Back in Bangkok; on jet lag and culture shock

 

this represents Bangkok as well as anything else

I'm back!  Not really feeling 100% just yet, but I'm definitely back in Bangkok.  I've got jet lag and shingles, not a good combination, but it's fine.

Thinking more about that last writing on spending a month in Honolulu I left out a couple of things, about transitioning, about jet lag and culture shock.  I can add that here, and then list out what I like more about Bangkok / Thailand than Honolulu / Hawaii.  It's so nice there that it's odd that some parts are actually better here, or that an overall feeling of being in place works out better, which I'll explain.

jet lag:  lots of people are very familiar with this, but some might not be.  An hour or two of time difference is fine, when traveling, but after 3 or 4 it requires some adjustment.  Hawaii is 7 hours ahead of here, or really it's 17 hours ahead here, so they're both kind of on different days.

They say that it takes one day to get over one hour of shift, and that it scales up the same way, so a 7 hour time difference should take a week to adjust to.  Maybe that's about right; it's hard to say.  It takes awhile.  There isn't much more to say about how that goes; you end up awake at night, and napping during the day, and a bit tired off and on.  Traveling one direction really is easier than the other, but I've lost track of which way that is.  Maybe going east is harder.  Google's AI take on this:

Jet lag is generally harder when traveling east because the body's circadian rhythm has a natural tendency to be slightly longer than 24 hours, making it harder to shorten the day by advancing the body clock. This means your internal clock struggles more to adjust to an earlier schedule, leading to greater fatigue, confusion, and other symptoms compared to the phase delay experienced when traveling west.

I did just switch right back to sleeping at a normal time this past weekend, coming West to Bangkok, and it did take about a week to get that to work out in Honolulu.  It also seems that the less well-established your sleep is to begin with the better, because you just have a messed up sleep cycle in both places, so that less changes.  I was working in the evening back there (remotely, based from a company in Thailand) so my sleep wasn't consistent, related to often going to sleep well after midnight and waking up at 6 with the kids, then napping to fill in the gaps.

This adds tangent after tangent, but it's nice having jet lag there, initially, because I can run in the mornings, when my normal daily rhythm is such that I'm no good for any morning exercise.

culture shock:  it's funny how it takes a week or two for me to feel more integrated back in Honolulu, and here in Bangkok it's relatively automatic.  I guess that I have lived here for 18 years, and have only spent 2 or 3 months there at a time, at the most, on and off.

It would be nice if I could describe how that feels more clearly, back there.  It's just a little strange, like everything isn't completely real.  You really don't get the same effect when vacation traveling.  That seems to be a different role, as if being a visitor anywhere isn't problematic, when the point is only to be a temporary visitor.  It's not as if I have a problem "doing" an American culture based persona or perspective; I never really switch out of that back in Bangkok.  Societies and cultures everywhere have modernized over the last 30 years or so, so things are much more uniform all over than they were before that.  It's also not that Honolulu isn't familiar; I last lived there for 2 years in grad school in the US, and that was my 5th stay there in the last 3 years.

It's about the people seeming different, more than the settings.  You see a half dozen different main types of people in Honolulu, like tourists from the US mainland, tourists from Asia, Asian or mixed-race locals, homeless people, and so on.  Then there are neighbors, school contacts, retail workers to talk to, etc.  I interact with people based on these roles and forms.

I suppose lots of other minor inputs add up to the rest.  The bus transportation system is different, the things you buy aren't the same, and the places you buy them in, and foods change over.  Chinatown is a little closer to here in theme (in Bangkok, where I am again), but culture shock wouldn't be different there, since it's still different enough.  People speaking English is easy to appreciate, but also easy to sort of overlook.  If people only speak Thai here I catch a decent amount of that, and speak back a very limited and badly pronounced version of it.  That part is much easier there, but the harder version here seems normal now.

these old style markets should be hard to adjust to, but they're not, at this point

you get a great price on lots of types of pineapple in a place like this

a very familiar version, our favorite place to buy fried chicken and sticky rice

weather:  there is no adjustment going there, because the weather is perfect, 70-some degrees (in the mid 20s C), sunny, and breezy.  Here I sweat a good bit more for a few days and then it just seems normal.  

It gets overstated how hot Bangkok is.  It's hot, and the hot season is completely unbearable, but you adjust to it being in the low 90s (F; in the 30s C) a lot of the time, and being humid.  It's worse for visitors, because adjusting takes weeks to months.  But locals only feel like they're dying from it a couple of months a year, at the peak.  We sleep in air conditioning here, and of course offices are air conditioned, so some conditions are the same everywhere.  It's great that they have an open air mall there, Ala Moana, that's perfectly at room temperature all the time, but then it just matches air conditioned mall temperatures here.

people:  I didn't mention how people differ in that last post.  In a city like Honolulu people are really a bit diverse to be generalizing them as all one type.  In general locals are really nice, but transplants or temporary stay locals are just like they are in the mainland, however that happens to be.  

If you are white many of the most local locals aren't so interested in experiencing contact with you, and I kind of get that.  A few give everyone else a bad name.  They would probably experience just as many problems with the worst of the more local locals as well, but might not think through how parallel that really is.  The worst tourists are doing some pretty stupid things, and are annoying, but the worst Oahu locals aren't better.

Thais are very nice, but that can mean different things.  The main thing that it means is that they're superficially pleasant, which is only so significant.  It's a cultural norm to be like that, to smile a lot, and to remain calm.  It's mostly genuine; they really do feel calm, mostly.  But a smile can mean they disagree with something that they've heard.  It helps to be able to read different kinds of smiles.

my favorite Thai smile

both kids, way back when

Wouldn't anywhere be more pleasant if people actually tried to be pleasant?  Sure, why not?  It's sort of nice that Americans show you exactly what they are experiencing just then, in general, but they sort of don't need to tell you all of it, as people tend to.  If there's a point to it they should.  If it's just venting, or that they have no internal filter, then that's not ideal.

I've really appreciated having nice neighbors in Hawaii, but then we just had a conflict with one not long ago, the first time I remember ever having a conflict with a neighbor (anywhere, over a very long span of time; strange).  They said that we were staring in the window at them, which wasn't accurate.  I think that neighbor had been smoking too much weed for too long, which is normal there.  It probably didn't help that we felt kind of a strange vibe from them from early on, and never really established any connection, as we had with half the other neighbors.  Then the others we really never spoke with didn't seem to take that in any negative way; it's a normal thing in the US, to not talk to your neighbors.

Here in Bangkok my wife doesn't like the motorcycle taxi drivers in our soi (alley) drinking in the alley in the evenings.  I don't mind; it's up to them.  That doesn't work out in the US, since it's not really legal, but here people do whatever they do.  

It's funny how the US is the "land of freedoms" but they protect common interests in so many ways that you are more restricted there.  Which is fair; noise laws help people sleep at night, and if you are living next to someone blaring Thai country music you'd wish there was more protection related to that.  If Americans could openly drink in any given alley it would get out of hand.  Maybe the music those "motorsai" guys play is already a bit much, but again to me it's fine.  We hear it, but it's not loud at that distance.  Out in the Thai countryside people can set up concert power level speaker systems so that at nearly 1 km away people hear it; that's something else.  

That's just one example.  The roads are a bit chaotic here as well, and that comes with the obvious down-side, that when it doesn't work out for someone on a motorcycle they get badly injured, or worse.

what's best about both places:  the earlier post covered this for Honolulu:  natural settings, the beach, the weather, great parks, people are generally nice, and the transportation system is good.  The look and feel of Honolulu is great, and the rest of Oahu is even better.  

Bangkok has a lot of diversity.  Food themes are amazing, and there's a bit of everything to experience here.  Traffic is terrible, and at time pollution is bad; there are down-sides.  There isn't that much crime in either place, but it's something you need to keep in mind as a factor in Honolulu, but not so much here.

I really like the feel of Bangkok.  There are countless places to go to shop, go to markets, to see events, or check out a temple, so that you can easily build up to having 100 favorite places to visit in the city.  There are way more malls than the city needs, so many grocery stores, and lots of local markets.  It's all almost a bit much.  But that makes it feel vibrant and alive, that there is so much going on, block after block, for thousands of blocks.

comparing Chinatowns:  maybe the two different Chinatowns work as an example of how the cities differ.  Honolulu's has some interesting shops and restaurants, and the look and feel is novel.  Lots of things are priced better than elsewhere, even though things still are kind of expensive there.  Homelessness offsets the safety and positive feel there; it's better to not be around after dark.  But it's still safe, and nice enough, and easy to get to from downtown or elsewhere; it's a moderate sized city.  It looks clean and tropical.

Bangkok's Chinatown is massive.  I've heard that it's the largest outside of China, maybe only rivaled by San Francisco's, but surely it's much bigger.  The main street is packed and chaotic, with so many crowded side streets with lots of shops and street-themed food areas.  It doubles as a wholesale vending area, many parts of it.  People live there too, and there are bars and cafes; themes mix, with no limitations imposed by zoning.  Tea shops are decent, but lots of that theme doesn't carry over directly from the influence of Chinese culture, so they're generally not great.  There's not much Thai tea there, reminding me of looking for Japanese tea in a Chinatown there, before figuring out that it's the one place that you go to emphasize Chinese culture instead.

Like that Chinatown Bangkok is a beautiful mess.  For people not on that page it would be too much, and it could seem awful.  It's not orderly and Westernized; there are few places where you can sit down with a standard Western menu to eat.  There are some, of course.  I don't mean to buy spaghetti carbonara or a hamburger; I mean that in general you have to just know what they sell, or ask them, which only works well if you can speak Thai.  

jostling through crowds and buying snacks

In the Honolulu Chinatown there might be a dozen odd shops carrying unusual goods to check out, or a second dozen that are harder to find.  In Bangkok's version it's essentially endless.  You could see all of that Chinatown in a few months, if you put the right amount of time and effort in.  I've visited dozens of times and don't really keep exploring, as much as visiting the same half dozen places that I like to go best.  

Bangkok in general is like that; people end up appreciating and experiencing their own version of it.  Then you explore from there, whether you want to or not, as other themes and places come up.

oddly there are no old tea shops like this in Honolulu (but plenty in Bangkok)

Street fairs or festivals make for a good example of this.  I've visited maybe two dozen versions of these over the years, not much over one per year.  That's not counting Loy Krathong, or other holiday themed events; to me visiting somewhere to celebrate that is just a normal annual experience.  I've seen countless others in passing, that we didn't have time to check out just then.  You step into a different world every time you visit one.  It's not necessarily better than visiting a local fair in the US; those are great there too.

The kids and I just visited a street fair in Waikiki, and have seen parades there, but essentially it's the same thing over and over (the Waikiki versions).  That's down to most of the vendors being the same, the food and trinket vending booths.  Where in Bangkok you can buy snacks or substantial foods for $1 or so, of many types, there everything costs $10 to 20, so that you could easily eat a dinner of those snacks or grilled meat items for $50.  It's a bit absurd, paying amusement park pricing at a street fair ($10 hot dogs and such).  But that's Waikiki for you.

oddly this was the last Bangkok street fair I've been to

an arts themed festival in an old part of town

not a street festival; this part of town is patterned after trendy areas in Seoul

this is Seoul; places look a little like this in Bangkok, but it's hard to copy it all directly

Loy Krathong; most of that is biodegradable (flowers and bread), and they clean it out later

a bittersweet memory; you can never go back

An immigrant to my own country

 

I've already written here about some of the background of moving back to Hawaii, and how the first couple of weeks went.  I really thought the groundwork preparations were mostly finished then, but another three weeks of them continued, layer after layer of setting up our family's lives.  

In a sense this post isn't about that, or about whatever culture shock I might experience, but I'll touch on both subjects more and then set them aside.  It's really about how odd it is going through a process of immigration back to my own country, not just arranging details, or dealing with culture shock, but essentially re-joining this society from the ground up, rebuilding every bit of it.

More transition details:

In an earlier post I must have covered getting an apartment here, and of course electricity, then also cell phones, wifi service access, arranging schools for my kids, passing a hurdle of two separate health checks for them.  I probably didn't mention renewing a driver's license, restoring a bank account, struggling with online bill payment functions, and helping my wife as a driving instructor.  Let's just say that last part is ongoing, that she isn't a licensed driver yet, but not for lack of trying.  

Oddly she's an amazing driver in Bangkok, and had a Hawaii driver's license in the past, but switching back over to proficiency here is taking time, changing over to driving on the other sides of the road and car.  That was hard for me there; it took months, or even a full year, to really feel comfortable driving on the other side of the road, and that only felt completely natural after years of practice.

as one would imagine the botanical gardens here are amazing

It's all normal enough.  Something like getting a library card was easy and special; we read a few books every night, as we had back in Bangkok, but now they vary daily, because they're not just what my kids already own.  I suppose it's a little odd that details keep coming, that there is always one more layer, like setting up subsidized health care for my kids, since my last coverage plan only works in Thailand.

We really are poor now, related to using a Thai income to support parts of two households, which wasn't more than enough to support only one with a lower cost of living earlier on.  Some details we just won't arrange for awhile, like sleeping on beds instead of the floor.  It's a battle to free up spending for any small luxuries, for example spending $46 on a comfortable chair for the apartment.  It's all a trade-off, spending for anything.  We've bought shave ice a couple of times; even frivolous spending seems important in some cases.

another version not far from this place used natural reduced fruit toppings, just amazing

this chair cost less than subs from Subway, but somehow it felt like an investment purchase

There is no status update about job hunting, beyond a "headhunter" helping with the process.  It's still completely up in the air.  If anyone has a friend related to IT processes and ISO systems work in Hawaii help with that would be appreciated.  There's seemingly no chance of doing work related to tea.

Our kids do well in school, socially and academically.  Both are well behind in English, to the extent that my daughter is in a special class program, and that's the only class that my son hasn't been able to catch up in yet.  Their spoken English is on-par with their peers, or probably ahead of many, but years of limited education exposure in a Thai based school is hard to overcome.  They were in online classes for over two years back in Bangkok; that definitely didn't help.

I keep asking my son and daughter how it goes, and beyond the standard "good" Keo recently mentioned that it still feels a little like being on a vacation.  It should; we live in Waikiki, the main resort area.  And it's a complete break from their prior life, how vacations go.  They seem fine, and stable, but the odd stress indicator still gives me cause for concern.  Kalani drew a cool picture of many images that included a theme of murder more than I would like, probably partly related to video games she is playing, but stress could come into play.  Keo had melt-downs frequently earlier on, about feeling displaced, and missing the cat, just all of it, but that ended.

Let's move on to cover culture shock a little and get to that root experience of being an immigrant after.

Culture shock, layers of local culture

There are a lot of social groups here, many distinct cultures, not just one.  We helped decorate a float for a local parade, a little, and that brought us in contact with a contender for the truest local culture, native local Hawaiians.  Our uncle Al--not a relative by blood--invited us to that, as part of a Hawaiian Airlines float preparation he and his wife were involved in.  I don't feel so connected to that perspective or local group; this is definitely no sort of claim about that.  But it was welcome contact, and it is great to be considered family by him and his wife.  His nephew is really nice; it felt a little like an older cousin passing on advice in talking to him with Keo.

that one connection is probably indirectly why we are here, more than any other single input

they won first place for that float, just not even partly related to our efforts

Of course Waikiki is full of tourists, and service workers, who are generally transplants, and who form the labor infrastructure.  I was a service working in a resort area, in the Vail Valley (so tied to a winter sports theme), and here too, during grad school, so all that is familiar.  That was an earlier life though, and I'm not taking that up again, at least not yet, or not related to any plans.  There isn't much to say about exposure to those two forms of culture, not that "tourist" is a culture, more an activity and mindset, a mode people from anywhere can easily relate to, even with limited exposure.

I had thought the conservative and liberal divide in the US would show up more than it has.  Yesterday--at time of first draft--we visited a Sam's Club and heard country music there, and saw people wearing camo ball caps.  The same day we also visited a local organic foods grocery store, and saw tattooed young women wearing robe-like dresses there, who surely did yoga, and guys with long hair in a bun (not so unlike my own now; kind of strange).  We were in the presence of both sides of that, just not actually involved, beyond buying in bulk (milk, butter, OJ, and a cherry pie--we had already picked up veggies and meat there recently), and also bought protein powder, vitamins, and flax seed oil at the other place.  What to add about contact with those two groups and contexts?  We're not really a part of either.  But then I have been completely integrated with both, at different times in my life, so it's a bit odd.

A third very short outing brought up limited contact with a third group, which I experienced as a mild culture shock.  I ran around Diamond Head a couple days ago (which I'm still feeling), and saw a sport enthusiast group there, that I'm also not really a part of, but I do some of the same things.  We rented a car for that driver's license test and later visited the beaches there, catching a look at local surfing spots, and surfers.  Of course those people look amazing, like those old "Point Break" characters come to life, but much more impressive.  A Hollywood actor can pack on 20 pounds of muscle and strip off body fat in 6 months of prep but it takes a long lifestyle to look like those people, just lean and ripped, sun darkened and agile.  Even a half dozen years into being a "snowboard bum" I probably wasn't that fit, but I could accomplish impossible athletic feats back then, with ease, so it was really just how different sports activity training changes outward appearance.

Kalani's school; I never take pictures of the classmates, since parents might not be ok with it

It's odd how recognizing they are a different group felt different than related to the others, or walking through my old UH Manoa campus seeing almost every female student wearing yoga pants (which we "didn't have" back then).  I don't know who those surfer people are; maybe that's the difference.  I've been a version of all those other groups, and it's a stretch to say that being a snow-sports enthusiast shared common ground.  I suppose that it did, but the local culture would've been quite different.  It makes me think back to picking up some "dude speak" back then, with people using brau instead of bro or dude marking how they saw the role.

I was briefly in a higher tier social status club here once for a short meeting, and caught a look at another group, the more successful locals.  It's odd that I've never been a part of that circle either.  Earlier academic progress and short starts toward a successful career made that seem within reach, but it never really came together.  The wealthy class was familiar from that ski resort time, serving them.  The different social / economic levels in the US associate mostly within their own range, which is fine, but depending on the form of contact with other levels that can be uncomfortable.

That leads on to discussing my current immigrant status.  I've mixed with other immigrants here, or local versions of them, parents of my kids' classmates, or visiting Chinatown.  For now those are as much "my people" as any other, outsiders who might only get so far in joining other groups.

Immigrating back to the US

At least I've got the paperwork, right, a passport and working rights?  It was easy to get a new Social Security card, one of many, many errand steps.  All the same re-integrating feels like the layers add up to building a new life, and it feels like my status as outsider is something to bridge over.  It's not mostly about culture shock, shifting perspective, or not really truly matching how others see things.  It's how it all adds together, spending time feeling out of place, even in relation to living in a foreign country, although that was worse for the first half dozen years or so.

Another aside will fill in some context.  My daughter has two best friends, and lots of others, one from Japan (a wonderful girl, just as special as my own, which is kind of amazing).  The other, who is surely also wonderful in her own way, I don't know so well.  She is the daughter of two Americans, a military family, with a mixed genetic background but still from that culture.  There's a language divide in talking to the first girl's mother, but the feeling of being a little out of place seems like as much common ground as I have with anyone.  I share most of the other details about local culture and experiences, and US culture, the past decade of history, I share with the other family, but only to a limited extent.  I experienced most of all that last decade's worth of US culture changes through online contact.  

It's interesting thinking back to when I last lived in the US mainland; I was here from 2005 to 2007, so even then Facebook and smart phones didn't exist yet.  A lot changed since.

Parts of cultural background run deeper, not related to changes, like growing up with Christmas as a theme, knowing and loving the American music tradition, or American food preferences, and I only lived out selected parts of that in my Thai life.  My kids have never carved a jack-o-lantern, for example, and have never been trick-or-treating.  I just bought them a bag of candy corn, and they tried it for the first time (so-so for them, but my daughter likes it better than Keo).  I won't be here at the end of October to support them through that, although we probably will carve that pumpkin earlier on, to get that part in.  And we should buy a costume of some kind for my daughter, but we're not good with those kinds of details.

No need to mince words:  to repeat, we are poor now.  I could write a 1000 word post just about that, but these ideas aren't mostly about that, as I see them.  At this point we need to do what we have to do to build up a life, to eat whatever we need to eat, to walk instead of drive when it's time to do some things, to see busing as a luxury we can't always rely on (although with better planning related to monthly passes that would've went better).  I don't feel bad about exposing my kids to that experience; I think they can learn a lot from it.  I keep telling them the best way to get through it, to endure it to the other side, if there is one, is to delete most of the automatic "I want" response from their thinking and vocabulary.  Of course that's not possible, but they will become conscious of what they consume in a different way from this, and of what they've taken for granted in the past.  We were middle class in Bangkok; we lived in a nice house, had a car (of course), went out to eat all the time, enrolled them in lots of extra sports activities, traveled quite a bit, and so on.

outdoor experiences replaced mall outings, but I never take a phone to the beach to capture that

In some senses it is sad, and goes a bit far.  We just took my daughter to "picture day" at her school and her wardrobe here doesn't support dressing up beyond what other kids would tend to regard as "play clothes," the more disposable garments they own.  Her school theme relates to members being middle class and below, with immigration and poverty being running themes, but in terms of her clothing she is at the lowest end of that range.  That's a bit much; we could work on that part.  Oddly Keo won't stop wearing polo shirts to school, when no one at his school does; their two sets of clothing ended up differing so much related mostly to how they packed, which we should've checked better.  I guess it's also that she had lots of clothes for a slightly smaller body size, then grew, and we never re-upped it all.  The main input seemed to be that only a bit of both of their wardrobes made the trip in a single suitcase worth of space, and apparently we didn't review that.

Kalani is quite confident, and makes it work anyway.  She doesn't miss keeping up with such appearances, instead it's the random things she wants that we can't provide, a popular toy, whatever beach gear she wants.  She does own two snorkel sets, a body board, plenty of swimsuits, and a second swim ring (the last one just broke, and we replaced it from a thrift store), so it's not about owning nothing, just missing this or that.  We just bought her some Legos yesterday, with that swim ring, but there is no way to replace everything that is Bangkok, or provide a normal amount of things, or a housing setting that matches her friends', yet.

I guess that a true immigrant wouldn't be building on all the connections that I've already mentioned.  I've been an overlapping member of most of these social groups; that's why I can sort of relate to them, and am not really a true outsider.  My wife and I married here in grad school, and lived in this same building for a year, 15 years ago.  I'm working remotely online now, so the financial struggle is not quite as desperate as it would be if this was a running tab working off debt.  My mother-in-law is supporting that end too, really more than we are, so the financial stress is more an abstract theme than a pressing daily concern.

That one point keep keeps coming to mind, about how all the people here are in different social groups too, with a mix of varying interests and types of connections.  It feels normal to them because it built up organically, and there are other friends and family who see the range as a normal set, so they can too.

There's a standard idea that the service industry types that transplant here tend to leave later because they tire of struggling to make ends meet, related to the high cost of living.  It's that "living in paradise" eventually doesn't seem like a fair exchange for putting in extra hours and doing without, whatever they end up doing without.  I've seen that cycle in a ski resort more, and also here.  Maybe it's not so much about doing without, and costs, as it is the connections seeming unbalanced after awhile.  

There was an idea that ski-bums would "come for the winter, and stay for the summers," that the feel and environment having two dimensions of appeal made people stay.  It was probably that people could connect to more than just 4 to 5 months of a couple of sports.  By "stay" that often meant spending a half dozen years instead of the shorter form of 2 or 3.  To really stay an employment theme needed to click, for example venturing into real estate sales, or at least restaurant management instead of just serving.   There's a pretty broad middle level of resort service work management here to access too.

It could click well for me here since I never will have a completely single-culture perspective again, and that all mixes here.  As one expat once put it eventually you just feel equally out of place everywhere.  I'm still a long, long way from seeming like a local insider to people in an IT industry though, or any industry I might work in, maybe unless service work can work out, which I don't foresee.  I'm not local, and to some extent can never be, just as was the case in Bangkok.  Half of everyone here lives like that though, so maybe it's still common ground, of a unique sort.

It's interesting asking my kids how they experience that, if there is any tension about being mixed race, or foreign.  In a word, no.  Kalani was accepted quickly and completely, and her classmates look like the cast of some sort of diversity oriented commercial.  Two favorites are black, one is Thai, and I'm not sure any of them are completely white.  Keo said that people asked where he was from, and upon hearing "Thailand" they only paused and then responded "good for you."  His accent is from the mainland, but a conventional "haole"--a local racial slur meaning white--isn't mixed race and Asian.  

It reminds me of my wife joking in Chinatown restaurants how I was the only haole there, many years back.  It was funny because she was better accepted than me, in my own country, but not in my native culture.  You have to go to local Hawaiian places to actually experience that racism, so it was just a joke there, but the Hawaiians I've met have been wonderful people, with absolutely no hate in their hearts, at least as far as I could tell.  That "aloha" theme is a real thing.  I suspect that they have deep reservations about the negative sides of development, or issues like increasing homelessness, but faced with actual transplants they can relate to them positively.  Maybe I should leave off there, and get back to that in another post, about how you can't miss a range of amazingly positive sides here.  

true local culture is about connections between people, not stereotype images, not only here

That's if you get out of Waikiki; turning a beach theme into an immersive outdoor shopping mall, restaurant, hotel, convenience store, and bar environment is nasty.  It's like the Vegas strip, but with an ocean beside it.  It's fine if people are on that page, but to me it's the opposite of what Hawaii is really about, the appealing and magical sides of it.  But I'll get back to all that.  

For now, aloha.

cheerful enough on a break, but the driving instructor role has been really stressful

from the latest hike, a ridgeline version

view of Honolulu from up there

Moving to Honolulu

 

Diamondhead!

I considered using a title about reverse culture shock or other sub-themes, but this is what's up, moving to Honolulu.  It's a staged move, because my kids will start school here now, and I'll work out the year, in part remotely, in part back in Bangkok.  If finding a suitable position doesn't work out maybe I'll roll back the whole plan, but I feel like this has to go through.

Given that context a lot of what I might write about would be struggle on multiple levels, how the last 10 days have went, what it's like to start up relocation and new schooling mostly from scratch.  Or concerns about employment, and whatever else is a work in progress, although that concern really stands out.  Getting specialized data center company quality assurance / ISO support work to transfer to another country is really problematic.  I'll talk about culture issues here instead; it's more interesting, and sounds less like someone going on about problems.  Then a little on what already worked out; that's not so bad.

For initial context my wife and I met here in grad school, and married here, within that two year window.  That first year was really rough for me, all the adjustments, and workload, working and going to school in an academic program that wasn't a great fit, but I loved it here the second year.

Hawaii is a really magical place.  In general I'm not on that page, describing mystical spiritual experiences, but in some places you just naturally feel it, like in Sedona, AZ, Canyonlands national park in Utah, or in Siem Reap, Cambodia temples.  Lots of Thai temples have a great energy.  Or maybe we just imagine such a thing, brought up by stories, and reinforced by running themes and aesthetics?  Here in Honolulu that feeling is muted a bit by crowds of people and the urban setting, but it's still there.  If you can get out just a little and tune it in the experience is really amazing.  I felt blessed to spend that time here, and in a sense it wasn't enough for my wife.

We're here for the kids to go to an American school, not on the mainland instead because she feels more comfortable here, and thought that they would too.  They've always had to deal with being mixed race and nationality in Bangkok, which isn't seen so negatively, but they are different, and here they fit in.  I'm quite sure that it's safer here, with less emphasis on political divides and seemingly artificial conflicts, which lead to real impact, so I'm also ok with that.  Just a bit anxious about getting the details to work out.

This focuses on what I see as changes here, since it's too much to really describe the continuum of Hawaiian local cultures, but I'll add a little on that theme range first.  On the one extreme more local and native people live out a completely different lifestyle and perspective; it's like the difference between the melting pot in US cities and more traditional rural cultures, before radical conservative biases made those place breeding grounds for bad ideas.  

A local family here more or less took in my wife, which is why our kids have Hawaiian names, and share a middle name, that family name.  I can't do justice to describing their perspective, beyond saying that anyone could meet them and love them, so it's nothing exotic or difficult to approach.  They're closer to Asian perspective than mainland American, which only made sense to me after years of living in Thailand.  At first I thought it was about rice preference, warm weather, and appearances, but it's not at all, it's about perspective toward family and social roles, valuing connections more, and even accepting limitations that come with accepting such roles.  They're less focused on themselves, more on where they fit in relation to others, including respect for a local natural environment.

it has been amazing to have local family here

I was in grad school in Honolulu, so I knew next to nothing about all that, about local culture.  A friend joked that we didn't really live in Hawaii, but that we could see it from our school, and it felt a little like that.  Even with frequent outings to the beach; in a sense we weren't really immersed in any local culture, even transplant or tourism oriented culture.

Changes in Honolulu local culture

So what changed here, since that grad school experience 15 years ago?  As superficial differences go there are more homeless people.  It means little to me, in relation to being frightened of them, because I never really feared them before.  It definitely throws off the idealistic appearance, seeing someone sleep on the ground everywhere you go, or very disheveled looking people using the bus beside you.  I feel sympathy for them instead of fear; what they go through I can't imagine.  But then in cycling through countless Youtube video channel themes I ended up watching a few dozen personal stories from homeless people in LA, so I guess I feel let in on ways that can come up, and sort of remain in effect.  

Drug addiction and mental health issues are the primary themes, in those particular videos, at least.  People start out partying or use drugs as a crutch to deal with trauma, or mental illness, and it keeps going downhill from there.  In a strange sense I don't blame them.  I was essentially addicted to weed at one point, before it became legal, and I get it how transition from a social and sustainable habit can lead to the exact opposite.  Luckily my addiction wasn't on the order of opioids and meth in terms of typical impact.

Young people look different; I suppose that always keeps happening.  As a late 80s kid I could completely relate to the 90s, and the 2000s didn't seem so different, maybe just some extra piercings and such here or there, or that hipster aesthetic theme.  Tattoos are really common now, but beyond such minor differences one thing stands out the most:  the trend for young women to have large butts.  It's one thing in a music video or Instagram post and another to see lots of young women walking around who are relatively disproportionate, in relation to primary body shape forms.  How do they do that?  Squats, surgery, I guess it doesn't matter.  That's Waikiki though; surely local Hawaiians aren't looking to Instagram to decide how to change their appearance, whether they're local in the sense of native, or of whatever mixed background instead.

Everything else seems kind of similar to how I remember it.  I changed, or rather my life context did, more than who I feel like I am internally.  I'm a father now, and that role and set of responsibilities defines what I'm doing, or need to do next, at any given time.  It can weigh on me, especially in higher stress times, like during this transition.  But I've raised my kids to try to take things lightly, to see the good in difficulty, and notice the potential fun in every set of circumstances, and especially to not take themselves too seriously.  Keo tries, but he has frequent melt-downs here.  He misses the cat; she really was the glue that held the parts of his world together.  Kalani is so strong and balanced that I'm worried about her bottling up parts of what she feels, but I think she just passes through challenges as if they're nothing much.  She doesn't overthink things, and stress about what might happen, waiting to directly face issues when they actually happen.  Then she acts.  I'll provide an example to clarify that.

I've been talking to my son about what difficulties he might face, and how transition will go, to not be too nervous, and worry if some people don't like him.  As a mixed-race Asian he should be fine, but he sounds like a mainland American, his accent, which is going to give some classmates pause.  Two aunts were also warning him about bullying, a subject we keep talking about.  In discussing that topic related to Kalani they came to the exact same conclusion I did independently about her:  she won't be bullied, because if anything she will be the bully.  Or rather the one stepping in when anyone is being treated unfairly, and setting things right.  She's so small but she has an inner power about her.  And a unique physicality; no kid her size should step up to challenge her, for their own sake.  At one point I was worried about her being a victim and taught her how to throw a punch, and later it seemed like maybe I shouldn't have, because she can really dig into the body practicing it on me.

They both know not to fight.  We were just joking that Keoni's intro to Hawaii might be getting a swirlie from his super-sized Hawaiian classmates, but I made sure to be clear that I think nothing like that will really come up.  Hawaiians are great, until you give them a unreasonable degree of reason to show you their darker side.  Misunderstandings could come up, from visiting an off-limits local beach or whatever, but even then they would shoo you rather than acting hastily.  One guy I knew here did get dropped by a giant islander at a party, who one-punched every white guy on his way out of a Big Island gathering, but that kind of thing is an exception.  In two years of living here I crossed paths with two local people who seemed to resent me being white; not so bad.  Both only strongly implied it; even that scope, disliking me related to race and cultural background, they were nice about.

So to me Honolulu and Hawaii is still great, I'm just overly caught up in my own conditions at this point.  That would happen anywhere, less than two weeks in.

Running has been nice to help establish continuity, but I've only done that twice so far.  Of course swimming in the ocean has went even better.  We just bought a second boogie board today; we'll check that out soon.

we swam out to that flag once, 230 yards or so out, but didn't see the turtles there yet

It helps most that the people I care for most moved here with me.  I think that's why Kalani feels so stable; in her eyes the background changed but the rest didn't.  The cats we left with a sitter are the exception, especially Myra; we all miss her dearly.

Maybe this tangent won't exactly integrate with the other themes, but one neighbor is cool here, so nice.  And a bit unconventional, but he wouldn't work as well as a person without some of that.  It was comforting experiencing meeting him early on across a few levels, as a good sign, an indication of local support, and starting into a sense of community.  I never really felt that in Thailand, the entire time.  I felt at-ease and in-place but the context couldn't have been clearer that I wasn't one of them, and never would be.  

About that friendly neighbor Kalani once commented "he has a good life," and I think that sums it up, and how perceptive she really is.  Who reads people, based on fragments of impressions, as an 8 year old?  She does.  And related to him a few words here and there really brought across how welcoming he is, and how his own life experience covers some cool scope.  He invited Kalani down to do some resin based painting; that was really what triggered that comment.

American food experiences

I'll keep this part short, but a couple of unusual experiences stand out.  Living in Thailand has been great for access to inexpensive, healthy food; I've been living on fresh fruits and vegetables for 15 years.  Here those would be quite expensive, and preparation time could easily be a significant problem, at least for cooking the vegetables.  The US produces and sells a broad range of very inexpensive snack and desert items, and we've been living on many of those for nearly two weeks.  It started with Ben and Jerry's ice cream, pop tarts, and a tub of cookie dough, and Goldfish crackers, which we do have in Thailand.  

Even fast food is expensive in comparison with the low cost of these relatively empty calories, which come in delicious forms.  $60 for a fast food meal doesn't seem like much, for a family of 5, but in Thailand we never tended to spend the equivalent (2000 baht) on much healthier restaurant meals.  Cost of living works out like; it's normal.

It would be difficult and expensive to return to my Thai diet standard here.  On a tight budget I just couldn't.  The kids will have school meals, hopefully healthy versions, to fill part of that gap.  I'll have to be careful about retaining some balance, or I could change body weight over a period of months instead of years.  Keo must have put on a couple of pounds in the past week, although at his last health check for school it seemed that he hadn't yet.

School update:  Kalani's first day

Kalani went to school on Friday, in a local school so close you can see it from our balcony.  She said that all the kids were really friendly, and a couple of the girls are already her friends.  We met one the next day, when I'm editing this, part of a Japanese family that hasn't been here so long.  There is a Thai kid in her class but she's not talked to him yet; that'll come, but it won't be necessary for it to serve as a social tie, to compensate for organic connections not coming quickly.  I suppose that Japanese family could be our friends here too; that's how that went in the past, with one Japanese class-mate's parents one of the nicest people I knew in Bangkok.

It could be more challenging for Keo.  Being 13 is different; freshmen in high school have a lot of social issues to balance, without factoring in being a foreigner, or new to a local culture.  Or representing a less well-regarded outside culture, if they interpret him as a mainlander, which of course he's not, having only visited the continental US a few times.

A few more brutal errand days have brought it all that much closer to narrowed down to only getting a job yet to do.  We have wifi, re-activated an old credit union account, and I have an appointment to renew my license next week.  I'll meet a solitary online tea contact here towards the end of next week.

Given the transition and introspection themes I should be able to close this on a catchy life-lesson theme, right?  Not so much, but maybe a little.  It makes all the more sense to me why people don't do this sort of thing in the second half of their life, like we are doing.  Maybe as a retirement theme, but that's really something else.  We're shopping at thrift shops, weighing out where the dollars are going, even walking a good bit for transportation.  This post skipped a main sub-theme related to moving under absurd conditions, packing things people just wouldn't pack, taking two night-flights to keep that expense moderate while also scheduling it last minute, adjusting for when our apartment was available.  The first day we moved here we moved 20+ bags and boxes into an empty apartment to discuss lease terms; the landlord just kept saying "this isn't how this normally goes."  We sleep on the floor; we own less chairs than we have family members.

This isn't a sob story about what I suffer through, to be clear; in fact it's the opposite.  It's a challenge but also a privilege to struggle in this way.  And I don't regret that my kids have to endure it.  One of the main things that shapes and builds up children is providing them with challenges that they can overcome, and this is a huge set of those.  That's the life-lesson, I guess.  People would be crazy to take it to this extreme, but we aren't at the far practical limit yet.  I'm not doing this alone and unsupported; I owe my company, and one person in particular, a huge debt of gratitude for making this possible.  

I hope to look back on the fantastic things my kids accomplish and see this one crazy fork in the road as a big part of what enabled that.  Or if they go on to do very mundane things, and struggle themselves, that's fine, and I'll keep supporting them.  I'm just as Asian as I am a part of mainland American culture, and we don't write off family members so easily, or embrace our own independence and space by distancing ourselves from others.  Like they said in Lilo and Stitch, Ohana means family, and family means that no one gets left behind.  I hope that the magic here enables me to do amazing things myself, and I'll mention it if it works out like that, but probably will focus more on how my kids are doing, which also describes my life in general.

The story in pictures

a Thai uncle back in Bangkok passed on since we've been here; much love to him

family saw us off at the airport; that was a nice start

an insane amount of luggage

a rough two day set of flights, here in Tokyo

so nice, but a little rough edged still

Kalani's school

Keo's school, with some of Honolulu in the background

the errands take a toll

all of Honolulu has a nice look, not just the beaches or parks

at Keo's school