Weird things expats do:

....... join an 'internet' forum







Having never done this sort of thing before, I still find this weird

I read academic papers while drinking. And watching the sunset on the lake. (Except for the lake part, same drill as all over the world!)

Worse are expats from the same country who speak to each other (having a pretentious war--who speaks it the best???) in the acquired language. Sometimes I'll use a random foreign word if the English equiv isn't exactly the same. Like, I have to go to the Commune instead of town hall or whatever.

yeah. i would say gemeindehaus instead of the commune town hall. or whatever it is. and 'hb' instead of zurich main station.

Commune (Gemeinde) does not feel replacable with town hall or radnice (townhall), me thinks. Since it is a lot more than a town hall, in terms of the services they usually provide.

Academic papers get more digestible when seasoned by some good La Cote wine.

So is zapping spammers.

We do that all the time. My English teacher friend says it is referred to as "code-switching". We throw in "bahnhof", "gare", "quatre heure", "comune" etc all the time.

BTW how would you give a definition for an "expat" term?

I'm really confused if I can call myself expat or not

I cook up something Canadian (like maple-glazed salmon) for whoever happens to be around... and bring home to Switzerland!
Also I celebrate North American holidays to the best extent possible.... one Halloween I blasted Grieg's very creepy 'Hall of the Mountain King' in the CD player and charged around the house like a wild thing.

I try to learn and cook the local recipes wherever I am...

Back at home I was never interested in taxes – always asked someone to sort them out for me. Not because I’m lazy, but because the tax law in Poland is so unfathomable that even experts argue back and forth about certain issues.
Now, thanks to the EF, I have been figuring out the Swiss tax law, which is a very weird activity for me, as I’ve always considered myself detached from such earthly things I was so proud recently when my husband’s company admitted a mistake and we got back some money that they’d taken from him in tax. I couldn’t believe that it was my constant perusing of the forum that got us out of this fix.

Proud of you.. I still let my mum do it.. not my thing...again... I've tried it a few years myself but I'm too stupid for it.

......don't consider themselves immigrants no matter how long they've lived in the country.

Although technically that's a don't. But they do.

wonderful reads , thanks..

just to let you know I am at it again, making dinner, listening to dutch music, wondering how the heck I came "home" from vacation to a total new country instead of my little too expensive townhouse in the Netherlands

Watching gabriel iglesias especial at night, downloading movies from the computer and wondering if it would be ok to go the bathroom at 11:30 pm and waking up the neighbors

The sun rises in the west and sets in the east. England is west of Greece. Unless you still think that India is part of the empire you were sadly mistaken.

I don't know which parallel universe you're posting from, but as I look directly north out of my office window this morning, the shadows are being cast from right to left - meaning here in reality the sun has indeed risen in the east.

You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!

Just remind me what Japan's nickname is, again?

Behold, uninformed one. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...5163246AAPHi97

Online? Uitzendinggemist? Get a sat dish with CanalDigitaal.

I'm not sure if I'm missing your point but every one of those answers says the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In your previous post you say it rises in the west and sets in the east. Care to elaborate?