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I'm often asked where I'm from, especially by people who've overcome the revulsion of my nose (despite my nose job), and who've therefore heard me make mumbling sounds that mimic talking. I'm the first to admit it - my accent is absocompletely screwed up. But yours would be too if you'd never lived in one city more than 5 years and never in one country more than 10.
Basically the story of where I'm from goes like this: Born in London (England) in 1973, interrupting my parents' 2 year holiday riding mopeds around europe. Was 10 weeks old, living in the East End and not finkin' bout much 'cept "more milk", when my parents decide to take me back to Africa; to what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). While my Dad was fighting in a bush war there during my formative years, I was fighting on the home front with my obstreperous sister Tasha who's 2 years younger and consequently always wrong.
When I was about 6 we moved to Malawi to get the heck away from my younger sister Tamlyn, who had just been born. My parents screwed up however, and she made it onto the plane. Malawi? Yes, such a country does exist, in the middle of darkest Africa. I loved the place, my strongest childhood memories are from there. I finally received some help on the home front in the form of my wonderful little brother Jason (whom to my dismay the doctors had said would be a girl! These were Malawi doctors remember people).
When I was almost 12 we moved to Australia. If you don't know where that is...well...youre from the U.S. aren't you? Its a place the Simpsons went to. Australia is a great country, with a few too many kiwis. After 10 years in Oz, I left to spend a year travelling around the world.
Yep - I was part of that plague of dirt-poor young Aussies making their way around Europe and Canada. One night, while sleeping on the ground outside Union Station in Toronto, I came to the cosmic revelation that it was damned fortunate I liked Canada, because I couldn't afford to go anywhere else. So I went to grad school in Toronto, then stayed to work a couple of years there.
After 5 years in Toronto (I had an apartment by this stage) I went to work for a year in Vienna, one of my favourite cities in the world. I then moved to New Jersey, and stayed sane by going to Manhatten as often as possible. After two years of miserable, East Coast of the US weather I'd had enough, and moved to London, where I presently eke out an existence.
Does all that answer where I'm from? My four grandparents were all different ethnicities. Everywhere I go in this world I sound like I'm from somewhere else. I may or may not be holding more than the legal number of passports, I deny everything. The saddest indictment on our species is that they have yet to make me President of the World, or at least General Secretary of the UN....
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