Cultural Shock. Or maybe not.
This week a person asked me through mail about cultural shock.
It seems to me that, much more than the social norms that we see in travel books, Cultural Shock presents itself in a very diferent manner, and does not necessarily require a foreign country for that.
You see, what I have realized is that the biggest form of cultural shock can be the many little things that make your daily life, and not this monstrous ghost called “national idendity”. The TV channels you see when you were a kid, your favorite and most hated politicians, commons games at school.
I mean, I felt some cultural shock when I came to japan the first time. But I came to realize that it was a culture shock not because I was in japan, but because I was in a mostly-humanities university, among mostly people from economics, marketing, history, politics background. So no one would care for the latest slashdot story, or get a Microsoft joke. Or talk silly things about integrals and numbers, or care about spurious logic. Even the tone of the generic jokes were different. Not to say anything about brazillian “deep” culture, like Chaves.
I think these kind of common things connect people easier… make half sentences go through. In this way, I have felt this kind of cultural shock before, even before leaving Brazil.
On the other hand, this time out, I feel much more at home. The nerds in the lab understand me, and I understand them a lot too. It is reassuring to see them reading slashdot (even if the japanese one), or playing Final fantasy 5 for a few hours at my place.
I mean, today I was talking to a couple of friends from the Micro-processor lab, and it went like this.
“I should be in the food business - that is where the money is. Everyone needs to eat!”
“And what would you do?”
“I don’t know… I could do hamburgers… I know! MOS Burgers!”
And the funny thing is, there IS a burger chain in japan called MOS Burgers…
Of course, it opened the worm can for all kinds of “the burger needs more silicone” jokes.
… cringe …
Yeah, I’m in the right place.
January 22nd, 2006 at 10:44 am
hey chaves is not brasil culture.. its mexican, or whatever.. we imported it@! (what is worse ehehehehe)
anyway, i dont think its a matter of culture.. its just that, since a kid, you were always ahead your real age, and way more critic then kids usually are. THX GOD! see how far you have gone already
January 23rd, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Chaves nao eh brasileiro, mas ja eh quase como se fosse… O futebol tambem nao foi criado no Brasil, hehe…
Mas isso eh verdade. Mesmo no seu proprio pais, o verdadeiro “choque cultural” eh estar em uma “tribo” na qual vc nao tem nenhuma afinidade, nenhum ponto em comum. Muitos nao entenderiam a piada que vc mencionou…