How to survive life as an expat

Sometimes you'll hate it, let's face facts.

 
Your alarm will still go off every morning (unless you are a travel nomad with a perfectly Pinterest-worthy life without mussed hair, a few too many kilos or frumpy clothes) and boring work days will stretch ahead of you where everything you do is picked at.

Completely new social behaviors will have to be learned the hard way (like when it's appropriate to kiss your boss, and strangers), you'll learn to live without road signs and where to find really expensive tastes of home.

The train will occasionally breakdown en route to an important (cocktail) meeting to discuss urgent matters. The weather might suck, a lot. Life will be expensive.

You'll have to re-make friends, establish new networks and suss out multi-person calender notes to have Skype sessions with family around the globe.

And you know what, it is absolutely worth every second.



Living permanently in another country as an expat, it is so easy to fall into days where the grass looks greener on the other side. It is so easy to think "Hmph, if I were at home it would be so much easier/better/simpler/this wouldn't happen..." when you run into problems and you're not in your home. C'mon, really?

Know that homesickness will pass.

Do *that* thing you've thought about for so many years and put off. There are so many opportunities in a new city if you're prepared to take a risk to do something outside of your comfort zone.

Find local alternatives to home delicacies.

Buy a sarnie and sit in one of the Royal Parks with a group of chattering friends, peruse one of the free weird and wonderful London Museums. 

Make the everyday extraordinary.

Learn to bake bacon and egg pies.

 

Get on Twitter or join a social/meetup group if you are struggling for moolah/people to do stuff with/unusual activities. Seriously - and brands are always doing competitions and giving away tickets.Go! Add me whilst you're there, come say hey!

Book another adventure.

Take a break, get the blood pumping and listen to a few uplifting tunes.

And if the above doesn't work, have a massive Pinterest session of things that make you smile. And Cats.

Sometimes you might even need to sit down and write a psuedo-narcissistic blog post in the form of advice, simply to excorcise those demons and remind yourself of the wonderful things in your expat life.

Adventures of a London Kiwi

Friday figments and photos

Fridays aren't just the best day of the week, but my favourite for blog reasons. I get to mull over the ghosts of the week past, and the spectre of weeks future. What surprises will they bring to Adventures of a London Kiwi next?

Searcys at The Gherkin (St Marys Axe)

Jaw-dropping views of the London skyline, watching the sun dip below the horizon as Twilight creeps across the city. This evening was quite literally the high life - and well worth the 3 days I had spent ill in bed, affording me the time to stumble across the brief window of public bookings available in St Marys Axe (known to one and all as the Gherkin).

I have been dreaming of getting inside this modern marvel ever since I lived in London. Strategising the best way to avoid 4-hour queues on London's Open House, trying to see what strings I could pull with the many people I knew and just wishing I had the kahunas to wander up to the security desk pretending we had a booking, all whilst knowing none of it would work. Who could have thought that all it would take was a well timed wander into the incredible world of Twitter on an auspicious afternoon?

Things to do (if you fall for a sailor and find yourself spending time) in Aberdeen, Scotland – Part 2

Bottle of rum Glass of beer in hand, Alana also spent a few hours of her recent trip to Aberdeen tasting her way around the city. When in Rome and all that...

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Drink some craft beer
I’ll admit I was in a bit of a bad mood when I arrived in Aberdeen due to some issues with my flight but Brewdog helped turn my mood around. The decor is trendy craft brew pub standard - carefully curated raw materials mixed with funky eclectica. The guys at the table next to us (who matched the general decor) sported fine hipster beards, curled moustaches and were busy taking macro photos with their DSLR. If you ignored their Scottish accents we could’ve been back in London!

The beers The Boy and I tried had personality – both on the palate and with their rather creative names. Brewdog’s cheeseboard is also delicious and third party mediation was nearly needed to ensure the spoils were divided evenly. Cheese, like beer is a serious business.



Within sight of Brewdog is another gem in Aberdeen’s beery crown. Some Scottish folks down the coast in Stonehaven got it in their heads to start brewing Belgian beer and 6° North was born. With an intimidating list of tap beers, help from the staff was very necessary to for me make my choice. They were also rather generous about serving up samples to help me with my decision.




Luckily they didn’t tell us there are over 300 bottled beers on their beer menu until after we’d picked our first drinks or I think I might’ve had had a meltdown over what to choose. However The Boy got a gleam in his eye when he discovered the extent of the beer menu and took a copy back to the boat with him to show his colleagues.

Eat some Italian
Dinner was decided on the toss of a coin (if it had come up heads we would’ve been eating Indian). Rustico has classic Italian decor without being kitsch and the photographic prints of Sicilian life on the walls took me back to when I was there a couple of years ago. The restaurant is well reviewed online and the praise is justified. The Boy’s Padellata Siciliana justified it’s £20 price tag by having plentiful portions of every type of sea creature in a spicy tomato broth. My mushroom pasta was packed with so many oyster mushrooms there were possibly more of them than pasta. I wish we’d had more space for dessert - their handmade cheesecake looked divine but we were so full we only had room to share a tiramisu.



Read/buy a book and have a cup of tea
Imagine a bohemian cafe inside a secondhand bookstore and you have Books and Beans. It’s cluttered and a little bit cosy but it works. I browsed their books but didn’t have a coffee so the verdict is out about the quality of their brew. If you go there grab a seat on the first floor. The ones by the window have good light for reading and a view of the street if you prefer to people watch. Don’t bother going to the second floor - there’s only an internet cafe up there and it smells a bit like teenage boy and people who don’t go outside much!

Get a coffee
Contour cafe gets a tick in my book for a good coffee in Aberdeen (even if they did serve it in a mug). They’re tucked away on The Green, a quiet square just below Union Street (the main shopping street). Their lunch menu looks impressive but they were kind enough to make me a bacon and egg roll with plenty of tomato sauce for breakfast – despite not being a breakfast kind of place. I arrived just as they opened their doors for the day and when they turned on their music the first track that played was Katchafire. Between that and the plentiful tomato sauce this kiwi was pretty happy.

 

Also popping out to nearby Stonebridge, a good helping of Fish and chips was on the menu...

Walking past people in kilts practicing their bagpiping in a carpark for the festival (it wasn’t pleasant so I didn't linger to see/hear more) I made it to Stonehaven beach. Following the beachfront walkway I eventually reached The Bay Fish and Chip Shop, winners of the Independent UK Fish and Chip Shop of 2013. As well as being award winning deep fryers they’re also all about the sustainability and accountability of their food. Apparently the potatoes for my chips came from a farm in Suffolk and my haddock was caught on a boat called Faithful FR129 (which is a real boat because I checked).

 

But forget about the pedigree of my food - the most important thing is that it was delicious.

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Utterly scrumptious. Have you been inspired yet?

The Writing Process Blog Tour - behind the scenes at Adventures of a London Kiwi

Why do we have such a pressing need to express ourselves? Whilst you mull that over (answers on a postcard) my fully-caffeinated friend Rebecca of RunawayKiwi has challenged me again. Not a post live blogging a Football game, or how life would be without cake (hint: horrible) but one dissecting the thought process behind constructing 300 words of my blatherings. I mean blogging.
 

As it's a chain letter of blog-proportions, so I nominate the lovely Jess at Jess on Thames, Dannielle at Chicadeedee, and YOU! If you don't, well, I'll be a little sad which isn't nice. And you wouldn't want me to be sad now, would you?

via

Q1: What are you working on?
Honestly, it really depends day to day what I fancy sharing. Normally it's everything that I adore; a new London nook, delicious flat white, wonderful view or book that I can't put down. At this precise moment I have a half dozen posts titled, photos waiting for editing and zero hours to draft the posts. I tend to go through phases of organisation; some weeks will have a subtle thematic arc known only to me, some an in your face celebration (such as Doctor Who or Harry Potter) but most are a hotch-potch of shiny things that have caught my fancy.

Q2: How does your work differ from others of it's genre?
Weeeell, I wouldn't call it work. If if ever became work it wouldn't be fun any more. Blogging is a lovely hobby that makes me happy, and enables me to share the love. As an expat blogger who shuns all niches and categories, the freedom to post about anything and everything suits me. I'm enthusiastic, a photograph addict and an explorer. Simples.




Q3: Why do you write what you do?
Initially the blog started as a reason to explore our incredible city. Then having taken on a life of it's own, the blog has introduced me to a wonderful network of expats living their dreams, opportunities I could never imagine and a plethora of passionate people. As a creative outlet blogging is so flexible that everyone can have their own twist, their own medium for bubbly personalities to shine.

Q4: How does your writing process work?I either have evenings where words and ideas pour from my weird brain onto the keyboard (or more often last thing at night into my hastily snatched phone much to the annoyance of the previously sleeping Mr Kiwi) or afternoons staring cluelessly at a blank screen. I'm not one for writing about feelings unless I feel super empassioned about something. And by that I mean Eggs Benedict and leisurely afternoon teas.

(Oh, and that live blogging of a Football World Cup Final, or how life would be without cake (horrible) I mentioned turned out surprisingly ok)

Your turn...