You’re Going to be Jet-Li-ed.

I’m into the beginning of my second week here in India. From the last blog update, I’ve gotten a new room mate from Lithuania. She’s alright, I’d even say pretty good from the start – but as I experience increasing exposure to people of different cultures, I’m all the more aware of the chasm between Asian Oriental and Western social cultures. Honestly, to hell with the whole racial harmony mantra of reveling in the differences in cultures – the whole uniqueness. Well, not to hell with it entirely, but it is easy to be simply blinded by the mutual fascination of exotic differences and forget that it can amount to a certain degree of friction.

Let me give you the low down. She’s the latest flat mate to live in the company flat. Unfortunately, we’re short of a key. So she’s going to this wedding and decides to leave early from work since she’s has nothing more on her plate, after we headed to the immigration office with another one of our flat mates from Turkey. Without even asking my plans, ( technically the key is mine ) she asks for it saying telling me that I can get the key from another ( German ) flat mate when I get back to the office, because it works out easier that way. Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no qualms about lending her the key. It’s just the fact that she didn’t bother finding out if that would inconvenience me and simply assuming that it would be perfectly fine. In fact, I had plans made. The other room mate with us, simply turned to me and said dismissively “Oh, it would be no problem.” Thing is, that would be no problem, IF I didn’t make plans for the evening and went straight home. And how come, she didn’t volunteer the key.

I’m getting mad all over again. I really don’t want to make a racial issue here, but there is some truth there. It’s the whole submissive oriental stereotype shit going on here. I see it happening to the other Taiwanese intern when another German intern wanted to use her desk. True, they were on friendly terms – but I felt like it was as though he was wheedling her into doing so. I could sense her frustration; she was being pushed from desk to desk. So in this way, I’m happily lumped into the category, of submissive oriental kid. It doesn’t help the least that in the new environment, I tend to be lot more reticent than vocal, more likely to say yes than no, even if I don’t feel like it. Guess what? Fuck them all. No, I’m not going to be deliberately antagonistic, but no way if I’m going to let anyone step over me.

Oh, Mr British Pratty F.F. ( Fucking Fag, for the record – no, I have nothing against gay people, but this one really does have something up his posterior, and I hope its razor sharp ) – I’ve given up on him. He’s really not nice. I’ve tried to be polite and civil, but I think my limit has been reached. Some individuals aren’t worth sweating for. Miss Turkey and him are good friends. I’m largely ambivalent towards Miss Turkey, I used to think she was one of the nicer ones – but a lot of them honestly wouldn’t step out of their comfort zone unless offered a carrot in terms of chocolate, tobacco or alcohol. I’ve run out of chocolate and emptied my liter bottle of Absolut and I’ve decided that my 9 packs of Virginia Slims should not be thrown away in bad investments.

Going back to my roomie – I do it like you know it when I feel disrespected – ala Titanic, become a distant ice-berg. Well, didn’t take her long to figure it out – she asked if I was angry with her. I was tempted continue the North Pole Treatment, but I decided it wouldn’t solve anything. So I tried reasonably as I could to explain it to her – which I did well I think. She said that she was sorry that it upset me and came over and gave me a hug, and that she didn’t think of it at that point in time and try not to do it again. Its partly chilling and partly relieving – I would never do that, I would ask if it would inconvenience them. Is this an Asian thing? I don’t see many of my friends back home doing this to me, angmoh ones included. Good, that she was willing to talk and change, but somehow I see this issue coming up again soon. I’m not sure if I should invest in this friendship. Maybe if someone western could enlighten me on this.

Basically, today was a bad day. Many other bullshit things happened which I haven’t mentioned.

By the way, I’m not your S-O-K ( submissive oriental kid ), do it again to me, and I’ll fuckin’ Jet-Li your ass.

Post-note: Granted, it was a bad day. I've decided I like my roomie a lot. FF is getting tolerable, but I'm taking effort to make sure we hardly cross paths. I don't think I need so much grief.