I fisrt took note of this turn during my church’s bible study for young adults (18-30). In trueth I wasn’t really paying atention to anything and was just drifting away, as I always do in most group settings (i sort of drift into myself, and close the world out around me). anyways i just remember hearing the group leader say “…. and some people are socially awkward…” As soon as he said this it was like a bell flicked on in my head, i knew he wasn’t talking about me, but I completly felt that way. So immediately, after he said this I pointed to myself in a self comidic sort of way (i did it without really thinking about it, was more like a reflex, sort of my way of breaking the ice when the conversation in a room gets to deap for my comfort). Anyways this caused a little much needed laughter in the room, with the group leader trying to asure me that i wasn’t socialy awkward. In truth, it dosn’t matter if he truely believed i wasn’t or if he did but was trying to be nice, the fact is, it was truely how i feal, every moment of the day when i have to interact with people of my age group, especially when in large groups.

I often find myself in situations like today, where i’m in a group of people my age (22ish), I’m kind of the outsider watching them interact. And one thing about Canadians, is they can be quite witty, and are in generally comedic people in my opinion (or atleast in comparision asians). So i’m watching interact, then they’d say somthing to me, and i rarly know how to reply. Theres a thing in Canada called sarcasim, it can be a wonderful thing, unless your like me, and have a hard time detecting it! And i’m not say i have no sence of humor, in trueth, when i’m with friends who i know really well (all of them also tcks) i’m often the life of the party. But with my “canadian” buddies, I just don’t know how to react to them, and often don’t really understand whats going on because of all the cultural refrenses they make. So i just become that idiot who laughs when they laugh, not because i think that the joke is funny, but because i don’t get it! Well my main problem is in group settings, when i’m with just one friend, I’m able to interact a little beter, perhaps it’s because i don’t feel as much social presure to impress when i’m only around one person.

Shaking hands

Other then my struggle in group settings, knowing what to say, and saying the right things so i don’t sound stupid, but I also struggle greatly with physical contact! To exsplain, my parents are Canadian, but I was raised in Taiwan, and learned Taiwanese rules of greatings, and departures. I remember when i was old enough to care about not seeming wierd, I actually did some self studying about how to interact with westreners. I had to teach myself how to shake hands properly (not to soft, not to hard) so that I come across as a confident young man. I also took note, not to offer my hand to a woman, unless she offerd first (I learned from some very conservitive southren baptist course on how to be a gentalmen). So now that i’v lived in canada i’ve had to really master how and when to “shake hands”. The problem, its a reflex for me, someone in church might reach their hand out to grabe a coffee, but my brain tells my arm to shakehands, when thats not what me not the other perosn plan on doing. It can be extreemly embaracing!

being asked “hows it going?”

for me it seems, it is never going well, which really sucks, since i find it extreemly hard to lie, even when it’s to be an answer to a redundant question. I know when people say “hows it going?” or “whatsup?” its just that their saying “hi” and the answer should be something like “good, how about you?” without actually wanting to know the answer, but i always take “hows it going?” as a starter to a conversation. And like I said, Its always going badly with me, so I end up sounding like that guy whos always complaining about everything. So i’ve learned, short answers like, “well…. its been better – (quickly followed by) hows it going with you?” so that they can answer my question without having to do the polite thing of asking me what wrong.

Hugging

dear lord, I’m still practicing at this. For those who don’t know, people don’t hug in Taiwan, even handshakes are much rarer. anyways, The fisrt time in my teen life (as a kid, i probably didn’t have such a probblem with hugging) that i remember giving someone a hug, was when my oldest sister, was leaving at the airport, on her way to repaitriate into canada (for unviesrity). So i sort of learned, to hug when it was a family member who I wasn’t going to see for a long time (more then a year), or when a family member I hadn’t seen for a long time, comes back. Then I went to canada in my mid teens and had to learn to hug my aunts, which seemed wierd, since i wasn’t really close to most of them at the time. So i learned to hug extened family members, or friends of my parents who where like family. Now after living in Canada a little more then 4 years (too long!) I’ve learned that hugs are like handshakes in many social circles, but i feel very uncomfortable at both! I remember being really surprised at when one of my coworkers who i hadn’t seen in a few weeks – when she saw me, she pritty much jumped into my arms, I was quite shocked, I had no idea that friends hugged like that. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, we both had an unoffical “thing” for one anouther, and that hug, made me feel so close to her, It was a very intimate feeling for me. I don’t remember ever feeling so close to someone, its a shame I never asked her out (i always figured, I didn’t have enough in common with non-tck canadians). So anyways, the hug, for me, is something I don’t feel very comfortable with, unless it’s with a family member, or a girl i’m close with, so its very hard for me to hug. I usally just react to what the other person dose, if they open thier arms that means “hug”. kind of like a robot reaction, same as the “handshake”.

Kissing

I plan to go to spain next year and in the future LAmerica, and I hear that people kiss each other on the cheeks. I don’t know what i’ll do, since in the culture I was raised in, husbends and wives don’t even kiss in public, so this whole casual kissing for greeting people and saying good bye, is terifyingly foreign to me!

I often think my sociall problems are more then just the fact I’m a tck, but I see how growing up in no body contact sociaty, and then moving to body contact sociaty (perhaps Zoe can relate to the opposit of my situation! haha) can have a major affect on me, and tcks with similar exsperainaces. Its strange, I’ve very uncomfortable with bodycontact (i often flinch someone touches me, wether on acident or on purpose), but strangly, at the same time I feel starved for it and crave it. So i don’t know is this just a people thing, or is it a tck thing, or is it just me? haha.

please share.

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My whole life I’ve been avoiding any close relationships. I just turned 22, 5 days ago, and as of yet, I’ve never had a girlfriend. A lot of it probably has to do with having extremely low self esteem during my teenage years (continuing to now). I was short, fat, and extremely emotionally unbalanced (haha, i probably make myself sound a lot worse then I’m actually am). So low self esteem, plus living as a foreigner in my home country which made finding people similar to me a very hard aspect, and the girls who i liked and had a lot in common with, i avoided getting into a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship because our families were all so close, and it would be like dating a close relative or a sibling (problem with being a minority, is everyone knows everyone, and we all grow up together!). There were also many local girls that i was interested in, but we always had too little in common with each other, and being the pastors kid made me feel like everyone’s eyes were always on me, and whatever i did, seemed to be so interesting to everyone. Not wanting to bring any extra attention to myself (more then i already had) i avoided any sort of relationship.

So now I’m an adult (better looking, with a little more self confidence then i had as a teen), and living in my passport country but because I had zero practice in relationships during my youth, I have no clue how to be more then just friends when around girls! which is annoying since I know there are some girls who are actually interested in me and I’m interested in them. But that’s not the only problem, I’m thinking far ahead, i don’t what to wast mine or her time, on a relationship that won’t have the possibility of eventual marriage, which makes me have very high standards in finding someone who would be compatible to my global view of things. And as of yet, I haven’t found a girl who would want to leave Canada eventually, which really sucks since I know i can’t spend much longer in this wonderful yet not-for-me country. and i don’t want to end up like my sisters, who although they married some great husbands, by marrying monos, they’ve pretty much sealed their fate in northamerica, even though my sisters would much rather live elsewhere. Well I guess marriage is about sacrifice, but honestly I know I am not willing to sacrifice my dreams and identity. So this is why I’m still waiting. Waiting for the right girl. Are my expectations to high? Should i wait until I settle down in a country i can live in before starting a relationship?

One reason why I’m thinking about this now, is i have been faced over the last year again and again with the thought of our limited life, and mortality. About a year ago, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, then a few months ago, right after he finished radiation treatment, my mom was diagnosed with a much worse type of cancer! So perhaps that is pushing me to stop wasting time, start a relationship, and make some commitments to someone other then myself.

anyways, I’m not going to rush into anything stupid, Its just got me thinking. I wonder is this inability for relationships common among tcks? from what I’v seen a few of my friends end up getting married much earlier then the mono population, while the majority of my tck friends are very behind monos in having relationships. It’s seems like we grow up fast, but many of us suck at making commitments, and have a late start in the field of dating. another unscientific observation of mine (about my tck friends) is tck females (seems like mono guys find them exotic) seem to do a little better in getting a boyfriends while me and all my male friends seem to have no clue about how to get a girlfriend. Now i now that is one crude observation, which is often not true, but this is just from my own personal observation. I still know many tck girls my age or older who are in the same boat as me (relationshipless).

I haven’t read that tck book yet, but dose it say anything about tcks and their boyfriend/girlfriend relationships?

and does anyone else here suffer from the same problems or similar problems, in the whole field of romance?

anyways i thought this was an intresting topic, although mostlikly it’s been discused on these fourms before.

Popularity: 8% [?]

For an English essay, I wrote about my experiences repatriating into Canada. The paper is a little choppy and their some errors since I lost my “final” draft. Anyways i thought I’d share an older draft with y’all. I had my sis proof read, and she said she like the paper but complained from my tone of voice it sounds like I’m full of myself. That was not intent-It’s just my writing style. Also, I apologize for my bad pinyin, originally I planned to write in characters, but decided it would be a bad idea since my teacher wouldn’t be able to read Chinese. Anyways, here’s my paper, feedback is welcomed!

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Hidden Immigrant

By “Senlando”

Today I woke up looked out the window and screamed ‘oh sh*t!’ My brother hearing me also proceeded to look out the window and screamed the same thing; this was a typical day in my new life for my first winter living in Canada. The first words out of my mouth, although crude, reflected my mixture of surprise and anger at realizing it had snowed the night before without warning (I never paid attention to the weather report on the news). This means that today, it would be too dangerous to ride to school on our bicycles since it’s really hard to see black ice when it’s covered by a few inches of snow, so we would probably have to walk to school and end up being 20 minutes late for class because we didn’t anticipate having to wake up 20 earlier than usual to get there.

Luckily, our teacher was also a “Third Culture Kid” (a person who spent much of their childhood in a culture other than that of their parents) who grew up in British Hong Kong. She understood the transition my brother and I were going through, and gave us a lot of slake and support, while most other teachers would have just reprimanded us for not preparing for the unpredictable weather. When most Canadians observe me, they hear no accent and see no difference in physical appearance that could mark me as a recently arrived immigrant or as a member of a minority group; they just see me as a typical Canadian. They don’t realize I’m from a country where the weather tends to be unchangeable from one day to the next, and therefore, I am not used to paying attention to the weather forecast.

After arriving I decide to find a seat in my classroom, for some reason it seems that gravity pulls me away from the table with all the Canada born students, and I end up sitting at the table along with the minorities and the students who only immigrated to Canada a few years ago from the Czech Republic.

At my new work place, I always find myself preferring to chat with the recent arrivals and taking my lunch break with other immigrants. Gradually I got tired of having to work on the sales floor and being exposed to so many mono-cultural customers and sales associates so I asked to be transferred to the truck unloading and receiving department, where almost all the workers had only lived in Canada for less than two years. We quickly overcame the languages barriers by coming up with a Creole mixed with English, Brazilian Portuguese, and some Kiswahili slang. We quickly got used to each others’ different accents and I became the de facto lead un-loader since I was the only person who both the management and the un-loaders could understand.

After living in Canada for a year this is where I felt most comfortable and built my strongest friendships. I did make a few “Canadian friends” but our friendship were based mostly on comradeship from being suppressed by the evils in upper management, and therefore our friendships were formed more out of necessity than out of actually having anything in common or being able to relate to one another.

While eating spaghetti with chopsticks in the staffroom, a few Canadian born coworkers politely came up to me and marvelled at my chopstick dexterity. They were polite and asked me why I choose to use chopsticks while eating spaghetti (a clearly western dish). I stated that I often choose to use chopsticks especially when eating noodle based foods and that for me chopsticks were the most practical set of utensils for the majority of foods. A coworkers who recently emigrated from China sits down and greets me with “Ni hao (hello)!”, and I greet her back with “Hen hao (I’m very good)! Ni chi bao le mei (Have you eaten yet?-the Chinese equivalent to How’s the weather?)? At this the Canadians who I was just chatting with, are hit with a wave of shock and ask, “Where are you from?” To that my reply is “Taiwan”. This really throws them off since I’m Caucasian and don’t look at all like an Asian.

This is a really strange phenomenon for me. After spending my whole life as a foreigner in my home country, I now have to live as a native in a foreign country. I don’t think I really understand this new culture I’m in and many times I wish I looked physically different than the majority and that I had a foreign accent, that way my ignorance would be excusable, and people would forgive my lack of knowledge instead of thinking I’m some strange loner.

Many of my new Canadian friends think I’m shy. What they don’t realize is that in my home country I’m usually the life of the party, and that the only reason I’m shy in Canada is because I’m observing and studying the people around me, as to make sure I don’t do or say anything stupid.

It has been about four years since I first arrived in Canada. I still feel like a foreigner, but I feel a little less naïve. I have learned much of the slang from my generation, although I’m still trying to catch up, and I’ve completely given up on trying to know how a Canadian is supposed to dress. I guess it just depends on how cool you are so that you can pull something off. I no longer work where I used to work, and most of my friends have moved back to their home countries (since they where migrant workers). So in many ways it seems like I have to start all over again. Perhaps I’m ready to make friends with the locals? Maybe I can hide my true identity long enough in order for people to get to know me as a person and not as some curious cultural mutt.

I really don’t know what I am nor what I’m supposed to be, but in truth I don’t really care anymore, I no longer feel the need to always have to identify or categorize myself. Whatever I am, I know what it feels like being a Hidden Immigrant.

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btw, anyone else find this website imposibly hard to navigate? Took me about half an hour to figure out how to Post in a form, and I’m still not sure if it’ll work! anyways, even though I’m complaining, I’m really thankful for this website and I thank everyone involved in brining us tcks together.

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