10 Signs That You've Been Overseas Too Long

by Michael Bear · 2009-09-06 10:56:00 UTC
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1. If asked to rank the most wonderful inventions in human history, you would list air conditioning significantly above penicillin, movable type and the wheel.

2. You're inordinately impressed by working traffic lights.  And paved roads.

3. At your leaving party, you jokingly insist that you won't miss the open sewage trenches along the sides of the roads.  But you know that you will.

4. In any debate about copyright infringement, you come down firmly on the pro-piracy side.  Unless you're talking about the bastards who simply smuggle a videocamera into a movie theater and then market the resulting product as a clean copy.  They can burn in hell.

5. You've developed a Landcruiser fetish.

6. You've also developed an inappropriate, twitching reaction to fireworks.

7. Doctors at home are slightly intimidated by your ability to detect the symptoms of incipient malaria.

8. You simply assume that everyone knows where Yambio is.  You also think acronyms like NCP, CPA, FDLR, AMISOM or ISAF are completely self-explanatory.

9. When pregnant friends at home talk about getting ready for the hospital, you mentally translate baby bag into quick-run bag.

10. You've worn exactly three pairs of pants and four shirts over the past month.  Tho you do take care to mix the combinations according to a semi-complex rotating schedule known to you and you alone.

[Photo taken in eastern Congo from Julien Harneis' flickr photostream - Creative Commons, Attribution]

Michael Bear
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