Life in a new place

Here I am, almost a month into my new experience of life in Geneva. As I expected, it is extremely different to what I lived over six years ago, when I lived here with my family. What’s more, it’s also quite different to my first year experience when I moved to Canterbury exactly six years ago, something one would expect when moving from a small city to an international centre that is several times the size of the first, in population, economy and horizontal as well as vertical development. The most important thing though, is that I am lacking nothing: I have a great house, a great course, great food on the table and great support from family and friends. God really provides all things.

Being something of a theologian, I have to bring everything back to God, sorry for those of you who don’t tend to do that, and at the risk of contradicting the fundamentalists, atheists, agnostics and Arj Barker*, I have to see God’s sense of humour in one aspect of my present situation… My inner workings are pretty weird, so sorry for leaking some of that out to you here, but recently I actually started worrying whether I had become a sexist; not in belief, which contrary to what some think doesn’t leave any place for sexism (I'm talking about Biblical theology), but in practice. See, about 5, 6 years ago, most of my friends were women. I don’t know why, maybe because guys are such jerks, but anyway, I realised how unhealthy it was for me to have all these female friends who would give me some chocolate, say “ooh…” and watch Friends with me whenever I was feeling down and went to find some good guys to hang out with, which I did, and have never looked back since, I mean, I love hanging out with dudes - not jerks - in fact, I’m so happy that God’s provision has gone as far as giving me some friends to watch the Ultimate Fighting Championship** with, here in Switzerland, where already in England hardly anyone had heard of it! I love being a guy! And I love growing as a guy, learning to become more of a man, not in the macho way, which I find fun to promote, but only as a joke. Anyway, I guess that I’ve landed on the complete other end of the spectrum and I started thinking recently: “Hmm, do I treat, or unconsciously think of women as less important, intelligent etc. than men?”, which I think is a good sign, because if I’m worried about it, there are great chances that I’m not a sexist. Truth is, I’ve spent so many years with so few female friends that I think I’ve forgotten how to relate to women in a real way. This also may come from the fact that many English girls are so incredibly closed and guarded against guys that it has made it extremely difficult to strike up any real conversations with them in my time out there. Russell Peters had it right, and I know others who would agree, when he said “What have the English men done to the English women? Whatever it is, it’s ruined it for the rest of us!"***

Anyway, what is so funny about that that you have to bring God into it? It’s not funny at all; oh, but it is, when you walk into my seminar classrooms and lecture halls, and all you see are… Women. Over the two years of Master’s students in my course, there are between 6-8 guys, amongst maybe 80 women. But in my department and year, I believe there’s only one: moi. Watch your thoughts! Joey: “Hmm, I’m worried I may have become sexist, I’m not really sure how to relate to women”. God: “Ok, here’s a class full of women, knock yourself out! It’ll definitely build character!” The Lord does work in hilarious ways. Now, I’m not about to put the “trans” back into “translation” just to fit in, but I am kind of failing to fit “bad-ass macho man” into the job description, even though I walk into class with my shaved head and goatee, muscles rippling etc. In the end, I’m just a nice guy and it’s hard to fool people otherwise. What I have concluded through this experience is that women are definitely more intelligent than men, since they all seem to go for languages, when so many guys shy away from such a glorious discipline ;)

In church, it’s the same thing, I’ve met an overwhelming amount of girls, which no doubt will make my dad happy, since I’m sure he’d like to eventually meet a woman I’m actually seeing, which, you know, I’d like to meet a girl I’m seeing as well, but hey, good things are worth waiting for, and once again, that’s something I’m having to exercise faith for. Speaking of faith and theology, God is hilariously challenging the nitpick in me, getting me to formulate my thoughts beyond the blur of “huhhhh…” at times, and teaching me to pick my battles, and words, carefully, because I tend to overreact to certain things. I miss a lot of my friends in Canterbury, I love them deeply, but I am so happy to be here, knowing and seeing already how God is shaping my character, picking out the ugly bits of me and replacing them with Grace.

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*Who some time ago debated in a rather humorous way against the question “Does God have a sense of humour?” which you can find on YouTube.

**And the last one was, oh so sweet! Seeing Dan Henderson and Richard Franklin fight so well among others…

***In another stand-up show that you can find on YouTube.