on second thoughts......

I don't know what to blog about. It's like a mental block that forms each time I make up my mind to update this so-called diary of mine~ But I mean who really wants to know what you ate for lunch or what you plan to eat for breakfast? It's like telling people every minute, every second of your life which I guess if you had the wit and the humour to write about it without people realising that these aren't probably the best topics in the world, then you have surpassed the amateurs and have entered the professional league. I confess that I wouldn't even dream of being able to do that simply because I don't believe my life is exciting enough or warrants enough attention for people to bother about it: which has led me to the final conclusion that why should I personally bother about it if others aren't going to. This could be purely a superficial concept of mine but I think it resonates throughout everyone. Humans were not born to be hermits. We are, by nature, social creatures. This is why when we are young, we find cliques in schools, groups which we can associate with. I mean, how else would you explain what-I-would-call the "school canteen phenomena"?

Let me elaborate. Picture yourself... there is that 13-year old kid, fresh out of middle school and into the BIG school. Your uniform is crisp and clean and it is the first day of school. Having survived the first few classes of the day, you feel ok - it wasn't as bad as you expected and you seemed pretty confident now that you have survived those few hours. But then comes the lunch bell - everyone rushes to get their lunch at the canteen and the tables start to fill. You grab your tray, ladle out your food on your plate (whether it is a mountain of food or not, I'll leave it to your imagination) and start to move towards the seating area. For just one moment in time, that time before you have found your group of friends sitting in the crowd, you panic. You have a slight nauseous feeling and you freak out a bit - 'what if you have to sit alone? what if you have no place to sit? what if you have to sit with seniors?' All these kind of questions pop up in your head until just at the last minute before you pull a 180 and scram out of the doors, you see a familiar face and peace is restored in the world once more.

I don't know whether this example resonates with you but I feel that even from a young age we are given a feeling of safety and reassurance simply by sticking with the same group all the time. This is something we repeat over and over again whether we are in our teens, our 30s, our 50s... time itself does not play a role here which is why every time we move or make a drastic change to our social bearings, we experience what I would imagine a fish does when it is pulled out of the water. Why do I bring this up? Well - oddly enough I have experienced this exact same thing when I started work this month. Frankly, I don't know why it should be so awkward for me when I have had many of these experiences in my life already: in Bangkok when I first entered in Year 4, when entering high school, when entering Senior Studies and finally when I entered uni. Maybe it is because each time we are removed from our normal surroundings, we are forced to acclimatise and undergo something like a social reconditioning. It makes it a ton worse if you don't know the culture and you are afraid of doing something wrong, or something out of place. I mean, who wants to have the label "FARANG" on their forehead just because of some small gesture or mannerism?

This probably explains why in the first few days I was here and having lunch with my colleagues, my eyes were darting around the table always checking to see what is right, or what seemed to be the status quo. Haha - extremely weird as it may be, I think that most of us who experience these kind of circumstances do it automatically. For example, I have realised that like the cars on the German road which have the driver's seat on the left side of the car, the pedestrians or people walking on the streets also have a tendency to walk on the right side of the road when passing others. This was so weird for me because in Asia, it is the opposite way round but it is something I do instinctively without realising which is why when I came here, I could only feel the difference. Who knew that driving on the road actually affected the way people walk on the sidewalk? But I am rambling - there is actually no point to this post except to put my thoughts down onto 'paper' or so that you can see what crap actually fills my head. I have a lot of time to think nowadays especially with the 10 minute walks to the train station, the 30 minute ride on the train to work and the 15 minutes walk from the front gate to the building I work at. It must come to no surprise then that I think a lot. I have actually compiled a small collection of what facebook statuses I could post just from thinking during these short walks. I'll post it up next time - although why you would want to see the dribble that I come up with.... :) Till then! Tschüs! XD