Spectrum

I ought to be doing my Chinese homework and my other essays instead of blogging, but what the heck, I will just type it out.

The United States of America is diverse. Amherst College is diverse, too. Even the FOBs. For readers who are unfamiliar with FOBs, it stands for Fresh Off the Boat (or as my senior Jez pointed out, Fresh Off Boeing, since no one really travels around in boats anymore), a (somewhat) xenophobic term that refers to an international who just came to USA. FOBs are usually characterized by their inept English Language, their stubbornness to cling to their original culture, and their unwillingness (or lack of) adaptation to the American culture (or whatever the host culture is).

However, for the sake of this post, I am going to argue that a foreigner, who did not grow up in the country, is a FOB nonetheless. I am, therefore, an FOB. And I'm kinda cool with that, as long as I still make friends and try to reach out to the Americans here. Hahaha. And yes, I'm doing fine too, because in a lot of sense the American culture espouses values similar to those I hold: Friendliness, Openness, and Political Correctness (although yes, I sometimes complain that people at Amherst tend to be too politically correct, but I appreciate their efforts.)

Anyhow, I met my badminton senior, Shanghui, for dinner as we wanted to discuss about our cooking plans for the badminton team. Two other Singaporean seniors, Jacob and Jez joined us as we are halfway finishing our food, making the table an unofficial Singaporean table to talk cock and sing song. Unfortunately, Jez has just broken up with his girlfriend. My planned 30 minutes dinner turned into an hour and a half as we shared stories to try and cheer Jez up.

This is when I discovered that among us FOBs there's diversity too, there's a spectrum. Let's begin with Shanghui. Shanghui is your stereotypical conservative Singaporean Chinese, who doesn't go to parties (well he goes to study parties, but which Asian doesn't?), is very industrious, and goes to bed (for the most nights) before midnight. He's someone I respect for keeping his values firm and intact even after studying abroad for (almost) four full years. Jacob was rather conservative too, he shared that he did not want an angmoh girlfriend as the cultural gap would be too big.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Jez (and Nich, but Nich wasn't there with us). These two Singaporean men are probably as American as they could: Both are dating (well, dated for Jez) ang moh girls, both go to real parties with real booze, they practice hook-ups, and are very liberal in their views. I respect them as they are willing to change at least some parts of their identity in order to fully immerse into the American culture and integrate with the Americans. We even have Shamira, a Singaporean junior currently in the Frisbee team, who does not even say hi to her fellow countrymen. I suspect it has something to do with her wanting to integrate with the American society, but I can't say much since I haven't seen her yet.

Where do I fall? I guess I am a little bit in between. I have my own personal standards and lines I do not intend to cross, but I like the freedom United States offers. It is really interesting. Too bad they're graduating real soon.

Truly Indonesia's Finest,