When I was working as an instructor on a Prometheus camp at summer 1996, we had a nice guy from the Hare Krishna temple visiting our camps world-view panel. He was wearing the typical orange robe of the movement and afterwards, when we were drinking tea together, I asked him if his church requires him to wear such clothes. He answered: "Oh no, I could wear any clothes. But I like to wear these clothes to remind me of my identity, to strengthen my resolve, to make me feel more what I am on all levels of my mind." I was impressed with that, the idea to wear some clothes to reflect on, focus and strengthen your self-identity instead of trying to give some impression to the external world.
In the year 2000 I did a big and scary career move from university research work as a software developer in the private industry. I then decided, along the lines of the robed Hare Krishna, to wear a tie for one year in the work. I decided to associate the wearing of a tie to the idea of being a good employee and polite and social coworker, having pride in my programming skills and will to develop my skills even further. I wore a tie to remind myself what I am and what I want to be, to reflect and build my self-identity. I cannot of course know how things would have developed without the tie, but my life has been good and my career has been successful and enjoyable.
Writing a diary, or its modern version blog, probably serves similar purposes. The main reason I am writing a blog is to reflect and focus on my thoughts, emotions and identity regarding my life and relationship to Jinlin, to think what I am, what I want to be and to nudge myself towards the target.
Brain is a peculiar thing: sometimes new insights can be gained by simply writing words out. Insights that could not be gained by just silent thinking inside the head. Even though the process of writing does not add any new external information to the process. This seems paradoxical, but can be understood in terms of brain - and personality - not being one single thing but comprising of multiple parts that communicate with each other in limited ways. People who have written diaries through the times know that main point of diary is not to communicate to the external world but to reflect on oneself, to seek and strengthen ones identity, ask questions and gain knowledge that thinking alone does not produce.
When I returned from my trip to China with Jinlin in the end of July my head was full of thoughts of language and culture, emotions and memories, growth and learning, questions about present and future. Partly so because our limited language skills did not allow very deep spoken discussion to happen on the spot. Some of our simple discussions that started to drift towards more complex topics ended in agreement to continue the discussion with emails after the trip. So I wrote notes that after the trip I have expanded to longer texts and other ideas, some resulting in emails but other more fit to diary-like form. So, although I am a nerd and have always thought that any blog I would start would be on topics of cosmology or functional programming, I found myself feeling more and more like starting to write on these "soft" topics.
I have quickly realized that the process of reflection that writing brings serves to bring also more ideas to write about. This is yet added by the immense input from reading other intercultural blogs and forums. My current condensed list has, among others, following topics listed:
In the year 2000 I did a big and scary career move from university research work as a software developer in the private industry. I then decided, along the lines of the robed Hare Krishna, to wear a tie for one year in the work. I decided to associate the wearing of a tie to the idea of being a good employee and polite and social coworker, having pride in my programming skills and will to develop my skills even further. I wore a tie to remind myself what I am and what I want to be, to reflect and build my self-identity. I cannot of course know how things would have developed without the tie, but my life has been good and my career has been successful and enjoyable.
Writing a diary, or its modern version blog, probably serves similar purposes. The main reason I am writing a blog is to reflect and focus on my thoughts, emotions and identity regarding my life and relationship to Jinlin, to think what I am, what I want to be and to nudge myself towards the target.
Brain is a peculiar thing: sometimes new insights can be gained by simply writing words out. Insights that could not be gained by just silent thinking inside the head. Even though the process of writing does not add any new external information to the process. This seems paradoxical, but can be understood in terms of brain - and personality - not being one single thing but comprising of multiple parts that communicate with each other in limited ways. People who have written diaries through the times know that main point of diary is not to communicate to the external world but to reflect on oneself, to seek and strengthen ones identity, ask questions and gain knowledge that thinking alone does not produce.
When I returned from my trip to China with Jinlin in the end of July my head was full of thoughts of language and culture, emotions and memories, growth and learning, questions about present and future. Partly so because our limited language skills did not allow very deep spoken discussion to happen on the spot. Some of our simple discussions that started to drift towards more complex topics ended in agreement to continue the discussion with emails after the trip. So I wrote notes that after the trip I have expanded to longer texts and other ideas, some resulting in emails but other more fit to diary-like form. So, although I am a nerd and have always thought that any blog I would start would be on topics of cosmology or functional programming, I found myself feeling more and more like starting to write on these "soft" topics.
Connection and community
While writing a private diary is valuable in itself for the reasons discussed above, a blog naturally adds potential for more value to self and others via expanded audience. Perhaps my humble utterances give some moments of fun or insight to somebody. Of course there is the special somebody, Jinlin herself, who is also reading the blog. With the blog I am hoping to add also another channel for us to communicate and learn about each other. I might write in ways and topics that might not so naturally come about in emails or chats otherwise but are nevertheless important to be aware of. I am happy her reaction has been very positive: 很开心你的文章，我在欣赏 ("I am very happy about your writings, I appreciate") and later 我看见你的文章，非常感谢你美妙的语言.我非常开心你的记录 (I saw your article, Thank you very much your wonderful language. I am very happy you make records.)
During my short blogging career I have received suggestions to other blogs that similarly tell stories of joy and challenges from inter-cultural relationships:
By the way, these are all blogs written by females - it seems to be much less common for men in such intercultural relationships to start blogging (or perhaps they blog only about cosmology, functional programming and sports ;-) So perhaps I can add some male perspective to the interesting discussions about cultural habits, language challenges, emotional issues and life lessons or international couples. Furthermore most bloggers seem to have the western person from USA, Canada or similar large English-speaking country whereas I come from the weird small North-European country of Finland with our peculiar own language. And it's good place to come to: Finland is the best country in the world ;-)
Topics, topics, topics...
I have quickly realized that the process of reflection that writing brings serves to bring also more ideas to write about. This is yet added by the immense input from reading other intercultural blogs and forums. My current condensed list has, among others, following topics listed:
- Topics from travel in China
- Shows of dance and singing
- Animals
- Nature
- Chinese children
- Chinese traditional medicine
- Jinlin (and me)
- Her beauty
- Her sweet character
- Her hobbies (and our shared hobbies)
- Her likes and dislikes (and our)
- Her career, studies and ambitions (and my)
- Our shared interests and compatibility
- Cultural differences and compromises
- Jinlin with my children
- "Beauty and the beast"
- Practices, joys and sorrows of remote relationship
- Ways of communication
- Snippets of nice and interesting words
- Learning language and misunderstandings
- Gifts, photos and singing
- How does love feel?
- Sorrow and missing due to the distance.
- East-west relationships in general
- Why start dating Asian women / western man.
- Good and bad Chinese dating sites.
- Positive and negative stereotypes of East-west relationships and people.
- The past and future
- Our childhood(s)
- Our past relationships and growing as persons
- How our relationship started and developed
- Our evolving plans for a future together
Anything that you, my dear reader, find especially interesting? Let me know and I'll adjust my priority :-)
Topics I would especially like to read about:
ReplyDeleteHow did your relationship start? What compromises have you had to make so far? Have you already noticed developing as a person during this new relationship? What kind of effects have been emerged by Chinese authority's not-so-open attitude towards internet etc.?
Interesting posts so far, thx.
BR, TK