AlienAid

Reading Cory's English Standard Tribe and about Gary Turner's homesickness for Glasgow reminded me of an idea I had ages ago (pre-blog) but never got round to doing anything about. The idea is to provide helpful mappings between cultures for displaced aliens such as myself.
When you move to another country, timezone or even a different area within a country, a lot of your cultural referents are misplaced or disconnected. The obvious ones - your sudden lack of any sense of the geography of the place, or where to go to shop for anything, or what the currency is worth - are usually overcome quickly, but the more subtle ones can lurk for months or years before they bite and give that sudden moment of anomie, alienation or perhaps external prespective.
I am great believer in learning from others' experiences, and conversely sharing mine.

Here's the germ of the idea. I'm going to write about some of these cultural disconnects, and put the tag word 'alienaid' along with the topic, and the places I'm translating between in. See above for an example. As 'alienaid' is currently a null search on Google, if I do this and other people join in, searching for alienaid in additon to the terms or locations will give the cultural translation needed. If I get enough repsonses, I'll register alienaided.org and collect them there.