Self awareness related to using tools from Buddhism

 

This is from a Quora answer I wrote, about what most or many people don't know, but don't realize that they don't know.  I'm saying that limited self awareness is one answer.  

I add a little on how tools from Buddhism, meditation and mindfulness, can partly resolve this, but a how-to for more in depth guidance would be a short book, so this doesn't get far.  I did write a short book on that, about a year ago, and even it didn't get that far.  

This is that answer:

What are a few things that people think they know but actually don't?

Most scope of knowledge and aspects of human experience, taken a certain way, but I wanted to take this in a specific direction.  I’m claiming that people think they know themselves but really don’t.

I’m into a few subjects, Buddhism being one of those.  Not only do most people who think they’ve got an intermediate grasp on what Buddhism is kind of miss most of the point, most people also don’t get how their own life experience, perspective, worldview, and even immediate process of perception work.  

Let’s stick to the second part; it’s a lot to unpack of how Buddhism is often modeled, versus how I see it working out in practice.  I could write 1000 words just trying to justify being a subject expert, and different people would interpret that justification differently.  Someone with essentially the exact same credentials and background could be either be a great reference or else relatively biased towards unhelpful and impractical directions; it’s funny how the subject works out.

[Later edit]:  let's add the high level summary of my Buddhism background, a sort of resume, more tied to it being interesting background than a convincing foundation of expertise.  I was into Buddhism as a personal interest for awhile, a decade or so, attempting some degree of practice along with learning.  I went back to university studies to help extend that learning and convert it into a form I could communicate, getting one degree in philosophy and religion (a BA), and then a Master's in comparative philosophy (having originally studied Industrial Engineering).  I was ordained as a Thai Buddhist (Theravada) monk once, for just over two months, and have lived in a Thai Buddhist society most of the time for the last 18 years. 

There is a layer of subconscious input in lots of psychological models, so it’s normal to sweep lots of an internal model of experience into a black box kind of category.  This works, but you can break down what is going into that, what processing is doing, and what the output means a lot more than most people ever attempt to.  Of course you can’t access the mechanisms of your own thoughts and reactions, as if reading code that your internal “operating system” equivalent is running.  But you can switch an awful lot of what is normally subconscious to the range of partial and limited conscious awareness.

How?  What are the odds I’m going to make any sense of this claim?  Not great, based on what’s here so far, but let’s keep going.

We are built up of societal inputs, conditioned to be who and what we are.  That conditioning starts when we are a baby, or really as long as nine months before that, and by the time we’ve learned quite a bit of language, at age 3 or 4, a lot of other conditioning has already happened.  By 5 a lot of that gets “fixed” into a personality.  That will keep changing over time, but perhaps not more than it has already formed, in one sense, or range of senses.  

We’ve already learned what a social self is, at this early age, we’ve grasped how we relate to lots of forms of desires (for food, related to interaction, and it just keeps going).  Ideas about negative experiences become clear, related to pain (physical mishap, or violence), social interactions that cause stress, about how lacks of different kinds of stimulus play out (hunger, being left alone), about decision making gone wrong, and so on.  Lots of this maps to what we ordinarily see as cultural components, but lots is more basic than that.  Culture tends to be about clothing choices, or social roles, interaction norms, aesthetic issues, then on to ethics, but our conditioning to be a human runs a little deeper.  

We can go back and unpack some of all that, and see how we relate to it uniquely as an individual.  We can become familiar with our own assumptions, biases, goals, and most importantly self-image.

In one sense it’s not difficult to, but in another it’s absolutely impossible (conventionally).  We simply examine our own experiences, in two different ways, drawing on a different form of reference input about patterns we might find.  

Note that I’m going to tie all of this to Buddhism, just not so explicitly, and not in a really conventional form, unless one already knows that framework of ideas.  I’m talking about using meditation to examine patterns of thought and experience, as our mind presents them to us as mental noise.  The reactions and desires that are “running” in our mind, to the extent this even exists as a singular, unified thing, show up as a sort of noise when we try to just sit and quietly experience our thoughts.  

Don’t take my word for it; go and just sit quietly, with absolutely no stimulus, for about 20 minutes.  The first half will be so noisy you might as well be watching television.  Then your mind might settle a bit, and more distinct thought patterns might stand out as more important, or at least less inclined to just dissipate.  But it takes a long time to experience anything like more clarity.  The point never really is “going blank,” it’s about relating to the noise in different ways.

We can also use a different but somewhat equivalent process to identify how our ongoing mental state, and immediate desires, and model of self, all play into our immediate reactions to external inputs.  That just keeps happening, right, but we are present for it?  Not present in the sense of fully aware of our current internal mental state, and why we react as we do.  Our current emotional state is sort of relatively clear to us, sort of not.  Where impulses and intuitions come from is generally not clear; we aren’t completely “in on” that subconscious layer.  We function well enough without that, but without the benefit of much of a degree of self-awareness.  In a limited sense we all do really know ourselves, but if you ask yourself why you did something or made a choice exactly at that time, and in that way, you’d have to unpack things a bit to get to that.  

People would assume the opposite; of course they know why they do what they do.  Routine demands it; they have burdens to work, eat, sleep, conduct social functions, and so on, and each individual choice or action, or thought, relates to working through all of that.  That’s right, in a sense, but we can drill down to mapping broad inputs to specific outputs, if we try to.

Lots more channels through self-image than we might initially expect.  Or maybe we would expect that.  But the forms it takes, and individual inputs and finer reactions, thoughts, and actions, wouldn’t normally be apparent at all.  It’s all a little counter-intuitive.  In the end we have built up fairly developed images of social selves, with some dimensions that are more evident than others, and we act on goals related to maintaining or extending those.  In lots of cases the drivers we act on aren’t social in the sense of an external demand, limitation, goal, or pressure, but instead relate to a dimension of internal self-image and self-definition, which acts within and internal cause and effect loop.

So it’s hard to push all this to the next level, adding examples of that, making it clearer, but the claim here is that we can learn about the make-up of our internal reality by listening to the noise residue from it (using meditation), and we can examine the same kinds of things by breaking down our immediate reactions and process of forming external reality (using mindfulness training to extend momentary reality of internal mental inputs).

Let’s go with one example, and then let this drop, since it’s not supposed to be longform writing, but already is.  My son, who is 17, and his mother argue over what time he should go to sleep.  In this modern context, or I suppose when I grew up too, at that age he would normally be expected to make those decisions himself.  But among his friends all of them make terrible choices about this very thing; they sleep late, at 2 or 3, either getting by on 4 hours sleep a night or else that plus a nap.  It would be better to sleep 8 hours a night, or at the most extreme 7 plus an hour as a nap.  

He claims that he functions better on less sleep, which is difficult to evaluate, but it’s probably not accurate.  There is a genetic variation that makes that the case, for some few, but in general people still developing a complete brain structure need that rest to support a more positive outcome.  Probably all of this should have been resolved by better parenting and more assignment of responsibility when he was 13 or 14.  You try being a parent and making that work perfectly.

Here I’m claiming that it’s not just the extra activity of gaming or scrolling media that he is interested in, since he gets in plenty of that, but the relative freedom to make the same choices as his friends.  That’s understandable; that part kind of works.  But if he could take a longer view he might value having a better developed brain and mind more.  If he could see how it all maps out he should be able to notice that it’s all partly a form of protest, and that her well-grounded concern is valid.  His internal view of self, related to valuing freedom and self determination, is actually causing him a problem, because that sufficient sleep would benefit him.

Of course I’ve had this explicit discussion with him, so the theory behind this set of ideas is clear.  It just doesn’t map out to internal self-awareness yet; he can’t see all of the parts at work within his own internal processing.  On one level he really does think that he would function better on 6 hours of sleep.  That’s even though on another level he knows that boost in adrenaline from running short on sleep is temporary, and not completely sustainable, at least as an optimum.  

Looked at one way this all boils down to ego; his view of self and how he maps out reality is inflexible, and tied to inputs and outputs he isn’t completely clear on.  He is making decisions based on reasons he is getting wrong (the reasons and evaluation form, not just the final evaluation process result).  Looked at another way it’s a problem related to short term and long term decision making.  Two more hours of watching videos is a short term gain; two more hours of sleep is a long term better choice.  Kids need to learn this kind of evaluation process on their own, ideally at 14 or 15, instead of 17 or 18.  I suppose most really put it all together between sophomore and junior year in college, if ever.

It seems strange saying that if he sat in meditation 20 minutes a day he could figure all of this out for himself.  I guess that’s the general claim here.  He could also map out how he sees his future better, how he deals with childhood ending, and other thorny issues, like themes related to romantic relationships.  Pretty much no one is trained to evaluate reality in this way at early stages of life development; it’s rare enough for adults with real problems to take up such tools in adulthood.  And there are other paths to a similar goal.  During my freshman year of college I tried out all sorts of crazy sleep cycles and almost all of them not working well identified how normal sleep really is relatively optimum.  Who knew?

Someone would need to try to make use of these tools to confirm that they work.  In general that’s not normal, to do that.  There would have to be some unusual driver pushing them to put in lots of atypical effort and exploration.  That leads to another set of tangents I’ll not pursue here; why did I do that?  I’m kind of an odd person, and my life experiences were atypical.

I suspect all of this is not so convincing.  I do appreciate feedback about it though.  The more functional parts are probably a bit too vague to critique in standard forms, but input based on intuition or related or unrelated experiences would be interesting.

Bangkok Chinatown shop Tie Guan Yin and Jin Jun Mei

I'm reviewing two more tea samples from my favorite Chinatown tea shop, Jip Eu.  I was there to buy some other teas and they gave me them (many thanks).  

It turned out they're low-medium oxidation level / high roast level Tie Guan Yin (Chinese Fujian rolled oolong) and Jin Jun Mei, buds based black tea from the Wuyishan area, as opposed to the TGY being from Anxi.  I don't know the full producer details and back-story, so those are the primary origin areas, not a solid claim about the origin of these, but they're probably from those places.  That shop owner has family in those two parts of Fujian, so of course they would be from there.

These are kind of standard tea types.  That oxidation and roast combination for the oolong isn't the most standard form, but it comes up.  Jin Jun Mei is a well known black tea type, just a higher tier sort of theme tea, the opposite of a daily drinker.

This is their Facebook page, one potential contact for them (with their location here).  They have a Shopee outlet page (online sales platform), but it probably doesn't work to cite a link because the web page link details won't apply, but it's here):

I've bought some of that before.  I think the hexagonal tin three over from the bottom right is what I just bought, which I think was Da Yu We Dan Cong oolong, to give to a few monks.  Here's a somewhat recent Da Yu We Dan Cong review, if that background is of interest.

One might expect there to be a good bit of generality related to how pre-packaged tin based teas turn out, related to quality level.  It doesn't work that way.  It's just a packaging and distribution form; the teas can vary a lot, and do.  

In Western outlets we're accustomed to teas being presented in a certain way, then packaged and sold in certain ways (in multi-layer zip sealed bags, with printed labeling), but that kind of form doesn't really improve or detract from tea quality.  We're also accustomed to typical story telling.  Those stories definitely don't make the tea any better, and often if you know tea background well parts tend to be self-contradictory.  Some descriptions work as red flags:  tea master, 1000 year old tea tree, forest origin, etc.  A tea could still be really good even if many of the details a vendor passes on are wrong, if the plant type doesn't match, plant age story, the "master" part makes no sense, they describe oxidation level wrong, and so on.  It's better to go by how the teas are, but you need to try them to know that.

It's nice when Chinatown shops let you try tea after tea, so you know exactly what you are buying, but they don't at Jip Eu.  All of those teas in that image are sold as pre-packaged tins, and they wouldn't have very many of those open to taste from.  They're more of a local wholesale outlet for different grades of Wuyi Yancha, Fujian oolongs like Da Hong Pao, Rou Gui, and Shui Xian.  And then there are lots of versions of teas there no one would know about if they only visited a few times, and after visiting regularly for more than a half a dozen years I still usually try something I've never heard of there.

Shops set up like tourist attractions, where you can taste a lot of things, like Sen Xing Fa, tend to sell teas at higher mark-ups, so you get charged fairly directly for that tasting process.  Sometimes that's in your favor, since you only buy teas you like, but if you pay 25% more for teas that aren't quite as good then that's not favorable.  

It takes a long, long time to be able to judge trueness to type and quality level quickly and accurately.  I drank some of a sheng pu'er with them at that shop that day, an 8281 CNNP yellow label 2007 sheng pu'er, from Mengku, and reviewed a sample at home a week or so later, and my impression was not the same.  How could that be, since I've been drinking mostly sheng for 8 years or so?

Lots of factors enter in.  I was on a fast that day; what you've eaten or haven't eaten changes your sense of taste.  If you are in a hurry that makes your impression less clear.  In a shop they may brew tea slightly differently than you do, which changes things.  Using different water makes a difference.  

Some teas that come straight out of a warehouse storage area will be much better after they rest a few weeks, and air out a little.  Now that I think of it vendors always frame that as the teas needing rest from the trip when shipped, as if temperature and humidity variations affect them during travel, but especially for sheng pu'er it could be that being packed in with tons of other teas is good in one sense and temporarily negative in another; a musty edge picked up from that can fade fast.  The jet-lag theme for teas is usually about intensity being limited at first, for a couple of weeks, or longer.

If you try a half dozen teas at one time that can muddle your impression, especially if you keep mixing stronger and lighter types and versions.  If you can side-by-side taste a tea along with a benchmark version you know, at your home, taking time to settle down and focus in, you'll get a much clearer impression.  

Most of those tins are between $10 and $30, usually for 200 gram amounts, but in some cases for 100, which is on the low end of a normal range, 5 to 30 cents a gram.  Better quality oolong I've bought there was $30 (1000 baht) for 100 grams, at 30 cents a gram, which again is about right, for high demand, high quality Wuyi Yancha.  I've had good luck with Mi Lan Xiang Dan Cong there in the past, I just wanted those monks to be able to try something else, so I didn't buy them that.

I'm pretty sure that I own a part of a cake of the 8001 CNNP tea shown in that photo, a 2006 version.  I'd go with the 8281 over that, because that 8001 is on the intense / heavy / burly side, unless someone loves that kind of character.  Or this 8653 Xiaguan cake (from 2006).  That's going to sound strange, to people who know these teas, because that 8653 has a strong barnyard sort of theme, with lots of saddle leather and old barn scent, but to me it works.  Much better than it did in 2022, 4 years ago, when I first reviewed it; that style range of tea can really use the full 20 years or more to age-transition (ferment).

On with this review then.

Review:

TGY:  this isn't really opened yet; the next round will work better for a description.  It's clearly quite roasted, which is a good sign if that balances well with a medium-high level of oxidation (not like black tea; I mean for oolong range), and a bad sign if it's used to cover up flaws, or to re-condition a stale tea version.  We'll see.

JJM:  this is pretty good.  There are a few different styles of Jin Jun Mei, or the range covers some scope, however one wants to frame that.  One style is bright, heavy on honey.  Another is warmer toned, a little closer to a conventional black tea, maybe including more dried fruit range, and slight earthiness or spice.  This is the second.  It does include some honey, and a touch of beeswax, along with a characteristic light dry edge that seems to pair with that beeswax.  Then the rest of the tone is warmer and deeper.  It's closer to rich spice, but hard to place.  There are bark spices out there that aren't cinnamon; maybe that.

Sweetness is good, it balances well, and feel is relatively full, even though this is just getting started.  It's good tea.  I'll need to keep brewing this quickly, at less than 10 seconds, even though this is probably 5 grams in a 100 ml gaiwan, a little less than I usually use.  The other will need to infuse for much longer to get it to open, more than 20 seconds, then probably backed off to 15 or so once it's brewing normally.

TGY #2:  this is much more complex, even though it's still not fully opened.  It's going to be nice.  It includes a bit of cinnamon, so it's not so far off the other in flavor range.  Rich floral tones are a little stronger, quite warm related to the roast effect pulling the whole flavor range to warm mineral.  I'd guess oxidation level wasn't all that high, since bright floral is still present too.  It's probably mineral tone that's warmer, and the two mix, making it seem like warm floral tone, when it's really not.  Sometimes teas like this can seem really out of balance, when there's a lot going on that doesn't completely match, but this is good, just not great.  

A friend shared a decent but moderately plain roasted oolong from Taiwan, that he bought in the airport there on the way back, and this is similar in style but slightly better.  It's not completely balanced, because inky mineral, some warm spice, and some lighter floral range are all mixing, and they don't sync together perfectly.  But it's pretty decent tea.  Maybe on the higher end Taiwanese scale not that good, but that's already filtering versions down a lot for a comparison range.  As teas go you would find in a Chinatown shop, anywhere, this is good.  It would've been nice if just a little more oxidation input had made it balance better.

JJM:  this is on another level, compared to the other.  A bit of sourness, that is picking up, offsets that high quality, very pleasant assessment, but it's still in a different range, just better.  Warm tones add a lot of complexity.  The honey and beeswax, now a lot more subdued, lend it complexity, as spice tones do.  The sourness is a bit much this round, related to it coming across completely positively, but people would have different tolerances for that, or preference range that makes it seem a neutral input, or else awful instead.  Apparently I'm in between; it's worse for including that, but it's not something that ruins the experience.  It would be nice if that evolves back out.

TGY #3:  this might just be where this is settling.  The balance of all of those inputs last round have shifted, but they're all still the same, beyond that.  A cinnamon note is nice; it kind of links the rest.  Warm mineral tones serve as a base, and decent sweetness.  It seems like the floral tone range probably is warming a bit.  Feel has some fullness, which is pleasant, but that's limited; an even higher quality range would probably feel thicker and fuller.  Same for aftertaste expression; it improves the tea including it, but it could be a little stronger.  All in all this is pretty good tea though, with a balanced, pleasant character.  Not perfectly balanced; in between a relative ideal and a tea that's a little off for lacking balance, again good but not great.

If someone loved this high roast, medium-low oxidation style, adjusting TGY character, they would probably assess this more positively.  I'd love a little more oxidation and a little less roast input more, and probably some variation of the Taiwanese Qing Xin cultivar instead.  It's pretty good for what it is though.  A pronounced ink sort of mineral note someone might love, or else dislike.  I don't see it as more positive than neutral, maybe even as a slight negative.

JJM #3:  this is balancing much better; that sourness is fading fast.  Tones have warmed; it includes lots of rich spice and now comes across more as warm mineral.  Brighter honey more or less dropped out.  This probably won't last long, before it's brewing much thinner infusions.  A lot of flavor has extracted out already.  The other took the first two infusions just to open up, and it's only brewing most of the material now, which was true of this much finer black leaf form within seconds.

TGY #4:  for people who haven't explored these ranges of tea a different theme would enter in that I'm not experiencing:  novelty.  I've not tried that many versions of teas in these styles and types, but maybe a half dozen quite roasted, medium-light oxidized TGY, and at least a half dozen JJM versions (not a half dozen in this narrower style range within that type; it's not like that).  It's really nice trying new tea range, but I have to be experiencing something unusually unique to include that.  

Then your favorites it's fine to repeat, over and over.  I could drink decent but ordinary Dian Hong (Yunnan black tea) half of the time, forever, and I tend to like sheng pu'er a little more than that, I just wouldn't tolerate repetition as well for any one version of that.  I suppose that I could drink just one of those relatively basic Vietnamese sheng versions I've been trying two days a week, all year.  These two teas I'm reviewing are nice but not my personal favorite types.

This round improves just marginally; it all hangs together in slightly better balance.  It probably will hold up that way for a few more rounds.  It has to be decent quality to do that (which is early to call, since this is still only a couple of rounds into being fully wetted).  

JJM #4:  this is as good as it's been as well; I suppose it could make a couple of more very positive infusions, and stretch on beyond that.  Warm tones stand out, but there's a lot going on.  The same flavor list applies, but that would be open to different interpretations.  A toffee note seems to be picking up, replacing the earlier honey, settling in where spice and limited mineral covered before.  The spice leans a little towards cacao now; that would make for a more reasonable interpretation, at this stage.  Warm mineral supports and balances that, so that it doesn't just taste like a candy bar.  You wouldn't associate it with sourness in this balance, but I suppose a very light part of it still is that.  

This is a pretty good place to leave off note taking.  These will change a little more over the next two rounds, and they're in a solid part of the infusion sequence now, very positive.  But 8 cups usually feels like a good bit at one time, and the intensity of that Jin Jun Mei has me really feeling these.  It's trivia that most people know, but buds only teas contain the highest amount of caffeine, and processing (the oxidation) barely offsets that any, so this black tea version may well contain 1 1/2 times as much as the older leaf oolong I'm comparing it to.  

At a guess sheng pu'er probably kicks in related to feel related to other compounds also contributing to the experience.  Or maybe it's just magic, "cha qi," the spirit of the earth carried by deep roots from tea trees.  Probably that takes on the form of specific compounds, but that's not as cool a story.

I'd recommend these to others to try.  Jin Jun Mei is an interesting and novel black tea type.  Unsmoked Lapsang Souchong can also be really nice.  I really like rolled oolongs made to balance more oxidation and less roast input, as I've mentioned, but that more traditional style is more rare now.  It might come up more in Taiwanese versions, than for Anxi origin Tie Guan Yin.  Inky mineral and light floral can be ok, evolving into richer spice tones, as this did, but the balance works better for the other style I'm describing, as I see it.

Experience curve of an American expat in Thailand

 

To me the stories that people tell about moving abroad tend to just repeat, which is why I've never written about this here before.  But not everyone would be exposed to those discussions, and maybe some of it isn't what you'd expect, so I'll write a bit on it.  I'll cover lots of parts, and keep each brief, to balance covering plenty of scope and keeping length reasonable.

This is written as my own take and experiences, but pretty much all of it is standard in online discussion.  The different factors tend to shift a bit, depending on individual perspective.  I'll go from what people experience early on to much later; that form makes sense.  Or as an exception, since I've already used an expat group photo capture as an intro I'll explain a little about networking with other foreigners first.

expat groups / networking:  as with any social group this works out differently for everyone.  Some people are happy to stay more isolated, others have families to focus on, others can meet people in bars or gyms, or wherever, and so on.  Online groups are another main theme.  I went to different "Internations" events (photo credit for the header image here), and it was your basic networking experience.  In theory it would have to do with making connections for different reasons, and in practice socializing and hooking up were main focuses.  This is a dedicated reference page for foreigner meetup themes.  Of course they mention meetups, and a few specific groups, and about exercise related clubs and such.

It's funny how all of that applies to some people but not others.  Someone relocated with a family may feel a little out of place, and a retiree probably all the more so.  A full-on sexpat might not mesh well with young "digital nomads," someone in Thailand mostly for nightlife and adult services.  All of those categories of people are out there.  It's all probably somewhat "Western" oriented, so Asians, from Asia, might not feel as included.  Two of the people in that page header group photo don't look completely white.  That carries over to the next photo; two of eight there are not.  It's surely not intended as targeted marketing, as inclusion or exclusion, but the proportion might be about right.

This isn't really about how to make social life work out, but it overlaps with that.  It's more about how the experience tends to go.  So let's start at the beginning of that.

honeymoon period:  I didn't exactly experience this, in a standard form, because I didn't vacation in Thailand and then want to move.  In that sense some transplants would have local exposure even prior to this phase of actually moving.  I didn't.  I met my Thai wife in grad school, and scholarship conditions brought us back to Thailand.  I needed to figure out how to work here quickly, and never really experienced living on extensive savings on a vacation lifestyle.  But that other form is one normal experience, that it all feels like a vacation, because it either carries over from vacations or involves a transition phase like that experience form.  Then within months or years a longer term reality would set in, and everything would change, most typically.

Some of the same things could've been just as captivating and positive for me, like seeing temples, or experiencing new foods.  But the context was a little different.  If you eat food on vacation that is too spicy, or the textures seem unappealing, that represents novel themes to experience, but over a longer term--even just related to expectations, not actual timing--it could signal that you might have problems with your diet later on.  Really people end up missing what is familiar more, later.  For example, the selection of cheese and bread wasn't as complete when we moved to Thailand 18 years ago, which only changes as you explore different types of specialty grocery stores.  Now it's not an issue; it doesn't work as a current problem, because Thai grocery stores have evolved to cover most of the scope of earlier international grocery stores, with room for both to still operate.

initial culture shock:  of course lots of differences stood out.  The smells took months to adapt to, which oddly I almost never smell at all now (canals, old markets where there is no refrigeration, fragrant Chinatown shops--those I still do).  I was worried about what might be unsafe for months; it took a few years to realize that I wasn't really at risk from crime, even though places certainly look rough.  I had to adapt to eating different foods, which takes time.  Plenty of people would love the foods right away, but the range of textures is different, and for something like blood-thickened soup--my son's favorite--you need to get over the idea to appreciate the dish.  I'm ok with blood-thickened soup now (boat noodles, in the main form).

those boat noodles; I actually like them now

grilled chicken, papaya salad, and sticky rice; just about anyone would love this

language:  it's hard being somewhere where you can't communicate well.  Lots of expats recommend that people become fluent ASAP, which is easier for some than others.  I still can't really hear the tones, so I certainly can't pronounce them.  I can understand more than 500 words, since context helps identify them, even when those sound differences don't, but when I try to speak them I'm not actually saying lots of it right.  

To clarify that, vowel sounds vary based on tonal shift, so the rising tone you use when you indicate a question, at the end, is pretty similar to one of 4 additional tonal variations (I think it's 4; it's been awhile since I even tried to learn it).  You are trained to hear that slight shift in tone, to process it, and in a similar way Thais hear that as a normal part of vowel sounds.  But English speakers don't.  Vowel length is a similar complication; they can hold the same vowel sound for an extra marginal duration, that no one would even hear without practice, and then that's a different sound too. 

You should learn a local language, of course, if you live abroad.  I should have underwent formal training many years ago.  I got busy with work and raising kids, and when it finally became easier, a decade or so later, it was all just normal for me, speaking some but not well at all.  It's hard to describe how that kind of factor works out.  It would seem like laziness, that you just don't want to put the effort in, and on some level that's part of it.  But lots of dimensions need to become normal for you that aren't already familiar, and what you adapt to over the first couple of years becomes your new normal.  For some that's relatively complete integration; perhaps for more it's acceptance of being an outsider, in some ways.  Just being white places you as that, regardless of anything else, so it's natural to accept it.

personal perspective differences:  I won't do this justice.  Within about 3 years of working in a Thai company I could see how others would see different ideas, reacting to contexts differently, or communicating differently,  but that only came through related to an incredible amount of exposure.  I thought that I knew a bit about Thai culture from marrying my wife back in the US, after knowing her for a year, and living together for another year there, but I didn't.  

Her perspective and ways of communicating aren't even standard for a Thai, it later turned out.  I'll put it bluntly:  she's kind of a Karen.  That's not normal in Thailand, but it can come up.  I remember teasing her about it a little, when our daughter was much younger, asking Kalani what the clearest sign of that is, and she would say "Mommy always wants to talk to the manager."  I always felt bad for those people.  At least in the US they're accustomed to it.

Under different circumstances, and less immersion, someone could probably live in Thailand for 20 or 30 years and never really get the Thai perspective.  It's been unusually helpful having older kids help explain parts to me, but teenagers are kind of touch and go on who they even are, so it takes some drilling down to get to any finer points, of any kind.  Someone working in a Thai company would automatically need to immerse more, and someone working mostly with other foreigners never would have to.

religion differences:  this changes a lot.  Someone being from another country who isn't religious, seeing it as irrelevant, wouldn't change that you still go through the same contrasting perspective related to holding that opinion.  It's not belief in God versus atheism that would contrast, it's Buddhism versus everything else.

I studied Buddhism for a long time prior to coming to Thailand, in different forms and contexts, and ordained as a Thai monk here for 2 months, but it still took years to appreciate how it all comes together.  One fragment is that people believe in fate in a much more concrete form, versus self-determinism, and that changes a lot of things.  Some is positive; people can resign themselves to things being out of control better.  We don't get to pick when we die, usually, and dealing with death relates to making peace with that.  Some parts are negative; you only want to resign yourself to what fate is dictating when your own input isn't going to make the critical and positive difference.  Either belief in your own agency, based on culture, or your own experienced karma has also helped you become that person that makes things happen, or else not (mixing the two themes).

Plenty of people would see Thais as hypocritical, because they can be corrupt, or might lie as much as anyone, or are unfaithful in relationships, and so on.  Basic human nature is kind of consistent across cultures, but how it all manifests varies.  Some of it is really positive; people are far less inclined to commit a broad range of crimes.  Being superficially pleasant is a good thing.  Then other parts don't work out so differently than in the US.  

It might seem like you don't need to trace back underlying perspective difference to underlying associated cultural influences, that you can just deal with people as they are, by noticing differences.  That sort of works.  But it really helps taking in as much as you can about all of it, to adjust better.  If that extends to absolutely needing to work within a group dynamic, for example in a work context, that more basic approach just isn't going to work.  The patterns need to become clear to you, so you can react in ways that go without questioning for people from within that local culture.

back to experience curve idea, the middle part:  one theme that comes up online all the time is how a foreigner will build a good life in Thailand, and positive relationships, then a significant other--the Thai woman, as the story always goes--will not remain faithful, and will cheat that guy out of everything, or sometimes worse.  That's a limited sub-theme, but people do experience it.  Lots of that probably relates to people getting into bad situations, from the beginning.  I get a sense that maybe miscommunication related to perspective and expectations may be factoring in, a lot of cases.  Relationships are hard enough with plenty of communication, without working through a culture divide.  

If two people in a relationship are never remotely close to on the same page for perspective it's probably going to go badly.  Not that badly, necessarily, but if someone marries a bar-girl--a woman working as a prostitute--then there is a high potential for her doing whatever seems necessary later on, even if it violates a social norm, since she's acted on this capacity in the past.  Right and wrong can naturally seem a bit more fluid, if someone had to part with their standard societal norms at one point.  

To clarify, people adopting atypical group behavior norms is not all that unusual, in any culture.  If you join a biker gang in the US maybe some forms of crime automatically become normal.  When I grew up just smoking weed was illegal, so someone changed to be a criminal just by dabbling in that.  Maybe that was a lot of the gateway effect; if you didn't mind the risk and stigma of smoking a joint, why not keep going?

Back to that earlier thread, if a husband remains isolated within a Western social circle, not really embracing local connections, there is potential for an offset parallel of two very different perspectives, never coming together.  

It could be tempting to see your Thai wife as embracing common ground with you, that you are on the same page, but it's just synced with your page, but that's potentially problematic.  Then not even noticing that she is the one making all of the allowances for this kind of thing could be even more problematic.  The Thai woman, or I guess this could apply to men, might feel like it related to making more and more allowances, until some event or tipping point makes it all seem untenable.  

I suppose a foreigner could interpret their own somewhat forced integration in such a way, to try to see this as I might possibly experience it.  The standard stories are about foreigners loving the new foods, learning language, embracing the religion, seeing Thai social roles as admirable and special, and so on.  But it's possible that it could be too much.  It would relate to a relationship power dynamic, I guess.

I'm not saying that I fully integrated and completely worked around that.  The claim here is that the more someone "doesn't get" Thai culture and the Thai perspective the more that sets up potential for a relationship disconnect later.  The base Thai culture has "Westernized" quite a bit over the last 20 years, it seems to me, but surely lots of that is superficial, with media content exposing people to social forms and images more than underlying perspective.  It's more normal for people to go camping or ride larger motorcycles now, for example.

Any relationship that's relatively transactional would be unstable anyway, if the transaction changed in any way.  And it's quite possible that role-related perspective could make it seem that this is essentially what the other perspective is all about, that there are only role differences, not this other layer, maybe even from both directions.  

Maybe it's that an older, wealthy foreigner marrying a younger, attractive Thai woman is close enough to the US "trophy wife" theme, which could also be unstable, and perhaps unfulfilling all around.  Or it could work.  You hear about cases of it not working online (I mean the foreigner-Thai relationships), which makes for good stories, but comments saying that someone's relationship is fine are boring, and don't draw much attention.

resuming a "normal" social circle:  this kind of thing divides up differently even with the US.  Many people, men and women, find that they focus on work and life circumstances and lose the 20s and early 30s emphasis on partying, and on other forms of group interaction.  Some don't.  Some women turn to cats, or some guys focus on careers, or the gym; there are stereotypes based on these sub-themes.  

Thais are pretty good about not getting caught up in that, from what I've seen (social isolation based on narrowing interests).  Work socialization can work out, or people group together to turn hobbies that could be singular pursuits to become group activities, like running.  There are run clubs in the US too, of course.  Somehow US culture seems to "run ahead" related to online isolation being more pronounced, as I see it.  Or maybe one of my wife's friends is a stereotypical cat lady now, and I'm biased by what I see at work, and in our neighborhood environment.

I've been considering if broad, problematic social issues in the US play a significant role in that, or not.  I don't know.  I mean that public safety is more of a concern there, for example, so people have one more reason to not go to malls, or in public in general.  Really there have only been two public shootings in Thailand, that I'm aware of, beyond lots and lots of people killing each other for personal reasons.  Both were in malls.  Only one followed the "some guy snapped" paradigm, and in the other someone shot two people, for almost no reason, I think it was (so that guy was a bit out of balance too).  Probably it's not that simple, that this is a main cause of social isolation in the US.  I was questioning more to what extent it could play any role.

So back to the issue of forming a social circle, Westerners have two options:  fully integrate, as some do, becoming fluent and embedded in social circles, or join up with other foreigners.  Both could work.  Foreigners tend to cycle through, so you would need to keep renewing those group connections, for the second.

why the culture suits some people, but not others:  this would be a mix of the other themes I've covered.  If someone wants to live an isolated life that's definitely helpful, because that can work out anywhere, but it's cheaper abroad, and food range can be better, or travel options.  I think some people love the "outsider" role, instead of being put off by it.  At least they have a public image, versus just being invisible.  

I suppose I'm good with focusing almost entirely on family life, which is one reason why I feel so at home in Thailand.  Living in Honolulu I do a little more with others, related to kids' events, but not too much.  I connect with others related to tea interest some, but more in Thailand.  And I love what there is to love in Thailand, the look and feel, exploring new places, getting into new themes (like tea), appreciating local holiday themes and festivals, and so on.  

Being more flexible helps.  I don't really need to get back to eating exactly the same foods I did back in the US, for example.  But then I cook, so it's not the best example.  Having a personality type that matches a Thai culture norm also helps.  I tend to say exactly what I think, so that's a mismatch, but beyond that I'm generally calm and relaxed.  And I'm inclined to take others' perspectives into account, and don't care for the experience of conflict.  Some people really do, even if they probably wouldn't frame it that way.  

Thais love gossip and drama, so I'm not saying they they favor ideal social interactions.  There's just more emphasis on meeting expectations related to social interactions.  Not a norm to be faithful in relationships, oddly; I mean in a superficial form, related to how people are.  People are pleasant.  Not to throw shade on some other random culture, but it's kind of the opposite of the running theme in Russia, where showing friendliness and openness to a stranger is seen as a sign of weakness, or at least of unconventional behavior.

Youtuber norms:  this has almost nothing to do with a lot of what I'm saying.  People make "viral" content videos about how to live on 100 baht a day ($3), or show off what beach areas look like, which often has little to do with normal life experience.  I can eat in inexpensive local food shops, so that's a match, but these are tourists communicating tourist perspectives.  A walking tour video shows what places look like; that's kind of universal, separate from perspective.  Then lots cover why someone experienced a falling out with their relatively short-term girlfriend; back to scope that people do experience, but not so much related to long-term stay experiences.  

It's like the rest of social media; more extreme images and stories draw attention.  It's helpful if someone dies in the story, and a pretty, barely dressed woman's image would be good for clicks.  Some expats, the "sexpats," live out this kind of lifestyle for years.  It's fine, I guess.  Living a similar lifestyle in a place like Miami would cost a lot more, and you wouldn't need to push it nearly as far to get into real trouble there.  

That's probably why it's normal for some people to pursue it to a bad end, here, because it goes so well for so long.  There are lots of videos of foreigners fighting in the streets.  In other places you would need to be even more careful about what you said and did around others, or it would come down to that faster.  I've lived in a bunch of US cities, and you just can't be walking into some parts of many of them, or you'd be lucky to walk back out, regardless of your behavior.  In those videos you usually see guys calling out a lot of the bar customers, or trying to fight others, shoving women on the street when surrounded by Thais.  In Baltimore, where I lived at one time, you would be shot or knifed long before your behavior became that outrageous, again maybe even for just being in the wrong place.

the best case:  would there be a best case?  An ordinary, positive, fulfilling life is a difficult balance to achieve, anywhere.  People get things wrong, or external conditions can go badly.  There are certainly lots of pitfalls to look out for in Thailand, for a foreigner, and it requires a long learning curve to even know what those are.  Mixed culture marriages are rough, period.  They don't look it, when others see parts that work well from the outside, but it's the lower probability mix of personality inputs that help most with that.  

That's not different elsewhere; a good example of a mainland white guy happily married to a Filipina woman in Honolulu comes to mind.  They put work in, for sure.  If they hadn't reached across the divide to see how the other partner sees things, and wants different things, it never would have balanced as I'm seeing it.  My own marriage feels like an extreme case.

Of course a lot of this applies to same nationality, same background and race couples.  People vary, and you need to work around differences.  If you don't communicate well or drift apart that's that.

But if everything lines up and works out the overall balance can be great, even when working through extreme differences in backgrounds.  I've barely mentioned what is special about Thailand here:  the food, the people really are kind, travel options, safety, and a society that holds together fairly well, so far.  A foreigner would need to be open to changing who they are to fit in, to an extent, their own perspective and expectations, which would come naturally or else it wouldn't work out.  

I'm reminded of a Japanese friend who says that he doesn't feel as at home back in Japan now (now living in Cambodia, but it works out about the same).  His wife probably has a more traditional Japanese perspective than him, and maybe they need to put work in to deal with that, or maybe they're lucky in relation to aligned perspectives.

Addressing a bit of a tangent, early on in my stay here an expat commented that later on, after foreign exposure, you can feel equally out of place everywhere.  He was more serious than joking, I would later find.  I could never be a Thai, not really, and I'm certainly not what Americans expect from each other either.  Intuitively maybe I could still make a good liberal back there, but it's really not about that, and not like that.  I don't feel like I kept up with the political divide there, and don't feel aligned with either of those two perspectives.  I can't accept that the form media presents of the culture war is valid.  Of course that's too much of a tangent to get into here, moving way off topic.

calling it quits:  I've not really had this experience, but I did move back to the US part time, to Honolulu, so in a limited sense I've had parts of it.  It could be hard to re-adjust to your original culture, if you had spent 2 or 3 years acclimating to another one.  Some expats spend decades struggling to live in exactly the same ways they had before, while in another culture, and for them it would be easy.

It's obvious enough why someone would see living abroad as very positive for a long time, and then as negative, isn't it?  Negative events would lead to this, personal problems, business failure, run-ins with the legal system, and so on.  Or maybe it all just wouldn't work out as well as expected, or homesickness could set in, without a major problem as a trigger.

Just moving back and forth I continually experience reverse culture shock, over and over.  Another factor related to searching for work back in the States, which never did work out.  The work I do, in IT, as quality assurance in a data center and IT services company, does relate to forms in the US, but some parts don't match.  Beyond this practical factor there is potential for foreign experience to be seen as inferior in some way, not just partly irrelevant.  Ageism is universal; that would be a problem here too.

All of these transition issues, related to cultural forms, local norms, employment, social themes, and so on, could relate to potential problems while living abroad.  This relates to the experience curve I mentioned earlier, how things being novel and interesting early on can relate to missing what has been replaced later, or to potential that seemed to apply back there more.

It's funny how these issues seem to mix with a decline into bitterness about life in general, for some, related to aging working out in different ways.  I just saw a post online about someone regretting that aging effects were as negative as they are, related to their health, appearance, and social status, at the age of 30.  They need to be careful; if you are bitter about losses due to aging right at the start of early middle age that doesn't bode well for late middle age, or for you even making it to old age.

Of course I don't mean this in some sort of judgmental form, saying that too many people don't do aging right, or maintain appropriate connections, or life status and health.  It all works out organically.  One person's good balance would be another's untenable disaster.

why move abroad:  this part might not have been organic, right, the very early primary cause for having these experiences.  In my case it seemed to be; I didn't plan to date a Thai, a fellow grad student, and I wasn't great at looking ahead even half a year when I did marry one.  Looking back I was a complete idiot in my 20s and 30s.  It makes me wonder to what extent I've actually resolved that.  I suppose others could get swept along in similar decision making, or a lack of it.  A vacation to Thailand, and a downturn "back home," could make the decision to move abroad seem very organic and natural.  It's funny how many people discuss avoiding US political problems by moving abroad.  That could work, but other problems would come up there, even deeper level issues.

I've not discussed it here, but Thais have their own problems with those political issues, and the forms aren't all that different.  As a foreigner / expat it can easily be seen as not relevant, but that's a fairly limited and weak causal input, that turning a blind eye to such important context makes perfect sense.  Visa policies change regularly; it can become relevant quickly.  Of course you can have no influence as a foreigner, and it's not so simple to follow political groups in relation to how those changes might occur.

Can you imagine how a foreigner dropped into the middle of the current US political divide would take it?  They would have to think "what is wrong with you people?"  Trump has turned it all into a complete circus, and it wasn't going that well earlier on anyway.

versus experience curve in the US:  lots of this applies to people just moving around the US, doesn't it?  Everywhere you go norms are a little different, and foods and activities.  I was just talking to someone who moved from a liberal state to a conservative one, and that person felt out of place for a different set of reasons.  The difference is a lot more extreme moving between countries and national cultures.  And the setting changes a lot more.  It's hard to drive in Thailand, at first; little differences like that add up.

But people do change over time everywhere, and have similar relationship issues, and need to change to adapt to environment changes, or else those can work against them.  It's possible to experience an "us versus them" mentality in lots of ways in different places.  I suppose that can even be experienced positively, if that group identification is meaningful and important, and represents acceptance and inclusion, versus your own exclusion.  I suppose in an abstract sense maybe the other side is more intuitive, or maybe that's just my own liberal inclination, thinking that less flexible social groupings could be more of a barrier to new experiences and social acceptance than a support for a consistent and positive lifestyle.  I've moved around a lot; it has long since been hard to relate to being part of the most native in-group.

It raises an interesting question, would expats tend to be more liberal than conservative?  Maybe.  I suppose not always.  Openness to different perspectives definitely comes in handy, but again many people interested in living abroad aren't really on that page.  They can be attracted to the tropical environment, low cost of living, an acceptance of a "party lifestyle," or perceived relationship opportunities, that don't necessarily relate to them "going local" in terms of their own worldview.  

That sort of colonial mindset seems less acceptable now, doesn't it?  When I first moved to Thailand, nearly 20 years ago, foreigners held an elevated social status position related to being different.  That was in the process of changing, even then, and not so many years later the opposite was just as true.

This reminds me of an old friend living out one odd and slightly tragic relationship stereotype, which doesn't relate so closely, but it was funny.  He was an alcoholic, off drinking back in the States, but it made sense to him to go back to it on vacations in Thailand.  He had a girlfriend at one point, or a few, really, and stayed with one in her home village.  He joked that one particular cousin who was around may have really been her boyfriend, which was funnier because we both knew it wasn't a joke, that it was probably the case.  He was just a "walking ATM" to them, per another part of that stereotype paradigm.  But probably a poor version of that; his spending potential wouldn't have been what they had hoped for.

Anyone getting involved with that strange range of local experiences may not have long term success.  It's all so unthinkable, switched back to a potential Western parallel.  A woman could have a boyfriend for financial gain, completely in the open in relation to her family and actual romantic boyfriend?  Or who knows, maybe someone could get that to balance.  In general the friends I've had engaged in long term alcoholism saw it work out as a gradual decline, and I'd expect the same to be true here too.  Of course that friend's relationship was very short lived.  

Even though there is reality to those stereotypes that doesn't mean that they're common.  I've known plenty of expats in Thailand, from many different countries, and not one fit that mold.  A mostly online friend, who I've met IRL a couple of times, married a Thai, and it was nothing like that.  They divorced for much more conventional reasons, the same that could apply within any relationship.  Then one might wonder if the marriage itself was or wasn't under stress based on that difference, which is a different concern, that people just being from elsewhere might not effectively help sustain a personal connection, as personal commonality might.  

I suppose it works to conclude that everyone's case is different, no matter which generalities do or don't apply.  This has certainly been a broad discussion of lots of types of patterns.  It wouldn't change much if a foreigner from elsewhere moved to Thailand; the "American" part is mostly to my own frame of reference.  I get a sense that British people tend to feel more commonality with other Brits, and often rely on that national group inclusion more, but that still might not change much.  I would guess that a foreign woman moving to Thailand would have very different experiences.  Now that I think of it I've met foreign women here, but never knew one as a close friend, beyond those school friends of my kids.  Not one was ever American, or even Western (British, French, etc.).  

I would talk to my son's Australian teacher when I dropped him off, to an international school, since it was nice to hear a Western perspective again.  But I never had reason to know many foreign teachers, or all that many other expats, in general.  This maps to a generality of many Americans being ok with keeping social ties minimal, especially if they have a family.