Wild Cyprus, angry mermaids and my YouTube crush!

A few things I’ve been reading/watching today:

• Peace threatens wildlife on Cyprus! No man’s land separating Greek and Turkish sides of the island in 1974 turned into an unintentional natural reservation. Peace and the ensuing return of farmers and villagers will threaten various rare endogenous species. There have recently been an influx of other animals such as rats and wild dogs – maybe the returning folk could protect the incredible gift that has come of this conflict from such things and preserve it? The cynic in me says no.
• Represent Copenhagen! OK so the ground-breaking, pollution-tackling, environment-saving, hope-inspiring resolution everyone had been hyped up to depend on never came through. But can we really expect to solve a problem so great in just 11 days? Regardless, I think Copenhagen made some important statements that I hope people will take home with them, my favourite being no one is too good to drink tap water – Go Jantelov! (not that I really agree with it but it has its perks.) Can’t say too much as I have only caught bits and pieces during the Christmas cram.
• The Angry Mermaid – Awards prizes to worst coroporate lobby groups for “undermining effective climate change” (see above). Cool animation on YouTube – regardless of the criticism, I think it makes a valid point – we want to help, we want people that genuinely want to make a difference to represent us and solve this problem, cause in the end it’s going to be us paying for it! It’s totally doable – sure, drastic changes need to be made and some very powerful companies will lose out unless they, too, make the switch. Boo hoo. Things evolve, we need to pay the consequences for our mistakes and apply the knowledge we’ve gained to ratify the situation. How can the politicians keep selling us out? It’s us they’re meant to be representing!
• I’ve been watching this guy Lasse Gjertsen on YouTube for a couple of years now. I must admit that I am somewhat infatuated with him, but the guy’s seriously talented! He’s done a few different things, Hyperactive being his most watched video. Along the same line of stop-motion animation is Picadilly Postcard – awesome! He’s also done some classic animations – Gammel Nytt and The Business Man being a couple of favourites – and a satirical “commercial“. He’s has recently started making music videos to make ends meet – some people look at that as slightly traitorous. I disagree – music videos are an art overlooked thanks to all the trashy stuff out there and I think Lasse’s latest upload, A Bar in Amsterdam is proof of it (artsiness, not trashiness).

The difference: Iranians do heroin, Arabs coke.

This Iranian dude Maz Jobrani talking about the difference between Persians and Arabs.
So true!

Christmas hype.

Everyone’s gone mental with Christmas shopping, decorations, parties…! Yes, this holiday celebrates the birth of Christ, but do the majority really give that a thought? And if not, what is all the hype about? To me it’s just a reason to get friends and family together for parties, and the best bit is getting presents!

I guess my lack of Christmas spirit is probably due to growing up in a Muslim country. I was taught never to greet strangers and wish them a Merry Christmas. We have a plastic tree that only comes out when we can be bothered. Ornaments for it are nearly impossible to find. I end up eating so much food that I put on at least 10 lbs by the end of December. And all my friends always go home to wherever they come from for the holidays, meaning my parents and I always spend the Christmas season alone.

However the days leading up to Christmas always excite me, simply because I can’t wait for my presents. And I know exactly what I’m getting every year. This is because either I pick them out myself (and even help my parents wrap them!) or my mom can’t keep her trap shut.

This year I am especially excited because my presents are AWESOME! I’m getting a Louis Vuitton purse from my mom. Buying it was actually a very embarrassing experience…my mom tried talking the salesman into giving her discount. When he replied, “Louis Vuitton doesn’t do discount, and I hope they will never do discount,” I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. From my dad I’m getting an 80GB video iPod! Woohoo! Yes…I may be slightly spoilt ;D

Damn it. The days of waiting are torture. Let it be Christmas now!

Third culture kids.

Everyone wants to belong. This is part of the reason why homesickness strikes: you miss the place where you come from, where you know everyone, where you feel most comfortable.

Sometimes home is a hard place to define. Is it where you grew up? Your parents’ house? Or is it the country that issues your passport? Or can you find a new place that feels more like home than anywhere else?

This is an issue that I’ve always had to deal with. I come from a multicultural background: a European father, an Asian mother, and then I was born and raised in the Middle East among Americans. Who am I? What am I? It’s a struggle to answer these questions.

I have always felt a little bit of an outsider. I have never been to the US and because of that there were always things I didn’t quite understand when with my American friends. As I am not Muslim, I’ve never really fit in while living in the Middle East either. I respect their culture, but I don’t live by it, and this was always a barrier for me.

The Philippines isn’t my home either. Being white automatically puts me up on a pedestal, and I hate the special treatment I receive when I am there. All I want is to be one of them! Instead, because of my pale skin, people go out of their way to please me.

Before going to Denmark, I considered myself Danish as that is what it says on my passport. However, moving over there was an extreme culture shock! I love the country and the people, but again, I am an outsider. I do things in a different way than they do, I think differently, I even speak the language with an accent. I will always be a “perker” to them (a very derogatory word used for foreigners). Damn my American accent!

So now I consider myself a person of the world. I have a little bit of each of these cultures blended in me, and I wouldn’t be the same person if anything was missing from my background. I wouldn’t give this up for anything, even if that means I may never find my “home”. I can see things from different perspectives, through the eyes of different cultures and religions. Of this I am extremely grateful as I find so many people are quite closed-minded and can’t understand things that deviate from their limited worlds. As everything and everyone is different to me, I am forced to see things from other perspectives and compromise.

And I haven’t had enough of learning about other cultures yet. I see myself traveling the world for the rest of my life. A few years here, a few there…At first I thought I was in search of a place I could adopt as my new home. Then I realised that I will probably never find such a place as I am of a unique breed called the “third culture kids” (TCKs).

TCKs are very eloquently defined by Ruth Hill Useem as

[a] person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The third culture kid builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the third culture kid’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of the same background.

Wikipedia has a very interesting article about TCKs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_culture_kids. While reading this, I was overwhelmed by such a sense of belonging that I couldn’t believe it. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

Finally I know who and what I am.