, I could express empathy and connect with people more so than any other agent in that call center. I was getting paid more because of it and at some point, I believe I became a threat to those around me, especially my Egyptian manager.
It eventually got to the point where I would be at work for less than two minutes and was already being berated by this woman. She couldn't not say anything condescending or insulting to me. It was always something about having my bag under my desk (for easy access to food and insulin) or about not adhering to the strict schedule by 30 seconds. Then it was becoming obvious to the rest of my team this woman had somewhat of a vendetta against me. I was the best person on my team so why was I being singled out? She would pull me off the phone because she "didn't even want me on the phone right now." The last time I interacted with her she took me off the phone unannounced and yelled at me for an hour and 20 minutes. She came with such hits as
"How did you even get this job?", "I see no evidence that you've done this job before",
and the crowd favorite, "Do you even know what you're doing?"
Instead of offering me ways to improve the already satisfactory calls I was receiving, she insulted my intelligence. I don't even think I answered those questions. I just nodded and shrugged, the only war cry I had left that wasn't NSFW.
What are we going to do, Liz? "
I'll tell you what I'd like to do...
I caved at that point and took a 45 minute break instead of my mandatory 15. I went outside to smoke and text my mom about the situation. I was incredibly close to walking out of the job I had fought so hard for. For the eight months before this, I had been tied up with immigration, translators, bureaucratic meetings, notaries, certified stamps, seals, and approvals trying to get this job. I was already sick and I'm guessing the stress of this made me sicker and when I came back to work from being ill, I was immediately fired on the day before my 10-day paid vacation started. My hair was falling out. I was incredibly depressed. Most of the information I had been told about the job for the last eight months had been a lie. I was given false information numerous times, information I had to confirm with four or five different sources before I landed on the right answer for questions I didn't think I'd be having to ask. This sudden firing also made me have to delay my trip to Seattle, pay British Airways more money, and once again rely on my parents for help. When I asked why I was getting fired, they answered with "legally, we don't have to tell you." Oh cool, doubling-down with the word "legally." I grabbed my shit from my desk and was escorted out of the building. On the way down to the lobby, I told the HR representative that AT&T was discovered to have donated money to white supremacist political campaigns in the United States, and it probably would be a good idea to have an actual American on staff to handle those complaints instead of some people who think the entirety of our country is Texas.
One week later, I interviewed at IBM with a group of four women, three of whom I'm working with directly. The bureaucratic immigration process took roughly eight weeks instead of the usual 20, and even with a small delay, I was able to start on time, get dependable information, and adapt to their much more professional environment. To put it this way, IBM is more of a democracy and less of a regime.
The more and more information I found out about the job, the more relaxed I became. For the last week I've been busy but I haven't been stressed out. I'm at work by 8am and home by 5pm. It's still light out upon my departure and my return. I'm not tethered to a phone so now if I want to get some coffee or some water or go to the bathroom, I don't have to send out a literal signal to all of the managers to let them know where I am for the next two minutes. It's quiet. No one talks to me. Most of the time everyone leaves me alone. At one point one of my managers told me she was worried I'd think the job was boring because I'd be "doing the same thing a lot." I would much rather do the same thing day in and day out with all of the possible repetitive motions than have someone standing over me while I'm trying to tell someone else the reason they can't watch TV right this minute is because there's a Category 4 hurricane barreling towards their quiet little beach community.
But most importantly, I'm happy that I'm learning. I'm doing data security, and without going into all of it, I'm making sure the correct people have the correct access to the correct things. Most of this last week has been spent reading PDFs, doing educational modules designed for the company, and quickly learning an atrocious amount of acronyms. There's no life or death situation and the work is fairly straightforward once understood and experienced. Yesterday was the first day I did any actual work and I got excited because I was finally contributing to the cause of keeping information safe! Or something. This job can take me places. I feel like I'm learning and by the end of the day, I feel accomplished. You can only restart someone's modem remotely so many times before you want to blow your brains out. What I'm doing now is current, freeing, and relevant. They're excited to have me on the team and I'm getting the impression I'm doing well for someone who is only five days into the job. I could tell it would be different solely by the on-boarding process they took me through prior to my first day. It was precise and clean with no room for error. Their HR speaks English incredibly well so if there were any complex questions or concerns, they were answered with clear confidence.
I have 23 days of vacation this year including some national holidays thrown in. I'm more giddy than I usually would be about this because my mom just retired. My happy beautiful mom had her birthday last week and retired the following day. She's worked so fucking hard (sorry, mom) for me, herself, her family, her friends, her former president, the amazing women in her life, and for the causes she believes in. Her last day at her job was my first day at IBM, like she tagged me in to take over so I can take care of her. What this means is more opportunities to travel in the future. I'm not chained to a specific timeframe and neither is my mom. She's looking forward to going to New Orleans with Max and there may be a summer trip to Mallorca taking shape. AT&T had such a hold on me where I had to bail out of so many things and let go of opportunities I wasn't sure I'd ever have again. I lost $450 on accommodation for Edinburgh Fringe and I could never make travel plans due to imprecise information. But now that it's the beginning of 2019, I can fuck around with the dates that are free to me and it'll make my family more flexible in the long run for our plans. I also like Facetiming my mom on a weekday where she's up making coffee and I'm home from work with a snuggly kitty who I whine at if he whines at me.
I'm also trying to be more careful with my money. 25-year-old Liz would have gotten money for Christmas and then immediately booked three tattoo appointments after buying a flat of Coors Light. 31-year-old Liz went to the Czech dentist to get fillings in her teeth replaced because the last dentist she saw before she left the country did a real shit job. Actually, it's because of this heinous contraption that my dental health was compromised:
This is a Herbst appliance, which I'm assuming was named after a German guy named Herbst. This car engine of an orthodontic apparatus adjusts your jaw to replace the need for elongated headgear use or potential surgery. It seemed like a good idea. It sounded like a good idea. But while my jaw slowly shifted into place over 18 months, my dental health was completely destroyed. No matter how diligent I was with a toothbrush, floss, toothpicks, those rubber pokey nibs on the end of toothbrushes, or mouthwash, there was no way to get that actual good clean feeling Orbit always talked about (no matter what). It was like having two pistons on both sides of my mouth, digging into my cheeks and chugging along as I spoke. A few days after getting it "installed," I went to a friend's house for dinner and ended up crying out of embarrassment because I couldn't chew anything . I wanted to be polite and finish what was in front of me but there was this shiny metal shame protruding from every breath, bite, or word.
When I got the thing out, it was a miracle.
I could yawn and not have it get jammed open like a stupid baby bird! I could chew gum! I could brush not the best but better!
After the entire ordeal, my teeth were straight and white just in time for high school. I was no longer an awkward gawky kid trying to be cool while also trying to find out who I really am. But shortly after this I discovered that having the equivalent of a pawnshop renting out my mouth weirdly created some permanent damage for my now structurally compromised teeth. I have severe cavities in the four points where the Herbst appliance connected to my teeth. Had I known this was going to cost me thousands of dollars in dental work in the future, I would have foregone the process of slightly moving my jaw. The dentist I saw prior to leaving Seattle did a shit job and I think I still owe them money but now they're in the same category where I placed my student loans: if I'm not home, I'm not paying for it.
I imagined the Czech dentist to be like a scene from the Saws or Hostel. Deep underground in a putrid stoney cavern, a man with blood for sweat and a metal ribcage would saw my jaw out of my head while I screamed and you wasted $14 seeing a shitty movie. But instead it was...calming. The practice I went to was owned and ran by two Czech twin sisters who get a fair amount of business from expats since they both speak very good English. Initially when I walked in, I thought I had the wrong place. Their reception area was shabby chic and for sure belonged on a Pinterest board somewhere in the Bible Belt. The floors were a gray wood and the furniture was clean, white, unassuming flatpack. They even had a chrome espresso machine on top of a bureau in case the mood struck while you were waiting to get your teeth cleaned?
The equipment, technology, and bad music was the same as every other dentist office I had been in. The procedure of getting numbed the fuck up and then drilled into was no longer a foreign or scary concept to me; as a tattooed diabetic person, I don't exactly fear needles. The cost is also roughly the same IF you had insurance in the United States. This wasn't covered under my state health insurance here, but it was still less expensive than what it would have cost at home with no coverage. A week later, I can feel my upper lip and I can drink hot and cold liquids without flinching my entire face. My next goal is to get my eyes checked because my prescription has drastically changed since I've been here. I started wearing my glasses more often but when I came into IBM on my first day as a platinum blonde with Gryffindor glasses, I needed to reintroduce myself to a few people.
It's about 9:30pm here. Tom Brady is a good football player but holy shit is that guy super boring. What a lame Super Bowl. I can't stay awake for a lot of the primetime television events due to the time change, so I skipped out on the Super Bowl and the State of the Soviet Union address or whatever people are calling Trump's rambling babbles now. The days (err, nights) of staying up until the wee hours of the morning are over. But I'm going to bed early and I'm not stressed so I'll take it. I'll make my weirdo food concoctions of something spicy with protein, vegetables, and a sauce made up of three other sauces. I'll drink my tea with too much honey in it, and I'll snuggle with my cat whose newly discovered affinity for wet food has made him so much more annoying but in the best way.
Down by the Water
My first trip home from the Czech Republic was surreal. Including an 11-hour layover in London-Heathrow, the entire journey came to about 33 hours from start to finish. One tram, one train, one bus, one plane, one bus, and another plane later, my step-sister picked me up and we made the essential white girl stop on the way home before doing anything else: Starbucks.
Seattle changed but didn't change at all. I kept expecting this massive influx of reverse culture shock but instead it was little mannerisms or habits I picked up in CZ I noticed, like putting my key in the door the wrong way, assuming the flush for the toilet was located in the center of the tank, or how to drive a car. It wasn't like coming back to the Pride Lands after your British uncle screwed everything up for you by killing your dad. Everything was still standing even though the mood was openly more volatile than when I left. Despite the crazy jet lag and early morning insulin regimen, I slipped back into the normalcy of being an adult living at home with their parents.
After arriving, I came to realize how much I missed a few things, like Corn Chex. I don't mean this as a pun and I temporarily had to rewire my brain to type that word, but cereal isn't a common breakfast food here. In the US you have an entire aisle dedicated to cartoons and the sugary nonsense they sponsor. But what I missed was lumbering out of bed, haphazardly pouring squares or circles out of a really noisy bag and then dousing it with a milk of my choosing. Then I was done! That's it. Boom. Breakfast, and not necessarily a balanced one.
Cereal does exist here but not in the way it does in the US. Same thing with big trucks. I maybe see a truck twice a week here, a Ford something-or-other. It's not that I completely forget they exist, but it's kind of like I completely forget they exist. They're just impractical. Brno is a tremendously easy city in which to not own a car. With 12 tram lines (well, 11 tram lines but the number 7 is missing...) and numerous busses and trolleys, there's no reason for me to get a Czech drivers license. As a resident here, I can no longer get an international driving permit and I would need to take drivers ed in Czech.
A little more than 24 hours later after landing in Seattle, I headlined a show in Tacoma at a community cafe/gallery/meeting place or whatever these multifunctional purpose spaces are called. All 25 minutes of me rambling were interrupted with little jet-laggy sighs or intruding thoughts with zero filter. It felt good to let loose in front of an audience that could understand me in our mother tongue. On stages in CZ, Slovakia, Poland, and Austria, I've had to slow my pace WAY down just to get a simple joke across but also to make sure everyone could understand me. Now I had a room full of people that understood me and a mic to make it even louder. It might have been the jet lag, but it felt so relieving to relax on stage, dick around, and take my time.
I did a handful of sets in Seattle with a trip to Tucson sandwiched in. As I was getting used to one jet lag, I set off for Arizona to see my dad, step-mom, and uncle for another subpar time change. The desert was welcoming with temperatures in the 70s and food which wasn't commandeered by another culture who tried to create what they think is Mexican food. Everyone in my Tucson family is a photographer so the images which resulted from my trip look easy, natural, and effortless.
After looking through the photos, I sighed when realizing that there haven't been a lot of pictures taken of me in the last year because of how much time I've spent alone. And this isn't going to turn into a pity party; it's just fact. In Brno I'm either taking pictures of myself or other stuff, usually kitty. I was pleased how my hair turned out, which was done three hours after I landed in Seattle, and it was nice to be outside in a t-shirt because Brno was crazy cold when I returned.
I flew back to Seattle from Tucson on Thanksgiving Day and spent some time in Salt Lake City between connections. The family dinner in Seattle was a bit bumbling, a little off-the-rails, and somewhat distracting, but we kept it together between wrangling kids and passing dishes in a direction that was never discussed beforehand. I also got to meet my new niece, Emily. Well, not new. She's a year old now and was born only a few weeks after I had left for CZ. She's an incredibly happy baby and very interested in everything around her, especially her almost three-year-old sister. When combined with eight-year-old Laszlo, there are actually a troupe of kids now at family gatherings. For so long it was just Laszlo in varying degrees of age over the years, but now he has cousins who are beginning to communicate better. I don't use the word "rambunctious" ever, but that's exactly what Thanksgiving was. It was like the Benny Hill theme was the soundtrack to Toy Story.
The next day I turned 31. I went out to dinner with mom and step-dad who were trying incredibly hard to get the server to become interested in me. I think he was until my mom went the extra mile and mentioned I live in Europe, which is something else I'm going to debunk now:
I'm not on vacation 24/7 because I live here. I received some confusing reactions right after I moved, comments to the tune of "god it must be amazing to be on vacation every day." If you've kept abreast of my immigration situation on here or my social media, you're well aware that this has been far from vacation. All bureaucracy aside, I'm doing everything I'd be doing in the US. For instance today I went to a psychiatry appointment and the discount grocery store on my way home. I stopped to take some pictures, and now I'm home with Patrick. This exact day has clearly played out in Seattle more than once and I'm really not trying to be hacky, but that's where I'm at. One day last year I watched all three Men in Blacks in one sitting. Depression doesn't know I moved to Europe. My anxiety sure as shit does, but my depression doesn't.
Anyway, my birthday. It was great. I did a show in White Center and overall it was cool seeing how Seattle is getting it's shit together with comedy, and when I say that I mean there are some seriously great people doing some seriously great things. Some parts of me felt weird to be back, some places definitely felt like the cafeteria in Mean Girls. I wasn't sure of what my status was or if I would be perceived the same upon my return. I had a lot of shit to clear up while I was trying to sort out my life while living nine hours ahead, and I'm hoping a lot of it has been forgotten.
One important day when I was home was seeing my three closest friends in comedy but also just my three friends who I can get real with. We had a family dinner of sorts with chicken wings and hella La Croix. We talked about our fears, tumultuous events from the past year, our travels, and our current standings with stand up. It felt good to be myself around the people to whom I feel comfortable revealing myself. No pressure.
And to be honest, the hardest part was leaving. The only other time I've cried when flying out of an airport was when I was in Burbank and I was leaving a relationship that had ambiguous boundaries at the time. This time it was different, even harder than moving last year. I felt so reconnected with my family and my hometown and my familiar environment. I'm still unclear about what was making me cry. It could be a lot of reasons but I think maybe it's because I didn't want that camaraderie to end. I was knowingly taking a trip forward, and this time I even knew what was on the other side. I knew what was waiting for me. So why was this time so much harder, so much more emotionally taxing than the original move itself?
I returned to Brno with the city anxiously celebrating Black Friday because they don't have a Thanksgiving. The Christmas markets are up and running and all of the white and red holiday lights are running through the alleyways in the city center. We had our first snow on Saturday and I turned my heat on in my flat for the first time. Nothing blew up or caught on fire so I think we're safe for now. I outfitted my sleeping nook with some shelves and a nightlight so now my opium den is almost fully functional and almost ready for Instagram.
Right now I'm spending time waiting to hear back from IBM. Oh yeah, probably should have explained that earlier. I've been too stressed to write until now but long story short I got let go from my job at AT&T and due to the timing of it, the trial period I was under erased any valid visa I had so in order to not get deported at the end of December, I needed to find a job which will sponsor both my job and my residence in the Czech Republic. I interviewed at IBM with a group of four women and within the next week, they offered me a position. Part of the reason I was stressed was because I had initially made plans to go home for the first two weeks of November because it was the only time I could take from my job for the holidays...but then I had no job for the holidays and I needed to patch things up with immigration before leaving the country. I suspended my trip for two weeks while I communicated with IBM and made sure everyone knew I would be on holiday and unavailable for interviews and phone calls. The situation with IBM became more and more solidified and on Thanksgiving morning I woke up to an official job offer.
I'm hoping to start sometime in January, but as I've learned over the past year, I need to add an extra 60 days to any sort of bureaucratic timeline in the Czech Republic. So maybe before Easter is more realistic. Once again I have something on the horizon, but now I just have to wait.
Also I went to Dick's while I was home and it was fucking awesome.
All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.
I'm writing under a very slanted wall in my new apartment. Over the last month, I've been taking one Ikea bag full of my shit for a 90 second bus ride and then up six flights of stairs to a flat which is tough to spatially navigate for the short and tall. If a hipster hobbit lived in Brno, they might have a place like this.
My favorite part of my new spot.
I returned my keys to the landlord of my first apartment in Brno this past Sunday. The Skacelova flat was my landing pad, my home base furnished with white leather couches and glass coffee tables. Over time I realized the comforts of that sizable flat was unnecessary for a single person plus cat and I was paying for a lot of space I wasn't using. I had an alcove with a desk and an entire living room I didn't sit in until six months after I arrived. These spaces collected dust and an unimaginable amount of cat hair during the year I inhabited the contemporary concrete dwelling and in an effort to save money and feel like I was really living in a space, I moved.
Looking for the right apartment took a few weeks. Time was of the essence during this point in the summer as it was right before the throngs of university students descended upon Brno for their careers in horticulture or veterinary science. Instead of being up against those living away from home for the first time, I decided to look earlier than I initially intended. I found a few places I really liked. I even told the real estate agents I met with "I'll take it!" more than once, only a few days later to discover it was given to someone else with no warning despite my firm and enthusiastic response. What was it going to take to actually secure an apartment in this city?
When I found the apartment I'm in now, I immediately fell in love with it. The walls are slanted and I have skylights for windows. There's no carpeting, and the space is just enough. I didn't want this apartment to turn out like the last few by slipping through my fingers, so if the Czechs wanted to play hardball, fine. It's supposedly my national past time. Why not make an attempt at getting what I want? I would be living in it, after all.
I pulled 10,000 crowns out of the bankomat at 8am and met with a real estate agent who could probably star in Real Housewives of the Former Iron Curtain. Her nails were very manicured and her strapless pink jumpsuit was usually seen poolside somewhere in Vegas. She and her tall hair led me up six floors to the flat I'm still struggling to name. After shaking hands, it became apartment she knew zero English and I could point at things and name them in Czech but was unable to create any concrete thought which conveyed meaning. But money doesn't need a language.
As soon as I saw the apartment met my minimal requirements of a separate bed space, washing machine, and walls I could drill into, I pulled out my cash and slid it across my new kitchen counter to the agent. She laughed as she outstretched her arm to count it and possibly make sure it's not counterfeit which I hear is still a thing here. She immediately wrote me a receipt and I had officially reserved the flat for September 1. I'm officially in and most of my things have a space of their own which isn't cluttered. Maybe I'll even buy a TV because
While I was sorting out moving from one flat to another, I made reservations to come home for the first two weeks of November. Thanksgiving and Christmas weren't available to take due to popular demand, so I inadvertently decided to travel during the most tumultuous week of the year: the midterm elections. I didn't even realize I had included this burgeoning clusterfuck in my travels until I gave my mom the dates of my visit. "You're going to be home during the election!" was the first reply I got to my news. Panekristo. I'm in a weird place with going home. I haven't told a lot of people I'll be in town with the exception of my family and a few close friends. I've been off Facebook for about three months meaning I didn't send out some pointless press release announcement to everyone in the digital ether. I haven't tried to book any shows or schedule things which can't be unscheduled. I've had 30-some Novembers in Seattle and this one probably won't be much different. I can honestly see it now: first I'm going to borrow my mom's car and hopefully remember how to drive. Then I'm going to go through the Starbucks drive-thru and go back home. And maybe I'll hit a mic or two.
Right now I get the feeling I'm really rusty with comedy. When I first got to Brno I had to test out which material worked from home and which stuff didn't. I had to adapt certain jokes or completely forget others that relied too much on local references or inside jokes. I'll probably have to reformat what I've written here prior to going on stage in the back of a Thai restaurant. In my head it goes a certain way. I make an awkward joke about being away and I stumble through a combination of old and new jokes that don't work regardless of what country I'm in. Am I going to be judged? But I want the attention and validation of being on stage without having people look at me.
Better try stand up!
I know I seem pessimistic about returning, but I think it's because I don't know what to expect. I'm sure friends and family will be happy to see me and I'm sure I'll be consoling one or multiple family members on election night due to some fantastic upset we'll act like we didn't see it coming but in reality we were in the backseat as it had been careening out of control for months. I get to meet my niece Emily just in time for her very first birthday. From what I hear she's an extremely happy baby and kind of a ham. But as I'm writing this, I realize it's not even the actual visit back that I'm concerned about; it's getting through Heathrow in under two hours.
In 1999 I spent six hours somewhere in the sprawling duty-free stress zoo of London-Heathrow. My family and I were returning from a trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe and the trip home to Seattle was roughly 36 hours starting from Livingstone, Zimbabwe. My only real memory of the seventh biggest airport in the world was that my mom bought a watch. Our layover was long, even by international standards, which meant shopping and ogling at things like cigarettes and booze, dormant items which would awaken in about five years. A silver Seiko, my mom bought. I'm not sure why that's the one memory I'm clinging to about this English detour, but that's all I got.
To get back on track, holy shit it's a big place. The website for Heathrow is actually pretty adorable. There are a ton of little video tutorials on how to go through passport control, customs, how to get from terminal to terminal, take the Underground into the city, and where to exchange money. I plotted out my course and realized the last time I was making a connection was with two duffle bags and a cat on my back so this should be a bit easier.
I've traveled enough to have developed habits along the way to ease the process and not stress out. Here's my foolproof to-do list:
1. Put your headphones in before you even get on the plane. Don't even listening to anything if you don't want to or need to keep your hands free from the Shuffle function. You know that guy waiting in line to board and you know he's just a chatty motherfucker by looking at him and his stupid jacket and utility vest with all the pockets? Don't risk it. This flight is 10+ hours and by no means can you speed it up. Chatting may make the time go faster, but the last time I tried this I ended up sitting next to a Mormon guy ("Elder Matt") and he was very confused by the presence of a tattooed girl leaving the Tucson area and had to know more. If you don't want to talk, headphones.
2. If you're in line for security and there's a sign that reads "you no longer have to remove your shoes or belts!", remove your shoes and belt. More than half the time people act like they can cruise through a metal detector when it's not like any of us have anywhere to be and the process slows to this unprepared passenger rubbernecking through zigzagging lines. The little Vietnamese kid making six cents an hour assembling your shoes probably didn't think the little piece of tin or aluminum wedged in between the arch and sole of your shoe was going to cause massive delays. But here we are, waiting on you because the signage stated our travel plans are impervious to hidden materials. Nope. Take 'em off.
3. Buy shit when you get there. Every time I was traveling to Tucson, Los Angeles, or Minneapolis, I was having to buy tiny containers of bullshit every time, and I ended up buying more than I needed because what if three tiny containers of hairspray wasn't enough!?
At Target these little guys are $1.08 before tax. The average woman uses 7-8 products during her shower and beauty routine, and given the frequency I was flying, I didn't want to fork out money for every round trip flight, so I bought stuff and kept it where I was landing. But if you're booking a one-way to stay in a yurt out on the Mongolian steppe, good luck.
4. Schmooze with a flight attendant for extra perks. And if you're a dude I don't mean try to fuck one of the flight attendants. I just mean be nice to them and show them some extra courtesy while they're doing their job. And I understand being nice to someone on a long trip while 38,000 feet in the air can be demanding, but it doesn't have to be. On the trip from Seattle to Frankfurt, I had kitty underneath the seat in front of me and the seat next to me empty, leaving us considerable room to spread out in the luxurious world of Economy Plus. I stuck to the basic please and thank yous but also remembered to maintain eye contact and telling them I appreciate what they were doing for me. After a while, one attendant would "serve" the empty seat next to me so kitty and I would have extra potatoes, rolls, or teeny bottles of water. Other times an attendant I hadn't seen yet would appear from within the aisles and ask to see the hidden kitty at my swollen feet. Wo ist der katzen?
5. If you don't want to check a bag and have everything with you in the cabin, don't use a rolling rectangular suitcase. A habit I picked up from my dad is checking to see which kind of aircraft is taking me from A to B or A to B to C. You might have traveled in the past and realized with a pang of panic that you're suddenly taking a two engine prop plane to your final destination instead of the now seemingly luxurious 737-900. It was nice knowing you!
Travel with a backpack meant for light travel or for serious backpacking. If you don't overpack, the shape of the backpack can be malleable and more forgiving in unexpected spaces. You know that shitty little luggage test space (I'm seriously blanking on the name of this thing) where you try to squeeze your bag in to see if it's up to the airline's sizing standards? Never will you be asked to compare your luggage to this if you don't use a rectangular bag. You don't even need to get a serious hiking backpack, just something that lends enough support for your back and shoulders. Also you'll have both your hands free. AND you won't look like a doofus trying to figure it out how to get a rectangle into a rectangle. Get a backpack, shove that thing in the overhead bin and be done with it.
5b. Don't have a backpack but don't want to pay the $25 to check a bag? Carry it through security anyway and gate-check your luggage. 90% of flights offer to check your bag for you at the gate rather than at the check-in counter prior to security. Usually this happens because “aw wouldja look at that folks, we're oversold and need some volunteers to take advantage of this undiscovered trick we either haven't realized or chose not to tell you about!"
I've gotten to gates and been like "What do you mean it's too big?" Play dumb and volunteer. Don't forget to take out any medications, keys, chargers, etc before separating from your belongings.
Obviously a few of these are strictly for international flights, but yeah have at it. This is the closest I've come to giving advice on this blog for about a year, the last being "So you want to expatriate." I've lived in the Czech Republic for 352 days. 352 days ago, everything here was brand new. Little processes you'd gloss over and not think twice about took some major maneuvering. The simplest answer was never the easiest. The scenic route wasn't always scenic. I've cried at bus stops, on trams, and outside of hospitals at 2am. I've been yelled at in a few different languages, sometimes by a person in the immigration office, sometimes a person at the embassy. Someone told me I'd be home by March 28 because I would give up and want to come home. I fight for this because it's what I want. It's painful, exhausting, depressing, and discouraging at times. There are times when I've really wanted to pack it in and stick kitty back in his backpack and book a flight home. The inner child in me runs home to my mom for refuge, reassurance, and a good blanket. That inner child yearns for a bedtime story and for someone to tell her that just because things are unpredictable right now doesn't mean it won't be okay.
There have times I've been unhinged and very un-Dude. Most of these situations involved a government or business entity leaving out key pieces of information I needed in order to plan my time and spend my money accordingly. There are so many instances of this I'm not even going to list them. I'll leave my flat with a mission, get these three things done!
And I return home with half of one to completion. But the comfort, ease, and automation of bureaucracy currently present in the United States are a few things I chose to sacrifice. The Czechs still run on a take-a-number system in the majority of public places. I might even go so far to say the Czechs run the take-a-number system. In the bank, the doctor, the post office. It's as if every moment of progress backslides because standing in a queue (weird) is a thing of the future, a thought which hangs out with "walls that aren't cement" and "my ATM not being an actual person." It's frustrating, but I chose this. The longer I live outside the United States, the less I want to go back.
I've changed positions a few times under my very slanted ceiling since I've been writing this. I'm in bed which is in a nook that resembles a mid-century-modern opium den with oversized pillows, slightly askew angles, subpar lighting, and a cup of rooibos. I feel safe in the nook. Kitty is snoring next to me and we both got our toenails cut today. I'm on the mend from being sick and I may have some changes on the horizon. Lateral move changes, not move-to-Sihanoukville changes. I hope the United States gets it's shit together soon. If it doesn't, you have my permission to burn it to the ground.
