Last week, I was at two places where there were a lot of foreigners. One was a conference in which an Islamic finance was the topic of the day and there were representatives from various agencies like banks, institutions, authorities and private individual who came to here what Islamic finance is all about. Another was a resort which is marketed and catered mostly to Western travellers. For the former, I was there as I currently doing post graduate study in Islamic finance and the latter was for my wedding anniversary.
When I am at a place like these two places, one of the misconception that I am often guilty of doing is seeing all the foreigners as coming from one same place which I classified as the Western hemisphere. Although I have travel around the world a lot (except to the Americas), I still thinks that when placed together, most Westerner, especially Caucasians, look alike. Even when I am at an Islamic finance conference where the people comes from Middle East, Europe, Australia and even Americas.
It was a topic with this one guy I met at the said Islamic finance conference I was at last week. We were saying our goodbye and one of the norms is to say "Keep in Touch". In a modern society like now, although the technology is so advanced, that you have this thing called Poken (which came out of Japan) where you can touch yours and whomever you meet to exchange your social network data, you still exchange business cards when you meet someone in a business environment. How I wish that poken thing can evolve fast into something more business-like. As of now, Poken is only available in those cute looking stuff that Japanese love to create with a cartoon-like character holding out its hands where you can lap the hand of the other person's Poken. You can read my friend Niki Cheong's blog to understand it more. The link is here.
Anyway, back to looking alike. If we think Westerners look alike, I bet you guys also think the same as us. Maybe as the world become more of a globalise village, we would be looking more and more alike and then maybe being an Easterner or Westerner wouldn't make any different and then wouldn't that make it more difficult?
Just a thought....
4 comments:
him just dropping by to say hello, it is nice to know some of my neighboring country's culture. i will follow you.
Thanks for stopping by and will follow you too
Good topic. I think anyone who looks different looks alike to any of us. It's a common joke here in America, although it's not politically correct, that everyone else looks alike. For me personally, everyone looks alike until I get to know them, even people of my same origins.
Ratty - Getting to know someone is the best way to realise this
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