The Life and Times of the Curious Cockroach

Location: Vancouver (!!!)

This summer, I made a “Cockroach Chronology” and glued it to my closet door. Really it’s nothing more than a bunch of stickie notes and pencil marks, but it serves as mental map for what I’m going to write about, and in which order. So this week, according to this Cockroach Chronology, I am supposed to write a nice, soulful post about my return to Vancouver from my exchange abroad. I spent a good while simply staring at my closet door, unsure of what to do. Since the door flatly refused to give me any kind of hint or idea, I set about gathering excerpts from different sources (my journal, emails, letters, etc) and tried to figure out how to mush them together into some sort of coherent whole. It was only yesterday that I realized that the task is impossible. Leaving a country, coming back home, seeing everything with fresh eyes and going through reverse culture shock — there’s nothing neat or coherent about it. It’s a bumpy, awkward process with many different emotions at play, and trying to stuff the entire experience into a catchy thesis statement simply wouldn’t be true to the story.

So I’m going to be true to the story. Here are the excerpts — edited, but essentially undigested.

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“I’m convinced that there’s a little cockroach in all of us. The part of us that is determined to survive. The part of us that adapts to new surroundings and circumstances. The part of us that stays hidden during routine life, but springs to action when there is a disturbance…”

The Inner Cockroach,
April 28th 2009

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Location: Brussels, Belgium
Emotional state: pensive/amused

I attended a rather curious dinner party yesterday evening. The guests weren’t jolly as they usually are (or pretend to be) during dinner parties. They weren’t wearing colourful clothing, and there was not one seductive cocktail dress in sight. Wine was being poured into elegant glasses, but the lips that sipped the wine were not relaxed, they were tightened — some were even trembling.

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Location: Brussels, Belgium
Number of days since last beer-tasting session: 43
Emotional state: very serious, studious
Reaction to emotional state: empowered
Eyebrow behaviour: furrowed, could cut through diamonds

Dear Reader,

I, the Curious Cockroach, feel that I need to get down to business sometime or another. After reading my previous posts, one might have the impression that I don’t do anything useful here in Brussels. How can I rave on and on about some rotating toilet seat, and, worse still, my latest attempts at conceptual art, when I am supposed to be here to study? Is this, or is this not, an academic exchange?

It is, it most inevitably is. But I can reassure you that I have indeed done a fair amount of studying while in Brussels. Studying serious — no wait — worldly things. And after a considerable amount of research, observation, and experimentation, I dare say that in some domains, I’ve become somewhat of an expert. Which is why (brace yourself) I’ve dedicated this post to sharing with you a fraction of my accumulated knowledge of the city’s outdoor food markets. You’re welcome.

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Written: February 2nd, 2009
Location: Brussels
Note: here the word “morning” is used loosely

It’s 3:20pm, and you’ve just rolled out of bed. You squint your eyes against the sunlight.  You massage your aching head. You hobble over to the bathroom for some water, and catch a look at yourself in the mirror. You jump back, startled at the sight. You forget why you’re in the bathroom in the first place.

Gradually your eyes become accustomed to the light, and you start to regain normal function. First order of the day is finding your pants. You wade through the piles of clothing in your room, slowly, arduously, clinging to your floor lamp for support — here you can easily be mistaken for a sloth climbing through the thick jungles of the Amazon.

You never do find your pants, but you unearth plenty of other note-worthy objects along the way. You find a cobblestone in your handbag, for one. Curiously enough, it looks just like the type of cobblestones that line the main square of Brussels. Curiously enough, you were at the main square of Brussels last night. Oh. And then it all starts coming back to you: your intense beer-tasting session … your new exchange friends … your failed attempt to speak French … your second beer-tasting session (you’re a fierce cultural explorer, after all!) …  your astronomically successful attempt to speak Finnish (or so you thought) …  your public declaration that you’ve always wanted to be an archaeologist and you can’t imagine doing anything else in life … hence the cobblestone?

Now you’re all alone in your room, but you still blush. You look around at your surroundings, as if seeing everything for the first time. The first few months of your new life abroad have flashed by in a blur.

In the life of the typical exchange student, there comes a moment of realization. At some point between your arrival at the airport and the fiasco at last night’s bar, you’ve changed. You’ve come to a country of perfect strangers, and the usual constraints (parents, everyday responsibilities, strict drinking laws, etc) are conveniently located back home, thousands of kilometers away. Perhaps you’ve blossomed. Perhaps you’ve withered. Or perhaps you’ve become an entirely different creature altogether. And it seems like every day you wake up to discover a new and exciting part of yourself. This morning it was the Closeted Archaeologist. The day before that, it was the Closeted Political Activist. Tomorrow morning it’ll be something else entirely.

Now, dear Reader, I offer you a selection of personas  I discovered while living in Brussels. The list may or may not be exhaustive. Parents: you can stop reading here. Colleagues: ditto. Grandparents: thank goodness you don’t speak English.

‘

The Closeted Philosopher
Email to long-distance boyfriend:

I miss you Gilligan. There is a giant party going on around me. I just talked to a philosopher. It was sad, very very sad. I am sad, Gilligan. You think I’m an optimist. I am. But only because I know that life, in itself, is very sad. La vie, en soi, est tragique. Tragic. The only way to fight its intrinsic tragedy is to be optimistic. Maybe that makes a person naive. Maybe I am naive. But how is it so that I know that life is sad yet still fight against it. How is it so?

Yours (but for how long?),
Roachy

The Closeted Poet
Another email to long-distance boyfriend:

Hips don’t lie
I want you like pie
You’re my type of guy
And that’s no lie

I’ll cover you with rye
And do it like Bill Nye
(The Science Guy)
And till then, bye bye.

Love,
Roachy-pie

The Closeted Conceptual Artist
Email to sibling:

Oh my god. What the f*** went on last night. Woke up this morning, room looked like explosion at the spaghetti factory, clothing and books and dried pasta everywhere. And get this: in the middle of all this mess, my desk is spotlessly clean. As in, wiped-down-with-soap-and-ammonia kind of clean. There’s nothing on the desk, except: one dried anchovy, three strands of human hair, and one post-it note with my own handwriting on it, saying: “Dear Roachy: I will always love you. Love, Roachy”.

???????

And with that, dear Reader, I will be signing off. There’s a cobblestone in urgent need of reburial.

Angry Letter to Mayor of Brussels
Written: February 1st, 2009 at 3:34am
Reason for being written: tripping over cobblestone 17th time since arrival in Brussels
Intended to be sent: February 2nd, 2009 at 9:00am
Reason for not being sent: had second thoughts when read it sober next morning

Dear Sir,

We hope this letter finds you well. We understand you have been keeping busy this month, dealing with the dairy farmers’ strike and all. We imagine it isn’t easy concentrating on your work as Mayor of Brussels, what with the tractors circulating around city hall with life-size plastic cows taped to them. We would hand-deliver this letter to you, but fear that we would become one of those unfortunate souls we read about in the papers, who get drenched in sour milk and are forced to endure the running commentary emanating from inside the cows.

Today we have an equally pressing matter to bring to your attention: it is that your entire city is paved with cobblestones. Now now, we understand that tourists love that “old” look. In fact, we were just as charmed by the stones when we arrived in Brussels five months ago. After numerous incidents, however, we regret to inform you that cobblestones are:

1) a menace to public health,

2) an impediment to a lady’s dignity, and

3) dare we say, a matter of national security. Read the rest of this entry →

Written on December 2nd, 2008, at 6:01pm
Location: bathroom stall, super posh Brussels restaurant
Emotional state: indescribable

Here I am: standing in a bathroom stall with marble floors, clutching my boyfriend’s love letter in my hand, watching with complete awe as the automated toilet seat before me rotates while cleaning itself and perfuming the air, and wondering if the ten or so American CEOs in the private dining room outside are aware of the fact that I’ve been hiding in the bathroom for the last twenty minutes. My eyes are glued to the technological display before me – imagine flashing lights, whistling noises, and the occasional rose petal blown forth – and I feel a mixture of happiness (boyfriend’s letter), wonder (auto toilet seat), and panic (CEOs outside). Oh, and I’m a tad drunk.

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Location: apartment bedroom in Brussels, as far away from electrical outlet as possible
Fun Fact: “Duivelszoon” means “son of the devil”

While I was making carrot soup in the communal kitchen today, Monsieur Duivelszoon (the landlord) popped by the house after work. He was wearing a suit with black polished shoes. I hadn’t seen him for a good few weeks, and last time he had been wearing the exact same outfit.

We had a lovely conversation. Monsieur Duivelszoon told me, with much enthusiasm, that he was a nuclear scientist by day “and landlord by night”.

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Written on September 27th, 2008
Location: cyberspace
Emotional state: perplexed

11:01am

Having a cellphone feels odd. I was sitting beside Chloe (one of my housemates) in the backyard, when something started to ring. I realized that it was my cellphone. I squealed out of happiness that someone out there was trying to reach me. But all Chloe said was, “Good for you – now you might want to pick it up.”

Oh yeah, that part.

12:30am

And I can even send text messages now. I’m a little overwhelmed: new country, new friends, new way of communicating with the world.

12:41am

My god. I think my entire life is changing, and I don’t know how I feel about it all.

‘

Location: Brussels
Below is a conversation I had dozens of times while on exchange

Dear Reader,

For the purposes of this post, I ask you to conjure up a certain image in your head.

You live in Brussels. You are in your early twenties and are almost broke. You are either an exchange student, or one of those prized locals exchange students love to befriend.

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Written on September 19, 2008
Location: Université Libre de Bruxelles
First day of classes

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

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“Qui est anglophone, ici?” [Who is anglophone here?]

Suddenly I was summoned out of my daydream, back into the giant Janson auditorium for my Twentieth-Century Literature lecture. I automatically put up my hand in answer to the professor’s question.

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