Allow me!
Time is passing, I don't like my job, I hate my boss, the company I work for is getting richer and richer by sucking bloods and it's being run by some assholes who openly admit they are assholes. I just baby-stepped into my 35th and I feel so unaccomplished. And please don't try to imagine a faceless loser in your mind when you read "I feel so unaccomplished". For we should all know accomplishment is quite a relative concept.
I used to blame myself for not being accomplished, I used to blame myself for being lazy and not concentrating on one thing and never noticed that how much this the urban life style is eating us up. It's like an endless hunger which will never get satisfied of eating. You have to keep the job in order to pay the mortgage and pay the endless bills. Then I notice that not only I have to blame myself for being lazy, I also have to blame myself for giving in to the awful urban life obligations, mortgage, loans, credit card balances and some unmentionables. I take the blame.
Monday, November 29, 2004
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Call me traitor
I am an immigrant, like many others here in Canada. Immigrants are involved with many issues and emotions in their first 3 to 5 years of new life -- I guess I am talking about average --. As an immigrant, first thing in your mind would be the barrier of language and consiquently the slowness of job finding process. If you are lucky you'll find a job within few months if not you'll hook yourself up to a college program or a course or if you are brave and not too old, you'll commit yourself to a degree or so. After a while the barrier of language becomes shorter and shorter by daily practice of dealing with native speaking people, after couple of years that barrier will look like a road bump, short enough to ignore, thick enough to slow you down when you are having an intelligent conversation. And if you are obsessed with learning and exploring, you'd try to make friends with people who were born and raised in the host land country. You'll face two different types of people, interesting and sophisticated exotic-land lovers kind of people and none-interested-in-forigners kind of people. The first group are those who are like yourself, obsessed with exploring and learning, the second group who get stuck in their own politeness, so at first they try to figure out what the hell you are trying to say, a couple of frowns or questioned faces here and there and then once you make the first pause, they are out of the conversation like a cartoon character with a circular tail of dust at their buttom while they are running away. They are the reason you become concerned with your accent. After a while accent becomes your new obsession.
And there are immigrants who are so protective about their homeland culture; they live under this constant shadow of “one day I'll go back home with my family, because I don't belong here”. They don't deal with native speaking people unless it's necessary; they find their own people, they make a community of their own, they even get special satellite dishes to watch mother-tongue speaking TV or radio channels. Practically they live same life and same culture in a different geographical position.
I guess I belong to the first group, yet in touch with second group of immigrants and I see the culture shocks the second group goes through. I see how difficult it is to live as an immigrant in a different value system and not contradict your own biased values. I've seen people who suffer a lot for not sacrificing their original values, I wonder what is the point of immigrating then? I came to this land to redefine some principal values which were defined for me, values that didn't make sense to me at all. I was having culture shock of my own when I lived where I was born and it’s hard for me to call it home. To me home means something else. I don't know what but not the place of birth. Perhaps home is where you want to settle in not where you left behind.
I am an immigrant, like many others here in Canada. Immigrants are involved with many issues and emotions in their first 3 to 5 years of new life -- I guess I am talking about average --. As an immigrant, first thing in your mind would be the barrier of language and consiquently the slowness of job finding process. If you are lucky you'll find a job within few months if not you'll hook yourself up to a college program or a course or if you are brave and not too old, you'll commit yourself to a degree or so. After a while the barrier of language becomes shorter and shorter by daily practice of dealing with native speaking people, after couple of years that barrier will look like a road bump, short enough to ignore, thick enough to slow you down when you are having an intelligent conversation. And if you are obsessed with learning and exploring, you'd try to make friends with people who were born and raised in the host land country. You'll face two different types of people, interesting and sophisticated exotic-land lovers kind of people and none-interested-in-forigners kind of people. The first group are those who are like yourself, obsessed with exploring and learning, the second group who get stuck in their own politeness, so at first they try to figure out what the hell you are trying to say, a couple of frowns or questioned faces here and there and then once you make the first pause, they are out of the conversation like a cartoon character with a circular tail of dust at their buttom while they are running away. They are the reason you become concerned with your accent. After a while accent becomes your new obsession.
And there are immigrants who are so protective about their homeland culture; they live under this constant shadow of “one day I'll go back home with my family, because I don't belong here”. They don't deal with native speaking people unless it's necessary; they find their own people, they make a community of their own, they even get special satellite dishes to watch mother-tongue speaking TV or radio channels. Practically they live same life and same culture in a different geographical position.
I guess I belong to the first group, yet in touch with second group of immigrants and I see the culture shocks the second group goes through. I see how difficult it is to live as an immigrant in a different value system and not contradict your own biased values. I've seen people who suffer a lot for not sacrificing their original values, I wonder what is the point of immigrating then? I came to this land to redefine some principal values which were defined for me, values that didn't make sense to me at all. I was having culture shock of my own when I lived where I was born and it’s hard for me to call it home. To me home means something else. I don't know what but not the place of birth. Perhaps home is where you want to settle in not where you left behind.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Knock knock! Who is there?
Winter is coming. Things haven't been very well lately. Oh well! Life is a roller coaster, isn't it? I had the most amazing winter last year and it gave me sweetest memories of my life. Despite the fact that last winter became a memory or at its best a nostalgia, despite the fact that I am watching a spider walking upon my wall, life is going on. No matter how hard, it seems we manage to carry on with it. Sometimes hope is just a rope for us to hang in there until a better day comes along. Every one has their moments, the very moment that you hear a knock on your door. "Who is there?". You ask. "It's me!" Snow-white says. "Open up! I am home."
Winter is coming. Things haven't been very well lately. Oh well! Life is a roller coaster, isn't it? I had the most amazing winter last year and it gave me sweetest memories of my life. Despite the fact that last winter became a memory or at its best a nostalgia, despite the fact that I am watching a spider walking upon my wall, life is going on. No matter how hard, it seems we manage to carry on with it. Sometimes hope is just a rope for us to hang in there until a better day comes along. Every one has their moments, the very moment that you hear a knock on your door. "Who is there?". You ask. "It's me!" Snow-white says. "Open up! I am home."
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