After 16 years of having left the country of my birth I have almost spent equal parts of my life in either country (i.e. birthplace and the place where I am naturalized as they say).
Hence the name for self - Hybree(i)d. Not to be confused with the eco friendly mode of conveyance that green folks are getting themselves into.
Having got past the introductions I wanted to start jotting down what it means to have lived on two continents literally on opposite sides of the planet. Growing up was YIN and the adulthood is the YANG? Growing up was chaos and unpredictable moments while now its process centric and reliable? I prefer the latter.
I can relate from experience that not knowing if you could get from A to B and what to expect when you get to B can be unnerving. Here in the 'land of opportunity' the forefathers (or some wise president and his planners) thought of all that and when the going was good got some Interstate highways built that convey folks literally from any corner of the vast continent to any other point, also on the same continent; and it is a BIG continent.
They are now dabbling in ideas like Hi Speed Rail but I think it has more political flavor than real imperative. When you get used to sitting in your own automobile and gassing up to head on outdoor wherever your heart desires for not much by way of fuel cost (both for the conveyor and the conveyee) its hard to switch habits (for those religously minded there is a Pun there).
Anyway I digress. As you can tell after a bit of reading I do that a lot which is the whole point of writing a BLOG! Freedom to digress at will.
Is there such a thing as Undigress? I wonder? If you could would you return to the spot where you Digressed from? Would that qualify as true undigression since you would already have strayed from the story line so to speak?
Anywho - having contemplated that line (or would it be non linear path?) of thought let me get back to the subject at hand i.e. my experiences of living on two continents over my life span to date.
I have grown to be an assimilated individual who has come to apperciate a world unknown or hitherto unbeknownst (to sound really erudite - seriously who talks like that) to me and feel privileged. It also makes for some really interesting observations of life in this so called 'land of plenty' (where there are a lot of people with negative cash flow; also called BROKE) where you get to experience what it means to have a sense of 'Entitlement'.
I once happened (as in chance encounter) on a self-proclaimed (by way of a sign post he held) homeless man at a major interstate off ramp - who had on a pair of Bose headsets (majority people on this planet would not know what that is) listening to a tune (or gospel or talk radio - since I could not hear exactly) and some good looking sneakers and clothing but was hungry for food. Ergo he was begging to get some cash without exerting productively so he could go and satisfy his gastronomic interest. Funny thing is he easily pulled it off every day since I did see him toting his music device doing his routine for a whole month thereafter.
Folks - there is this and then there is what I saw growing up - which is a person so decimated by ravages of his surroundings in a large metro that he could have been a candidate for 'most amazing person I saw' video. I saw homelessness with a capital H. People that literally had been starving for days on end or consuming whatever they could claim from the local garbage dump much like scavenging animals and deciding to fight for survival.
The supply and demand side of the equation on two sides of the same planet were very different. Of course a lot of it has to do with the history of each nation that created these situations. More on that in my next rambling blog...tired now and time to turn in (come to think of that - it is an odd expression - where exactly am I going to turn?).
Ciao,
Desi Prawasi (translated to English means 'the Indian Traveler')
Hence the name for self - Hybree(i)d. Not to be confused with the eco friendly mode of conveyance that green folks are getting themselves into.
Having got past the introductions I wanted to start jotting down what it means to have lived on two continents literally on opposite sides of the planet. Growing up was YIN and the adulthood is the YANG? Growing up was chaos and unpredictable moments while now its process centric and reliable? I prefer the latter.
I can relate from experience that not knowing if you could get from A to B and what to expect when you get to B can be unnerving. Here in the 'land of opportunity' the forefathers (or some wise president and his planners) thought of all that and when the going was good got some Interstate highways built that convey folks literally from any corner of the vast continent to any other point, also on the same continent; and it is a BIG continent.
They are now dabbling in ideas like Hi Speed Rail but I think it has more political flavor than real imperative. When you get used to sitting in your own automobile and gassing up to head on outdoor wherever your heart desires for not much by way of fuel cost (both for the conveyor and the conveyee) its hard to switch habits (for those religously minded there is a Pun there).
Anyway I digress. As you can tell after a bit of reading I do that a lot which is the whole point of writing a BLOG! Freedom to digress at will.
Is there such a thing as Undigress? I wonder? If you could would you return to the spot where you Digressed from? Would that qualify as true undigression since you would already have strayed from the story line so to speak?
Anywho - having contemplated that line (or would it be non linear path?) of thought let me get back to the subject at hand i.e. my experiences of living on two continents over my life span to date.
I have grown to be an assimilated individual who has come to apperciate a world unknown or hitherto unbeknownst (to sound really erudite - seriously who talks like that) to me and feel privileged. It also makes for some really interesting observations of life in this so called 'land of plenty' (where there are a lot of people with negative cash flow; also called BROKE) where you get to experience what it means to have a sense of 'Entitlement'.
I once happened (as in chance encounter) on a self-proclaimed (by way of a sign post he held) homeless man at a major interstate off ramp - who had on a pair of Bose headsets (majority people on this planet would not know what that is) listening to a tune (or gospel or talk radio - since I could not hear exactly) and some good looking sneakers and clothing but was hungry for food. Ergo he was begging to get some cash without exerting productively so he could go and satisfy his gastronomic interest. Funny thing is he easily pulled it off every day since I did see him toting his music device doing his routine for a whole month thereafter.
Folks - there is this and then there is what I saw growing up - which is a person so decimated by ravages of his surroundings in a large metro that he could have been a candidate for 'most amazing person I saw' video. I saw homelessness with a capital H. People that literally had been starving for days on end or consuming whatever they could claim from the local garbage dump much like scavenging animals and deciding to fight for survival.
The supply and demand side of the equation on two sides of the same planet were very different. Of course a lot of it has to do with the history of each nation that created these situations. More on that in my next rambling blog...tired now and time to turn in (come to think of that - it is an odd expression - where exactly am I going to turn?).
Ciao,
Desi Prawasi (translated to English means 'the Indian Traveler')
Comments
Post a Comment