Life + Times of Fenton et al.

Category: Culture

  • So, Where Are You From?

    During our trip up to Vancouver, we visited the excellent Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. There most of us joined a tour run by a volunteer with a group of a dozen or so. To break the ice a little the tour guide introduced herself and then asked where people were from. A couple from the UK, some from the US and then she got to Ariana who just went, ‘Errr …’ and looked up at me, a little lost. I said that we were Australian by way of California and that seemed sufficient. In discussing it with Ariana later, she confided that she thought about saying Australia, Germany and/or California — and while in some sense we are from each of those places — none of them were particularly accurate.

    That got me to thinking a little about cultural identity and, well, what exactly is ours? At the time we were in Vancouver I posted this status update on Facebook: “Fenton thinks that a family from California who has lived longest in Canberra — watching in their motel in Vancouver — supporting Queensland beat NSW can’t possibly be confused about their cultural identity.”

    I think that, for us, we are a little bit of each culture we have lived in and embraced, to the extent of those things we adopted. So, I know Gaynor[1] and I quite like lighting a candle on a Weihnachtskranz and singing a hymn each week in the four weeks leading up to Christmas. The children are fond of Halloween (though not quite as much as Karneval where the sweets come to you) and we all seem to enjoy Thanksgiving. I think these are traditions that we’ll bring back to Australia with us and enjoy for years to come.

    However, more subtle and powerful are the effects on our understanding, our world view and our character. I believe that the particular ways that different cultures perceive things alters your own point of view, however minutely, to the extent that you come to understand the people. Of course, not everything you find is worth picking up but just being exposed to an alternative is usually beneficial. Perhaps one of the main benefits for us has been an increase in tolerance for different ways of doing things. Having now lived in three education systems, three health care systems and three political systems, we occasionally remind the children that sometimes some ways are better, sometimes they are worse and sometimes they are just different.

    Recognising that your own eyes have been opened to an alternative way is not always apparent — can’t see the forest for the trees, I expect — but you can clearly see that recognition in someone else’s reaction when you expose them to something new, something they hadn’t previously known or considered. We’ve enjoyed doing that for people met in other cultures and I’ve enjoyed being on the receiving end, however difficult it might have been to adjust perceptions and thinking at the time.

    In the end, our family’s culture derives largely from the sum of our experiences — just as for everyone — though I guess our experiences have, perhaps, included exposure to more alternative ways of doing things than might otherwise have been the case if we had stayed put. I think we are better for it, even given some of the discomfort that came along with it. And to answer the original question, I think we are from a bit of lots of places now. Now the question, ‘Where do you belong?’, well … that’s a bit trickier.

    [1] Gaynor has her own whole range of culinary traditions and experiences that she has embraced, including picking up her very own raclette grill in Germany.

  • Easter 2009

    While Good Friday is currently sacrosanct as a holiday in Australia and Germany — indeed in many other countries that we’ve never experienced it in — that’s not the case in the U.S. At least, not in California. I’m told some other states do have it as a holiday but, well we don’t live there. So as such, Elijah, Mara, Ariana and Bryna all had school that day, while Joshua is currently on spring break. Well, not so much of a break as an exaggerated bend — it’s merely a week off. Unlike many other general populace workers though, it was a company holiday for me. Not sure why exactly but it’s good just the same. 🙂

    So we had to be on our toes in order to continue one of our Easter traditions — freshly baked hot cross buns on Good Friday. When I say ‘we’ I really mean ‘Gaynor’. She was up early and had the buns baked in time for us to enjoy a good couple before dropping Ariana and Mara at school. Usually they catch the bus but driving them myself gave us just that bit of extra time.

    The Devourees – the hot cross buns all prepared to fulfill their Easterly duties.

    The Devourers – the family gathers for our Good Friday tradition.

    Of course, the traditional condiment to accompany these delectable delights is nothing less than slatherings of butter. There are some things we are glad we have taken the time to carry on. 🙂

  • Baseball with the Angels

    Recently a good friend invited Joshua, Elijah and I to join him at an Anaheim Angels baseball game. Now baseball isn’t something I grew up playing with softball being the generally preferred option that is closest. In the past, I’ve tried to watch the US-based ‘World’ Series at least twice and found the games like watching paint dry. And considering I don’t mind sitting down to watch cricket, saying baseball is boring appears to be an obvious contradiction.

    However, I was prepared to give it another go and certainly in a live context. In general, I usually enjoy even mediocre live entertainment as much or more than very good or great ‘canned’ stuff. And baseball on television definitely comes across to me as canned. So we headed to Angel Stadium on a week night to take in the game against the Tampa Bay Rays. Both the boys prefer the Angels to the other team in LA, as evidenced by their ability to procure hats as needed. And so, true to my expectations, the game, atmosphere and traditions were a lot of fun and very enjoyable. We stumbled through the never-known words to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during an innings change-over and bantered with an ice-cream salesman who was plying his trade throughout the stands. I even predicted the home run by Vlad Guerrero in the fifth innings!

    Fenton and the boys at a baseball game.

    The boys and I at the game. Note the dopey looks on the faces of the confused Australians. What, no wickets??

  • Language Update

    Of course, one of the challenges of moving countries is the language barrier. The shift to Germany meant an obvious difficulty but the move to California has brought its own subtle problems. In Germany the challenge was to learn a whole new language, in California it’s retention. Retention of both our Australian dialect and our German. The former is not such a large hill but the latter takes a lot more effort.

    The retention of our Australian was mostly put on hold while we were in Germany, in favour of them spending more time leanring and speaking German. Besides, there wasn’t much competition between the two, being so different. Living in a culture with a different dialect, on the other hand, is much more subtle. Most of the ‘replacement words’ — ‘vacation’ for ‘holiday’, ‘parking lot’ for ‘car park’ — are generally already known and very easy to understand even if they’ve never been heard before. Remembering to use them in context when speaking to an American is a bit harder. Americans are less likely to have heard the other version than we are to have heard theirs.

    A couple of our children are picking up a few accented words. Bryna has a few and Elijah tends to adapt his accent to his audience. It’s most obvious talking with him immediately after picking him following time with his friends. At first, we’d remind him but I’m pretty sure he’s not doing it consciously, so now I just let it go.

    Watching Australian television shows wasn’t something we could do in Germany — everything is overdubbed there — but the children have a few they watch religiously here. H2O, The Saddle Club and even Bindi the Jungle Girl all get a regular airing. In addition, we take our sports education very seriously and enjoy many rugby games, Brisbane Broncos, Queensland Reds as well as internationals.

    And so to German. To be honest, my German has never been that great. I figured out enough to hold a grammatically poor conversation for about 20 minutes. I can read a bit and know plenty of less used words that the rest of the family didn’t need to know, like Rechtschutzversicherung (legal insurance) and Ölwannedichtung (oil sump gasket). Gaynor and the children on the other hand did wonderfully. Gaynor could teach a 45 minute lesson at church and each child was passing German as a subject at their school. In the case of Joshua, Elijah and Mara that was at the academic high school. Ariana spoke fluently and without an accent with all her friends and Bryna really only spoke German.

    Gaynor and I have spoken a number of times about steps we’d take to help the children retain their fluency in German. Unfortunately for Bryna her only chance was for us to mostly speak German at home and that is something very hard to do when it’s your non-native tongue. Bryna now only remembers a few German words and phrases and almost always speaks in English. Her transition was complete within the first six months of our arrival. The retention improves with the older children and Joshua, Elijah and Mara seem to recall virtually all of theirs with Ariana somewhere in between.

    However, we are of the firm opinion that without constant practice and opportunities to use it they’d lose it. So to that end, we’ve tried to bring as many German books and DVDs with us as possible and we’ve recently had an influx of books and DVDs when one of Elijah’s old school mates came to visit for a few weeks. We also have an incentive scheme for them to read and report on German books, we subscribe to a monthly church-related magazine in German, a friend in Germany sends us copies of one of the children’s favourite television programs Die Pfefferkörner (English description) and every Wednesday is supposed to be ‘Deutschsprechtag’ — ‘German speaking day’. I say ‘supposed to be’ because not everyone remembers for all of the day but we are mostly making an effort! Hopefully these opportunities and ideas will be enough to help them retain the lion’s share of their ability.

    And finally, speaking of languages, we’ve set the children the challenge of being fluent in three languages by their eighteenth birthday. Some have picked French and others Spanish but we’ll see how they go. By the way, we’ve been pleased to see that southern California, at least, is very bilingual. Of course there are many people who are native or fluent Spanish speakers but there are also many stores that have signs in both languages. Perhaps ‘American’ as a synonym for ‘monolingual’ is on the way out — much to the chagrin of some US citizens I’m sure.

  • Paranimf-in’

    A little while ago two PhD students at work graduated from their respective Dutch universities. I had had a small hand in helping both of them with their theses — mostly editing (thanks be to Brett), English and some thoughts on layout. I attended the graduation ceremonies of both and they are somewhat different to my own in Australia.

    Firstly, the generic Australian version. Usually the protocol is to write the thesis, submit it to the univeristy who — with the preparation of you and your supervisor who have invited them — send it off to the examiners. There are rules about who can and cannot do this but in general it is three or four people who know enough about your work (hopefully) to say if it’s rubbish or not. They prepare a report on the work and then recommend one of a few possible outcomes[1] This then goes to the University who generally follow through on the advice they have received and a bit later on you (optionally and usually a few months) head to the official graduation ceremony where you, along with a few hundred others (mostly undergraduates), are presented with your scroll of paper. At some universities they read out the thesis title of the graduand before handing over the parchment and other places — like my own at ANU — they just print it in the program.

    The differences with the Dutch system include, for starters, it takes more the form of a formal thesis defence. The candidate having previously published and submitted his thesis to the examining committee, then comes before them in a formal ceremony and is grilled for a designated — and strictly controlled — time period. Work colleagues, friends and family typically attend the ceremony. To support the grillee — though pretty much only in a moral sense — two assistants are asked and they are known as the paranimfs. I don’t think there is an strictly equivalent word in English. Anyway, I was recently invited to be a paranimf. This pretty much involved wearing a dark suit, walking in the processions, standing in the right place at the right time and sitting still during the Process-O-Grilling. I thought it might also entail coming quickly to one’s feet and calling ‘Objection!’ or stopping the candidate running from the room but I appear to have been mistaken. Overall the ceremony went well.

    At the end of the Grill Fest the examining committee retires for its deliberations and upon return (usually) grant the degree on the spot. Usually then the candidate’s “promotor” (the academic who officially is putting him forward as a candidate) says a few words about the candidate (now Doctor) and their efforts. The ceremony is concluded and friends, family and colleagues adjourn to a reception room to partake in drinks, hors d’œuvre, congratulations and possibly even some gift giving. Then it’s all over bar the posing.

    The Man of the Moment with family members and flanked by his two Paranimfs.

    [1] Generally and broadly they are: conferral of degree with no changes, conferral of degree with minor changes, rewrite and resubmission of thesis and denial of degree.

  • German Driver’s Licence

    This post is part vent, part information. So, the time has come for me to obtain my German driver’s licence[1] and there are a number of rules governing the use of foreign licences here. For starters the most infuriating part is the sheer bureaucratic and almost arbitrary nature of which licences are easily exchangeable. Once you have moved here the rule is all licences should be converted to a German licence within 6 months. Since I only ‘moved’ here at the beginning of May[2] I must change over by November. There is a list as to which countries can simply exchange their licences and those whose resident’s must take theory and/or practical tests. The list is generated using the rule: “Whoever Germany has made a formal agreement with”. And that seems to be the only rule as far as I can find out.[3]

    That means that all countries in the EU are fine to just exchange, since Germany as an EU member has agreed to this. The list gets a little stranger the further away you go. So Japan is free to exchange as are South Korea and Canada however Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are not. The list gets, in my opinion, positively crazy when some states in the U.S. can simply exchange — such as Utah and Virginia — others must only perform a theory test — such as Missouri and Oregon — and still others, such as poor Texas, must do both a theory and practical test. Australia, NZ and South Africa also fall into this category of having to do both tests. If you hold a current licence the requirement for a certain number of instructor hours is waived.

    In addition to the tests one must also present documentation for a first aid course, eye sight test as well as a translation of any current licence. Of course each of these cost money and money also goes to pay for the tests, the licence itself and the driving lessons (enough for the instructor to determine that you are competent enough to pass). All up for Gaynor the cost was around the 400€ mark and I expect it will be a little cheaper for me, though probably not much. To keep this in ‘perspective’ one should realise that a first-time licence getter will pay a minimum of 1500€, most of which goes in lesson time to meet the required number of hours standard.

    The craziest part of the licence exchange (fühererscheinumschreibung in German) is that legally it’s ok for you to get off a plane from Australia — having driven your whole life in a right-hand drive vehicle and on the left hand side of the road — and do 200km/h down the autobahn. And you can keep doing this for 6 months not having a clue about the road rules or being able to read German to know them. After that however, they really view you as a danger on the roads since you don’t have a valid licence!

    On the plus side you do end up with pretty decent driver training and they really do seem to take their social responisibilty to be a good driver very seriously. In addition, the German driver’s licences are valid for life. You only have to do this once and they never need to be renewed. And — and here is the part I like and will miss soon enough — you can keep driving on the autobahns. 😀

    [1] Gaynor’s time has already come and gone and she successfully completed the transfer last April. But since she hasn’t blogged about it, I’ll have a go.
    [2] Actually didn’t blog about that piece of minor news though it was alluded to in our post about our visit to Amsterdam.
    [3] Bit more information on driving in Germany at How To Germany.

  • Back to School

    I remember in Australia the new school year was always a time of excitement and a little anxiety about whether the children would have the right teacher and the right friends in their class. Well this feeling is greatly exaggerated when the system and the language is unfamiliar (or barely familiar). To further compound this feeling, Mara started high school today and she is not yet 10. She seems so small to start high school though in other regards she is well equipped as she is fluent in German, is quite studious and very determined. Still, I don’t like the idea of her travelling home alone a couple of days a week.

    One off the joys of the system is that children finish at different times so lunch can last 2 hours. In addition the first child home will have finished all their homework, jobs and piano practice before the last child is home. This means they are asking for screen time before the others have even had lunch (for me this is a logistical nightmare).

    A little whinge: The parents must supply all the equipment but unlike the book packs you can buy in Australia the primary school gives you a comprehensive list down to colours and sizes etc, that you normally can find everything by visiting 2 shops. The high school doesn’t manage to form a list instead requests trickle home via the children over the next couple of weeks, but normally with the plea that I must have it tomorrow (fat chance) we don’t know whether the urgency comes from the teacher or the children only telling us at the last minute. This is also difficult to budget for and by the end of the period I’m loathe to hand over any more money. End of whinge.

    Joshua is in year 7 and will be learning Latin this year which he is very excited about. Elijah has the same teachers as last year which is a bit of a concern. His German teacher is antiquated and his English teacher said that nothing is more important than school work. Elijah replied that family, church and sport were more important than school (and we mostly agree with him — which is not very German of us).

    Ariana is in the 2nd grade and has the same teacher as last year who is very nice. Ari is really good at math but, we must help her with reading English and German. She sounds out everything but has no fluency or much comprehension yet. I think it will all come together soon.

    Bryna started Kindergarten — or as she calls it “garten schule” (garden school) — this morning and she looked so little with her “princess” backpack on her back. When I asked her what made her backpack heavy she replied “Essens” (which is an English plural of the German for food. Good Denglish!). She didn’t want me to stay (she doesn’t need me any more 🙁 — pass the TimTams) and she was very quite when I picked her up. So I asked her how it was and she answered “spass gehabt” (had fun). This evening Mara said “I have maths tomorrow” and Bryna replied “I have garden maths tomorrow”. I asked, “What do you do in garden maths?” and she answered “Count blatte” (leaves).

    I hope the children have a good school year. I am looking forward with a little trepidation to mornings all alone, as this will be an experience I haven’t had for 13 years. I have a list 1.6 km long of what I hope to achieve in my 3 hours a day. 😀

    Bryna’s ready for her first day at kindergarten. Yaay!

  • Fire Targa

    Though I’m usually in favour of the separation of Church and State, if it comes at the cost of losing many of the religious public holidays we have recently enjoyed here I’m not so sure :). In reverse order, we have recently had days off for Fronleichnam[1], Pfingsten[2], Christi Himmelfahrt[3], Ostern and Karfreitag[5]. Another religious-type holiday later in the year is Allerheiligen[6] — which I’ve always thought was much more (spiritually) justifiable than Halloween 🙂 Of course Maifeiertag[7] is also a public holiday and on top of this, if a public holiday falls on a Thursday (Christi Himmelfahrt and Fronleichnam this year), the research centre has an agreed day off on the Friday. Rest assured, though, that despite this hectic schedule of free days my commitment to acheiving my usually small output of work has not wavered!

    By the way, the title of this post, when read in English, is roughly how you pronounce ‘Feiertage’ — German for ‘holidays’.

    [1] Corpus Christi Feast. Celebrated 15th June this year.
    [2] Pentecost. Celebrated 4-5th June this year.
    [3] Ascension. Celebrated 25th May this year.
    [4] Easter. Celebrated 16-17th April this year.
    [5] Good Friday. Celebrated 14th April this year.
    [6] All Saints. Celebrated 1st November.
    [7] May Day. Celebrated umm … I forget.

  • Spring Sights

    As I mentioned last year, the switch to spring seems to be very fast here. True, we have had a bit of a lingering winter but on the whole I am only slightly less amazed this time round at how quickly the new leaves appear, flowers bloom, festivities kick-in and something approaching warmer weather arrives. Seeing the sun out and the hearing the birds twittering, I wandered our gardens for a few snapshots.

    Ornamental Pond FlowersOrnamental Pond Flowers

    Two twin bulbsTwo twin bulbs

    Magnolia Tree and DetailMagnolia Tree and Close-Up

    Apologies to all those south of the equator who are heading into colder weather! Still hard to work up much sympathy for the Brisbanites though …

  • Weihnachten (Christmas)

    It snowed late on Boxing Day but on Christmas the sun was actually shining. It looked a little more like Christmas but it didn’t feel like a proper Christmas. We went sledding a couple of days later but otherwise we mostly played inside. We did have a snowball fight with one of Joshua’s friends. Bryna says it is very cold and she doesn’t like cold feet. I cleaned my room just before Christmas so that Mum would feel happy.

    We had a real Christmas tree and it was spiky. We put some lights up in our windows with about one hundred in each window. We also had candles burning as part of decorations. We didn’t have many decorations at first but we made some for the tree and the windows.

    We ended up doing some German traditions this year and some Australian ones. We opened the presents on Christmas Eve and had St. Nicholas come. Instead of putting out stockings you put out shoes for St. Nicholas and they get filled with sweets. St. Nicholas comes on the 6th of December so you have enough stash to get through to Christmas. We still put out our stockings on Christmas Eve and they got mostly filled. We didn’t get any mangoes though.

    We had some missionaries and two friends over for Christmas dinner and we sang some Christmas carols. The Christmas dinner was really yummy with roast goose, roast potatoes, chestnut stuffing and vegetables. We got to try a new Italian dessert — pistachio panatone — brought by a Sicilian missionary. Mum also says we had a salad of smoked salmon, rocket and mascapone cheese for starters and a palate cleanser which was a pink grapefruit sorbet.

    Where to start on what people gave? I made cool keychains for everyone out of scooby-doo bands (like plastic string). Ariana painted noni glasses (small ones) for everyone but Elijah’s broke before he got it. Josh made bookmarks out of paper, then he burnt them a little and wrote a Hitchhiker’s Guide something on it. Elijah gave us blank books with our names and ‘Gosple Notes’ on it (Yes, that is how he spelt it). It’s for writing down things we hear in church. From Mum and Dad I got a Bugel Bead Kit (it’s craft beads that you make into a pattern or picture and iron it together) and a ballet CD. Elijah got an mp3 player and a calendar with cars on it. Ari got some Little People(TM) and some Ello(TM). Bryna also got some Little People and a soft bear with a bag. She calls it ‘Teddy mit Tasche’. Joshua got a game called ‘Abenteuer Menschheit’ (Adventure Mankind) and a cartooning book.