The All-Cultural Rejects

The Chens of China and the Kims of Korea have done their Ni haos and their Konnichiwas but when it comes to tasting the soup of other lands, the broth has not yet come to a boil.

In the political eyes of the media and the print, cultural acceptances are the tiger’s skin in a savannah: flawlessly camouflaged. The working men on business trips and performing artists on their tours are too busy signing contracts and autographs to face awkward moments and embarrassing bloopers but ask the tourists, the visitors, the families shifted on work for a year’s extension and the students on international programs what the real street has to offer, not the adventurous entertaining ones shown in travel programs. 

The Spanish wonder why the French are rude and the Indians wonder why the Japanese advertise so much pink. The English jargon, the Scottish Kilt, the Australian accent, the Afghani eating etiquette, the Dubai dressing code, the German slang, the Italian hand-talks, all come together to cook up a really really strange Cajun.

From the street-tricks to the local handy phrases, facial bribes and the cheating bargains can all be only learnt either from experience or from tutoring of another fish in this foreign water who has been here long enough.

Carry a DSLR camera, wear a traveler’s hat, squint at a huge map, and luggage on a backpack and you’ve just opened the trap, sat inside and snapped shut the lock on the outside by yourself. And yet you’ll see this sample in a Hawaiian beach shirt walking around in a flea market with the camera and the map and the backpack. 

But it’s worth it. Personal experiences about the wrong dress code or that other meaning of the word you didn’t know or violation of public Do’s and Don’ts are all bizarre souvenirs we carry and use time and again to laugh off when we’re back home binging on Ben&Jerry’s. 

Imagine wearing a toga holding a bagpipe with Geisha make-up, a South African wig, and a tall British Tourist hat. Imagine. 

So be easy on making a fool out of yourself, cringe when you say something silly, chuckle when you are corrected and you find out that you asked the vendor about going to a movie together instead of asking where the nearest theater is. 

Because the best part about two borders is that there’s an overlapping you just cannot ignore.