About: Ayako
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Name:Ayako
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2007-12-16 10:09:02
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Posts by Ayako:
Why do we go nuts when we are trying to be tolerant?
“I have to stress that, as a virtue, tolerance is highly vulnerable, for it becomes forceless when confronted with intolerance. If one is tolerant to intolerance, one is forced to accept intolerance; but if one is intolerant to intolerance, one is to provide a double ration to intolerance. Voltaire already pointed this out at the end of the 18th Century. I am afraid humanity has made little progress ever since.” (Shigemi Inaga)
Indeed, Voltaire had it all figured out in the 18th century, and how many times have we run into a situation when we were bending over backwards to accommodate someone’s culture and had them return the favor by being utterly insensitive and intolerant of anything they found ‘different’ about us?
Inaga was actually discussing the death of the Japanese translator of ‘Satanic Verses’ (S. Rushdie) when he said this but I think his statement relates to TCKs in that we often find ourselves in this very dilemma Voltaire discussed at length.
This also explains how we can swing to extremes of intolerance at times as a backlash to being stepped all over when we were doing our very best to be tolerant.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH - I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK ANYMORE! DO YOU HAVE ANY CONSIDERATION ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE? BESIDES WHAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU IS WRONG IN MANY PARTS OF THE WORLD! GRRRRR….!
Have you been there? I have. 
Then I guess if we decide to hold onto our guns (or principles) we sigh and slump down on our chairs defeated by our efforts and frustration and go on trying to be tolerant again.
There’s no sense of victory or accomplishment. We feel tired and sad and depressed sometimes…but we pick-up where we left and carry the cross again.
Although Inaga attempts to arrive at a solution it’s still weak because of the very essence of ‘tolerance’.
“My recommendation therefore is to stop talking about tolerance. Instead, we need to think about the conditions for tolerance, because tolerance is never a neutral matter. If tolerance itself is a form of intervention, which necessarily provokes some form of (verbal or physical) violence, by means of passivity or activism … we have to pinpoint the necessary conditions to help realize tolerance, which is a prerequisite to any dialogue among civilizations, in the true sense of the word.” (Shigemi Inaga)
I’ve created this thread for all TCKs who’ve tried their best to be tolerant and find it exhausting and defeating.
What experiences have you had in relation to this?
Tips on How to Organize a TCK Get Together
As you know we have a section where we post get togethers: http://www.tckid.com/group/category/meetup/
I’m posting this in General Forums so that everyone can contribute tips on how to plan and implement successful get togethers.
For example, when organizing an event it’s important to choose a venue that has access via both private and public transport so that more people can attend. Choosing a day of the week and time when most people aren’t attending classes or at workwill also increase the percentage of attendance by interested individuals.
Besides this, it might be a good idea to organize things to do at the get together that will get the conversation flowing.
Please post your two cents. 
Summer of 2008: Where did you go? What did you do?
So come on and tell us where you went and what you did… I just stayed home myself, but I’m sure you all had a more exciting summer than I did.
Come on, don’t be shy!
What books (authors) did you read as a kid?
I read (as a child under the age of 10):
Maurice Leblanc
Ernest Thompson Seton
Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre
Walter Farley
Otfried Preussler
Free Gelato…but you need to be in Paris…
To celebrate opening day, you’re invited to Grom for free gelato this Friday, August 22 from noon until midnight. Simply download this invitation and bring it in.
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/Invitation22.pdf
Grom is located at 81, rue de Seine (6th) .
For more information visit David Lebovitz’s food blog site.
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2008/08/3_grom_gelato_in_paris.html#more
I wish I could go.
My Hot Water Heater Broke…eeeek!
Anyway, I’m out of commission until this is resolved. I am going nuts already thinking of what will happen over the next few days or weeks or months trying to get hot water back into my apartment…and it’s August.
Until then…
Cheers.
PMS and PMDD
I’m going to post this link here because there are quite a few women on this site and PMS/PMDD tend to make the usual problems worse.
For example psychological symptoms include:
· Depression
· Anger
· Irritability
· Anxiety
· Sensitivity to rejection
· Sense of feeling overwhelmed
· Social withdrawal
In other words, if you tend to get depressed you might notice your depression getting worse during this period (which is surprisingly long - it can go on for 2 weeks). Irritable people might notice more irritability. We’ll feel more anger about feeling rejected and be more sensitive to any kind of rejection. Culture shock or repatriation will be more overwhelming than ever and we might overdo it in terms of social withdrawal.
For more information please look here:
http://www.womensmentalhealth.org/specialty-clinics/pms-and-pmdd/?gclid=CNuA69jZ4JQCFSVPEAodCBZCTQ
Putin of Germany???
Let’s be careful we don’t make mistakes like this. Talk about embarrassing!
Brats: Our Journey Home with Donna Musil (Free Teleconference for TCKs!)
Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming information on Donna Musil and her documentary film ‘Brats: Our Journey Home’. But here’s a clip from Youtube you can watch in the mean time:
Click here if the video is disabled.
Brats: Our Journey Home
Join us for our teleconference with Donna Musil – Army Brat/ATCK, writer, director and producer of Brats: Our Journey Home
Click here for more details about the teleconference
Have you lived outside your Passport culture and then struggled trying to fit in with people that you have nothing in common with when you returned “home”?
In this 60-mins interview, you will learn about:
1. How to be comfortable with who you are – that completely opposing ideas are valid and exist all at the same time.
2. How to fully employ your strengths and have compassion for your weaknesses.
3. How to look at “belonging” in a whole new light.
About Donna Musil
BRATS is the first cinematic glimpse into a global subculture whose journey to adulthood is a high-octane mixture of incredible excitement and enormous pain.
It’s the seven-year work of passion of independent filmmaker Donna Musil. It’s the first film Donna has directed and produced. Before embarking on BRATS, Donna wrote a variety of scripts, including Ananse, a children’s animated film based on African folktales, in development with Visionex/Ghana and Melendez Films/London. She co-directed a staged reading of her original feature, To Kingdom Come, with Producer Judith Pearlman, in NY Women in Film & TV’s Screenplay Reading Series, representing “some of the best developing women screenwriters.”
Prior to her writing career, Donna worked as an attorney with the AFL-CIO and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, helping organize unions throughout the South. She has a J.D. and B.A./Journalism (magna cum laude) from the University of Georgia and is a member of the State Bar of Georgia.
Donna was raised an Army brat and has lived and worked in Germany, Korea, Ireland, Copenhagen, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and Paris. As a child, she moved 12 times in 16 years. Her father was a JAG officer and military judge. When she was 16, her father died, and two weeks later, her family moved to Columbus, Georgia, where she finished high school.
For the next 20 years, Donna moved 19 times, graduated college, and worked in a variety of jobs, but always felt “different” from her fellow Americans. In 1997, she learned that she was not alone. While surfing the Internet, Donna discovered a Web site for her Taegu, Korea high school. A few weeks later, she attended an impromptu reunion in Washington, DC. It was revelatory. For the first time, Donna felt like she “belonged” somewhere, and thus began her journey “home.”
Sign up to join TCK Academy’s Paulette M. Bethel’s interview with Donna Musil.
Click here for more details about the teleconference
Game: Youtube Music
This is how it goes. I’m going to post music from Youtube and the next person needs to find music that starts with the last letter of the title of the song above him and find this on Youtube and post the link.
Confirmation by Charlie Parker
So, the letter ‘N’…
What do ATCKs do to calm down their brain waves?
I’m starting this thread because I have now realized I have been doing a lot of things to calm myself down because there is so much pent up energy inside me - uhhh…just like an adolescent.
For example I listen to Mozart rather than more ‘exciting’ music, make sure the interior decoration in my house is calming, and try to avoid engaging in activities that wake-up the rebellious adolescent inside me
When asked what I like to do I list things like taking long walks down the beach, cooking, reading and writing.
I’ve also tried aromatherapy and meditation - so know how to use these things if I need to, i.e. put a drop of lavender or geranium oil in a hot tub and lie down. This can work wonders.
So let’s share tips on what we do to keep the wild creature inside us calm. What do we do or avoid so that this kid inside us doesn’t come out and takeover! :p
Game: You know you’re a TCK when…
I think we had a similar thread to this before but since I can’t seem to find it, I’m going to start a new one. :p
1. Say it in one sentence.
2. Try to incorporate some essential characteristic of a TCK mentioned in Ruth’s book.
Here’s mine:
You know you’re a TCK when, you’re 45 years old but you’re playing an online game and when Admins get abusive with your character, delayed adolescent rebellion kicks in and you decide to go on a rampage killing everyone in sight. 
What makes you feel good?
OK. This isn’t really a TCK thing at all, although we might see a trend when people start posting that’s unique to TCKs…then again we might not and find out we are like those other people who are different from us in so many other ways! lol
I’ll start out by saying: It makes me feel good when I make people laugh, entertained them or brightened up their day a bit. It could be because I made excellent party food and wowed them or just told them a story that made them laugh.
So what makes you feel good?
Ts’ao CHih: Third Century Chinese Poet
He’s one of my favorite Chinese poets because I can relate to the emotionality in many of his poems. Here’s one that always makes me think of the life of a TCK:
Alas!
Alas–this whirling thirstlebush,
How alone it is in the world!
Long gone from its roots, to drift,
Morning and night without rest or leisure.
East and west along the seven highways,
South and north along the nine byways.
Suddenly meeting a rising whirlwind,
I am blown up into the clouds.
Thinking I would explore the pathways of heaven,
Then suddenly falling to sink into the abyss.
A fierce whirlwind wafts me up;
Will I be returned to the field from which I came?
To the south, and then again to the north,
I think to go east, then revert to the west.
Adrift, adrift, where can I take refuge?
I’m suddenly lost, and then saved again.
A whirlwind, twirlwind, covering the eight marshes,
In winged flight across the five mountains,
Drifting and whirling with no permanent place,
Who knows my bitter trouble?
Would that I were grass among the trees,
To be burned in an autumn grass fire.
To be destroyed, would that not be painful?
But I want to be with my roots.
_________________________________________________________
Ts’ao Chih was a Prince of Wei during the period of the Three Kingdoms. His older brother ascended the throne and because of sibling rivalry (though it was mostly jealousy on the part of his brother and Ts’ao Chih probably did not have ambitions to overthrow his brother), he was moved from province to province away from the capital and palace where he grew-up. The poem I believe was written during these years of constant moving.
Calling All Diplo Brats: Can you sympathize with the Crown Princess?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/05/wjapan105.xml
The crown princess is an adult TCK and I don’t think she’s having too much fun now. She’s a ‘diplomat brat’ so I’m sure eating out at ‘expensive’ Mexican restaurants is a rather banal affair for her.
By the way, she’s supposed to be a role model for other females in Japan so anything the press finds wrong with her provides us valuable insights on what society expects from any female.
We can all assume that it’s not considered a good thing in general to:
1. Not be able to bear a male child
2. Dine out at nice restaurants
3. Use a babysitter
4. Go on holiday to foreign countries <–this one is largely ignored these days by almost everyone, but it’s still not considered a good thing to do!
5. To be depressed because your life is all about being a good breeding mare and servant of your husband and child - you can overcome this with discipline - if you are depressed it means you lack discipline and aren’t doing your duty to society - because everyone else is doing their duty - how dare you not do yours?
6.. Your job: There is simply no excuse for not doing your job - which consists of being servile to your in-laws, your husband and your children. Nothing constitutes a good excuse unless it’s the day of your own funeral! I’ve seen women in hospital beds apologizing for not being able to do their duty. -_-
Japan is a pretty bad place for repatriation if you’re a female TCK. There’s no need to marry into the Imperial household to be subject to insults and attacks by both men and women in your adult life, unless you conform totally to the rigid rules outlined above and more.
When I was doing my brief ‘corporate stint’ - which meant working until 1am in the morning quite often - I used to have to listen to male taxi drivers rant at me during the 60 minute journey back home:
1. You took my job and you’re a disgrace to society.
2. You don’t have children? You’re a disgrace to your parents & society. Besides if you did your DUTY to society and had children you wouldn’t be taking my job.
3. You are a disgrace to your husband for working this late. If you weren’t being such a disgrace you wouldn’t have taken my job.
4. blablabla…. (And the rant goes on even if my job required being bilingual and all of the ranting raving men were monolingual)…
I avoided being attacked by hoards of vicious females by not having children. If I had had children I would have had to socialize with them and would have been attacked viciously had I ever dared to use something so unethical as a babysitter.
Some people wonder why I dropped everything and left japan mid-career five years ago, and sometimes I’ve had doubts about this decision myself…but it really wasn’t very nice working THAT hard and having to do my time listening to rants at 1am in the morning. Geez.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? What do TCKs Dream of?
Do we have different kinds of dreams than non-TCKs or do we have the same kind of dreams?
Might be interesting to make a collection of these here since we have some notable specialists in the field who are likely to read them!
1. Have you ever had any recurring dreams? If so can you describe the dream?
Example: “I am in a familiar city but when I turn the corner I find I am totally lost and in a strange city.”
2. What’s the nicest dream you’ve had where you woke-up with a wonderful feeling?
Example: “Dawn was breaking over the jungle in the Philippines and the swell of the birds singing was like a symphony. I flew over the perfectly manicured lawn and fence that surrounded our compound, into the sky and reached the seashore. I could feel the spray of the salt in the breeze as I flew over the beautiful blue ocean and could even taste the saltiness on my tongue. I woke-up with this wonderful peaceful feeling and could still feel the exhilaration from soaring in the sky over the ocean…”
Weird Non-TCK Behavior
Since there’s enough finger pointing about our oddities as TCKs, let’s try to list some strange behavior we have noticed in non-TCKs.
It can be totally subjective. Anything you’ve found strange about non-TCK behavior goes into this thread!
French students shy of real world
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7293992.stm
This article came across to me as biased and written from a very narrow cultural perspective among other things. What do you think?
For one, although the author cites that too many French students study psychology and therefore can’t find jobs, job availability like anything else in economy is all about supply & demand. Hence, if too many French students specialized in a specific field in IT or marketing or medicine, they would have a difficult time finding jobs too wouldn’t they?
Also different cultures place a different amount of importance on those ‘useless’ academics. Some cultures are more oriented toward placing importance on anything that can make money, whereas others place more importance on the so-called ‘useless academics’ that usually have nothing to do with earning an income.
I don’t know the French enough to make definitive statements but I have a feeling they do place importance on being able to talk intelligently about those ‘useless academics’ as part of enriching life.
The unemployment problem is a huge one and a practical one we have to face, but I feel this article has been written without understanding French culture.
So, people who know French culture better….what say you?
How to get rid of leftover rice!
I’m sure many of us end up with leftover rice at some point and one can get sick of making rice gratin and fried rice with it after awhile so I was hunting for another way to get rid of it and came across…New Orleans Rice Calas!
Take a look at this photo!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKrDWs-xfrE&feature=related
This recipe is easier to follow though:
http://www.recipezaar.com/17385
Be careful with the amount of baking soda though. Err on the side of too little rather than a tad too much!
Asia Press International - Any aspiring TCK journalists?
This isn’t an article but didn’t know where to put it. If there are any aspiring journalists in the Asia region who are still unsure of what they want to do they might try contacting Akihiro Nonaka and having a chat with him. He’s an old friend of mine and I’ve helped their organization with interpreting/translating sometimes.
http://asiapress.org/api/03eng/index.html
If I remember correctly, I think the basic premise of this organization was for helping journalists report the truth as they see it without being controlled by mega corporations. I’m not 100% certain but I believe journalists from this organization have covered news from South Korea as well as Afghanistan.
When you write Akihiro Nonaka, you might say you saw the link to his organization posted here by me (Ayako Nakamura). He should remember me.
And here’s a related article (?) about what they’ve done:
http://www.rorypecktrust.org/Awards01/chol.htm
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