Jeez, I leave the country for 3 weeks, and I return to news of earthquakes and hurricanes.
After the first few days in my 3-week trip to France, I had no English-speaking TV or newspaper, so was totally cut off from events in the U.S.
What events did you ever miss, by being cut off from your “local” news?
We missed the London riots while we were visiting family in the US. US international news is appalling, by the way - we had to go to the BBC website to get anything more than the ten seconds the US news networks deemed the story worthy of.
Fortunately, although some of the mayhem was local-ish, we live far enough from the shopping areas that our house wasn’t affected.
I missed the Virginia Tech shooting because I was in Germany on business. By the time I got back it was old news.
There were some other occasions for which I don’t remember the details. But I do remember being annoyed by comments such as “You must have been living under a rock not to know about such and such.” No, I was just out of the country.
I have been overseas, isolated from news for many events. There are two particularly memorable ones.
When Katrina happened, I was working on a short-term project in Mongolia. The extent of the damage and the incompetency of management was just not evident from the coverage (I believe Sky News was the only English language news source, which was having technical problems at that time). Anyways, I was in a high level government meeting and the government of Mongolia pledged 10,000 USD to assist in recovery. I remember feeling embarrassed and also thinking that I clearly did not have a good idea of what was going on if they were giving us money.
I was also a student in China when the Iraq war started. I was actually at Tiananmen Square when someone came up to me and said “Do you know that the US has started bombing Iraq? It happened this morning.” When I went to go to an internet cafe, censors had cut off most things except Xinhua. It was difficult to get good news those first few days, particularly since I was in Beijing.
I moved to Spain to study abroad just a few weeks before September 11th. Of course I couldn’t help hearing about THAT, but since I didn’t return to the U.S. until a year later I think I missed the American experience of it.
I was also in the US while rioters were looting not 200 yards from my home. Typical.
When we were living in the van, we had very little access to news. So anything that happened in late 2006 or 2007, I may have missed.
I was in Nepal in October 2003 when a little Nepali man approached us. Normally that’s an event followed closely by a sales pitch, but all this man said was “So, Arnold Schwarzenegger is your Governor now, yes?” We hadn’t heard the news yet, and since we are not Californians, had not been following closely. It took a moment to understand what he was saying; “Schwarzenegger” is not an easy word for those who know English as a second language.
Incidentally, I just learned that Firefox knows the word “Schwarzenegger” but marks as misspelled “Obama”. How long does it take to fix that one?
I also missed hearing about the recent UK riots, due to being at a juggling convention in Germany- though apparently the local branch of them was close enough to the house to hear the smashing glass…
I missed the first few days of Operation Desert Storm because I was moving to another state, and the driveway to our new home had 2’ of snow on it, which had to be removed before we could unpack the van which held our TV.
In December 2009, we went on vacation. When we returned, we discovered that a house on our street had been gutted by fire.
OJ Simpson.
I lived in Colombia throughout the car chase thing and most of the investigation (before the web was accessible there)–and came back the the US wondering why everyone was so obsessed about OJ Simpson. A washed up actor who once played football? I couldn’t understand why it was an unrelenting talking point on TV. It made me feel like a complete foreigner.
Then I saw some recordings of the car chase footage, and was able to piece together how the whole phenomenon in reality unfolded as a self-perpetuating media enterprise.
In the Colombian press there’d been maybe one news article about it, at the time of the murder. That was about it.
I missed that Yarnell’s ice cream closed it’s doors. I am still really bumbed about this every time I could return home my Pa and I would enjoy a bowl together.
Went abroad two weeks, found that my girlfriend had picked up another dang cat. Entering hoarders territory here.
9/11. I was driving and listening to a book on tape and didn’t hear anything about it until the next day. My husband didn’t want to call and freak me out as I was traveling from Seattle to Orange County.
Woodstock.
Didn’t find out about it for days after it was over. Silliest part, I wasn’t out of the country, I was out in the woods. In Pennsylvania!
Tris
I missed the Chicago flood of 1992 because I was studying in France (instead of my suburban college).
When the topic came up, I told people that I’d been absent.
There was a flood in Chicago in 1992??? Where was I then?
If it makes you feel any better, I was a college student in Chicago in 1992 and have no recollection of the flood, either.
The first Persian Gulf War. I went to a living history event where I didn’t have any real contact with the general public and I totally missed it. We were in Desert Shield when I got there and the whole damn war was over before I left. Confused the crap out of me for a bit when I caught some CNN on the way home.
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami. I was at my parents’ holiday house, which is out in the country with no TV or radio reception and at the time no Internet connection. I only found out about it on the way home a few days later, when I saw the newspaper headlines at a petrol station.
I left for a trip to Italy in early November of 2000 after jokingly telling people that if Bush won the election, I wasn’t coming back. Came back a week and a half later after seeing some very confusing Italian headlines that I could only partially understand, only to find the election was still up in the air.