[LMB] alienness was: slightly OT: the term swap out

[A. Sasha Wagner-Adamo]

On 26 Mar 2008 at 20:03, Tora K. Smulders-Srinivasan wrote:
> I feel exactly the same way in England and I've been living here for
> over 4 years now.  It's wearying.  It makes everything just that much
> more difficult.  Though I guess I am getting more and more used to it
> by now.
> 
> It's not that I don't like it here.  It's that it's hard work to live
> here because of that jarring.

I always tell people that on good days I have two homes and on bad I 
have none.  And it's always the little things that induce culture shock.  
You make a conscious decision to accept the 'big' things like speaking a 
foreign language every day in my case, but it's the little things that make 
you look around yourself wondering how the hell you got there and how 
things that are so similar can be so *different* and alien, so deeply 
disturbing.

It's a very interesting topic and is getting some more consideration, 
especially in the field of international eduction where I used to work.  We 
called those folks, including you and me, 'Global Nomads'.  

It's wonderful to be able to go to so many places, to live in so many 
places and to experience so many different things, but it also means that 
one never fits anywhere ever again.  Not in your home culture and, 
however well adapted, never quite totally in your adopted culture.

With ever increasing globalization we see more people who 'suffer' from 
this phenomenon.  Don't get me wrong, I don't sit around feeling sorry for 
myself, but on occasion it becomes an issue when the feeling of being 
alien gets too strong.

Leading that back to TSK, I did not have any issues with the setting at 
all.  I knew it was fantasy and, yes, the world is weird, but it's fantasy, so 
I expect that.  It didn't feel particularly American to me, but that's 
because I didn't look for it to be, because, again, I knew it was fantasy.

I love Legacy.  It's a beautiful romance novel and that's why I like it so 
much.  The romance between Miles and Ekaterin leaves me cold, but 
Dag and Fawn sparkle, they are believable to me in ways Miles and 
Ekaterin can never be.  

Now Aral and Cordelia, that's a very different story and I'd love to get 
another book about them. :)

Sasha