About: Uncle Dan
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Name:Uncle Dan
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- Vietnamese in ethnicity, born in Houston, Texas. Lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 14 years while going to a British International School to finish with the International Baccalaureate. Survived only two years in the University of Michigan before ending up in Switzerland. Graduated from an international (and that's meant in every word) hospitality college. Interesting life, to be sure. But not the only one.
2007-11-08 07:19:36
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Posts by Uncle Dan:
Uncle Dan’s Blog: Some People Just Crack Me Up
Who gets CNN International? Anyone who does is probably intimately familiar with the advertising about tourism to whatever country, because its tourism board is shoveling money into it. Sometimes it’s really nice. Sometimes it’s really corny.
I have a few Malaysian friends here. In good fun, we occasionally call them “Malaysia Truly Asia!” which makes no sense really, but is just fun. They hate it.
I’ve an Egyptian friend here. A Canadian friend who gets affectionate when drunk, came up to him one night after having not seen him for some time and said “Aziz! I love that you’re from Egypt! … The Sun, man!” After joking around some time about this, Aziz said “Yeah, that’s all they talk about. It’s all we have! Sun!”
A Thai/Aussie TCK friend then said “You know how every ad for a hot weather country has a hot girl in a swimsuit jumping into a pool or something? Thailand has an old guy walking with a young boy along a beach. It sells, man! Niche marketing!”
And that’s just within a few days here. This is why I love it. Anyone else had something similar?
Edit:
Figured I should edit this for people who don’t get CNN.
Malaysia’s slogan for years was “Malaysia Truly Asia.”
Ads for Egypt invite people to come to the country where they “offer their greatest treasure: The Sun.”
Uncle Dan’s Notes: Race and Nationality
Another post made me think about this, and it also brought me back to a short exchange that Priyanka and I had. I was trying to get her to come to Zürich on her impending trip to Europe, pulling out the Street Parade (www.streetparade.ch) as a further encouragement. She went to the website, saw the photos, and said “Wow, that’s a lot of white people.”
To anywhere here in Europe, that sounds really, really silly. Having been in the US though, I understand where it’s coming from.
As was mentioned in the other thread, Europe, parts of the Middle East, and East Asia (probably Africa too, but I really don’t know) are pretty adept at dealing with different nationalities (and therefore cultures) because so many pass through all the time. Europe has had a long history of treating each other pretty differently based on nationality (and to some extent ethnicity and religion). Asia is just Asia, and… yeah, you get the point. There are still clashes of course, but often based on nationality (German and Dutch football fans, anyone?).
But if a bunch of Europeans go to the US or Canada, they become “White” or, sometimes, “European.” Sometimes their real culture gets highlighted. I’m betting that French and Germans are pretty recognized. Take the Spanish however, for example. Americans are so used to anyone speaking Spanish as a native tongue to be “Hispanic” that they have a pretty slanted idea of what Spanish culture is, not to mention whatever main characteristics they might have.
So when Priyanka said “Look at all the white people” she really didn’t realize that in that big crowd were Swiss, Germans, French, Italians, Bulgarians, Russians, Croatians, Brazilians, Portuguese, Spanish, Turks, Arabs, Greeks, English, Irish and whatever else. Take all of these different cultures, plant them somewhere in the US, and they become “White people” and, to people who can discern as much, “Brown people.”
It’s possible that this is a good thing, in that the culture of the US manages to dissolve all these national differences to mix people up and divide them again into bigger chunks of “Asians, Black people, Hispanics and White people,” but I don’t like it. The individual cultures get lost.
So why does this happen? Well, thinking out loud, for one, the US (and Canada, for that matter, being pretty similar) are very, very big countries. It’s understandable that the majority of people often haven’t had to tackle with the complexities of 800 or more years of national rivalries. The other thing is immigration. When you get to a new, strange place, you bond with what’s similar, and sometimes the most similar thing you have is race, and so you start to identify with that, rather than what came before. This is probably intimately familiar to TCKs who would’ve observed it on a smaller scale: A new kid comes to school, finds no one of the same nationality… but race, that’s pretty close, right? Asians are closer to other Asians (most of the time) than they are to the average White American. So just expand it to country-scale. Immigrants, too, are often seeking a new life. Not all of them will want to hang onto older traditions. And as the family generations continue, their kids, now in cultural limbo, have little to hang onto for a sense of identity other than race. And considering the long, long importance of immigration, that’s not hard at all to imagine.
Anyway, I did want to throw that out there for discussion, and to write my thoughts down. It’s an interesting way to approach the difference between American perception and… well everyone else’s.
And don’t worry Priya, you’re still cool in my book. You’ve just lived there too long. 
Uncle Dan’s Blog: Fun with Languages
So it’s been a long time since I wrote an actual blog entry. So far it’s been some notes, and that’s not as fun, even if it’s interesting.
I spent the last few months in Zürich, which was alright. A few times, friends came by to visit. I also went downtown to the Fanzone to watch the Euro Cup on the big big screen with lots of screaming fans, which was fun.
And now I’m back in Brig on internship. It’s a pretty easy job, and there’s not much to say about it.
What I *will* say is that there’s no more refreshing feeling than that of five or more languages going on around you. English, German, Cantonese, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Arabic, whatever. It’s great stuff. After a while of just one language, whatever it be, hearing several going on at the same time in the same vicinity is like fully waking up in the morning after being half asleep for an hour or more.
By now, most of my older friends have gone, but the prospect of meeting more is pretty invigorating, I have to say. Not to mention a relaxed summer in the Alps. Last night, I had Indonesian and Chinese food, followed by time outside on the balcony with shisha. Earlier, a friend introduced me to Ukrainian Honey Pepper Vodka. We have Swiss folk music (read, yodeling and such) on in the coffee bar. It’s not bad. 
That said, my internship gives me plenty of time to write and post, now, so I should be on with rather more frequency than before. I believe.
Uncle Dan’s Notes: Fun Facts About Indonesia
I lived for 14 years in Indonesia. People expect I know a lot about it, and I do, but not really beacuse of having lived there so long. Lots of expat friends I had there know less than I do, but some of them have a far more personal relationship with Indonesia that I can’t help but be a little jealous of. Really, I ended up knowing a lot because I was interested.
Relatively useless country as it can be, its culture is deep, complex, and utterly beautiful.
Indonesia suffers from some of the same problems that a lot of former colonies face. There’s nothing uniting it except the fact that all of the islands were once ruled by the Dutch, and to a smaller extent the Portuguese. There’s a distinctly nationalistic feel to the government, and any Communist party is banned.
They also have a corruption problem. This is a good and bad thing, as is common in such countries. On the one hand, you can do whatever you want so long as you have money, and as expatriates we did. On the other hand, anyone can do whatever they want so long as they have money. People complain all the time that the police force, judicial system, bureaucracy, government, army and everything is so corrup, but they don’t think twice to pay off a traffic cop rather than go through the legal process. As Charles De Gaulle once said about Brazil, Indonesia is a country of tomorrow, and always will be.
THat’s the thing, really. It has so much potential, but doesn’t use it, because it can’t be bothered. It’s a good and bad thing. I love how relaxed, chilled and easygoing Indonesians are, but I know that doesn’t get them anywhere. Anyone who’s afraid of Muslim militancy getting quakey about Indonesia needn’t bother, because Indonesians are too chilled to realy do anything these days.
I was living in Indonesia in 1998 when Suharto was toppled from power. Suharto’s regime wasn’t bad as far as dictatorships go, but far from bloodless. He had fake elections every few years, with big demonstrations for each party every time. Everyone knows though, that most of the time people in the street are paid to wear the T-shirts and wave the flags, generally making a ruckus for each party, and Golkar always won anyway.
After that, an interim president named B.J. Habibie (no, I don’t make up these names) took over before proper elections were held. He didn’t want to let go, but the next president was heralded in, whose nickname was Gus Dur. Everyone expected Megawati to get elected instead because of popular support (and more demonstrations of people paid in instant noodles), but Gus Dur came first. It probably says something about the nature of Indonesian government when Megawati was named VP after some more demonstrating in the streets after the results named Gus Dur at the top.
Anyway, Gus Dur was a former Muslim cleric, but we shouldn’t hold that against him. By all his writing and the speeches he DID make, he was a clever, shrewd and pretty witty guy. He was also old and pretty senile. And half blind. And handicapped. He had to have a couple of marshals help him into his seat in parliament. And he fell asleep in one session. Drooling into his chair. It was all over the news.
When they suggested that he leave office, he came out of the presidential palace in his underwear to say no. That was all over the news too. Anyway, he ended up going.
THe thing about Megawati Sukarnoputri was that she was the granddaughter of Sukarno, one of the founders of the country (read: Sukarnoputri literally means “Princess of Sukarno”). So people attributed the qualities of Sukarno to her. She didn’t want power, but kind of had it thrust upon her because everyone thought she’d be so great. It sounds like a nice kind of didn’t-want-it-nobility but…
She was pretty much a housewife in office. She didn’t do much, didn’t know how to do much, and didn’t really try. She wasn’t, after all, a real politician or leader. Everyone just thought so because of her family. In fact, she was pretty inept, cool as it might have been for a woman to be president of a Muslim country. When there was a particularly bad flood in Java, with half of Jakarta underwater, she was throwing a birthday party for her husband in Bali, and took a week to get back. There were nice pictures of her handing out Indomie to flood victims, but, well…
Anyway. National identity is important, because otherwise it’s just a zillion different tribes. Aceh fought for independence for 20something years, and settled for autonomy after the Tsunami virtually wiped out the area and they decided it was nice to be part of a bigger country that could help it out.
Sometime in 2001 (I think), Dayak tribesmen started coming out of the rainforests in Kalimantan and started killing people. During Soeharto’s time, he encouraged Madurese people to move to Kalimantan to settle, because they were traders and merchants. That meant they were stingy, argumentative bastards too, but I guess good for the economic development. It should be known that the Dayaks are headhunters. You know, the kind that cut off heads, shrink and petrify them, then hang them outside the hut. Tensions between the Dayaks and Madurese went up enough that the Dayaks decided to march out with machetes and go to town.
Only in Indonesia.
I think about roughly the same time there was trouble in Maluku (Maluccas, to some people), the original Spice Islands. Probably half the people there are Christian, the other half Muslim. Tension flared, and next thing you know, they’re killing each other with machetes and homemade guns. The police steps in, but because it’s mostly Christian, takes a side. The army then steps in, but because it’s mostly Muslim, they took a side too. So at one point, the army and the police were shooting at each other.
Only in Indonesia.
I lived in Kemang longest in Jakarta, which was kind of the cool area to go. The mayor of Jakarta decided to build his big new office there, and suddenly you saw a lot more gardens, lights and ornamentation around the place. Particularly in front where his office window would look out. The funny thing was that they started using it before the top few floors were finished. Turns out they’d run out of the money that they budgeted for the building, what with the bribes and everything.
Only in Indonesia.
Public transportation is pretty horrible, and it’s a status symbol to have a car or motorbike no matter how crappy, so one day the government decided to start a monorail project. And then they ran out of money. A few of the pillars were put up, but now no one knows what to do with them. One of the more recent attempts to help traffic congestion was to improve the bus system. They knew that no one wanted to travel by bus because that meant you were poor and couldn’t afford a car, so they bought brand spanking new buses, and tried to encourage use by making one whole lane of the highways exclusively for bus use. But since people STILL see buses as for poor people, it’s not used, and traffic is even more stuck with one fewer lane that no one else uses. And because no one cares about maintenance, the new buses now look pretty crappy.
Only in Indonesia.
Still, things were looking up when Bambang (yes, that’s his name) Yudhoyono was elected president. He seemed like the right kind of forceful character to get Indonesia going. But then they got lazy. As always.
I should note that Suharto, despite everything he’s done, has still not been arrested properly. Every time they get a warrant to do so, he says he has health problems and has to go to the doctor. In other words “Sorry, I can’t go to jail, I’m sick. Here’s my doctor’s note.” And it works.
Again, only in Indonesia.
Uncle Dan’s Notes: Fun Facts About Switzerland
In the spirit of gaijinsmash.net and Kristine’s funny post about Canada, I will therefore begin to speak about the funny-isms that make up Switzerland.
For those who don’t nkow, Switzerland is a country right in the middle of Europe with 7ish million people scattered across scenic mountains and lakes. They’re famous for clocks, cows, cheese, chocolate, and banks.
There are four national languages in Switzerland: German, French, Italian and Rumantsch (which is spoken by probably 30,000 people somewhere in the South-East where no one gives a damn). People probably think this means it’s really multilingual, and to some extent it IS. A few weeks ago my Russian friend came to visit me here in Zurich, and we went to get a beer. My German is better than my French, and her French is better than her German, so while I ordered in German, she ordered in French, and the waiter flipped between the two without a pause to think. That was pretty cool. One day, that will be me, if I ever get around to attaining true fluency in anything other than English.
Nevertheless, some things are hilarious. When taking the train from Zurich to Geneva, you will hear the announcement around halfway:
“Nächste Halt: Yverdon-les-bains
Prochain Arrete: Yverdon-les-bains
Next stop: Yverdon-les-bains”
I mean, I can understand when a city has different names in each language (like Visp/Viege, Geneve/Genf/Geneva and so on), but that there is just silly.
But the Swiss don’t really speak German. They speak Swiss-German. While German in general has more accents and dialects than English (which is quite something, I think), Swiss-German is pretty unique. And even there, it doesn’t stop. Each city/canton in Switzerland has its OWN variation of the tongue. The very worst (by experience and reputation) is Valais/Wallis, which is pretty indecipherable even to people familiar with the Zurich dialect.
Anyway, so Switzerland is a confederation, which means that each of the states has a lot of autonomy to decide whatever it wants. This explains the huge variety you get across the country. Plus, have you ever wondered who Switzerland’s president is? I bet you don’t know. Probably 80% of the people living here don’t know. I don’t even know her name. There’s a council which runs the country, and one person from it every year gets to get the title, but it doesn’t really mean anything. The title is just there to pick who gets to greet foreign officials from the plane and such. Apparently on this council they have to make sure that they have at *least* 3 French-speaking ministers, just to make sure they have representation.
So crossing across Switzerland can sometimes be like crossing against a few different countries.
In Zurich, the public transportation is unrivalled. You can get almost anywhere in the canton by bus, train, tram and a little walking, and a large part of it is electrically powered. The scheduling is almost perfect, with buses, trams and trains arriving to the minute of when they’re supposed to, and if not give pretty exact estimates of how much later they’ll be. Punctuality is king, and being late to work by even 5-10 minutes can get you in pretty deep manure. Likewise, they really respect your right to take holidays and so on. Zurich also has a laarge population of Eastern Europeans and Turks. In Zurich, people generally speak more English than French, and will be willing to help you out as a tourist asking stupid questions. Just don’t speak bad Swiss-German. It’s the equivalent of being a fresh tourist going to Harlem and talking gangsterspeak.
The problem there though, is that even if you ask them to speak in High German, or even English, they have so much Swiss accent that it sounds almost the same.
In Geneva, the public transport is pretty bleh by comparison. There’s no good map of where you need to go and the bus ticket system is pretty weird. It’s generally dirtier except around the nicer areas, like the U.N. building. I’ve had friends show up to work there drunk, or get drunk at work, and so on. The Francophone culture runs pretty strongly through it. There, you’ll find Africans, Arabs, Turks, Portuguese and Brazilians pretty common there. Here the Swiss-French share something with their neighbors in a certain pride in the French language and, quite often, will NOT speak English with you if you don’t speak some French, even if they actually do know English.
The Italian part isn’t that Italian, as they all learn German anyway. Probably they only speak Italian at home.
And no one gives a damn about the Rumantsch, though apparently it’s supposed to be the closest language in existence to original Latin, as the language developed from back in the Roman days. And they also all speak German anyway.
Switzerland is also typically European in the sense that they close almost everything on Sundays, and after hours. On Sunday, the only place to go shopping are the train stations or the airports, because after deliberation, it was decided that they HAVE to stay open. Most shops close by 6pm, too. I suppose the Swiss feel that on a Sunday, one should go to church, and then go hike up a mountain and enjoy the view all day. Not that many people actually do this, though.
Uncle Dan’s Blog: Music of a Small World
Almost 3 years ago from now, I first came to Switzerland. In that fall of 2005 I started at my international hospitality college here. The first two terms were amazingly memorable. They were in one campus in a tiny village on the shores of Lac Leman, and it was more boarding school than college, except that we had more freedom than boarders.
Among my most vivid memories are from the student bar there, which was small, dinky, and only served light drinks (beer, wine, and Smirnoff Ice). It didn’t have a great sound system. The furniture inside it was worn from years of only students using and cleaning it.
But the music, now. The music was awesome. Not because it was especially good, trendy or otherwise, but because the people playing the music were students themselves, and it being an international college, we ended up with music from everywhere. I loved it. Within a few months I had favorites among Bulgarian, Serbian, Spanish, Latino, Indian, Brazilian, Arab, Norwegian and Turkish music, outside of the mainstream American/Western-European music. Something about these equatorial countries made their dance music just plain fun.
I wasn’t the only one to enjoy it, but there were some who didn’t either. Some people just don’t like something that’s different from their own. My German friends couldn’t stand Punjabi music at the time, for example.
Still, I loved how the Latinos and Latinas would salsa at first opportunity. I loved how the Bulgarians, after hearing one of their songs come on, would make room, plant a chair in thei middle and dance around it with one girl dancing on top. The Indians would Bhangra, the Arabs would yell “Yalla yalla!”, the Croatians would jump and the Norwegians would sing (badly).
Despite the fact that we felt like kids in this almost-boarding-school, and that we had long hours and days in a village with not much else to do but drink in the colder months… the place left a strong impression. Even people who didn’t like it remember it well. And for years afterwards, people will say “It’s not like how it was in Bouveret. We were more together, over there.”
Which kind of goes to show how people come together better in adverse circumstances. None of us by choice would have lived in that small village named Bouveret. But having done so, had forged some unforgettable memories. As in the army, going through whatever difficulties or otherwise with the same people more or less consistently bonds you more deeply and more quickly than just casual acquaintance can.
From what I’ve gathered, it’s the same in international schools. Often, we have no one else but the friends we have in school to relate to, and we go through it all together.
So the funny thing is that even when I don’t necessarily even know much about a person I call friend, I still consider them close. A lot of the friends I had and have I don’t know much that anyone else would ask about. Often I don’t know about their families, their lives before, what their parents do, or anything that other people might ask me about them expecting us to be friends. But nevertheless, the bond is there. The rest feels unimportant.
Anyway, these thoughts came into mind because I’m trying to track down the music we had, and finding them here and there is incredibly nostalgic.
Your favorite hotel/place to stay?
We’ve all traveled. So where was the best place you ever stayed in?
I have to say that the moment I walked into the Hotel/Resort Nikko in Nusa Dua, Bali, I was impressed. I still have that impression even after staying in other hotels which copied its architectural idea… which was to let you enter the lobby and gaze right out to sea from the top of a cliff. The hotel was built on a cliffside with the beach below.
http://images.hotel-rates.com/hotels/DPS_NBRS-exter-1.jpg
Since then I’ve stayed in the Grand Hyatt and other big hotels there which had something similar, BUT that was the first, and solidified my view that Asian hotels are the best in the world.
And on another note! I enjoyed my stay in the Dover Castle Hostel in London. Good location in central London, for cheap rates, included breakfast, free wireless and luggage storage.
So where do you recommend?
Uncle Dan’s Notes: Bashing!
When you first find you’re a TCK, ohhh it’s so easy to start bashing your home country.
In fact, two years on, I’m still doing it. I *am* more careful about it, but yes, I still do it. Well, the USA is pretty easy to bash, I think, though I know some will disagree.
The other thing to take into account is that quite a lot of TCKs are people from Western countries going to developing countries. This is usually because sponsoring organizations are more likely to afford doing it in the West, whether it be church, government or MNC.
And I suppose the experience abroad before maybe returning to the Home culture gives you perspective to disagree with the accepted norms. Not to mention fighting the ignorance.
But it’s a bit hard to not feel guilty, eh? Just a little bit. That’s why you give the country its second, third, fourth and whatevermany chances.
A friend of mine who I know loves his home country, recently felt rejected by it. Without going into details, let’s just say that he felt like their chance to welcome him back into their fold was lost, possibly forever. Despite his patriotism and greater identification with there than any other country he’d lived or felt linked to, he feels like they just don’t want him. And fine and fair enough, he’s come to think.
Me? Well, in my mind, the United States and I just don’t seem to get along. It’s nothing personal, but there are times when you just figure that leaving each other alone is best for all concerned.
The thing is that the country and politics, so often criticized these days, can change. That’s the nature of democracy. But there are plenty of aspects of its culture I just can’t get on board with. Anyone who follows my posts and threads has probably gathered that.
And yet there are TCKs who love it, because that’s more what they’re used to, than the other way around.
We’re also used to thinking in a moderately left-wing position. At least, that’s my gathering from people on the site and elsewhere. Right-wing politics tend to favor the home nation above others, and being international people that’s not usually up our alley. But there are TCKs who do that too. The friend I mentioned above is relatively right-wing, because he sees nations, goals and long term planning. It’s not a bad thing, either. The social systems left-wing politics advocates slow things down, even though they help people.
So it’s all a big balance. The country you bash, I might love. And vice versa.
I suppose the point of this note is to highlight the sheer variety that TCKs can come in. We’re always tempted to think the they think just like us. They don’t, but they DO have access to the same breadth of knowledge you are. They just come to different conclusions.
The feeling I get sometimes, both here and on the Facebook TCK forums last year, is that TCKs go “Yeah! I hate that about <home country> too! Yeesh!”, but right from the beginning, you can tell that the opinion can really vary. Military Brats might grow up pretty patriotic of home, without the same sympathy for other countries. Missionary Kids might or might not grow up with an unswervable belief in God, where other TCKs are secular or atheistic. Business kids and Diplomat brats often grow up with privileges, whereas other TCKs grow up “bush” as Warona would say.
So don’t take for granted that just because we all had these multicultural backgrounds that we necessarily see things exactly as you do. We’re all guilty of having that giddy first joy of being able to think “These people see it just like me!” They don’t. They just have a similar wealth of experiences.
It’s been pretty good overall, though. More often we just want to find out what it is everyone else is thinking. Just don’t catch yourself in the trap that everyone else agrees with you. Both TCKs and Non-TCKs are guilty of that, but we can try to be more progressive.
Where’s your favorite place to sit and relax?
This can be anywhere. A patch of grass. A bench. The top of a specific mountain. A cafe. A bar. A streetside. A beach. Whatever.
This would probably be the Stockalperschloss in Brig, Switzerland, for me. It’s an unimpressive castle with unimpressive gardens… but it’s pleasant. I could read a book all day there, laying on the grass, with the alps all around me.
A Friend’s Note: My name is not Suzie Wong
A friend posted this on Facebook, and I thought it was pretty damn funny. So I post it here for your pleasure:
It’s quite sad that in this day and age, race is still such a defining point of who and what you are. Seems like no matter what my personality is like, what my life experiences were, people will see my Asian face and define by that.
I think in English, I read in English, I write in English, it’s my native language and it’s the language I know best. But people always feel so compelled to tell me,”Wow your English is really good.” It’s like someone telling me,”Wow, you blink really good, you do it without thinking.”
Even worse are people who dumb down their English when they speak to me because they assume I can’t speak English. “You very good drawer. You draw the picture so nice.”
Me: “Thanking you so very much, mister. You is talking bullshit very good.”
And then there’s the men with Asian fetishes. Ah, well, what can you say about a man who pursues Asian women because he has fantasies of having a quiet, obedient Asian wife/chef/concubine who will wash his feet for him when he comes home from work while hand-feeding him dim sum at the same time?
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with the stereotypes, they became stereotypes for a reason; because they are common characteristics of Asian culture. It’s also okay to laugh at them and make fun of them, there’s nothing wrong with laughing at one’s own culture. The perfect ultimate culture does not exist. All cultures have their own flaws, and it is by no means unpatriotic to recognise and acknowledge this.
However, it is not okay for one to tell people they should change their culture and their way of thinking just because they are different from his. Something that is acceptable in one country may not be acceptable in another because of differences in culture. It can be confusing and unnerving to have to live a way of life that is so different from what one is used to.
So what should one do?
Option A: Accept that different countries have different ways of thinking and different philosophies of life. Acknowledge that it may be shocking or bizarre but respect that country’s culture and rules of behaviour while living there.
Option B: Tell the people of that country that they should follow what is done in your country. When explained the rules of behaviour of that country, refuse to follow them and instead preach about how things are done in your country.
Sadly, there are many people in this world who choose option B when visiting another country.
TCK Video Requests (Please send your stories!)
Some of you may know that I’m working on TCK videos. For fun, for you, and because few things bring a story more to life than seeing it in motion. TCKs have fantastic stories, and it’s time to tell them yourself.
So without further ado, I’d like to humbly request YOUR participation! With further expansion for the TCKid website, we hope to be able to use these to make more content for you and other users.
I’d just like to request that, when possible, you record a short video of yourself telling your background and whatever other fun TCK things come across your mind. It can be of any length, so long as it’s hopefully under 50mb (though if you’re awesome, I’ll make concessions ). I recommend about 3-5 minutes, if you have enough to talk about.
To send it, I highly recommend using www.sendspace.com as it allows up to 300mb of online storage space, with the link to be emailed where you want it to be. So please email your videos to tckproject@gmail.com
Please note that your participation in this is entirely voluntary. Also note that in sending and receiving of the video, you provide express permission to use it and agree to those terms. This video will be used only for the providing of improved content for this website.
Thank you ahead of time!
Uncle Dan’s Notes: Asian Americans and TCKs
I’m going to the reference of my own experience in this post, namely being a TCK, and being (technically) an Asian-American. Hopefully it can relate to some of your experiences.
I never thought that much about being Asian American. It had occurred to me that people didn’t take me that seriously as an American growing up, because I looked Asian, but then most of my friends weren’t exactly what they said they were either. Lots of Eurasians, who had a strange, mixed loyalty to both their birth nationalities/races. And it was perfectly fine to us, so I fit in that category, in a way.
Coming to the US was an education in itself, for all the reasons I think American TCKs are familiar with. Race is a big thing in the US, for good and ill. It’s so recognized that people define themselves by it. This holds true for Asian Americans.
Second, third and later generations of Asians in the US stick together out of a shared sense of confusion about what they should be. Older, more traditional family members, do all those lovely Asian things to the younger ones: inputting values of family loyalty, career security, and ALWAYS, some kind of musical instrument.
At the same time, they get institutionalized by the world outside, which is American culture. Independence, self-achievement and freedom of opinion are things which tend to clash. As such, Asian Americans tend to have a lot in common. They can, and sometimes do, stick together because they feel that the others know what they’re going through.
I took a class when I was in Michigan, which was probably my most interesting class ever. “Chinese Culture as portrayed through American Film.” It was fascinating. I was learning about a whole new world of the way Asians were portrayed in popular culture in the US for the last century. From Fu Manchu to Bruce Lee to Lucy Liu. Something about the portrayal was never right, but always slotted neatly into the minds of “normal” Americans. It leads to the “Lotus Blossom” idea of the purty and simplicity of Asian women, which is misleading. Not to mention the whole Femme Fatale thing of the 20’s movies, and Lucy Liu’s whole Dominatrix-Charlie’s-Angels thing.
It’s amazing Asians haven’t rebelled in the US considering all the blatant racism in the younger years, and the more subtle kinds you might still see, but that too, is part of the difference between older and younger generations.
It more or less splits into two groups. The whole thing is based on the idea of the “ideal citizen” which traditional Asians are seen to be: hardworking, unquestioning, and usually no trouble.
One side argues that this is bad, because while African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans were marching for Civil Rights in the 1960s, Asian-Americans were keeping their heads down and making no trouble: doing your laundry, washing your dishes, and smiling over a pot of rice. They think that the example of William Hung (the Asian guy who sung terribly in American Idol to earn millions of dollars for his good attitude) was disgusting, and showed that they still weren’t taken seriously.
The other side argues that they don’t get in trouble (they’re never pointed at when things go wrong the way that African-Americans and Hispanics are), and that all in all it’s not a bad thing to be model citizens. We’re happy and get on with our lives, right?
And the first side argues again that that is just being SO Asian, and accepting of the inequality that Asians get.
I remember that in this class I was encouraged to pick a side, because the young professor teaching it was interested in what we thought about it. Or at least having an opinion. And naturally, you can imagine that I really couldn’t. Up until that moment it wasn’t my battle.
How can you explain to someone that for all your life, none of that mattered? I had never even thought about it. I couldn’t come up with a good answer. NOW I can, but it’s been a long while.
The funny thing is that there were people who thought it WAS my battle. Because I am, technically, a second generation Asian-American. I just didn’t live in the US. So I was offered by the Asian fraternities to join them in their brotherhood of Asians which felt so, so weird. So naturally I didn’t join them.
Most Asian-Americans I meet these days are very Americanized. It’s not something I relate to. Interestingly though, one of the friends I made in Michigan was a Korean who had only spent his high-school years in the US, and as such was very in-between. In hindsight, I think he was influenced by so many people to call himself Asian-American, but at heart still felt different. I think that people wanted to call him Asian-American, because that’s what Asians WERE to most Americans. They were either that, or under the lovely umbrella term of “FOB”.
Which is sad, because one thing that seems consistent with a lot of Asian-Americans is that sense of rebellion, of saying “We Are Not Our Parents!” You shouldn’t really rebel based on what you’re not, but what you are. And Asian-Americans are far from figuring out what they are.
In this, I think TCKs face a similar issue. I think that instead of declaring what we’re not, we should be trying to discover just what it is that we are. Rebelling for the simple satisfaction it brings isn’t the answer. Just having the term “TCK” makes it a lot easier, but it’s a start and a stepping stone.
Let’s think outside the box.
Uncle Dan’s Notes: Politics Indeed
So I know that Brice has been pretty unflagging in his support for Obama, and I have to admit it is pretty cool to have a TCK as president, BUT…
I was discussing this with a friend in London who is an IR whiz, and I generally trust his judgment, even if he leans more to the right. I asked him who HE would vote for, if he were American (He’s French by nationality, but yes, complex background of a TCK).
He said he’d vote of McCain, without hesitation.
So I asked him why.
And they’re pretty valid reasons. And after looking over the different stances that each candidate has, I’m honestly a little bit torn.
In an international sense, especially regarding Iraq and the various conflicts the US is involved in, I have to lean towards McCain’s position. I *do* think there’s progress in Iraq, and I *do* think that more time is all that’s necessary. Obama wants an immediate withdrawal, ASAP, which I think would be a mistake. Clinton want a prolonged withdrawal, which isn’t bad, but still sends the wrong message. While I don’t think that the US should’ve gone there in the first place, now that they’re there they have to go all the way.
As people say, you don’t go to someone’s house, eat their food, watch their TV, and so on, and leave without cleaning up. The same holds true in this case, except that abandoning Iraq would only bite them in the ass later. Obama thinks that a withdrawal will send a message to the current Iraqi government to shape up, but I don’t really think so. The last thing they need is something to undermine their confidence.
On the other hand, there’s a lot I don’t really agree with in McCain’s position. I don’t believe in privatized social security or healthcare. Sure, a government-run system might be bureaucratic and unwieldy, but it stays focused on the idea that service, not profits, are the goal.
And that justifies getting tax levels to where they were before. Not to mention fixing the deficit.
Both Democratic candidates also support same sex marriage, are pro-choice regarding abortions, and are willing to fund stem-cell research.
So realy, where domestic issues are concerned, I’m all for what Obama and Clinton say. Where international issues are concerned, I prefer McCain’s position. Clinton and particlarly Obama seem to be advocating a more protectionist policy. And I don’t like that one bit.
Obama wants to help increase American jobs, and so on, by “fighting against trade agreements that undermine American competitiveness.” Protectionism didn’t work in the 1920s and 1930s, and it certainly won’t again.
Clinton has some traditionalist views, focusing on family values and so on, which I don’t like in general, BUT, I think she’s got a good head on her shoulders. She wants to improve the American economy by improving healthcare and education.
What I think is interesting for us in her position too, is that she wants to end tax breaks for “American companies that ship jobs overseas.” Hmm. I’m not sure if she means companies who outsource, or companies who send expatriates out. This is a limit to globalization in either way, which I think is a step backwards, and smells of protectionism.
History lesson to the unaware, in the 20s to early 40s the US had a highly protectionist policy. They stepped out of international politics, figuring that they had no business in the affairs of other countries. This undermined the strength of the League of Nations, leading to Mussolini’s increasingly Fascist regime, Japan’s “excesses” in Asia, and later on doing nothing to stop Hitler’s early romps around Europe. A country as big as the USA cannot afford to “let others sort out their own problems.” It might not have the best ideas, and they can be silly, but they have to stay involved.
Who am I voting for? I have no idea. The other thing to always bear in mind is that while the candidate is important, it’s rarely ever just them. Behind them are endorsements, promises, support groups, interest groups, companies, and everything else. While McCain most probably is a good man, he’s got much of the same backing as the idiot that’s in office now, and I’m not sure I can support that.
Though I have to figure out *how* I’m going to vote first. I haven’t gotten around to figuring out how to absentee vote as an American abroad.
With thanks to the Washington Post website for its summarized issue statements from all the candidates at:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/
Uncle Dan’s Blog - Because Brice Asked Me To…
Actually he didn’t. But he did mention that it’s been a while since I wrote here, so…
I both do, and don’t, have a lot to write here. So it’s one of those “Wow a lot happened, but it’s hard to know where to begin” sort of stories.
Maybe an update, then?
I did indeed, graduate from my college. I got an extension on my sort-of-dissertation, because of a skiing accident I think I wrote about before. Concussions aren’t fun. In a way, I’m still recovering, though it’s in minor things.
It was emotional, though. And because I had that extension, and I didn’t have a job lined up right afterwards, well, it’s fair to say I’ve been floating. I hate the feeling.
Actually I would like it. I’ve done it before. The thing is that instead of floating like a tied down balloon, now I’m a baloon on the end of a tether. You can see the string unwinding, and soon you’ll be out and up and out of control.
It annoys me a little that some of my friends, newly graduated or graduating soon, are “going to take a break for a few months.” It sounds great. I’d love to do that. But I just don’t seem to have the luxury. In fact, most people don’t, but when enough people around you are talking that way, you catch the fever of wanting to, and later realize you can’t.
It’s waking up from the dream, and finding that soon I won’t be a legal resident in Switzerland, and I have nowhere I can realistically go to in the US, at least nowhere I’d be comfortable just hanging out till I get something real. So I’m looking around for jobs in the vain hope of finding something interesting and, fingers crossed, outside the US.
But while I’ve been here, I’ve been back to my college in Brig to visit and tie over leftover business, not to mention investigate getting a temporary internship there to hold me over until I get something better. And it’s been nice to see people, and to live, a little bit, the student life again. Especially that student life. It’s quite extraordinary, as I’m sure many of you have gleaned from what I’ve written so far.
And there are times I can’t help feeling like a carrion bird hanging around a corpse, looking for fresh eyes when they’re long gone.
I take pride in being able to meet lots of people, and take strength from them, and confidence. I take pride in never being tied down to just one group. But a lot of the friends I’d known for over two and a half years are gone, and most of the rest are going soon too. The sense of loss is pretty overwhelming, even in the face of all the newer people I also enjoy the company of.
And I also feel like I’m getting older. Most of my life I was the younger one. Younger brother, latest birthday in my yeargroup, all that. And now suddenly I’m an old hand in the community, and it feels weird. I look at the new people coming in and think “Kids.” It’s not that nice, and I try to be open-minded, but the impression stays.
There are moments though, that make it all worth it. Like sitting and chatting with people from every continent. It reminds me of what I love most about the place.
But it everyone says that now is the time to leave all that behind. Time to think serious things. My parents say this above all. Get a job, get a career, find someone nice, get a family. School is fun, but you’ve got to get on with your life.
And I wonder if it’s that simple. That it’s just a stage, and then you just forget most of it and focus on yourself. That all the things I thought were important aren’t anymore.
But I still think the lessons I took from there were good ones. Not the classes. That’s just to help make money. But what I learned as a person, that’s what I treasure. And why not aspire to bigger things in life? If we have nothing to aspire to, what’s the point?
I know people who say “I’m just a regular guy, so I’m happy with the things I have.” Which is fine. It really is. But I hate the feeling of lost potential. I’m not the neatest person, or the most organized… but I am efficient. I try to do the same with less, and it usually works. So the idea of me settling for a normal life just doesn’t sit well with me. I know it’s probably realistic, and it might well end up being what I get… but I don’t see that as a reason to stop trying.
But what do I aspire to? I haven’t figured that out yet. Suggestions?
Dear Uncle, How can I build long-term relationships without ruining them?
Dear Uncle Dan,
I have a Friendship problem.
Almost all of them are mostly short-term. It’s fun to chat and email them, but i seem so lonely sometimes. How can i build long-term relationships without ruining them?
—
Dear Jirah,
I think a lot of us have this same problem. Friendships can be a flimsy thing, but that flimsiness is a help sometimes, because while you might feel like you lose some people with time and distance, the lack of time and distance can bring them back just as easily.
People tend to tell you that your real friends will stick with you over years, and this is true. But I think that no one is actually unkind, or malicious to you, when a friendship dies for understandable reasons like time, distance, and a loss of a shared environment. The friendship might not be what it used to, but you’ll always share the memory of it at least, and what it meant to you.
I have some friends I haven’t really talked to for years, and it makes me feel bad at times, because those friendships meant a lot to me then, but it sometimes feels like there isn’t much left, and that as a result, all my friendships are short term, and forever doomed to just be the occasional email or facebook update afterwards.
But I also think it’s a choice. If you value a friendship, you have to work for it. It doesn’t come by itself just because you’re friends. It’s often a conscious decision you have to make, because especially for us, it’s so easy just to abandon them in your mind, and move onto new friends, because they always come and go.
Short friendships aren’t necessarily bad, because time doesn’t decide strength and they can be very intense in that short time. But they are sad, because you never have enough time to spend with the people you really value. The only thing I can recommend is to make the extra time necessary to maintain them once they leave.
But don’t let that limit you to the new friends you can make. Don’t get hung up on the losses of yesterday that you miss the opportunities today for a fulfilling life tomorrow. It’s so easy to do that, too, with the losses we face in that area. But a good friend is a good friend, and as many people say, sometimes the time passes and when you see them again it’s like nothing changed.
I won’t say that happens all the time, because I’ve had it change on me before, because a change in environments and lives going in opposite directions can change the way you approach an old friendship, but more often than not, it’s a positive experience.
All I can really say is to enjoy the time you have with people, and if you really value them, make the effort to keep them once they’re not in your daily life anymore, but not to the extent that you shut out the people who could be in your daily life now.
Dear Uncle, Is it common to be older than your age?
Dear Uncle Dan
Is it common for TCK’s upon returing to “home base” to have a 40 year olds view upon young people your one age? I grew up in a less than free socitey and most of my friends were refugees, TCK’s or lets say in short people who have lived lives that forced them to grow up and not be care free. I can seem to communicate with these kids, ive tried but were on completly wave lenghts. Heck i get mistakend as 25 at times!
—
Dear Omar
Actually, it is. This is a personality trait which isn’t limited to TCKs, but it’s a product of our lifestyle. When I was 20, I was taken for 25 as well, haha, just because of my attitude towards things. It’s not something to be ashamed of, but I know it can be alienating at times.
Ruth Van Reken describes this as a sense of early maturity, which goes hand in hand with delayed adolescence. Because we had to face both experiences and emotions a lot earlier than others, we matured quickly. The problem with that is that maybe we weren’t free to discover our own sense of border and limits which is what adolescence is all about, so sometimes we do that after repatriating because suddenly there are all these new options available to us.
But we were talking about early maturity. Well, think about it. Refugees, constant travel, saying goodbye, making and breaking friendships, tossing cultures, having to deal with travel, changing schools, languages, and not to mention whatever situation is in the country they live in. A common TCK is the kind who goes from a developed to a developing country, and with the package comes with living a relatively privileged life in comparison with the masses, and having to potentially deal with war, riots, violence, corruption, and all these things.
It’s hard to say how they wouldn’t be more mature… *in some ways* at least. When I got to the US, I was very mature in some select ways, but as far as American culture went, there was a lot about me that wasn’t mature. After all, I’d never worked for money, I’d never learned to drive, and I didn’t have the same achieving spirit that many Americans had.
One thing to bear in mind though, is that people are pretty individual, and age doesn’t necessarily count a lot, it’s just experience which counts. A person can live 80 very dull years, and be ignorant to a great many things, if have a knowledge of microscopic detail in a few select areas they focused their lives on, and I believe it can happen the other way around too; that a 25 year old who’s lived through a variety of intense experiences can be wise for his years. Age just gives you the opportunity to gain from whatever experiences you have.
So on that note I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have the viewpoint of a typical person 20 years your senior. It’s also perfectly understandable considering whatever experiences shaped your life to make you this way.
Dear Uncle, How do I relate with others my age where I am?
Dear Uncle Dan,
I’m new to to TCKid and I already have a question.
I’m 13 years old a TCK and CCK and in the country that we live in, most of the girls my age stay home to help their mothers. How do I relate with others?
—
Dear Jirah,
Well, I have a bit of clarification to ask first… Are you living in your “home” country now, having come back after time abroad, or are you still living away from “home”, and trying to adjust to the new?
In either case though, it’s always worth bearing in mind that everyone has some things in common, regardless of culture, religion and so on, and sometimes it’s in those things that you do. TCK or not, foreigner or not, we’re all human beings. Often people forget that, and differ between themselves on things like norms, values, and traditions, not to mention the now concern of simply fitting in.
While you might not be used to the practice of your peers staying at home to help their mothers, so long as your parents can also accept that that’s not something you’re used to I think that’s alright. I know it’s easy for me as an adult to say that it’s alright not to fit in, because it makes you special, but I do think that if people take the time to get to know you as a person, rather than a representation of things which are different and strange, then you’ll have lots to relate to.
I understand though that people, especially at your age as well as those within a fairly rigid culture, won’t come around to this way of thinking right away. It often takes time and effort to get there, and sometimes more of both than should be necessary.
And while I generally don’t like the idea of grouping up… you said that *most* girls stay at home, which means that some don’t. If you feel more comfortable with the people who don’t, then by all means let them make you feel comfortable. You’re still young, and fitting in is important at that age, but it doesn’t mean you have to fit in with the majority. As with any community, find the people who you ARE comfortable with, so at least in some ways you’ll never be entirely alone.
Third Culture Kids in Video, 1st draft
So this is what I was working more towards, but didn’t really get there till now.
If you don’t have Facebook, you probably won’t be able to view it. It’s a 15 minute video.
It’s more of a first go of things, just to see how the style and all that might work out. I didn’t bother with any captions or anything like that.
I just figured they were interesting stories, and shows to some extent the variety of experiences that people can have:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=615524546733
There’s occasionally explicit language, as is the way with students.
VIDEO: An International Community
People might have seen my other video in which I previewed a few friends in their interviews. For those who haven’t, up until recently I attended a Swiss International Hospitality school, and the numbers of TCKs here are quite large, and even in that case, the school is entirely made up of international students. There’s a certain amount of fun in just hearing the nationalities, accents and seeing the faces of a dozen countries.
Since I’ve graduated, one of my pet projects is recording experiences and people for later and for memories. I also like to tell stories, and I feel that some of these people are a terrific medium to tell stories, and worthy of them themselves. So this is made for my graduating class, but also for your enjoyment. Let me know what you think!
Uncle Dan’s Notes: “Neither here Nor There: Travels in Europe” Book
A few weeks ago, as a bit of a thank you for my contributions to this and that in my college, a few students and staff bought me a book. One of them, as a TCK, knew I’d be interested in travel, so chose a book related to that which they’d heard was particularly good.
It’s not your typical travel book. As in the title, Bill Bryson travels around Europe in almost story-form and offers his own perspective of things. It’s cited as probably the funniest travel book of the year, due to his experiences, viewpoint, and so on.
And quite often it’s true. It can be hilarious, particularly when you’re familiar with the cultures involved and it rings true. The emotional and emphatic body language of Italians and their complete lack of any sense of punctuality or organization, which has a kind of charm to it unless you want to actually live there, haha. And so on, and so on.
But sometimes you really disagree. He passed through Switzerland and seemed to miss the point. I know this, being pretty intimately familiar with the country. Oh, you can’t expect someone who’s just passing through to gain an in-depth knowledge, but you don’t expect them to judge an entire country by that short impression.
I thought his view of Germany was particularly slanted, too… To be fair, he’s American-living-in-England, born in the 50’s and first travelled in the 70’s, writing this book in the 90’s. So I understand that he grew up in a generation which felt “Germans were Nazis and bad.” It probably didn’t help that he was travelling through Belgium accompanied by a book about the Second World War, looking up the names of the towns he passed and the various massacres that happened in these quaint towns he liked so much. He found it hard to accept that German soldiers had once committed these 60 years before, and now young Germans were coming with their families and girlfriends. His travels in Germany come to a point where he seems to grudgingly accept some things about them… but can’t seem to forgive the current generation of blameless Germans for the sins of their grandfathers… of which many were soldiers’ sins which can and do happen on any side of a war.
It’s an American thing which I find constantly annoying. When they hear that people in Europe don’t like them, they say “They’re being ungrateful since we liberated their countries.” It annoys me on a constant basis when people make fun of France for surrendering, utterly ignoring a long and often-distinguished military history, and it’s almost always Americans who do this. Interestingly, a couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a Swedish/Serbian who felt strongly about the Russians who really liberated Europe, directly and indirectly, which American film, education and general knowledge tends to forget.
Yes, I’m a history buff. And a lot of people think they know things, without really understanding them. When a soldier shoots an unarmed prisoner, civilian, or whoever, they’re acting on the basis of their orders, their sense of discipline, and their own potentially skewed perception that doing what they’re doing is acceptable. I find it hard that someone can somehow make a connection between a grunt soldier 70 years ago being told by a frankly scary government to do some horrid stuff in a war full of all kinds of horrors, and the waiter serving him beer today.
But it bothers me that no small number of Americans travelling to Europe still have these preconceived notions. And passages of an otherwise-very-insightful travel book propagate that. I think it’s great that he travels budget, and not through the chosen routes, often off-the-beaten-track. I love that he can capture some cultures and countries so well with his words.
But sometimes inevitably, it fails. He found Norway and Sweden to be depressing places to be, in which the governments apparently attempted to suck “all the pleasure out of life.” He was surprised that the Germans of the 90’s were often good-looking, healthy and confident, rather than overweight and guzzling on sausages and beer. He judged his entire experience of Switzerland on a trip through Brig, Bern and Geneva. It’s a book woth reading, but there are times I have to put it down in annoyance.
Coincidentally, a German friend of mine who’s working now in China told me in conversation, “All these Chinese people are so happy to see me! In Europe everyone hates Germans, but over here I’m a celebrity for having blonde hair!”
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