Califenglish?

Last night further evidence of having become more established here emerged. Although there is still a cultural chasm between me and the average city resident, with a couple of notable exceptions, the real test comes when we meet up with fellow country persons. The changes which have occurred to us in the last eight months which are largely imperceptible in an ordinary course of events, become glaring beacons in more familiar company.

In the same way as we like to meet all sorts of new people and find out as much as we can about new and exciting things, we like meeting up with people from the UK. We like to be comforted by their accents, talk freely about a range of subjects without the requirement of explanation, and find out what is happening at home.

Our accents have remained the same, but our manner of forming sentences has changed and some of our phraseology. The biggest example started first with Mike who now begins a lot (like..45%) of sentences with "So.." slightly more elongated than a normal two letter word would warrant, but not quite up to par with some of the surfiest of Californians I have heard (my dictionary tells me surfiest isn't a real word which I think is scandalous.) It is irritating but surprisingly infectious and I find myself doing exactly the same. Worse, we are both fully aware what has happened, powerless to do anything about it, and incredulous that no one else seems to have picked up on it. 'Like' is another word which dribbles out of my mouth and sometimes a sentence begins agonisingly as something akin to: "So, like, there are these...." Don't even get me started on adjectives other than good or awesome, because you know how ranty I get.

So, like, the point. The Americanisation of our lives has become even further embedded in our psyches. It's wonderful really - it must have happened while we slept and I cannot pinpoint the time when everything changed, but I think it was sometime in February. I don't believe it was gradual. I think we ate something a couple of weeks ago, probably from Whole Foods, and it anchored itself to our frontal lobe.

I noticed the shift of attitude yesterday. We met up with some friends for some food in a place called Luella. It was a nice place, a little smarter and pricier than we normally go to, but the food was some of the best I have had in a while so I'm glad we went there. It described itself as a "warm, inviting neighbourhood restaurant featuring Mediterranean inspired cuisine" and was fairly typical of modern-American food. I ate a delicious 'Coca-Cola braised pork shoulder with white bean purée and red pickled onions', and Mike opted for 'Pan roasted chicken over asparagus and wild mushroom ragu with black truffle vinaigrette', so now perhaps you get the measure of the place. It was the sort of joint which perhaps I would have found fairly intimidating a year ago. Our waiter was pushy, arrogant and launched into great diatribes of convoluted borderline food-porn descriptions when asked a simple question. He looked mortally offended when asked, in response to his description of an ice cream sundae involving walnut brittle, Chantilly cream, and amongst other flavours, espresso ice cream, 'erm, don't you have any normal flavours?' I'm not sure it helped that the whole table after trying to keep a straight face in spite of his continued earnestness had now erupted into fits of giggles. He was not amused.

Here's the nub though. Although this pretension was ridiculous, it is also commonplace, harmless, dare I say it, charming in it's own way, and I have decided to embrace it, even though this practically rewrites my genetic make-up. I even decided to flatter his ego and asked what his preference would be out of two desserts I was trying to decide between. The food-eroticist didn't let me down, as I knew he wouldn't, and I was rewarded with warm fluffy doughnut-like 'orange and sweet ricotta fritters with wild honey'. I trust people passionate about food, even though I firmly believe hot doughnuts and honey would have been enough of a description.

Anyway, I have become waylaid, for a change, from the reason of this post, mainly due to thoughts of food. My point is that we, or maybe I should only speak for myself here, I, am evolving into a very different beast; stiff upper lipped, self conscious, tea drinking, sarcastic, critical, easily intimidated, plain speaking, but demanding higher standards of service and products, and getting more relaxed and laid back about how people view me. We are straddling two similar but very different worlds taking the best from each and creating a new wonderful place, which still needs a little bit of work on it's vocabulary.

Have a nice, no, have an awesome day.