What is after 'reverse cultural shock'?
Torres talked about her 'post honeymoon and everything sucks' experiences in Mumbai. Personally, I always think 'reverse cultural shock' is even worse than cultural shock. Time flies that I am home for more than a month already. Now I start to like the feeling of being at home and living in Shanghai, which actually scares me a bit. Time to give some love and fear confession.
Family:
I can obviously feel how much livelihood I am adding to a dinner table when I start to crack jokes, give bold statements, run heated discussions. My dad loves to memorize the details of my childhood. My grandpa even has tapes of songs I sang and stories I told when I was about 5. Though we have moved into a new apartment, the memories of us living in that old house are still so vivid and sweet. ;-) Then, do all these make me want to stay? Or I am asking myself why I want to leave at the first hand.
Friends:
Adam once said that I am the most useless person to be in touch with. This statement might be true because I was hardly in touch with anyone over the last one year. Now I have all the time in the world to reconnect - reading friend's blog, emailing my friends and most of all, meeting those who are here - this becomes the only reason that I walk out of the door. I cannot remember since when I appeal to my friends instead of my parents at those tough moments of life. One thing makes me love Shanghai so much is the friends I made or reconnected in the past 1 month. It is quite funny because last year I was fighting for personal space and now I can't imagine not being able to meet or talk to those people I am so inspired by.
A recent dinner talk with Devrim made me think the importance of a physical network and reconsider 'distance doesn't matter' theory. It does. I feel so drastically far from my AI teammates and sometimes people are not within reach of an email. I am not scared of making new friends in a new place. I am scared of losing who I currently have.
Too settled?
This brings me confusion. After the desperation of running away, I started to question myself: why I want to leave at the first hand? Indeed, with the amount of informaiton and different schools of thoughts, I have very little clue to plan out my career. All I want is to get started. Then why can't I start from Shanghai?
I just finished the book called 'Mastery'. George Leonard talked about 'plateau' as an analogy of practices and the persistence of sticking to boring practices as the way to mastery. Then I looked at myself and wondered - what the hell am I practicing now?
Family:
I can obviously feel how much livelihood I am adding to a dinner table when I start to crack jokes, give bold statements, run heated discussions. My dad loves to memorize the details of my childhood. My grandpa even has tapes of songs I sang and stories I told when I was about 5. Though we have moved into a new apartment, the memories of us living in that old house are still so vivid and sweet. ;-) Then, do all these make me want to stay? Or I am asking myself why I want to leave at the first hand.
Friends:
Adam once said that I am the most useless person to be in touch with. This statement might be true because I was hardly in touch with anyone over the last one year. Now I have all the time in the world to reconnect - reading friend's blog, emailing my friends and most of all, meeting those who are here - this becomes the only reason that I walk out of the door. I cannot remember since when I appeal to my friends instead of my parents at those tough moments of life. One thing makes me love Shanghai so much is the friends I made or reconnected in the past 1 month. It is quite funny because last year I was fighting for personal space and now I can't imagine not being able to meet or talk to those people I am so inspired by.
A recent dinner talk with Devrim made me think the importance of a physical network and reconsider 'distance doesn't matter' theory. It does. I feel so drastically far from my AI teammates and sometimes people are not within reach of an email. I am not scared of making new friends in a new place. I am scared of losing who I currently have.
Too settled?
This brings me confusion. After the desperation of running away, I started to question myself: why I want to leave at the first hand? Indeed, with the amount of informaiton and different schools of thoughts, I have very little clue to plan out my career. All I want is to get started. Then why can't I start from Shanghai?
I just finished the book called 'Mastery'. George Leonard talked about 'plateau' as an analogy of practices and the persistence of sticking to boring practices as the way to mastery. Then I looked at myself and wondered - what the hell am I practicing now?
posted by Jingwei @ 10:02 AM
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