Ugly American?

Thursday night I went to the American ExPat Club's monthly get-together at a bar in Northbridge. I mostly went as an excuse to get out and have a beer. I really enjoyed the last one I went to where I met this girl from San Diego. Her husband is a cartoonist and she is a Daily Show fan like me. We ended up having a great time chatting.

This time it was different. I did not enjoy it. Only three people showed up, and they all smoke. So they took a table outside on the patio. It was cold and raining outside, so I froze while having to breath second-hand fumes. The San Diego woman and her husband couldn't make it. They have some cartoon deadlines they were late on.

Who did show up was a 41 year old woman from Birmingham Alabama. She is here in Perth going to college getting her masters. She works at a gas station convenience store when not going to school. She is huge, very overweight. She seems lonely and comes to these get togethers just to get out. She also seems to have a hard time finding or keeping friends. I quickly figured out why. She is depressing. She dominated the conversation and kept steering it back to her.

She struck me as one of those people that I categorize as "energy vampires". They are the people who have the ability to suck the joy and energy out of you. They don't enrich you, or bring value to your life. It is difficult to not feel sorry for these people. They always seem to victims of this or that. Your natural reaction is of course to offer help, advice, sympathy, whatever. But then you learn that they really enjoy being miserable. All of your efforts to help are wasted. They use their misery as a ploy for attention. It works. So why change?

The conversation of the evening, as directed by the energy vampire, revolved around how difficult and how long it takes to adjust to life in Perth, so far from home. She has been here for 3 years or so now. She is still struggling.

It just pissed me off. Who cares? You are in Australia. No shit they do things different. Yes, I have noticed. No, I don't let it bother me. I enjoy a lot of differences. Some I don't like. But I don't worry about it. I usually think they are funny.

Eventually she got on the subject of why they are different. She claims that the difference is that the US was founded by religious and political refugees who voluntarily moved. Versus Australia that was founded by convicts forced to come here for petty crimes.

She is a loud woman, and some Aussies sitting at a nearby table overheard her. That got them pissed off, so they started having a loud conversation about how they didn't like loud-mouth Yanks.

I'm not going to go to anymore of these meets if she is going to be there. I mentioned this to Robin and she agrees with me. She does not like her at all. We like some of the members They like to talk about what they are doing, and fun stuff, versus what they miss about home. I wonder if they can ban her?