Mydentity
I have two questions for which I always have different answers to depending on the audience and the time I have to answer the question (or rather, the perceived time I feel they will give me before their eyes glaze over).
The first is, “what do you do?” : My job is so new and so varied that it’s hard to describe. It’s technical, it’s psychology, it’s sociology, anthropology, ergonomics, statistics, graphic design, information architecture …
But the one that gets harder and harder to answer is, “where are you from?” : When I was in Greece and meeting so many people, it was really difficult to answer. Many people look for “what type of Asian are you, exactly? maybe I know one of your cousins” but in this case, the people were all friend’s friends so there was some degree of genuine interest. I can say I’m from London, Austin, Vancouver, Hong Kong and they’d all be legitimate answers.
When I observe others in similar situations, I find it interesting how they choose to classify themselves. One girl from San Diego worked in Austin with me and now lives in Cambridge. When she was asked where she was from by someone in London, she said ‘California’. Another co-worker of mine in the same group answered ‘Texas’ even though he was from Cali, working in Austin but now working in UK. I asked her why she said California and she said, ‘it’s different. you guys already said Texas’.
Interesting. So I look at myself and realize that I usually answer ‘Vancouver’. I don’t know if it’s because I identify it most as home or because it’s the most unique answer. Regardless, the answer never seems straight forward anymore.
