Mad Men

I've just started watching the first season of Mad Men, a show set in a 1950's Madison Avenue advertising firm. I had been hearing about how popular this show was without paying any attention to it, until now. It is not uncommon for me to not know the theme of a popular show. I didn't see any episodes of 24, Lost, or Weeds. I tend more toward the talent shows via youtube and how their creative editors weave in the tearful drama. And, given that I don't watch any TV here because the kids monopolize it with their British shows, I spend most of my free time reading.

But this show, the first episode of Mad Men, struck a particular nerve for me. It pokes fun at American culture 50-plus years ago when gender discrimination and smoking in the work place was the norm, two topics I've been hardwired to be overly sensitive. I suppose the reason I am so sensitive to it even now is because I see a lot of this here, in Switzerland, in 2010... still... far more than I should.

A joke will be made, followed by an awareness that an American is nearby, and, oh, Americans are litigious, so perhaps we shouldn't joke like this right now. Is it that we're litigious? Or are we just far more aware of how we were held accountable for our discriminating behaviors in the only way that was legally available in the past? To change an unwelcome behavior, one (or a group) must change their tolerance for it.

There is still smoking in the buildings in Switzerland. They have spent a little more money to seclude people in a designated space of the building into a phone booth equipped with a vacuum and a filter. I think Americans might have done this, too, at one time. Perhaps they feel the escaping particulates are at an acceptable level, like our FDA allows certain levels of mercury in our farm fish, or acceptable levels of antibiotics and gene manipulations in our farm beef.

Signs of tolerance are still around. Here's a photo of actual chairs, in a commons area, in a business setting. They're cute, no? They're not gender-specific, per se, but the conversations about these chairs, at least those in my presence, always seem to turn gender-specific. Perhaps even this is just to test me and my own tolerance, to see how much more gender humor I can take without walking away. I once wrote in this blog about certain topics still seemingly being stuck in the 1970s here. Maybe my accuracy on the decade was a bit off.

Twelve

Raising a twelve-year-old is difficult enough. But transfer her to a country who has for the past two years ranked at the top of Global Competitiveness, and some very strange perspectives emerge.

She attends an International school. In this school are the children of people from all over the world. Naturally, some have more means than others. And so the competition begins. We do not have much, and we do not need much. Conversely, my daughter likes to spend her hard-earned babysitting money on certain items with designer-style labels. I like to roll my eyes. I'm pretty sure this is not something I taught her. I'm a man. I'm ignorant to such things.

Today, she went to a birthday party, where more twelve-year-olds were also going to be gathering. She smelled of Abercrombie-ness. She was wearing designer tennis shoes that her aunt gave her for Christmas. She was carrying a designer bag, inside a designer wallet. And her shirt had some other label on it. As we were leaving, a six-year-old girl for whom she babysits was playing outside.

her: Hi.
daughter: Hi.
her: Where are you going?
daughter: A birthday party.
her: Another one?
daughter: Yeah. There are a lot this month.
her: And you're taking your Juice bag?
me: Ha. Juice bag.
daughter: Juicy.
her: Does it have juice in it?

We do live in the land of understatement. Wearing labels and bobbles that show your numbers is scoffed at by the Swiss as very poor taste. And apparently the same by 6-year-olds from England.

Cuss

I love the process of learning a new language. I learn it like a baby learns to communicate. Lots of grunts and gestures until finally a pattern emerges. But I also like there are cuss words that, for whatever reason, are very easy to remember in a new language. There must be a linguistics paper somewhere that describes why we find a way to store and recall these words far more readily than useful things like "I'm sorry".

But when these words cross over into common colloquialisms, it's even more fun. I learned early when I started coming here that the word "whore" used to be used as an emphasis adjective a decade or two ago: "whore far", "whore big", "whore fast", "whore pretty". It made me laugh to here this. Not something to be used in a business or family setting... just reserved for trusted friends. But then I heard other word substitutions to help tame down the emphasis. In English, we might substitute the word "shoot" for a certain expletive. But because the word "scheibe" is close enough to the same expletive in German, one will say "window" instead.

Now I'm told the Swiss kids use the word "mega" to emphasize: "mega far", "mega big", "mega pretty", or just "mega" on its own to cut down on the number words.

Mega culture.

Limbo

I walked to the bus stop on yet another rainy dreary day this week, and for two minutes, I was again an American realizing I'm walking around in Europe. I call these moments "waking up only to roll over". It doesn't happen as frequently these days as it did. I've internally adapted to my surroundings, seeing 400 year old buildings that have been restored and maintained, seeing men in their 40s and 50s wearing vests, shorts, and funny little hats scootering around at top speeds in a crowded train station, hearing church bells and cow bells and languages I can't understand, seeing a wide array of varying breads and cheeses and meats and wines without gasping "wow". It's now easy to understand why colonies of immigrants in America would import their favorite parts of their cultures. When I first started writing this blog, a Swiss colleague would occasionally comment about it in private interactions. He found my observations humorous, mentioned he hadn't noticed these things in this way.

Him: "Now I hear church bells all the time where I didn't before."

I've grown a bit more accustomed, maybe even numbed depending on one's perspective toward positive or negative. Yet, I still have that "grass is greener" sense I am not as accepted here as I would be back in my own home town. I'm not implying I would be so welcomed back there, just that there would be less aspects to synchronize in the first three minutes of every interaction. I can't read people here like I thought I could there. All of the signals and anticipated responses are different. I also miss being there during these "rolling over" moments. I am told this is similar to how a person from a remote Swiss German village working in Zürich feels. If they do, I would be surprised at that level of self awareness or interpersonal differentiation. That's a whole new level of which I will never be able to relate. I am still an American working in Switzerland, not truly accepted, but also not fully rejected... just tolerated somewhere in the middle, limbo for now.

Fluffy

My daughter is a bit frustrated with recent interactions.

her: That's the third time!
Mm: What?
her: Grandmas are supposed to be fluffy and smell like cookies. That mean one just barked at me for reflecting the sun around with my compact mirror. I mean seriously?
me: You did it three times?
her: No. The other day another mean grandma yelled at me for Bear pooping. And a completely different one for walking across her backyard. What's up with the Mean Grandma Gang here??

Fluffy and cookies?