They found him.

 Angel: I know where Scooby is. Come quick.

Angel: Look at Rick's Facebook.

Petite Cougar: My son is playing piano at the London Airport. OMG!!!!

He's done it again

I can't find Scooby II anywhere!

He doesn't read, but I thought he might hide behind the books.

He's not on the patio

I looked in the trunk. He's not there.

I'm going to Dallas, Big D, little A, double L, A, S!

FATCA-Elizabeth Warren you haven't a clue

If I were still American, Elizabeth Warren would be my senator. Overall she does great things, but what the damage FATCA does to law-abiding expats she doesn't have a clue.

Her response ignores that FATCA is so bad that people are giving up their nationality because of the unintended consequences. 

My letter to her didn't address the underlying issues that the US is only one of two countries to tax citizens on world-wide income, nor does it cover the money and time spent filing US taxes, a large majority of which owe nothing.

She talks about the $100 billion they hope to recover, not the higher cost of implementation (one estimate is $100 million per bank).

At school when one kid was bad, all kids were punished. FATCA is the same, which is why expat Americans who can no longer want to be American. They are being punished for doing nothing wrong and she is helping attack her fellow citizens albeit indirectly.

Thank you for contacting me to share what happened to you while trying to obtain financial services overseas and your concerns about the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

As you may know, President Barack Obama signed FATCA into law on March 18, 2010 as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act. The purpose of FATCA is to prevent overseas tax evasion by U.S. persons holding assets in offshore accounts. Under the statute, U.S. taxpayers must report their foreign assets to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) if the total value exceeds $50,000 and certain foreign financial institutions -- such as mutual funds and banks -- must report annually on the accounts held by their U.S. clients.

I recognize that FATCA implementation has not been perfect, and it troubles me that financial institutions overseas would deny services to Americans out of concern over FATCA compliance. However, according to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the U.S. Treasury may be losing more than $100 billion in tax revenues every year as a result of offshore tax havens.  I believe measures like FATCA clamp down on overseas tax evasion and help make sure that everyone pays their fair share of taxes.
Thank you again for your input and for sharing your story about what happened to you personally. I will be sure to keep your thoughts and story in mind.

Home is here, a book review

 This book review for The Worlds Within appeared in UYD Magazine.

I consider myself a TCA, a Third Culture Adult. I’ve lived a third of my life in four countries and have learned to blend in, giving hugs, two- or three-cheek kisses in greeting, keeping my hand on or under the table during meals, depending on where I am. I claim I can mispronounce words in four languages, although I function totally only in two. I can blend in, but I am never, ever completely part of any culture, including where I grew up in New England.

But unlike Third Culture Kids (TCKs) I was the one who decided to move. I wanted to become a global nomad. TCKs don’t have that choice. They go where their parents go.

I write a mystery series about a TCK struggling with some of the identity issues that all TCKs face, so this book held a special interest for me. Although I’ve interviewed TCKs for my novels, to see how it affected my heroine, none of my interviewees were as articulate as the kids in this book.

Moving can be difficult for most children even within the same country: new house, new school, new friends. But it can be even more of a challenge when a child is set down in a different country with a new culture and even a new language and/or alphabet.

TCKs move from their parents’ culture to another at least once or in some cases many times if the parents are diplomats, international business people, missionaries and military–any of the millions of global nomads who change countries every few years for new opportunities or assignments. Some TCKs are the children of refugees, but this book deals more with TCKs who were not refugees.

This book includes the essays, poems, short stories and art work of TCKs from age five through approaching adulthood. They know the problems and the pleasures because they have lived it. The quality of the writing of even the youngest child in this anthology tackles feelings many people will never experience with a maturity that some professional writers would be proud to produce.

TCKs cope in different ways, sometimes embracing their new circumstances, but more often they feel lost at least until they can absorb parts of their new culture blending them with their old cultures until they make a combination their own. In most cases there are degrees of success, but it is hard.

Where is “home?” That word home does not have a simple answer. Is it where they were born, where their parents come from, where they live now? “Where are you from?” is a question many TCKs dread because they don’t know the answer. That is why the opening page that says “Home is here” is so poignant.

Moreover, if they go “home” to their parents’ country, they are strangers, not experiencing what those that stayed in one place experienced, making them forever a bit out of sync. As one TCK said, “My passport says Canadian, but I know I’ll never be.”

 Five-year-old Grant Lief Siemens says, “My Grandma’s house is like a warm hug” about his visit home after an arduous journey.

 “After all when you move, your other life is done,” eight-year-old Rahda observed in a poem as he saw his house that couldn’t “keep itself.”

 A fourteen-year-old who has lived in Australia, United States, Nigeria, Thailand and Canada says he feels like a pinball machine. Having juggled languages, airports, currencies, he says, “The world is my home.” With wisdom beyond his years, he sees that “memories are nothing if you don’t spend them with the people you love.”

 Armory, moving back “home” to England from Bangladesh, doesn’t like the cold. Leaving the friends he has known from kindergarten, he finds that he doesn’t know how to talk to English people. He doesn’t know how to get them to trust him, he said.

 Fortunately kids learn languages faster than adults. Speaking the local language can be a major factor in adjustment. One child signed himself into a school in China where his playmates went to learn Mandarin. Later he learned German. He complains he sounds like an American because when he goes “home” to New Zealand, he doesn’t sound like he belongs there.

 The book has art work. My favorite was a zebra under the title “Striped Curiosity.” But Rebecca Thorpe at 16, under the title “Identity Crisis,” has a face that is half western, half oriental. She has lived in China, Morocco and the United States. Another girl breaks her self-portrait into Picasso-like cubes.

 Some of the works made me want to cry. Sixteen-year-old Zac Coleman from the United States was transplanted to Cameroun. In a poem he takes adults’ words that tell him he’ll adjust, he’s resilient, and replies, “but they are wrong, dead wrong.”

 Robin, who has lived in five countries, separates home from hometown. When asked where she is from, a question echoes which many of the writers say they dread; she would reply, “From my mommy’s tummy.” When she grew older she would answer Japan, Thailand, Spain, United States and Hong Kong. She noted that just having a passport made her different from many of her friends in many places.

This book is a must read for any parent who is about to change countries to help understand what their children are experiencing. Oftentimes, the working parent or the accompanying parent is too caught up in the new job or coping with something as simple as getting Wi-Fi or the electricity turned on to think what the children are going through.

TCKs, who are facing moves, will benefit from the book by knowing that what they are feeling is normal. They are not alone. In a way, TCKs can bond with each other like those who stayed in one place most of their lives; they can share common things.

Book: The Worlds Within: An anthology of TCK art and writing: young, global and between cultures 

The reviewer is Donna-lane Nelson (http://donnalanenelson.com/), who writes a crime series with a TCK heroine.

Facebook postings

Okay, I like Facebook.

I've remet lost friends from lifetimes ago and am fascinated when people I knew in one part of my life, line up with people from another part of my life although decades and geography separate them.

I read are all the health studies...almost all of which have a contrasting study:

• Homeopathy proven to work vs. the homeopathy totally useless.
• Vaccines cause autism vs. vaccines don't cause autism.

Then there are the food recommendations.

Eat blueberries to do this, artichokes to do that, and broccoli and and and and... But if we ate everything recommended to prevent diseases we'd be eating 24/7. And as much as I love to eat, 24/7 eating would be too fattening despite the foods that allegedly help one lose weight.

Baking soda for colds was one recommendation. that one seemed to shorten my last cold to five days, but one cold is not scientific proof.

Garlic and lemon lower cholesterol and cocoanut oil to prevent gum disease and shrink your belly fat, rosemary or sage for memory are all recommendations..

I've decided just to live...ignore all the advice, eat the things I like which includes blueberries, artichokes and almost every other veggie imaginable.

And I did that without FB.

As for the politics, it certainly helps with the fight against FATCA.

The quizzes can be fun, especially the ones I ace. Others are dumb like "name a city without the letter A"...one would have to be an idiot not to be able to do that. I figure that is some kind of information sweep.

It won't replace sitting at table and drinking coffee and chatting face to face but it isn't supposed to.

And NSA watching my sight...go ahead...

Facebook is Facebook is Facebook with apologies to Gertrude Stein.

Change of plans

The original Sunday plan was to go to the vide grenier  (flea market) in Perpignan.

We woke to the insistent church bells calling our neighbors to mass. I'd left the curtains open so I could see the sun come up, but what I saw was our rain drenched patio. The sound of the rain on the skylight was a counterpoint to the bells.

Cancel the vide grenier.

The bed was toasty warm. Two cups of tea only added to the coziness as we read and checked emails and Facebook.

It was well after ten before we got up, performed a few chores, as few as possible then walked to the car.

I reminded Rick, who was more than willing to go to the river to pick up the car and come back for me, (no parking on streets built for only small horse-drawn wagons to go through) that the rain is to dance in.

He looked at me, grabbed my hand and we did a few steps before almost running to the car.

The mountains were hidden in mist as we drove to Perpignan and the new Italian restaurant we discovered a week ago. The waiter recognized us.

Back home, a chore or two, in the complicity that makes me glad I am with him. I will miss him when he is away the next two weeks.

Because we write weekends and weeks can flow together, but somehow we still make Sundays stand a bit apart from the weeks.

Week 1 52 budget challenge report

I'm taking the the 52 week budget challenge, ways to change your spending habits to waste less money or even better increase savings. Last week's goal was to plan a weeks food in advance.

In my single days I did that. Now, it is harder. 

Rick and I alternate who is cooking each day and his idea of cooking is to go to one of the local restaurants, nor do I object. Most of them have daily specials that are really quite economical.

And he does cook sometimes and although he's learning, he has produced some pretty impressive meals.

I've been known to buy my-turn meals from one of the butchers who produce excellent complete dishes, that aren't much more expensive than doing it from scratch. 

However, last minute decisions with all the good local and seasonal veggies at the green grocers less than a block away are easy. And I'm always conscious of having healthy meals with plenty of veggies, fruits, grains, etc. If I never had meat that would be okay, but he's not ready for that. He'll even try fish every now and then, but he hasn't learned the French word poisson which is very close to poison as my fish-hating friend RB2 pointed out.

My idea was always to cook once for a couple or more days twice and alternate the meals. Slowly, Rick is learning to like leftovers. We call it a frigo dump.

We do make it a point to have a sit down lunch everyday where we can talk, plan, laugh, catch up. Even when we're writing in almost the same space, we can get too caught up to forget to share.

Throwing away food is an anathema to me. We only threw out the leftover leftovers this week and only once. Better than usual.

Our frigo at the end of the week. I had to show off the magnets bought in each place we travelled over the the last two years.

Onto the next week.

 

Stop and smell the bark

There was a period in my life when I:

• worked a full-time demanding job
• was renovating a house with friends, a real handyman's nightmare
• had a wonderful pre-teen daughter
• was going to grad school

My relaxation reading was limited, but there was a book by a woman who talked about enjoying little things: a flower, a cloud, the breeze on her face.

I was so occupied with details and trying to get through each day, I hadn't seen or felt any of these things.

Somethings couldn't be eliminated. Work provided my livelihood, my daughter was a permanent fixture, the house still needed renovating, but grad school could go.

Since that time I've tried to take time to enjoy the small details that bring beauty or amusement into my life.

An example?

Walking to a friend's yesterday, I was stopped by the color of the bark on a series of a trees.

Taking time to stop and smell the roses is a cliché, but I'm happy to stop and see the bark.

I'm sore

This morning I woke up sore...We laughed so hard at a karaoke night with friends that my muscles are rebelling today. It was Rick's Roxanne that started it.

The owner of the rather elaborate set up has a good voice. Rick has a good voice. When my daughter was little she claimed my attempts to sing lullabies hurt her ears...probably a reliable critic.

Fortunately there's no correlation between talent and fun.

His home, not ours

Argelès is filled with houses going back several centuries. Many have been renovated and are beautiful.

Because of inheritance laws in France some are left empty such as the four-story one above. It has been so, since I bought my flat 27 years ago. The houses on each side are nicely finished.

Every time I walk by it, I imagine renovating it. The moment of insanity passes. Rick, although newer to the neighborhood, has had similar thoughts. His moments of insanity pass too.

Meanwhile, the bird has his happy home.

Another one?

"You'll never guess what I found under the bed in the snore room." Rick said. "Look at the blue bag by the door."

I did and wasn't sure what the lump was (it was tied too tight to open) until it dawned on me. It was a snail.

We have a snail history. 

Last year I bought shells to use as decorations in our pots outside and on our patio. What I didn't realise until we had hundreds of snails crawling up the windows and across the patio that they were still alive.

Rick has limited snail appreciation both as house pets and lunch. We didn't find anyone who wanted them for lunch so we released them in the riverbed. 

Snails have become a family joke.

Dear Kitten's voice

 If you're one of the 11 million people who've watched the Dear Kitten Friskies ad, you know how wonderful the voice of the senior cat narrating them. If you haven't heard them you can find them here on youtube.

This morning, like so many mornings, Rick and I woke up and opted for checking emails, FB in bed before beginning the day along with a cup of tea. I clicked on a video and heard that same soothing voice.

Who was it? I wondered.

A quick search of Swisscow.com (which does not save your information so take that NSA) and I learned it was Ze Frank.

He grew up in New York, graduated from Brown and has a fascinating career.

I found his website and started listening to his presentation to TED.

Then there's a series of nature recordings. I've spent part of today listening to them.

One of my favorites was his octopus which is sorta a scientific Dear Kitten.

Sometimes people you don't like...

Sometimes people you don't like do things you do like. Senator Rand Paul is someone in that category.

He has introduced some legislation that could help 7 million overseas Americans who are suffering from lack of banking facilities and draconian tax requirements. 

For example, children born of Americans in another country are automatically considered American even if they are never registered and must pay tax on everything they ever earn any where in the world even if they never, ever set foot on U.S. soil and none of their money ever comes from the U.S.

And if their banks find out they are American, they won't be able to open accounts, make any investments, have a loan, a credit card, etc.

Paul doesn't want to change the CBT (Citizen Based Taxation) part of the attack on expats, but he does want to do something about the banks all over the world that have succumbed to US pressure to report on their American account holders. As a result the banks are slamming the door in American faces. 

I'd put banks in the same category as Paul. Sometimes they deserve sympathy even if they are usually not likeable.

Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful, is leading an effort to repeal a tax law despised by millions of Americans who live and work outside the United States.

Paul formally introduced legislation this month in the Senate to reverse the main requirements of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, (FATCA or as many call it FATCAt because it is designed to catch the rich expats. Contrary to homeland belief, most expats aren't rich, but ordinary middle class people) saying the law has wrongly deprived American ex-patriots of access to banking services, violated their privacy and forced many to renounce their citizenship.

“Not only is FATCA dangerous with respect to the privacy protections owed to every American — home or abroad — it has threatened the livelihood of millions of Americans working or living overseas,” Paul said.

Likewise the Washington Times, is not a paper whose political stance is one I often agree on, but I'm glad they covered this story.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/10/rand-paul-pushes-repeal-of-obama-tax-law-despised-/#ixzz3U49xEhiB

Art at No. 21

Rick admits that my knowledge of art and literature is greater than his, partially due to his avoiding liberal arts courses and my taking every one I could, and his lack of opportunity to troll museums around the world until recently. He's making up for all the years he didn't/couldn't.

Thus he was chuffed when he piled the animals and announced, "The Musicians of Warren" and I looked blank.

"The Musicians of Bremen." He tilted his head waiting for me to catch the reference.

I still looked blank.

"The Grimm fairy tale."

I'd never heard of it, but I was chuffed that we once again had introduced something new to the other. Just like I know more about aviation than I ever did before. 

The animals had no comment on mimicking a statue that is in Bremen. Maybe we'll go to Germany to check it out, or check it out when we're in Germany.

This flash fiction exercise was triggered at La Noisette by a woman sitting among several empty coffee cups looking at her mobile phone. Another woman joined her. Another writer and I see someone or something and then write like mad for ten minutes with whatever we saw as the trigger.

Other exercises can be found here.

Helen checked her mobile. Nothing! While her friends were still there, drinking coffee and complaining about their husbands, she hadn't thought about it at all, a welcome break.

The waiter had not cleared the empty cups.

Aurelie returned from the toilet. Of the three women she met every morning, Aurelie was Helen's favorite.

The four women hadn't started as friends.

About two years ago, Helen had developed the habit of going to the tea room every morning for a coffee and sometimes a croissant.

Marie was usually there, reading The Independent. One morning Helen asked if she'd finished with the paper. They'd talked about the photo of the mayor and how often he managed to get his picture into the paper.

The same with Suzanne, another regular. Soon they never bothered to sit at different tables.

Aurelie was the last to join the group. She was a newcomer to the village. When she was there, they laughed more.

Helen looked at the phone. Still no message from her father at the hospital an ocean away.

Aurelie put her hand on Helen's. "Your mother is in a good hospital with good doctors. What will be, will be."

Pansies

Monsieur Ferdenez walked up the street and I saw he carried his oxygen and the tube was in his nose. We stopped to greet each other.

"My wife isn't good. She's been in the hospital five days."

His wife has been undergoing dialysis for more years than she should have survived. She's a little thing, a Catalan mamie, who is shorter than I am and that's saying a lot.

They've been through pain in their lives with their son killing himself in their living room. It was several years before a smile reappeared on her face. Then despite her illnesses the smiles returned.

She was a good neighbor, watering my plants when I wasn't there, which was more than I was. I came down from Geneva once to find my blue ceramic pot filled with daisies.

Sometimes she and her husband were even at the street dances.

She and the other mamies would gather on the various benches around time, but not the one reserved for the old men, Les Senators. There are less and less each year, a way of village life for the women dying out as they do.

Maybe she will pull through once again.

A painful subject

My last passport doesn't look like this. It has a big hole in it because I renounced my American nationality.

It hurt.

http://theexpatwriter.blogspot.ch/2011/12/one-of-saddest-days.html

After I took proof I had renounced to my banks (and don't think I'm rich, numbers were in the low five figures in three places) they were willing once again to do business with me which was why I renounced in the first place. I could continue to live in Switzerland and bank like an ordinary person.

Although I'm not a big fan of banks, I understand why they succumbed  to the threats of the US government and FATCA.

I never saw my name on those listed by the State Department. Other renouncées have said the same thing. Among us we think the almost 4,000 renouncée figures from last year have been fudged.

The American Association of Americans Overseas has reported that Freedom of Information requests on those numbers have gone unanswered.

One expat pointed out that it was ludicrous to think the relinquishments per country (190 countries x 20), as is stated by the Federal register is true.

An expat from London said an American vice council told him the number was about 20 per week. Another said there were 5 weekly in Belgium.

I'd love to know the real numbers.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

This little dog visits La Noisette with his owner, a tall French blond with flair almost every morning. They breeze through the door and head for their normal table.

He is good at pretending he's a starving pup, although he's pushing 11, old for his breed I'm told. 

More than one patron has been known to slip him a morsel under the table. He knows who the marshmallows among the regulars are.

And he's smart. When his owner let him out the side door he ran around and came back in the front. Why should he go home if there's a chance of something good.

I think he's adorable. Of course the punched in face reminds me of my Japanese chins.

Rick thinks he's ugly. If we get a dog he wants one whose butt is hidden under fur.

Beauty is personal.

A bittersweet concert

Oxymoron can be described by the word bittersweet and bittersweet can be described in emotion by the concert held in the church by the Argelès Gospel singers.

This was my late friend Barbara's choir that she loved so passionately, but passionately was the way she lived her entire 78 years. She should have been in the back row singing with the passion that made her so wonderful. She lives on the scarves around the necks of the choristers made by her from her African cloth. They wore them for the second part of the concert and I did not cry, although I wanted to.

Best guesstimate over 1,200 people listened. The solos, by the leader Alain Martin, would have pleased her as much as they did me. I can never get enough of his singing. I half didn't want to go, half did and Rick kinda pushed me in the right way. It is a necessary step in moving on.

Several choir people, including Alain greeted me (I was a groupie when Barbara was alive) asked me how I was doing, how her daughters were doing. 

It is still hard. She was worth it.

For a sample of Alain's voice and his tribute to her, play this.

The bitter is that she is no longer with us. The sweet was how she made my world and that of so many others better.

Women and movies

 Femmes et Toiles 2015, the annual Argelès women's film festival.

Films, discussions, exhibitions, meals are all part of the film festival this year. I found Difret especially moving not just as a study on women's lives being worthless in some places but in how cultural differences are so hard to overcome. The look into different classes of Ethiopian life, food, scenery was just a plus. The French subtitles made it easy for Rick to understand. The review is from the Sundance festival and it has appeared at other film festivals. read more here.

"Three hours outside of Addis Ababa, a bright 14-year-old girl is on her way home from school when men on horses swoop in and kidnap her. The brave Hirut grabs a rifle and tries to escape, but ends up shooting her would-be husband. In her village, the practice of abduction into marriage is common and one of Ethiopia's oldest traditions. Meaza Ashenafi, an empowered and tenacious young lawyer, arrives from the city to represent Hirut and argue that she acted in self-defense. Meaza boldly embarks on a collision course between enforcing civil authority and abiding by customary law, risking the continuing work of her women's legal-aid practice to save Hirut's life."

Sally Field may have morphed into Mrs. Lincoln, Nora Walker and many other characters, but her early role as Norma Rae, showed her as much more than a cute Gidget while calling attention to the need of unions. I thought the film would be dubbed, but  it was VO. Sadly, it is as relevant to today as it was when it was made.

Argelès in many ways is a dinky little French village, but to produce several good film festivals a year in a theatre 64 steps from my door...? I can't ask for more.