How Do Others View American Food?

 4^th of July went by and we saw a flock of flags appearing everywhere from TV adds to outdoor 4^th of July events, such as ‘the Works’-a 4^th of July fest in Raleigh which decorated their flyer-schedule-fan with a large US Flag and a replica of uncle Sam). Besides 4^th of July, at public administration and immigration venues, I do not encounter the US flag as often as one would think, given the fact that I live in the country with the flag of stars and stripes. Surprisingly enough, I came across the American flag a lot more often in German grocery stores when looking up ‘American foods’ in Germany. 

On my recent trip to Germany, I went to the grocery store and noticed that the packaging of something called ‘American style cookies’ with the US flag garnishing the entire box. I wondered and sought out other ‘American’ products. I found the same flag embellishing the hotdog, burger and peanut butter packaging. My husband was less irritated by the flag than the title which had a comical meaning to him. He could not place the significance to put ‘American’ in front of the title of the cookies. His reaction then reminded me of a neighbor who had asked me about a restaurant in Raleigh and gave me a puzzled look when I said that the restaurant had just ‘American’ food. I suppose all food at home seems ‘regular’ until one leaves the country and encounters difficulties finding foods one is used to. I remember an American friend who was living in Germany and was glad to return home to America in order to drink a ‘regular’ milkshake again and not be bothered with the McDonalds one, which is actually very American with very American fast-food products! 

Back to the grocery store: the point of placing the American flag on food packaging is to simplify our search for certain items, to categorize them in our brain and shorten the decision making process while at the grocery store with a limited amount of time to shop and infinite products to choose from. Nevertheless, living in America has showed me the vast variety of American foods but in Germany, however, or German food labeling and marketing firms, food considered American is clearly restricted to cookies, burgers and hot dog buns. 

Here are some pictures of American products from a German grocery store: 

 

Have you every encountered a similar experience when abroad or home? How was your experience with food in a foreign countries?

Mysterious Code of Silence

The mysterious aura of celebrities is what makes us admire and follow them, until a reality show airs all their secret details and the mystery vanishes.  Even though reality shows have a large audience that follows them, it still falls under a TV genre that is frowned upon or lesser valued. I wonder if revealing all our secrets or intimate details is the reason for revulsion towards reality TV? Apparently, everyone across different cultures has some sort of code of silence, motivation or even encourages to keep quiet about certain topics. I experienced that people do not like to talk about money in America. In America, people are willing to share personal details, i.e. address, telephone number or email with cashiers and retailers, whereas, a German would never give out their personal information because it’s considered invading one’s privacy unless they are about to seal a business deal. The Asian secrecy is on an entire different level. In Pakistan, people keep the meekest details of life to themselves out of fear to chip their perfect façade of reputation, honor or to get caught in a verboten act.

What do you think are the reasons to keep quiet? Is it a cultural thing or is it just old fashioned to keep things to yourself?

Stop Spreading the News

Keeping things to oneself has some benefits, I suppose. I found some ‘good’ reasons to keep quiet about, as Psychology Today* reports on why to stop spreading the news. It says, actually telling about an event can dampen emotions as we revisit an event, we alter the emotional experience by analyzing the event. Then we rewrite the past and the story about an event might be the story last told to someone about that event. When talking about a goal, researchers show that we tend to talk up our goal, which gives us the sense of premature achievement and reduces the drive to actually achieve the goal. It also depends who we are sharing information with because not everyone responds well to good news, i.e. if the listener is passive, unresponsive or negative, telling them is actually going to overshadow your good news due to their bad mood. 

*Psychology Today March/April Issue

An Immigrant’s Soul

Immigrant. It is a bad word. It sounds foreign even though it is an English word. When Americans hear it they think of the Mexican landscaper who is in their front yard every other week, the Indian man at the gas station register or the Asian woman who politely smiles when we pick up our Kung Pao take-out order. Some even think the immigrants are enjoying a privilege and, therefore, should be thankful to Americans and the American government for allowing them to be here. However, only a few actually recognize what hardship these immigrants might have fled or hardships they still endure. Here is a snippet of what an immigrant goes through:

The typical immigrant starts their immigration process as early as the childhood, either because their parents are migrating or because they feel alienated in their own society. The typical immigrant knows someone who ‘made it’ abroad, went to collage or married a foreigner and they themselves want to ‘make it’ too - abroad. Partially, out of need to go- leave everything behind, survive and provide a fresh start for their children and partially out of admiration for the ones who ‘made it’ abroad. The TV shows promised them a flourished country with clean streets and clean government which comes with a big price tag – the immigration fees of couple of thousand dollars and the emotional toll to leave your family, neighbors, childhood friends and colleagues behind. In return, the typical immigrant expects a prosperous life without fearing poverty, institutionalized injustice, corruption, governmental or mafia persecution, religious or racial discrimination.

After arriving to the flourished land, the fear of poverty, injustice, and discrimination is still a constant companion of conscious. They feel lucky to find a modest accommodation to live out of the one or two bags they entered the new country in with. As they overpay for virtually everything while not having any credit at all, lack of information makes things harder as well. The status in the new society is low. Even well-educated immigrants fall into the bottom half of the society rank. The language and custom is cryptic making the new immigrant isolated and alienated immediately. Some may never be able to acquire the new language as they are crushed under the daily grind to provide for their dependents. ‘Legal Alien’ reads their new status. 

As the immigrant evolves from ‘Legal Alien,’ to ‘Permanent Resident,’ or even ‘Citizen’ something changes; not just the immigration status, but his/her psyche as well. During their evolution, the immigrant learned (half-condemning his/her own actions) to camouflage, disguising their former images to imitating the new façade. Their former cultural traditions, customs and behaviors are bleached down to just a few core entities, which are easy to align to the new society, such as food and religious practices. The immigrant has the real urge to fit in to ‘make it’. More than likely, the immigrant only associates with other immigrants from the same former region and possibly even form a sub-cultural entity in the new country because to the native people they are not more than the gas-station-Arab or the Korean-pedicure-lady. Then upon visiting their former homeland the immigrant feels another overwhelmingly emotion - alienated by their own former culture or society. As they gain in one country they lose some in the other. As they ‘made it’ in the new country, they catch themselves sitting between two stools where the quest for their real identity just begins.

                                                            Identity Crisis?

Passion for Languages

As Easter rolls around, we will see an abundant array of documentaries, special features and films related to Jesus Christ’s life and resurrection. I just happened to stumble my thumb across the remote to find the movie “The Passion of the Christ” airing on screen. For the ones who haven’t watched the Mel Gibson directed film covering the  final 12 hours of Jesus, it is completely subtitled in English as the protagonists dialogues are held in Aramaic and Latin. I remembered the hype about the movie when it first came out but never watched it due to lack of interest of a 16 year old. As I watched the movie, I had to read the subtitle but I mostly paid attention to the spoken language and frantically waited to hear familiar words. The more closely I listed the more familiar words I heard. Just to clarify, I never took Latin in school or had any Aramaic lessons in my life. Nevertheless, I spotted words from both spectrums of my language knowledge. I grew up speaking Urdu and Punjabi in Pakistan; and speaking German with my family and friends in Germany. In school I took French and Spanish. All of these languages fall into the Indo-European language family. German is derived from the Germanic stem of the Indo-European language family and most of its vocabulary is derived from Latin and Greek. Similarly, Urdu is derived from the Aryan stem of the Indo-European stem and the vocabulary is mostly derived from Arabic and Sanskrit. 

Anyhow, I put a list together of words from the movie with their identical meaning in contemporary languages:

Latin/Greek	Tumultus	Kaisar
German	Tumult i.e. Trouble/Uprising	Kaiser i.e. King/Emperor

 

Aramaic	AeMuOT	Khatar	Malik/Malka	Abba	Karza
Urdu (meaning)	Mot i.e. Death	Danger	Malik i.e. Lord/Master	Abbu i.e. Father	Depth/fault (i.e. ‘penalty’ in movie)

 

Latin	Idiota	Quen	Mundous	Veritas	Quando	Diceme
Spanish	Idiota i.e. Idiot	Quien i.e. Who	Mundo i.e. World	Verdad i.e. Truth	Cuando i.e. When	Digame i.e. Tell me

 

As of now, I can confidently say that it was worth doing the drudgery work of reciting Spanish vocabulary and rehearse the tough grammar and spelling rules of German because now I am abound in linguistic knowledge which I can apply to even understand an ancient language! So do not pass on a chance to lean a foreign language. It’s worth it!

Multicultural Parenting and Dysfunctional Moms

We have all read about the different cultural parenting clichés, such as the Panda Dad, the Chinese überstrict parent with high expectations or the Jewish overbearing mother. Well, last week I discovered another one: the ‘French mother’. Last week I read two articles regarding parenting, one was about French parenting, how French mothers are permissive by giving their kids a lot of autonomy at a young age, and the other one was about the ‘All-American helicopter mom’, who hovers over her children constantly, tangling herself into dysfunctional patterns (i.e. she would even cut the applesauce if the child asked her to). I never thought about my parenting style but those articles just made me realize one thing: I am not a helicopter mom and I give my one-year old as much autonomy as possible. This revelation also made me grasp that my husband and I had different parenting styles based on our cultural difference which leads us to many clashes about parenting. He is more of the ‘All-American-hoverer’ category parent, where a parent’s worry is tantamount to love and my European autonomous style parenting is afflicted with neglect. For example, when we go to the playground, I let her run around as she pleases and socialize with other kids. My husband on the other hand will only be five inches away and pull her away as soon as she approaches any other child. At home, it’s a strict taboo for our daughter to touch any pens because in my husband’s opinion she could displace her eye with it. I on the other hand, see nothing wrong with a pen because it trains her fine motor skills and she loves them. 

The American author who wrote about French parenting seemed to have found a secret trick to parenting, but for me, the methods she described seemed just natural. The other article, to my defense, tallied numerous reasons why not to be a hover mom (e.g. not call the school because a child has stared at their child). Being a hover parent restrains the child’s development and spontaneousness, and feeds the parents with paranoia and depression. The longer I live in the US, and deal with other hoverers, the more it is rubbing off on me, forcing me to convert to hover-ism. In order to avoid rolling eyes and shaking heads from others when my child is trying to explore strange territory, I have to fit in to the social norm, which amongst others, entails hovering! I am trying to convince myself that the hover method has protective qualities I have never encountered before. I am starting to hover away my eyes and brain that it is just another disguise of paranoia!