They have them here too!

I’ve only ever seen spelling bees in the movies so it’s another piece of Americana coming to life before my very eyes! It reminds me of our inappropriate joy at spotting fire hydrants – I am of course referring to the children here, I’d just like to make that clear… 

Last weekend, here in Toronto, 12 y-o Sara Ferros beat 55 other Toronto-area finalists to win the Canspell Toronto Regional Spelling Bee. It was her first time competing and she left with the $5,000 prize and a chance to win the national final on March 28th. She looks understandably pleased. 21 spellers from across Canada will compete for the Canspell Cup, $15,000 worth of education awards from the Egg Farmers of Canada and a ticket to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington DC, the king of spelling bees, tracing its lineage back to 1925 Kentucky, where the US National Spelling Bee began.

Read a more detailed account of the nail-biting contest here.

According to Wikipedia, the word bee alludes to a gathering of people where a specific action is being carried out, although it’s origins are unclear. I’d always wondered about that…

Related Links: Canspell National Spelling Bee

The end of February brings hope and excitement as the cold weather weakens and we start to sense the slow creep of Spring. Shrugging off the survival mind-set that got us through the winter, it feels great to be alive again!

Being outdoors turns from a battle with the elements to an appreciation of nature. The best things in life –  space, bright sunshine, clear water and fresh air – are all here to enjoy. Who could ask for more?

Linking up for You’re Beautiful. Follow on Twitter under #yourebeautiful

When I married, I wanted to do all I could to bridge the cultural gap between my husband’s family and I. They had moved to England from Pakistan when K was two or three and now lived in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father could read, and spoke halting English, but his mother was illiterate and spoke only Punjabi. (At least that was the official line, in truth, she spoke better English than her husband but was shy about using it). The whole family spoke Punjabi, but felt that I should learn Urdu as it was the more refined of the two languages, polished and soft compared to Punjabi’s staccato sound. To help with my learning, my brothers and sisters-in-law couldn’t to speak to me in English.

In those early days of our marriage, K and I would periodically join the stream of stultified humanity on the M1 and M6, to make the six-hour drive from St Albans to Edinburgh, usually arriving somewhere close to midnight. I remember sitting on the sofa, drained by the long drive and dazedly wondering what everyone was arguing about. Voices were raised, brows furrowed and arms sliced the air; everyone talked over each other and the sharp volleys of speech fired back and forth around the room, made me edgy. Unable to understand the content, unsure if I was the cause/topic/catalyst, I adopted the typically British tactic of appearing oblivious, too absorbed by the over-made-up actresses in the Asian dramas playing on the forgotten TV screen to notice, “Excuse me, what was that? A family discussion descends into chaos? No, sorry, I must have missed it…”

Later, together in the warm, safe cocoon of our bed, away from listening ears, I asked K for the lowdown, “So what was wrong? What was everybody arguing about?” Half perplexed, half amused, he told me they were just chatting, “A bit of banter…” When I mentioned how aggressive it sounded, he laughed and said, “That’s how we talk…”  So there you have it: Punjabi is not pretty.

Urdu, on the other hand is the language of classical poets; Zafar, Ghalib and Faiz among them, who wove beautiful and intricate shayari (poetry) and ghazaals that captured the hearts of their listeners and wrought tears from their eyes. It has the softness and sensual flow of velvet as it runs golden and honey-like over the tongue and soothes the ears with its mellifluousness.

The best thing about learning Urdu was that it meant I had an excuse to watch  loads of  Bollywood movies, drinking in the beauty of the heroines, the drape and colour of their clothes, the delicate tinkling of their churian (bangles). I also formed a heartfelt appreciation for the young Amitabh Bachchan’s towering intensity and Shah Rukh Khan’s puppy-dog eyes, but that’s another story. Through them, I became familiar with South Asian culture and customs. I began to understand how they saw the world through the lens of family values and expectations, rights and duties and respect for elders. I gained a cultural understanding from the dramatic scenarios and my ears became attuned to the caressing cadence of Urdu as my eyes followed the meanings in the subtitles. I even found myself singing the songs…

“Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayaal aata hai…”

I went for weekly Urdu lessons and listened to Urdu radio stations. My vocabulary grew so that eventually I was correcting my husband. I could read and translate Urdu script – the swirl of pen strokes and dots now held meaning for me.

But then came the crushing blow. I learned, to my detriment and eternal disappointment, that Urdu and Punjabi, though similar, also have many differences. When I tried to converse with my in-laws in Urdu, instead of the broad smiles and admiration I had expected, I met with blank looks. “Ki bolti ha?” – “What did she say?” they asked one another, while I sat there nonplussed. Why didn’t they understand me? Was my accent that bad? K’s father prided himself on his Urdu. It conveyed class, intellect and education and he felt it gave him a certain caché, he would pore over his Urdu newspaper in the evenings, reading aloud to his ambivalent audience in a strident voice, any parts that interested him (usually a recipe for chutney or some such banality). But he would be stumped when I gathered up the courage to talk to him in Urdu – always turning to K for clarification. It seemed that my only “sure thing” could not understand my best attempts at his language and, for everyone else, the differences outnumbered the similarities.

To give you an example: the Urdu word for Pillow is Takiya, but in Punjabi it is Surana – COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! How would you EVER guess they mean the same thing? Short answer: You wouldn’t. Not without learning BOTH languages.

So, I was stumped. I would gradually pick up some Punjabi through prolonged exposure, but it was a difficult and isolating experience. Sometimes, we would stay in Edinburgh for weeks at a time, and you cannot imagine the relief I felt conversing in English with a cashier at the local Sainsbury’s for a few minutes. Hearing language that I didn’t have to work to understand, seemed so amazingly effortless. I felt almost psychic! To keep track of the high-speed conversations that went on around me in Punjabi, I had to concentrate hard, often I would be left chasing an elusive meaning in my head while the conversation continued apace. Every so often I would have to just drop out, stare into space, and let it all wash over me. Whenever I asked K to translate, he would shush me, telling me to wait till the end of the conversation for a summary, by which time he’d have forgotten how it began!

Sadly, now that we are in Canada, I don’t have much opportunity to practice my Urdu. I lie awake at night trying to recover words lost in the obscurity of my faded memory. It’s all still there. It just needs a bit of prompting to reach it. I remember back to the days when J was a toddler and I taught her the Urdu words for the pictures in her baby-books – billie instead of cat, dudoo instead of frog, phul for flower… perhaps I should do the same with S, even if it’s more for myself than anyone else.

Time to get my old schoolbooks out… ا alif – anar, ب bay – buckri, ﭖ pay – pankha, ﺕ tay – takhti…

“All together now…ek, do, tiin, chaar, paanche, cheh, saath, aath, nau, das…”

Filed under: Being muslim, Interracial relationships ]]> http://expatlogue.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/learning-a-language/feed/ 9 43.854079 -78.947930 43.854079 -78.947930 urdu script expatlogue urdu script bollywood nazm2 http://expatlogue.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/brave-little-blogger-contest-2012/ http://expatlogue.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/brave-little-blogger-contest-2012/#comments Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:35:30 +0000 expatlogue http://expatlogue.wordpress.com/?p=3723 Continue reading →]]> Emily Suess is a writer, blogger, editor, proof-reader and one of  my go-to’s for info about the writing business. She’s informative in an informal kind of way and makes learning the many and varied tools of this trade seem a little less intimidating. In short, she makes it all seem somehow achievable.

Anyway, she’s running a blog contest on Suess’s Pieces. The theme for the submissions is still a secret but clues so far indicate it’s a ten letter word linked in some way to getting bloggers to speak out – sounds right up my street!

If it sounds like the kind of thing you might be into, you can find out the details on prizes, judges and requirements and how it can help showcase your blog.

What is Borderline Personality Disorder?

I suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I was first treated for depression at 15 but doctors can’t make a diagnosis of BPD on an adolescent, due to their personality still being in its formative stage. It’s a condition in which people exhibit long-term patterns of instability and turbulence in the areas of self-image, relationships and emotions.

There are 10 classified personality disorders and of those, BPD is the most common, most complex, most studied, and certainly one of the most devastating, with up to 10% of those diagnosed committing suicide. It exists in approximately 2-4% of the general population; up to 20% of all psychiatric inpatients and 15% of all outpatients.

How is it diagnosed?

A person is required to be exhibiting five or more of the symptoms below for a diagnosis of BPD to be made:

• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
• A pattern of unstable and intense relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
• Identity disturbance, such as a significant and persistent unstable self-image or sense of self
• Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
• Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour
• Emotional instability due to significant reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic depression, irritability, or anxiety)
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger
• Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms

What causes it?

BPD is thought to result from a mixture of biological, genetic, social and psychological factors. In other words doctors aren’t sure and are keeping their options open, but studies have shown a high correlation between traumatic events during childhood and occurrence of BPD. I always knew my experiences growing up and my relationship with my parents were responsible for a large part of my mental health issues and as I grew older, I tried to maintain a distance from them to help myself. But it was incredibly difficult to accept that they weren’t the supportive family I needed and every so often I would allow myself the hope that perhaps they could be. That never proved to be the case.

Thankfully, with BPD, the symptoms become less intense as a person ages and sufferers experience few of the extreme symptoms by the time they reach their 40’s or 50’s.

What does BPD mean to me?

A diagnosis of BPD at 25 didn’t give me any great insight at the time, beyond the confirmation that I wasn’t completely to blame for my uncontrollable mood-swings and self-destructive tendencies. I was in a very dark place, frequently suicidal, self-harming and full of self-hate. It wasn’t until much later, after therapy, that I began to gain a greater understanding of myself, and even then, it could be frustratingly fleeting; a glimpse of something that resonated within me but was too intangible to pin down.

While symptoms differ from person to person, my BPD affected me in a number of ways:

• I experienced frightening mood swings for no apparent reason, and needed company to distract me from them. It was like having a video constantly playing in your head and being unable to switch it off. I couldn’t sleep or concentrate. Sometimes I used music to escape it, as I got older I used alcohol and drugs. I used to wish I could be knocked unconscious and wake up when it had passed.
• I had difficulty dealing with emotional reactions to things. Even today I’m not conscious of what I feel straight away, it takes a while for it to condense into something I can verbalise. I might experience extreme anger and frustration but be unable to express it – this led to me taking it out on myself by either demolishing my confidence with self-doubt or punishing myself physically through impulsive, destructive behaviour – cutting, substance abuse, starvation, binging and purging. I would feel the anger building and be scared of what it would force me to do. At times like that, calling The Samaritans helped me through. They didn’t judge, just listened sympathetically and that gave me the strength I needed to hang on.
• I experienced Splitting, “All-Or-Nothing Thinking” where everything was either one extreme or another: good or evil, innocent or corrupt, I would put people on a pedestal only to tear them down and demonise them when I felt slighted. I would easily become paranoid and read all sorts of things into a person’s behaviour. I would over-analyse my own words and actions, terrified I had inadvertently offended someone and caused them to dislike me.
• I had periods of Depersonalisation – a feeling of watching yourself while having no control over the situation. I could feel myself becoming distant, travelling to a kind of empty place with no feelings. I used to dream a lot about trying to say something but being unable to make myself heard, or trying to run from something but being unable to make my legs work. I felt like I didn’t exist, I was on the wrong planet; I couldn’t relate to the people around me – I looked like them on the outside but inside was an empty space.
• One of the core areas of BPD is concerned with identity and self-image. I remember my husband telling me once that he knew me better than I knew myself. That’s an uncomfortable thing to hear. To a certain extent I had to agree with him – his logic and ability to recognise the patterns in my behaviour and thought processes enabled him a clearer view than I could ever hope for. But at the same time, I knew he was completely unaware of the intensity and nature of the thoughts that invaded my consciousness. The dark ones are too horrific to share and the light ones (I thought) just made me sound ridiculous.  It feels impossible to put them into words – like trying to catch a cloud in a matchbox.

I still don’t have a clear sense of who I am. If asked to describe myself, I have to consult other people. On one level, I know I have opinions, likes and dislikes. I HATE mushrooms and I know the difference between right and wrong, but there seems to be something in me that is very impressionable. Every time I watch a film I come away identifying with some aspect of a character and wondering if that’s who I am. For a while, my thoughts and behaviour might change, until the influence wears off and I’m back to being a blank canvas again. I feel as though I have some definable “pieces” but they’re not enough, or don’t fit to make a whole person.

Learning to live with it

I was treated with medication to get my head into a better place and I had Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help me deal with my triggers. I discovered the thought and behavioural patterns I had become enmeshed in and worked hard to undo years of ingrained habit. It was slow and difficult work. I would get so frustrated when I could identify my problems but my habitual response would automatically kick in. Knowing the problem was one thing, but fixing it was another. It was particularly difficult to deal with people who triggered my symptoms but I eventually faced them and voiced my feelings. Doing this, in spite of my fear, gave me strength in the face of their denial and helped to give me another tangible “piece” of Me to fit with the others.

Hard work and persistence won out in the end. I wanted to change things, and with support from my husband and mental health team I did. I finally received confirmation from The Priory that I was in good mental health and no longer required treatment. That was some years ago now. I still have difficult times, but I know that if I dig deep, I have the tools to get through them. Thankfully now those times are few and far between.

Linking up with the Love All Blogs Mental Health Blog Hop.

Promoting BlackDogTribe

It seems unlikely that those who don’t subscribe to a particular faith or ideology will hold it in as high regard as those that do. Surely you have to take the rough with the smooth. And what about Atheists? Isn’t their whole argument based on a criticism of the belief systems of others?

Should free speech be limited when it comes to organised religion? How do you decide where to draw the line in terms of which religions to include and what level of offense is too great? People are different, some power through life barely registering slights and criticisms while others feel the smallest measure of dissent acutely. One person’s insult will be another person’s forward thinking. Some genuinely have a different opinion while others just like to provoke. Wherever you draw the line, there will always be someone claiming their sensitivities haven’t been taken into account and claiming discrimination. There will always be a push for greater and greater censorship.

Perhaps we’re looking at the problem from the wrong perspective.

Instead of looking outwards and trying to shut down whatever we don’t like hearing, maybe we should be looking inwards and concentrating instead on how we deal personally with what we consider to be negative in the world around us. If we replaced condemnation with communication, it would soon become obvious who is genuine and who is merely stirring up controversy.

This week I read about the young Saudi journalist, Hamza Kashgari, 23, who is facing execution for his tweets about the prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). To mark the prophet’s birthday last week, he tweeted, “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you.” He then added, “I will not pray for you.” His words sparked 30,000 responses. They’ve been interpreted as an insult to the prophet and he has been branded an infidel and an apostate, punishable under (man-made) Sharia law by death. Though he quickly apologised, the calls for his execution only multiplied.

I sat here and wondered about what is happening to the religion that I chose to live my life by. The very things that appealed to me about Islam:

• it’s common sense,
• encouragement to question and learn,
•  the right to choose “there is no compulsion in Islam”,
• ijtihad (individual reasoning instead of blind compliance),
• sabr (patience),
• social responsibility “enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil”,
• the idea that Allah is in us all (closer than our jugular vein) and we need only listen to our conscience,
• tolerance and compassion

seem to be absent in this case. It seems the more strongly people try to defend their beliefs, the further away they move from the basic tenets of their faith.

Hamza Kashgari’s tweet doesn’t offend me; I thought it was honest and simply put, almost poetic in its confessional nature. I thought it was very human. He typed his feelings and we don’t know the reasons for those. But where is the compassion? Is no-one interested in why a young man, a fellow “brother” in our faith, feels this way? Instead of offering support, we round on him for supposedly insulting someone whose feet haven’t trodden this earth for hundreds of years. Is this what we muslims do in the name of the Compassionate, the Merciful?

No-one is in a position to verify whether it has offended the prophet. He was human like us, not divine, and experienced his fair share of hardship at the hands of others. It’s natural for us, by turns, to be inspired by him, angered by him, bewildered by him, in awe of him, just as we might be by any other significant person in our lives, just as we are by Allah. These are human traits. Our relationship with God and our prophet is personal, and though it may be visible to others, no-one has the right to pass judgement on it. Even Muhammad (ﷺ) made mistakes.

All muslims lucky enough to live in a country that defends their right to freedom of expression need to stand up and protest loudly against this kind of treatment. There must be some in Saudi that feel sympathy for this young man, but progressive-liberal muslims living in conservative countries risk harsh punishments for speaking out. It is up to us to use our freedoms to benefit others and also to support emergent progressive-liberal nations. Islam is judged by the actions of those who call themselves muslim and unfortunately the ones who make the headlines are those with extreme views. Liberal muslims need to make more noise and become more active in defending their religion, like those in Canada recently who publicly and loudly condemned so called “Honour-Killing” following the Shafia trial.

Don’t let others tarnish Islam in your name

Aisha Ashraf is a writer and blogger who converted to Islam ten years ago. She still struggles to equate the faith she researched with the one she finds in the world, and continues in her efforts to improve her understanding.

So, it’s down to me to pay it forward to a few worthy bloggers. Here’s what I could muster:

• Expatria Baby – Join Erica & Stella as they rock Japan!
• Expat Mum - Observations from a Brit in the U.S. of A.
• Adventures in Expatland - Living abroad and sharing the good, the less good and the just plain odd
• I Was An Expat Wife - Maria might be settled but she’s still got lots to say
• In Search of a Life Less Ordinary - Adventures in making a home away from home
• Defeating the Deficit - Taking control of Attention Deficit Disorder
• Bi[polar] Curious - poppycock from the bipolar spectrum
• Cheetahs In My Shoes - living with the imaginary menagerie and all that it entails
• Piglet in Portugal - Sharing her insights from Portugal
• Restless Jo - Roaming, at home and abroad
• Yellow Days - one mum’s way of not vanishing under a pile of dirty nappies and pureed vegetables
• Mammasaurus - there are no words, just go and have a look
• Julie Dawn Fox in Portugal - more Portuguese anecdotes
• Team Oyeniyi - Two people in love against the weight of bureaucracy
• What about your saucepans? – The adventures of an expat in the Dominican Republic

There must be something in there for everyone! Now I have to tell you “7 Thing’s About Me”:

1. I hate mushrooms
2. I have eaten snails though, work THAT one out!
3. I smoked marijuana in a convent
4. I was once recommended to become a professional show-jumper
5. I learnt to play the violin (badly)
6. I set off the fire alarm at school (it was an accident, honest!)
7. I almost joined the Royal Air Force as a Navigator

There we go, as they say in Canada, “I’ve done my doody!”

Over and out!

Subscribe now by RSS feed or email to avoid missing any other scintillating tit-bits from the recesses of my mind…

You can find out more about The HUG Award© and its purpose here, but briefly, it’s aim is to keep hope alive in a world filled with difficulty and discord. It recognises and honours those who do what they can to help others regardless of belief, ability, race and gender.

It’s some accolade, and I will do all I can to support the integrity and further the cause of those on the front line of the fight for inclusion, acceptance, understanding, equality, and freedom. By accepting this award I would like to draw your attention to some people who are vociferous in their appeals for unity, credibility and recognition on behalf of others. I nominate:

• Raheel Raza for her tireless promotion of cultural and religious diversity, bridging the gap between East and West with her celebration of differences.
• Jeremy Gilley and his inspirational movement PeaceOneDay, an annual day of global unity when intercultural cooperation, on a scale previously unheard of, allows us to reach those trapped behind violence and war. He has proved to the world that one person CAN make a difference.
  
• Bi[polar] Curious, a relatively new blog I came across recently, whose author is documenting living with Bi-Polar Disorder (previously known as Manic Depression) and sharing her insights with the wider world in an effort to lessen the stigma surrounding mental health issues and educate the mis-informed.
  
• Annie of Mammasaurus and LoveAllBlogs fame. Despite having come through some tough experiences, her altruistic nature remains undented and her energy and seemingly endless patience and understanding are qualities I aspire to. The woman would split her last measure of gin with you if it came down to it! She’s also amazingly creative (sigh!).

To find out more about The HUG Award©, have a look at the website, nominees please be aware of the guidelines. All that’s left for me to say is a heartfelt “Thankyou” to Connie Wayne at A Hope For Today for initiating this propagator of positivity.

Back in Britain, Canada Geese always had that exotic cachet of having flown in from some far-away land. A little part of Canada right there in our midst!

It was amusing to discover that your average Canuck doesn’t hold them in such high esteem. Here, they’re seen as more of a pest than anything else. Great flocks of them will settle on sports fields for the evening, and, like a community of pikeys, they’ll be gone in the morning, having left at dawn, leaving nothing but piles of sh*t behind them!

I have to say though, I do like the reassuring sound of their calls as they maintain flight formation while passing overhead…

Linking up for You’re Beautiful. Follow on Twitter under #yourebeautiful

Filed under: Canada, Photography, Wildlife ]]> http://expatlogue.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/beauty-or-beast/feed/ 0 43.854079 -78.947930 43.854079 -78.947930 IMG_4289 expatlogue IMG_4289 You're Beautiful, meme http://expatlogue.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/smooth-moves-for-expat-kids-tips-to-ease-the-transition/ http://expatlogue.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/smooth-moves-for-expat-kids-tips-to-ease-the-transition/#comments Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:23:08 +0000 expatlogue http://expatlogue.wordpress.com/?p=3571 Continue reading →]]>

Image courtesy of o5.com

Moving to another country with children can be a stressful experience. The tearful confession, “I want to go home,” is the last thing any parent wants to hear. Adults will be going through their own period of adjustment and this, coupled with the logistical matters that lay claim to their time in the early days, can leave them ill-equipped to give their children the help they need to cope with the transition.

The good news is that, when properly prepared and supported, children often adjust more quickly than adults. The key to a move with minimum fuss comes down to 3 main things:

COMMUNICATION

CONTROL

COMPANY

Read this article in its entirety on my column at Expat Focus. You’ll also find a list of children’s books that can help prepare them for the move. Please comment on any tips you’ve discovered to make the leap into the unknown a little less scary for kids, I’d love to hear them.