A list of puns related to "Expat"
Person 1: Neat! Are you visiting or living there?
Me: Living here, but as an expat.
Person 2: Why'd you change your name?
Me: What do you mean?
Person 2: Well it used to be Pat, and now you're an ex Pat.
Back a few decades, I was working in a program with a local college in the Middle East.
The name of the program for ExPats has the clever acronym of "IDEA" (hey, I said it was clever); which stands for "Inter-Departmental Educational Adjunct". It's interdepartmental because my particular specialty not only covers field geology but also paleontology and a bit of archeology thrown in for good measure. Everyone hopes to have a good IDEA...
ahem...
Well, we saddle up and head for the Dune Sea out in the west of the country, where the Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Cretaceous, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene crop out and access is relatively easy and non-injurious.
Well, we caravan out, some 30 Land Cruisers, Nissan patrol, and the odd Mitsubishi Galloper strong. We all get our maps, compasses and split up into 5 or 6 special interest groups ("SIG's"); where each IDEA has his own GPS and LIDAR laser ranging apparatus. Reason being, that there are very few benchmarks out in the desert, and even those are constantly at the mercy of the shifting and ever-blowing sands.
Since we're split into groups and at any one time, ranging up to and including some 50 km2, when a real find is located, a device called the "DIME" (Digital-Interface Monitor Encoder) is attached and programmed into the GPS for location later; it is a digital sort of low-frequency transponder, developed from technology used by offshore drillers and jacket setters where benchmarks are even more transitory.
The way it works is rather simple. When something is to be marked for later retrieval, a series of wooden posts are pounded in a triangular manner around the find and the DIME is set, programmed with the GPS and attached to one or more of the posts.
That's the theory, at least.
Everything works well, especially all the hardened electronics and computer gizmos, but attaching the DIME to the stakes is the real problem. It can't be nailed, screwed or fastened with any sort of metal contrivance as that farkles the magnetic field and causes all sorts of goofy spurious signals. Zip ties don't last long in the heat and duct tape is right out. Many sites have been lost to the shifting sands this way.
Velcro doesn't work too well, as the sand fills the hooks of the receiving piece of velcro and soon renders it useless. String or fishing line work, but that's temporary (they melt). Glue or mastic are out as these are supposed to be temporary. Even plastic sleeves don't work due to the heat out
... keep reading on reddit ➡I just came back from a holiday back to the UK to visit friends and family (am an expat).
While we were there we went to a nice community festival, with some great beers. An American friend of a friend proudly proclaimed that he’d bought a pint of red stout.
Looking up at the board, and seeing the name of the beer, my eyes lit up: a golden opportunity had just presented itself.
‘Nah mate, that’s not red stout, it’s called Red Stoat. You do know what a stoat is, right?
[confusion]
‘Well, it’s a little rodent, a bit like a weasel. You know how you can tell the difference between a stoat and a weasel?’
‘Er..’
‘Well’, I says, ‘a weasel is weasily identifiable, and a stoat is stoatally different.’
Cue a puzzled look on the guys face, and a moment’s silence, broken by me and my friend pissing ourselves laughing, not at the joke of course, but at his reaction.
So this was all very well and good, just another in the litany of bad jokes that floats in my wake, and I thought the story ended there.
Karma, however, had other plans…
A few days later, we’re up in the Lake District, walking back to the hotel after a pub dinner. As we’re walking down the road, we see a small carnivorous rodent dragging the recently deceased body of a rabbit back to its home. It was either a stoat, or a weasel, but you know what? I honestly had no way to tell which…
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