You say 'tomato'. Now what the hell do I say?

Leaving Sydney

It's been 6 months now since I upped-sticks and moved here to San Francisco.

Acclimatising to a new domestic set-up, a new city, and a new country has presented some pretty significant challenges: job, visa, and moving-in with my partner amongst them. But there has also been a raft of low-key obstacles that clutter the day - small daily decisions that only become conscious when the tried & tested options are no-longer there.  My first trip to the supermarket is a bewildering set of choices -  I spend 10-minutes hypnotized in the Personal Care aisle, having to consciously think about the brand of deodorant I should choose, for the first time in years. And there are hundreds of these choices involved in setting-up a completely new day-to-day existence: Which bank to choose? Where is the best place for a no-fuss Saturday brunch? Where to get a haircut? How do you get the doors of the bus to open when it's your stop? How do you KNOW when it's your stop...?

And then, depressingly and predictably, there's the stuff that just doesn't seem to work anywhere, regardless of how much time & effort you invest. Getting a driving licence (or, I should say, a 'driver license') has been a royal pain in the arse. Three office visits and an hour-and-a-half on hold....and counting.

But - hey - a few bits of frustrating paper-chase, and the occasional missed bus stop. A heavy price to pay for being able to respond (and I still have a little mental fist-pump when I say it), when people ask where I live  - "I live in San Francisco".

It always was a special relationship

Having got beyond the first 'getting-to-know-you' hurdles - the new city equivalent of finding-out how many siblings San Francisco has, his favorite movie and what he studied in college - I'm now starting to find-out the tell-tale signs that show that San Francisco and I are going steady.

I know all the MUNI stops on my commute in to work, so can actually relax (AKA bury my face in my iPhone) like all the normal commuters, without having to verify at each stop that it isn't my stop.

I have a Giants baseball cap - but more significantly - I have an unnatural fascination with Brian Wilson's beard. (But did you know it has its own Facebook page and Twitter profile?)


Don't ask why


But these little 'badges of belonging' are all for naught when I open my mouth. I'm betrayed by a vowel.

It seems that many of the locals that I meet are already somewhat challenged by my accent. I've had as many guesses for Australia and New Zealand, as I have had for the UK. But it's clear that the accent does set me apart, for better or worse.

Now I could go into another entire post about the connotations of what being British is about (OK, so the Queen, "snaggle teeth" and warm beer are frequent mentions)....but it's obvious that a British accent itself creates a certain impression. I quickly got used to people telling me how it would be the key to getting a foot-in-the-door with a potential employer. And I'm frequently counselled to keep from losing it. So, what's the deal?

As the mellifluous Stephen Fry (who credits his own cut-glass accent to having vocal cords made of tweed) puts it, "I sometimes wonder if Americans aren't fooled by our accent into detecting a brilliance that may not really be there". Now, I myself (unlike Mr Fry), would never assume that the Americans I meet attribute my brilliance to just my accent....

....but I've yet to experience any of the reported benefits of having such a (supposedly charming) speaking voice (nope, no jumping the line at hard-to-get-into restaurants or being able to sweet-talk traffic cops into tearing-up speeding tickets, as reported in this great summary from (natch!) the BBC)

I have to accept, the number of times that my accent is commented upon and referred to in favourable terms would suggest that losing it would mean losing something that paints me in a good light, and sets me somewhat apart from others in my field.

So, why is it that recently I've been catching myself making the most ridiculous vocal contortions that have no relation to my 'normal' accent, and barely any to the native accent of my new home?

I'm conscious that there are certainly some times when I can sense myself flattening-out those vowels and reining-back on the apologetic, bumbling Hugh-Grant caricature of a British man. Like squeezing my way onto a bus in The Mission or buying a beer in SoMa. Times when I just wanna get on with things without drawing attention to myself. Slip under the radar.

Other times I find myself adapting my vocabulary to make it easier to get the message across. Every Brit has expeditiously translated 'loo' to 'restroom', and potentially 'rubbish bin' to 'trash can'. I've been walking on the 'sidewalk' (rather than 'pavement') for a while...

But have I crossed the rubicon my recent verbal confusion? It's confession time: I'm have been having some impure thoughts and unclean vocalizations. I have allowed "process" to pass my lips with a short 'o' (as in 'hot') rather than a long one (as in 'gold'). And, during the dark night of the soul, I may have had a similar slip with the word 'progress'.

SO, thank goodness for this article in the Economist, to give me a map to chart my descent. I'd better 'sKedule' a 'CONtroversy' when I start talking drinking 'waaaderr' rather than 'waughteh'...

But, if it's not about covertly slipping my Britishness under the radar, or even just being better understood, what's going on? It might just be that I'd quite like to belong... Just please don't let me sound like Madonna.