Great point in here about "diplomatic immunity". One of the coolest parts of traveling to out-of-the-way places. People open up to you because you're an impartial observer.
That said, author is annoyingly in love with himself; if you don't read the article, here's an indicative passage:
"My first night ever on the island of Bali, in 1984, I fell under what I later came to see was a spell cast on me by a young local woman, who led me into the unlit back alleyways and wound me around her almost as if I were helpless. I had done what I could to domesticate the island on arrival: I bought a pirated Dire Straits cassette and an owl mask as a good-luck souvenir; I mapped out a routine, locating where I could get good cake, where to post my letters home. In any case, a part of me was still in Manhattan, where I’d been closing a long article on Iran in the twenty-fifth-floor offices of Time only a day before."
Or maybe I just don't get his sense of humor, who knows.
No, you are correct. I tried to read through the article and it was very very hard to read through the superlatives and other bullshit. I'm not a writer, but I feel that its the work of someone who hasn't written much trying to write something grand.
I thought that was what made the article so engrossing. When I travel outside California I find the world so much more magical, and enchanting, which I think his writing style was trying to convey.
> I'm not a writer, but I feel that its the work of someone who hasn't written much trying to write something grand.
Actually, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll find that the article has been written by Pico Iyer, who "is the author of many books about travel, including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul, and Sun After Dark. His latest book, The Man Within My Head, circles around Graham Greene and hauntedness." Also, according to Wikipedia, he regularly writes for the New York Times.
Though to be honest with you, while I enjoyed the content of the article, I wasn't the biggest fan of the writing style either.
I fall in love over and over again. Tonight is my second night in columbia, a visiting american. Out dancing salsa and merengue poorly I met a gorgeous girl and danced for three hours. We danced close, my hands still smell like her hair, leg still perfumed by her pussy. She was on vacation too and was very insistent about her boyfriend. I'm on HN because I can't sleep, consumed by desire.
I don't get that at all. The paragraph you quoted strikes me as descriptive, perhaps it could be called flowery, but I don't see the stabbing phrases associated with narcissism.
The piece is written by Pico Iyer; he's a fairly well-known writer (novels & travel writing).
The style is fine with me, except that in this case I was actually interested to know the boring facts of the situations he was being dreamily ambiguous about.
> People open up to you because you're an impartial observer.
A friend-of-a-friend claims that this has been very useful for her as a psychologist who works in a country where she's a foreigner. A significant number of people, in her view, just feel more comfortable talking to a foreign psychologist, in part because foreigners seem less implicated in the local system of cultural norms (they might be implicated in some other system, but not the one that the patient is worried about). It's also not a very large city, so there may be an element of foreigners being perceived as safer confidantes, since they're not as strongly tied into the local web of social & family relationships.
This essay reminds me of the work of Bharati Mukherjee[1], an American-Indian author (now at UC Berkeley) that often tackles the vastly complicated issue of being a foreigner or an immigrant.
Great read. If you enjoyed it, I suggest Mukherjee's The Tiger's Daughter and Jasmine.
I feel similarly after almost 20 years of travelling where being a foreigner becomes an identity in itself. This follows me even when I return 'home'. A little sad not to be part of everyone's close knit communities however the rewards of an expanded vocabulary make it quite worth it.
Lately I am keenly aware that every time I leave a place I have become fond of - new friends and new foods and new vistas and places to walk - that the little feeling of sadness upon parting reminds me that I managed to make some kind of 'home' somewhere. After enough travelling it becomes second-nature and I would quite miss it if I ever had to stay in one place again.
To refer back to the article: I am now a foreigner in my own country to a degree, as I am less 'home' than not. It's not as drastic as being an gaijin but it did take some time to adjust to (and now, to enjoy the objectivity that comes with it).
It's hard to underestimate how much I have been changed by leaving my country of birth (the US) and traveling/living elsewhere.
I married my polyglot Malaysian college girlfriend, after having grown up with almost zero time on foreign soil, and a diet that was laughably non-diverse. We then spent our money and any vacation time (plus some unpaid leave) on travel to Malaysia of course, India, Australia, and Europe from the Isle of Skye to Istanbul.
We left the US for good in 2006 and have mostly lived in France; now we have kids and travel less, but we've gone to the writers festival in Ubud, Bali (see article), and took our first daughter as a baby to Sri Lanka for another one; recently we took both girls (1.5 and almost 5 years old, respectively) to Rwanda for a few weeks, traveling with friends who had been living there.
One of these days I want to write some of my own essays about things I've noticed; how I've changed... But for the moment here are a few thoughts.
I certainly do feel like an outsider, now, everywhere. This past summer we took a trip to the US, after 3 years away. It was all familiar, but the minor annoyances I remembered were now grating -- like TVs everywhere, including in the airports, taxis, and many restaurants. On a previous visit (before kids) I came alone, working on a contract and staying in a hotel in Western NY state -- and I got a haircut at 8pm on a Sunday night, in a mall. The woman cutting my hair asked which was better, the US or France, assuming the answer would be the US, of course. I didn't/don't have a simple answer, but I did point out to her that she was working, cutting hair, at 8pm on a Sunday night. I don't know about Paris, but where I live, no one's job makes them cut hair during dinner time (let alone later), nor at any time on a Sunday, or Monday, for that matter.
But about feeling like an outsider... It's worth mentioning that I'm a tall white well-educated man. I'm often treated with respect even when I've done absolutely nothing to earn it; I win most stereotype lotteries, even the "who should I mug" one, because I'm athletic-looking enough (plus not flashy enough) that it doesn't look worth it. It's been eye-opening sometimes, traveling with my wife, who's ethnic Indian, or groups of friends who aren't white. No, this woman opening my backpack is not a pickpocket; she's my wife (Spain). Or no, this woman playing with my children is not the nanny; she's my wife (white lady in Malaysia). Oh, you don't even rent this property to non-family members, until you do when I appear? In this case our friends actually waved me to the front to correct the "confusion" (Malaysia, British woman). Oh, this shirt cannot be returned by my wife, but when I come in it's okay?
In Bali I felt far more comfortable on the street -- not so different from many parts of Malaysia, which has gradually become far less alien to me -- than in the heavily-guarded resorts full of rich Western tourists. The festival provided lodging for us, and thus we stayed in a resort that looked something like the starship enterprise hovering over a valley on massive concrete pillars; our room had its own private swimming pool, and there were (Indonesian) staff everywhere, ready at a moment's notice to usher you into a golf cart and convey you to your destination. The gates into the property were guarded with multiple uniformed men with what looked to me like military-grade weaponry. I remember a 30-something American man lying by one of the central pools, not bothering to hide the erection under his shorts while idly talking about ad campaigns to his blonde wife/gf. It was incredibly uncomfortable; I'd never been more conscious of what colonialism has morphed into than I was there. We walked and got sweaty, rather than ask to be driven, and just tried to be kind to everyone we met working there.
After working in 4 different international places, I came back to my hometown, the third biggest city of France. Most people I meet were born here. Not only, but they've never moved, never been unrooted. When you live in a left-driving country, you almost have to switch your brain hemispheres, and I can't enphasize that enough. Everything that sounded like a given to you, will be switched around, when you learn a third of the world drives on the left.
When you work on the top floor of a building with a view on the skyline, you know that having power and being a cog are the same thing.
When you've shaken hands with refugees who did succeed to land on Christmas Island (find Christmas Island on a map and you'll get it), you can't help wondering how many have fallen for your own life. People ask me why I came back home, I don't have an answer, apart from maybe having seen enough to be a little creative about life, career or politics.
On finding a partner. The problem is connecting with a soulmate here back home, people who have always been surrounded by a social fabric.
On politicians. How do you govern a country when you've never experienced other systems yourself?
I like your point about politicians; of course, in the US, if you've spent too much time abroad (or good god, if anyone even things you might have been born abroad), much of the populace will mistrust you because of it.
About driving: as of the Rwanda trip, I've now finally driven in all 4 possible combinations of right/left-hand steering wheel and right/left-hand traffic.
There's definitely a mental strain, at first; and when I first tried driving on the "wrong" side, it took intense concentration. But by now I've driven vans and moving trucks on the "wrong" side, and it's gotten easy -- which of course alienates me from "regular" people who are often deathly scared of even trying.
I'm not someone with driving abilities worth bragging about (and just yesterday almost killed my car because I forgot basic maintenance for too long), or unusually courageous; I've just had experiences that have changed me in this way.
wow, so creative writing doesn't go down well with the HN crowd then. Take out all the adjectives and metaphors! Add some graphs! Maybe, just maybe, you might have a good article on your hands :D
As an expat this was great to read, a big change from the negative tone I usually associate with being a foreigner (in China).
Having grown up between the US and Central America, marrying a woman who had a similar upbringing has made an incalculable difference in our relationship. Together we get to explore the surprising details of living as adults in the US, which builds up even more shared experiences between us that other couples to not share. I think that bond has made it much easier to remain friends as well as partners, as every week we get to experience new things together.
It does make it hard to find others who share our detached sense of humor, but usually we do with international college students, who definitely appreciate the differences.
I understand the he used the term foreign as a literary device. But it's a very broad brush to use to paint a very complex concept.
I permanently left the states in my mid-20's. I've now lived in east asia for 30 years. I am an expat, this my home, my friends and family are here, my company is here. I was a gaijin in Japan, a gwailo in Hong Kong, a farlang in Thailand and Laos and now I'm a Barang in Cambodia.
I feel like a foreigner when I occasionally visit the states. Part of that is due to how much the country has changed in the last 30 years. I feel more free when I visit Singapore, which is certainly no bastion of freedom, than I do in the States now.
Foreigners who make their home countries that have a language and culture different from where they grow up are expats. Many expats are immigrants, who to varying degrees adopt the local culture and language and carve out a home for themselves. You can never really completely go native, and that is a good thing, nor should you try. But you can eventually create a life which straddles the two worlds.
There are lots of foreigners who have lived even decades in foreign countries who are not expats. They tend to live in live in foreign ghettos (they are often luxurious ghettos but ghettos none-the-less) where they largely only deal with people from their own country, they don't learn the language or culture, the vast majority of their diet is from their home country, they observe all of the holidays, follow the same fashion trends, hang out in the same coffee shops, fast food restaurants. The American Army takes this to the extreme of providing 110V power outlets on foreign embassies and military bases.
Another type of foreigner is the tourist, tourists are, by definition, spectators of cultures and countries and there is nothing wrong with that. Any exposure to foreign cultures is a healthy thing.
The final type of foreigner is the backpacker, which is a sub-species of the tourist who believes that because they aren't spending much money, they are seeing the "real" country. In fact they are far more insulated than regular tourists. They only stay in backpacker hostels and guest houses, they dress in absurd clothing that no one wears except backpackers. They often dress inappropriately. It's common to see backpackers (and some tourists) wearing vests (tank tops) or bikini tops in conservative countries like thailand, laos and cambodia. I've never understood why they feel that it's appropriate to dress like they are at the beach when visiting inland national capital cities like Vientiane, Bangkok or Phnom Penh. Thankfully it's easy to avoid these creatures because they only visit places listed in the lonely planet guidebooks. It's even better in SE Asia because most backpackers only bring the multi-country regional lonely planet book :) If you see a place that says it sells vegatarian food, it is only catering to foriegners. The whole concept of vegatarian and vegan diets is so alien in much of east asia that if a local restaurant provides no-meat dishes, chances are they will still flavor it with pork or chicken powder:) After all, if Buddha ate meat what could be so bad?
I do not agree that being foreign makes you detached, because you are still bringing all the baggage from your home country with you. You aren't seeing the culture with fresh eyes, just foreign blinders. It takes a long time and a lot effort before you can see what is around you. I believe that you really only BEGIN to see a culture after you've lived for a full calendar year in a place. And in cultures that are boxes within boxes, like Japan and Laos, a year is not even enough to begin to see. Understanding may well take a lifetime, but that's okay, because it's the journey that's important, there are no destinations.
But I do agree about constantly being surprised. After 30 years I still see something at least once a week that completely blows me away. But then, now when...
19 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 52.5 ms ] threadThat said, author is annoyingly in love with himself; if you don't read the article, here's an indicative passage:
"My first night ever on the island of Bali, in 1984, I fell under what I later came to see was a spell cast on me by a young local woman, who led me into the unlit back alleyways and wound me around her almost as if I were helpless. I had done what I could to domesticate the island on arrival: I bought a pirated Dire Straits cassette and an owl mask as a good-luck souvenir; I mapped out a routine, locating where I could get good cake, where to post my letters home. In any case, a part of me was still in Manhattan, where I’d been closing a long article on Iran in the twenty-fifth-floor offices of Time only a day before."
Or maybe I just don't get his sense of humor, who knows.
Actually, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll find that the article has been written by Pico Iyer, who "is the author of many books about travel, including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul, and Sun After Dark. His latest book, The Man Within My Head, circles around Graham Greene and hauntedness." Also, according to Wikipedia, he regularly writes for the New York Times.
Though to be honest with you, while I enjoyed the content of the article, I wasn't the biggest fan of the writing style either.
I fall in love over and over again. Tonight is my second night in columbia, a visiting american. Out dancing salsa and merengue poorly I met a gorgeous girl and danced for three hours. We danced close, my hands still smell like her hair, leg still perfumed by her pussy. She was on vacation too and was very insistent about her boyfriend. I'm on HN because I can't sleep, consumed by desire.
It'll pass.
I don't get that at all. The paragraph you quoted strikes me as descriptive, perhaps it could be called flowery, but I don't see the stabbing phrases associated with narcissism.
The style is fine with me, except that in this case I was actually interested to know the boring facts of the situations he was being dreamily ambiguous about.
A friend-of-a-friend claims that this has been very useful for her as a psychologist who works in a country where she's a foreigner. A significant number of people, in her view, just feel more comfortable talking to a foreign psychologist, in part because foreigners seem less implicated in the local system of cultural norms (they might be implicated in some other system, but not the one that the patient is worried about). It's also not a very large city, so there may be an element of foreigners being perceived as safer confidantes, since they're not as strongly tied into the local web of social & family relationships.
Great read. If you enjoyed it, I suggest Mukherjee's The Tiger's Daughter and Jasmine.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharati_Mukherjee
Lately I am keenly aware that every time I leave a place I have become fond of - new friends and new foods and new vistas and places to walk - that the little feeling of sadness upon parting reminds me that I managed to make some kind of 'home' somewhere. After enough travelling it becomes second-nature and I would quite miss it if I ever had to stay in one place again.
To refer back to the article: I am now a foreigner in my own country to a degree, as I am less 'home' than not. It's not as drastic as being an gaijin but it did take some time to adjust to (and now, to enjoy the objectivity that comes with it).
I married my polyglot Malaysian college girlfriend, after having grown up with almost zero time on foreign soil, and a diet that was laughably non-diverse. We then spent our money and any vacation time (plus some unpaid leave) on travel to Malaysia of course, India, Australia, and Europe from the Isle of Skye to Istanbul.
We left the US for good in 2006 and have mostly lived in France; now we have kids and travel less, but we've gone to the writers festival in Ubud, Bali (see article), and took our first daughter as a baby to Sri Lanka for another one; recently we took both girls (1.5 and almost 5 years old, respectively) to Rwanda for a few weeks, traveling with friends who had been living there.
One of these days I want to write some of my own essays about things I've noticed; how I've changed... But for the moment here are a few thoughts.
I certainly do feel like an outsider, now, everywhere. This past summer we took a trip to the US, after 3 years away. It was all familiar, but the minor annoyances I remembered were now grating -- like TVs everywhere, including in the airports, taxis, and many restaurants. On a previous visit (before kids) I came alone, working on a contract and staying in a hotel in Western NY state -- and I got a haircut at 8pm on a Sunday night, in a mall. The woman cutting my hair asked which was better, the US or France, assuming the answer would be the US, of course. I didn't/don't have a simple answer, but I did point out to her that she was working, cutting hair, at 8pm on a Sunday night. I don't know about Paris, but where I live, no one's job makes them cut hair during dinner time (let alone later), nor at any time on a Sunday, or Monday, for that matter.
But about feeling like an outsider... It's worth mentioning that I'm a tall white well-educated man. I'm often treated with respect even when I've done absolutely nothing to earn it; I win most stereotype lotteries, even the "who should I mug" one, because I'm athletic-looking enough (plus not flashy enough) that it doesn't look worth it. It's been eye-opening sometimes, traveling with my wife, who's ethnic Indian, or groups of friends who aren't white. No, this woman opening my backpack is not a pickpocket; she's my wife (Spain). Or no, this woman playing with my children is not the nanny; she's my wife (white lady in Malaysia). Oh, you don't even rent this property to non-family members, until you do when I appear? In this case our friends actually waved me to the front to correct the "confusion" (Malaysia, British woman). Oh, this shirt cannot be returned by my wife, but when I come in it's okay?
In Bali I felt far more comfortable on the street -- not so different from many parts of Malaysia, which has gradually become far less alien to me -- than in the heavily-guarded resorts full of rich Western tourists. The festival provided lodging for us, and thus we stayed in a resort that looked something like the starship enterprise hovering over a valley on massive concrete pillars; our room had its own private swimming pool, and there were (Indonesian) staff everywhere, ready at a moment's notice to usher you into a golf cart and convey you to your destination. The gates into the property were guarded with multiple uniformed men with what looked to me like military-grade weaponry. I remember a 30-something American man lying by one of the central pools, not bothering to hide the erection under his shorts while idly talking about ad campaigns to his blonde wife/gf. It was incredibly uncomfortable; I'd never been more conscious of what colonialism has morphed into than I was there. We walked and got sweaty, rather than ask to be driven, and just tried to be kind to everyone we met working there.
"Paradise" is v...
I agree that you should write more about your travels!
When you work on the top floor of a building with a view on the skyline, you know that having power and being a cog are the same thing.
When you've shaken hands with refugees who did succeed to land on Christmas Island (find Christmas Island on a map and you'll get it), you can't help wondering how many have fallen for your own life. People ask me why I came back home, I don't have an answer, apart from maybe having seen enough to be a little creative about life, career or politics.
On finding a partner. The problem is connecting with a soulmate here back home, people who have always been surrounded by a social fabric.
On politicians. How do you govern a country when you've never experienced other systems yourself?
About driving: as of the Rwanda trip, I've now finally driven in all 4 possible combinations of right/left-hand steering wheel and right/left-hand traffic.
There's definitely a mental strain, at first; and when I first tried driving on the "wrong" side, it took intense concentration. But by now I've driven vans and moving trucks on the "wrong" side, and it's gotten easy -- which of course alienates me from "regular" people who are often deathly scared of even trying.
I'm not someone with driving abilities worth bragging about (and just yesterday almost killed my car because I forgot basic maintenance for too long), or unusually courageous; I've just had experiences that have changed me in this way.
As an expat this was great to read, a big change from the negative tone I usually associate with being a foreigner (in China).
It does make it hard to find others who share our detached sense of humor, but usually we do with international college students, who definitely appreciate the differences.
I permanently left the states in my mid-20's. I've now lived in east asia for 30 years. I am an expat, this my home, my friends and family are here, my company is here. I was a gaijin in Japan, a gwailo in Hong Kong, a farlang in Thailand and Laos and now I'm a Barang in Cambodia.
I feel like a foreigner when I occasionally visit the states. Part of that is due to how much the country has changed in the last 30 years. I feel more free when I visit Singapore, which is certainly no bastion of freedom, than I do in the States now.
Foreigners who make their home countries that have a language and culture different from where they grow up are expats. Many expats are immigrants, who to varying degrees adopt the local culture and language and carve out a home for themselves. You can never really completely go native, and that is a good thing, nor should you try. But you can eventually create a life which straddles the two worlds.
There are lots of foreigners who have lived even decades in foreign countries who are not expats. They tend to live in live in foreign ghettos (they are often luxurious ghettos but ghettos none-the-less) where they largely only deal with people from their own country, they don't learn the language or culture, the vast majority of their diet is from their home country, they observe all of the holidays, follow the same fashion trends, hang out in the same coffee shops, fast food restaurants. The American Army takes this to the extreme of providing 110V power outlets on foreign embassies and military bases.
Another type of foreigner is the tourist, tourists are, by definition, spectators of cultures and countries and there is nothing wrong with that. Any exposure to foreign cultures is a healthy thing.
The final type of foreigner is the backpacker, which is a sub-species of the tourist who believes that because they aren't spending much money, they are seeing the "real" country. In fact they are far more insulated than regular tourists. They only stay in backpacker hostels and guest houses, they dress in absurd clothing that no one wears except backpackers. They often dress inappropriately. It's common to see backpackers (and some tourists) wearing vests (tank tops) or bikini tops in conservative countries like thailand, laos and cambodia. I've never understood why they feel that it's appropriate to dress like they are at the beach when visiting inland national capital cities like Vientiane, Bangkok or Phnom Penh. Thankfully it's easy to avoid these creatures because they only visit places listed in the lonely planet guidebooks. It's even better in SE Asia because most backpackers only bring the multi-country regional lonely planet book :) If you see a place that says it sells vegatarian food, it is only catering to foriegners. The whole concept of vegatarian and vegan diets is so alien in much of east asia that if a local restaurant provides no-meat dishes, chances are they will still flavor it with pork or chicken powder:) After all, if Buddha ate meat what could be so bad?
I do not agree that being foreign makes you detached, because you are still bringing all the baggage from your home country with you. You aren't seeing the culture with fresh eyes, just foreign blinders. It takes a long time and a lot effort before you can see what is around you. I believe that you really only BEGIN to see a culture after you've lived for a full calendar year in a place. And in cultures that are boxes within boxes, like Japan and Laos, a year is not even enough to begin to see. Understanding may well take a lifetime, but that's okay, because it's the journey that's important, there are no destinations.
But I do agree about constantly being surprised. After 30 years I still see something at least once a week that completely blows me away. But then, now when...