Inter-Cultural Interactions

Dearest Blog readers!

Hello! How are you all doing over there in Canada? India? Singapore? Specifically the cities of Toronto and Drummondville (?) I'm acting weird right? Ya, I know! It's because I know who you all are now!...Kind of. My friend Martin, from Uruguay (who arrived in KL just 2 weeks before me) has helped me to put Google Analytics on my blog! It's super cool - now I can track what cities you are in, what browser you use and how long you spend on my blog. The only thing is that I just don't know WHO you are (and this is why you need to comment. A simple 'hi!' would suffice. I'm really not asking for much guys). So basically, a whole new creepy internet world of tracking has been opened up to me. And, now that I am working in an online marketing environment, the stats that Google Analytics provides actually kind of means something to me now. In 2 years of having this blog, I've reached over 15,000 hits (it sounds pretty impressive...but really its not :-P) and I'm able to tell that I could never make it as a personal growth author :-P.

Speaking about personal growth, look at my Team's new piccy!

But guys, I have some really cool realizations this week to tell you about living abroad and being friends with a group of people that is so freaking diverse! So diverse that some days I'm just like ***BRAIN OVERLOAD***. But what is most interesting about my realizations this week is that I learned a lot of stuff about ME as a Canadian and how us North Americans are really, really different from everyone else in the world.

I went for a pool gathering at my friend Oscar's apartment.

Oscar and Sheena and the view from Oscars apt

It was St. Patrick's day so I was telling my friends that we should make pancakes! So Ania from Poland came with pancake ingredients and said we could make them! They weren't going to be green pancakes, but I have a really vivid imagination so, meh. So, I happily looked up a pancake recipe while Ania started mixing flour, soda water (?), sugar, salt, milk and egg together. I then helped mix it to the perfect pancake consistence but I quickly realized that we didn't have crucial pancake ingredients such as baking powder, etc. Ania said she knew how to make them so I trusted her as she began to pour MORE soda water into the batter and then proceed to spoon really thin batter into the frying pan.

I was very skeptical (and I'm a h-core micro manager unfortunately) so I asked her if she was SURE she knew what she was doing.... twenty minutes later we had a pile of "pancakes" that looked like this:

Not so pancakey, right? It looks like roti or chapati, or naan gone wrong. So I told Ania that the pancakes were really weird. I asked her why they didn't get all big and fluffy like I expected and Ania looked at me with a puzzled look. So I asked her if she knew what I was talking about and if she was trying to cook pancakes that were golden-brown, big and thick and fluffy and so yummy, just like I was trying to, because she did not seem worried about the state of our pancakes at all.

The she said she had no idea what I was talking about and that these pancakes were just fine. THIS is when I came to the realization that while I was trying to make pancakes, Ania was trying to make crepes! We were trying to cook two different things TOGETHER! And when we determined that this was in fact the situation, this was the result:

We broke down in fits of laughter. All I can say is that it was a really, really weird cultural moment where I learned that there is a difference between what we call pancakes in North America and what the REST OF THE WORLD calls pancakes. I can confidently say this because every single person that came to the pool gathering after was asked the question "What do you call these?" *point to pancake/crepe* and the Polish, the Belgian, the Egyptian, the Spaniard, the Hungarian, the Slovak and the Bangladeshi all said "pancakes".....

Something I also realized while cooking is that we English speakers have words for every little thing. We may not have words for emotions and feelings (in English, there is only one word for love while in Hindi, there are a bunch) but we sure do name everything else, especially kitchen utensils, as I soon found out! I asked Ania to "pass me the ladle....the flipper...the deep fryer"... and the people I was cooking with gave me looks of confusion. To them, the ladle was called "the big spoon", the flipper "the big fork" and the deep fryer just didn't have a name. Then when we were in the pool and I said i wanted the "noodle", they said "OF COURSE YOU HAVE A WORD FOR THAT THING TOO!". So I learnt that we North Americans apparently like really like to name everything. Who knew that my vocabulary was already apparently very large, yet I still spent 3 months learning 500 more words for the GRE this past winter.

SO that was the first interesting cultural experience. The second was that I went to see the Backstreet Boys this past Saturday in KL. Their concert was taking place for free for F1 in KL and they set up a stage right at the base of KLCC twin towers and it was really cool! I had a moment where I was like - jeez I'm really living in Kuala Lumpur right now! (I also had that moment yesterday when I found gecko poop on my bed, but that is another story). SO we watched the beautiful Backstreet Boys on stage with the beautiful KLCC towers all lit up behind them. Now, I went to see the Backstreet Boys (for the 2nd time, I am NOT ashamed to admit) with a seriously diverse group of people: a Malaysian, a Polish, a Slovak, a Hong Kongian (Chinese??), a Hungarian, an Egyptian, a Kazakstanian, a Uruguayan, a Philipeno, a Belgian, a Spaniard and of course, a Canadian (me!). Even though we were all from different countries, living completely different lives during our childhoods (when we were raised by both our parents and BSB), each and every one of us knew their songs and sang our hearts out.

When BSB sang the lyrics "....I don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did, as long as you love me..." I literally paused from singing to think "Whoa - the BSB lyrics DEFINE US right now!" The people I was surrounded with didn't care who each of us were, where we were from, what we had each done before this moment, but we still all managed to find each other as friends!

It was sooooooooooooooooooo symbolic as we sang those lyrics together! Who would have thought that I could connect on such a symbolic level with BSB :-P?!?! Anyway, it was an amazing concert. The Backstreet Boys played ALL their singles and I relieved my 90s and 2000s in one evening.
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Now, the Coles notes version of what else I've been up to:

1. I went to Singapore to hang out with my family and my grandma. I went tandem biking with Navin (Navin's legs are way to long and it was my first tandem bike experience.) I also got to hang out with Avia and my cousin Navin at the same time because they go to the same university and live in residences NEXT to each other!

Baby of the fam & the woman who produced us (Wadhwani's) all indirectly

2. Peeps from McGill were traveling around South East Asia and came to KL for Future Music Festival and so we met up! It was short but so sweet :)

3. I went to McGill's Rendezvous event in Kuala Lumpur to meet students going to McGill in September (so jealsies!!) and to my surprise, recognized people on the PowerPoint they were presenting to these kids. I also got a sweet McGill key chain that I show off to everyone everywhere I go even though the people I show it to usually have any idea what/where McGill is.

4. I volunteered at an Afghani School and taught these beautiful Afghani kiddies (who are mostly refugees from Iran) about Terry Fox and why he is an inspiring Canadian!

5. In other news, Raahil is growing a pony tail.

Anyway - that is my update for this week! 2 weeks from now I am traveling to the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia, and then week after to visit Chollawan in Bangkok! I am so unbelievably excited for all of my trips!

But guys I really miss y'all back home so call me/skype me/viber me/whats app me let's catch up. I always have time to stay in touch! It's been almost 4 months since I left home!
^Look. I bolded that. That means it's important!!!

p.s. some shout out requests that I am fulfilling right here: BILAL - IM SO EXCITED THAT YOU ARE COMING TO ASIA and shoutout to Raahil, Maya and Arun. okay donezoooo.