One Thing You Learn Living Overseas

I found this shared by my friend on Facebook, and it pretty much sums up the way we, who live overseas, think.

"Living abroad makes me change the way I see people

You smoke? cool. You don't smoke? okay

You drink? cool. You don't drink? Let's grab coffee.

You are not virgin? cool. You are virgin? great!

You wear short skirts, crop tee, dye your hair green? cool. You dress casually? nevermind.

You kiss your date in public? so what. You don't kiss them? not my business.

You get tattoo? well done. You hate tattoo? no probs.

Sometimes we have to mind our own business instead of judging and talking bad about people. You don't pay their living anyway, so what makes you think you can bad mouthing them?"

All those are true to us. We don't really care if you do or do not do all those. And we don't straight away decide oh, you have tattoos, so you are a bad person. Or, you drink, so you must be a drunk and use drugs.

To people living in our home country, they might think we are already ruined by western way of thinking, becoming individualists, arrogant, and simply bad. Well, to us, you are shallow, judging and don't have the ability or even maybe do not want to think. 

Take my friend as an example. She is over 30 years old and still single. If she goes home to Vietnam, everyone asks her "When are you going to get married?". Even her mum forced her to go meet this 40 years old man, to see if they have a chance to date. On that first meeting, that guy asked her "So, you live overseas, so you go to pubs and drink?". To which she replied, "That's the habit in Australia. People go out to pub with friends and have a drink or two. Nothing's wrong with that!". To tell you the truth, she is not a pub girl. True, we all here drink, but doesn't mean we do it regularly or are addicted to it. It's just a once in a while thing. And that guy, without getting to know her better, already judged her and believed that she goes out partying and who knows what else. People say the older you are, the wiser you become. Well, not in that guy's case. He's over 40 but still can't put himself in other people's shoes.

I experienced it myself when I went back to Indo. Once I went with my dad to his music club (It's a traditional Chinese music group, they play erhu, mandolin, flute, zither, yangqing, and other musical instruments). My mum was not feeling well, and she was worried my dad would be sleepy if nobody keeps him company when driving, so I went instead. Then, this old woman, my dad's music club mate, looked at me from head to toe, back to head again, and said to my dad in Mandarin, "Your daughter? Still not married?? She's past 25-26 already, isn't it???". Excuse me????? It's NONE of YOUR effing business!! If it wasn't for my dad, I would have scolded her back. 

That's the thing with Asian country, so much of the so called manner I.e. don't fight with elders, don't talk back to elders bla bla -_- which clearly gives the upper hand to the so called "elders". If we get upset, or annoyed bcoz of what they say, they say we have bad temper. If we talk back or increase our voice just a bit, they say we have no manners. If we defend ourselves, they say "No wonder, she's been living overseas for too long".

Seems like she likes judging people, so let me judge her then! That old lady, if you ask me, is no better than me anyway. She is OLD and already has grandchildren, let me repeat, GRANDCHILDREN! But she comes to the music club in obsessive make up and dressed like she is going to the Melbourne Cup Racing, also with 10 cm high heels. Lady, aren't you suppose to take care of your feet at that age? Also, she is a Chinese descendant living in Indo for all her life, yet, she can't speak a single word in Indo! Now talk about ignorance!

When I saw that post on Facebook, it reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend here. And she just told me that it reminded her of that too. That time her sister had just gave birth to a baby girl, and posted the photos on Facebook. Then this friend, who hasn't contacted her since they were in high school, started chatting to her on Facebook. She asked her all those questions about ANYTHING! About her baby and her sister's baby, I.e. are they or have they been baptized, where will they be baptized, what kind of mobile phones they have and then... What kind of contraceptive does she use -.- talking about kaypoh to the max -.- and please remember that they haven't talked to each other since like.. 10++ years ago.

So yep, back to the post I shared of Facebook, living overseas teaches us to be more considerate towards others. To know our place. To try to understand the other side of the story. To care, but not being busybodies. To ask a question, and know to stop pressing when the other party does not want to answer. To be close, but still giving people their space. When we see someone is upset, we learn to give them time when they are not ready to talk, but still watching over them and letting them know we will always be there when they are finally ready to talk. That to me, definitely is a good thing.

What People Think of You After You Live Overseas

After I live overseas, I realised that some stuffs that people in Indo think would happen to people living abroad, are not true. Some are even ridiculous lol I tried to think and remember of all those things, and here are what I can think of:

1. Your English is definitely absolutely fluent perfect. Or as my friend puts it, "uda cas cis cus" XD

2. You forget your mother's tongue and even pick up western accent when speaking Indo. This is very common to see in Indonesian sinetron. The most memorable one was the one portrayed by Feby Febiola I think, in Tersanjung as Tante America. 

Her performance was so ridiculous that it was memorable! Not only picking up western accent when speaking Indo is practically not going to happen if you don't learn to speak Indo overseas, her English in that sinetron was TERRIBLE as well. I can understand if you have that western accent, but that means your English must be perfect too!! If ur English is THAT bad, then there is no way your Indo has western accent! Gees... Do your research madam!

3. You can't find Indonesian food overseas. The fact is, prior to leaving Indo, I didn't eat much of Indonesian food. I.e. krecek, gudeg, Ayam penyet etc etc. I actually tried a lot of Indo food for the first time here in Sydney. As for the taste, of course some are really bad (I still remember that mi tek tek that cost me $10 a plate and tasted NOTHING like mi tek tek -_-"), but some of them are really good. So when my auntie in Jakarta offers me food, saying "you cant find this in Sydney right?', though I still eagerly accept it, :p most of the time I say "I can, but the taste might not be that authentic."

4. You like western food better than Indo now. Hmmmm... Not really... I don't know about everyone, but between me and my friends, we all still prefer Indo/Chinese food. We do like western food more than the first time we landed in the land of Oz, but we won't say our favourite is western food. We can crave, but we can't imagine eating it every day :l

5. You speak English all the time and meet more Caucasians than Asians. Well... Not in Sydney lol This city is SO multicultural, just name a nationality you want to meet and there will be one. Actually, if I go to Sydney CBD, I see more Asians than Caucasians. Of course this includes Australian Born Asians too, but you get the picture :) as for speaking English all the time, that really depends on your friends . I do speak 100% English at work, but my friends used to work for companies that have a lot of Indo people, so they spoke Indo at work and at home. And most of our friends are Indo too. So, really.. depends...

6. You must be filthy rich. Maybe the sound of living abroad is so cool? So some people who heard that I live abroad usually say, "Oh? How good, you have a lot of money. Must be very nice ya?". But in truth, I worked while I was a fulltime student in uni. In my last year in uni I even had 3 different casual jobs! It was pretty hard to juggle on my last semester. I was lucky to have a very understanding manager back then. Then after I graduated, I didn't get a full time job. Instead, I worked on 4 different jobs. A 3 days office junior job, 2 days of handing free magazines and 3-4 days a week in a supermarket. It's not as sparkly as people think it is.

So that's my list of things people think will happen to people living abroad. If you have other thought, let me know and I'll say if it's true or not :)