I am having a great deal of difficulty believing what I see on that poll.

What's that saying "There's nowt so funny as folks".

I do not claim to have coped better than you, Batty. There are things that I miss about my country of birth, and that I expect to go to my grave still missing. After thirty years here, I'm still not fond of Canadian winters. I grin and bear them as best I can, but I don't actually like them.

As long as we're all spitting our dummies, I'll share something that still annoys me once in a blue moon. It's the lack of servants, like the ones we had in my childhood home. Now at an intellectual level, I'm totally againsts a social system that is built around domestic servants. But, once in a while, in spite of what I like to think my values are, I get ticked off at having to iron clothes, etc.

I've discussed this with my Brazilian friend and my Pakistani friend, and they confess to having the same feelings sometimes. But we know that, if we were to mention anything along those lines to Canadians, they'd be shocked at our attitudes. So of course we are very selective about the circles in which we ever admit to having such sentiments.

That's why, when I see people from Third World countries making enquiries on this forum, I think to myself, "Oh boy, you don't know what you're in for." The very fact that the person is literate and has computer access in a Third World country means that he/she is at the more privileged end of the spectrum in his/her society, and is going to experience significant losses when he/she reaches Canada.

The thing is, though, that the country I came from is dangerous, I mean seriously dangerous. Going back there is utterly out of the question. So I'm grateful that I can live here, in a country that, on balance, is pretty decent, and that I was able to raise my children in this fairly clean and safe environment.

Actually, I think that, in some ways I'm at an advantage over those who have come from better countries, such as the UK. For most Britons, returning to the UK remains an option. I imagine that having that possibility at the back of one's mind makes it more confusing.

I am not cursed with that confusion. My bridges have been burned.

And now the cat is out of the bag. I don't whinge because, if I did whinge, the things I would whinge about would make me look more odious than whinging about fashions, cheese and television programs.

The other reason I tend to whinge less about relatively superficial things is that my relatives back home lead such dangerous lives that fashion, food, TV, etc., pale in comparison. In every nuclear family group amongst my extended family in South Africa, at least one person has been held up at gunpoint, been carjacked, or whatever. One cousin was shot through the eye by a burglar, another cousin was stabbed in the shoulder when his cell phone got snatched from him, and so on. When I hear updates from my mother, other topics recede into the background.

But, OMG, dbd33, getting a rise out of you about the cheese has made this discussion worth it.

On the basis of what you see on the screen, and as me and you are the two front runners, how about we take advantage and have a fantastic weekend with a bunch of young nubile babes at your place?
May be our last time...

You get in the wine

Oh best send your missus to her friends place for the weekend.

The missus saw the poll this morning and said that all the nubile young babes better keep their hands off.

I'm not sure why she would be concerned I'm not going anywhere and the nubile young things wouldn't want a "broken" old man anyway.

We'll just talk to them Steve, they are married after all, we don't want any club wielding husbands breaking our old bones.

How PC of you I would have said I don't want any club wielding neanderthals breaking our old bones.

I want some of this duck cheese he was talking about.

Judy, I didnt say you had claimed to have coped better. I said "if" you have.

I see you dont complain to Canadians about Canada either, but you do complain, maybe " whinge" to your noncanadian friends. Isnt that the same as me coming in here to talk to people in the same position, get advice from those who have been here longer and lived through similar feelings and situations?

Sometimes instead of support we get the Howards of this world who try to insult Britons and the UK at every chance, to tell us if thats we dont like Canada to stay at home. Well maybe I wish I had, I may not be fleeing a
dangerous environment but it would be hard to go home all the same. However we should find out in the next few weeks if we have PR, and if we dont I will in some way be relieved that the decision has been made for us

Even my British friends asked me how I could stand the
whining when I told them that I have joined the BE forum.
I told them that it is part of settling in a new country,
just like the stages of development of a child.
Of course some whine more than the others which can
be tiresome to the listeners.

I did my fair share of whining, complaining and got them
out of my system when I was a new immigrant.My Canadian
friends were my sounding board thank goodness for them.

Yes,I did get upset about the negative things people said
about Canada , however I reminded myself that I did
say horrendous things about Canada to my friends.

Judy ,sorry to hear about the violence inflicted toward your
cousins in South Africa and being so far away ,not able to
comfort your extended families must be difficult for you.
How are your cousins doing,are they getting better?
Yoong

Where are you going to find them, then ? It's only us lot voting, remember.

Young? Ish.
Nubile? I wish. Mobile, maybe.
Babe? Yeah, OK, you got me !

Yes, you're right, Batty. I started this exercise reflecting about British people, but the contents of this thread, and especially the exchange of posts with you, has shown me things about myself that I wasn't conscious of before.

The most recent round of thoughts I had about this started when a member of this forum sent me a gift in the form of a book called, Watching the English : The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox. It was someone whose questions I had answered openly on the forum but for whom I had done some additional research and sent responses by PM and e-mail. When the parcel arrived from Amazon, it took me completely by surprise. As I wrote to the sender, they really shouldn't have. But at the same time I was very touched, and I thought that the title of the book was deliciously appropriate, given the context in which we'd "met" each other. (We haven't met in real life, just in cyberspace.)

I opened the book and flipped through it to find out the names of the chapters. One of the first things I did was to read the chapter on humour. While it did go some way towards explaining the topic, I confess to being partly in the dark, even now. I reckon that, in order to navigate your way through British humour, you have to have been immersed in it from an early age. If you come to it late in life, you haven't got a snowball's hope in hell. So I've accepted that that is one issue I'll just have to park.

Then I went back to the beginning, and started reading the book methodically. As I was reading it, I was watching the watcher. I thought it was quite brave of Kate Fox to undertake the study at all. If you're going to be an anthropologist, it's easier to go off to the Trobriand Islands or some other far flung place where you are unfamiliar with the culture. It's much more difficult to be objective about your own culture. On the one hand, I was relishing Fox's writing, which was explaining to me so much that I hadn't understood about the English and which was helping me to understand discussions on this forum in a new light. On the other hand, I was testing her for thoroughness, and trying to spot any elements that she might have missed (given that she herself was English and had embarked on what I thought was an almost impossible mission).

The one issue to which I felt she paid insufficient attention was moaning. Fox mentioned it in several places, in reference to other topics. But it didn't have its very own chapter, which I thought it deserved. Mind you, Fox was observing the English at home and not on an expat forum. Because of the challenges that expats face and because they censor themselves when they converse with natives, it's reasonable to expect that this is a place where one would encounter more complaining than normal.

So, it was in that context that I got thinking about the topic of "whinging Poms" and started this thread.

But then, as the dicussion unfolded, I came to see things about myself. I came to see that, most of the time anyway, I'm stoical about Canada. I think it's fair to say that my whinging is rather rare, and even then it's mostly confined to non-Canadian friends with whom I feel very safe.

With that said, though, I must admit that, the longer one lives here, the more permission one has to complain about certain things. For example, I was with some other long-time Calgarians the other day, and we were commenting on the fact that Calgary has grown much dirtier in the last couple of years.

Perhaps none of us would have welcomed a comment to that effect from a newly-arrived Calgarian. But, because we were all long-standing Calgary residents, we all felt that we were qualified to comment on changes that the city has undergone recently. I guess it's kind of like complaining about one's own kids but resenting it if someone else complains about them.

So, as time passes, one is perceived to have paid one's dues. One is allowed into the local "club," so to speak, and one is allowed to complain about certain things. But, no matter how many years pass, there are some kinds of criticism that are never welcome.

What this discussion has revealed to me is that I envy you Britons because, at worst, the things that you complain about make you look mildly ridiculous, whereas the things that I might complain about would make me look repulsive.

The other difference between us makes me envy you on the one hand but pity you on the other hand. It's the fact that you can return to the UK. There are moments when I'm sorry I don't have that option. But then that option is a mixed blessing. As you said, even if you can return, it would not be easy to do so. And, even if you stay in Canada, I would think that the knowledge that you can return to the U.K. would always be there at the back of your mind. I am guessing that that would make it harder to bite the bullet and make the best of things in Canada.

Thank you, Yoong. Both cousins have recovered. The one who lost his eye will never get it back. But, considering that he was shot in the head, he's extremely lucky to be alive, to be living quite normally again, and to have the use of his remaining eye.

If you want to read Brits whinging, have a look at the moving back to the UK forum.

I take it as a huge compliment at the suggestion I maybe nubile
Hubs is a subscriber on BE but he wasn't included in the poll so he's nursing his ego

Hey Ann....dont be shattering the illusion FGS

You only need to go on any of the car parks in our town to watch a heck of a lot of bad driving! I swear the vast majority of drivers in this area are completely oblivious to anyone else in a car. Mind you we do seem to have a lot of drivers who must approaching 100 (years not mph ) who can hardly see over the steering wheel so maybe that has something to do with it!