blending in

In the context of one of my recent posts, I would have thought that, given my racial background, I would not generally look like anyone's doppelganger. Except at Berkeley where there's a club for us and there were four of us in my graduating class of my major.

Many years ago, my family was at a large family reunion that someone on my dad's side of the family had put together. I remember feeling out of place. Admittedly, I often felt out of place when I was younger since I was fairly shy and generally liked staying in my protective bubble of familiarity. But I remember thinking that the people at the reunion, all of whom I was presumably related to in some way, didn't look like my mother, brother or me. It wasn't an issue of belonging, but simply a mental acknowledgement that this was one of the most relatively homogeneous gatherings that I had ever been to. Back then, my youthful mind did not use such words.

Several years after that, while on vacation in Thailand, my family was at a birthday celebration for my mother's father. I remember thinking that the people there, again, all of whom I was presumably related to, didn't look like my father, brother or me. It was again a relatively homogenous group and I was not fully part of that homogeneity.

These were interesting experiences in the context of my youthful dandelion wine days. While suburbia is not generally a paragon of diversity, people in the neighborhood and at school were different enough. Growing up, the area was predominantly white with enough Asian, mostly Chinese, families that I was more or less never around all of one group of people. People were people and they were from wherever they were. And while I fit in, I never really blended in.

This is what I have come to realize. I can be accepted and integrate myself in a large number of places, but I will never be from those places and I will never be one of those people. There are probably few places where I will ever blend in and that is a good thing to me.

It is also one of the things I like about working here. I have had the chance to meet and work with people from all over the world. On my recent trip, amongst a group of four engineers, they spoke Spanish to one another though it was only the first language for two of them (and I was not in Spain). One of the other two was Dutch and the other was French-Italian. Amongst so many polyglot colleagues, I do feel a bit embarrassed that I have not shed my one tragically American characteristic of only speaking one language. In my new district, where at least 14 nationalities are represented, I am the only native English speaker so people ask me about pronunciation and grammar since business is conducted in English: the international second language of the world.

I will eventually fit in here, but I will never blend in. And while this is a great chance to pick up a second language, I'm not sure if Hungarian is a good language to start with given its limited utility in the rest of the world and the apparent fact that every other word is fifteen letters long. And while no one at the base is German, for various business and regional reasons, I've probably got not terrible odds of learning a bit.

At lunch last week with one of my colleagues here, she (who is Polish) remarked that I wasn't a typical American. I told her that I hoped to never be a typical American, especially in the parlance of what most non-Americans think of when they think of a 'typical American'. This is a jumping off point for a whole bevy of interesting ideas dealing with America's role and perceived place in the world. And that is for another day.