vancouver-g.o.b.

god what is with people in this city? as i was walking home this evening, i realized that that guy at work who looked so familiar today looks like g.o.b.! he's got that will arnett forehead, that smirk, and an unusually grovely voice for someone who doesn't appear to be a smoker. [sidenote: i find that grovely voice attractive on men for the most part even though i totally picture them as having straight up gizzards in their throat. freud say wha?]

anyways, this g.o.b.ish guy is in the office commenting on my veggie samosas lunch, started bragging about all his traveling. i know i'm the jealous type, but really this guy was just country name dropping for the fuck of it -- cities in india i've never heard of, all ending in -pour. '___pour, ____pour, ___pour -- they're all pours... haha, well poor yea...'

if that weren't enough, he went on a se asia spree 'china, taiwan, vietnam, cambodia, malaysia, we were gonna go to indonesia but blah blah wank wank,' ugh. i mentioned something about living in china and he was all, 'whoa! did you learn mandarian?' i'm glad i'm a grown woman now, because i now know how to give the slightest of slights in an icy eye shrug. 

dude... you ain't know shit about the shit i know. i was 23 and just trying to survive against something i felt an anti-intuitive existence in. [damn, there i go again with those prepositioning-ending sentences.] i was trying to navigate a place where the only sense of logic i had failed each and every time. that's pretty disorienting, when all your social constructs go up in flames over and over again, every fucking day. 

social construct 1: humans are sentient being who deserve to be treated with respect. -- nope!

social construct 2: even through some humans may appear very different on the outside, we're all still human on the side. -- nope!

social construct 3: treat others with respect. -- nope!

social construct 4: honesty is the best policy. -- not after you read this!

so... what was i talking about? china, vancouver-g.o.b., mandarin -- ah yes, the reason i didn't learn mandarin is because i only stayed for 75 days citing cultural aspect i couldn't adapt to. this is where vancouver-g.o.b. turns his desk chair to face me, puts his feet flat on the floor and his elbows on his knees, leans in -- as if he were seat-belted to the chair but he's ready to box. he says, 'not to be racist, but they have no culture -- they just push and shove each other, it's really barbaric.' 

so that makes about the 47th native bc'er who's pre-empted a racist comment with 'not to be/sound like a racist, but...' it makes me wonder if these people think i look like i agree with them? oh dear. i responded, 'it's not lack of culture, it's just their culture.' 

didn't we all learn in kindergarten that just because something is different doesn't make it better or worse? just because a foreign culture does something your personal culture doesn't like, that doesn't mean that foreign culture is inferior, lacking or somehow downgraded. aren't we all supposed to know that by now? or maybe this vancouver-g.o.b. is older than i think he is, and it's some kind of generational thing? he's probably thinking he's no where near as racist as his parents, and that you know, wink nudge, as white people, this is how we really think of *them*.

i said, 'no, it just works for them, and i decided if i couldn't do things on their terms, then that was my problem. and it's not a judgement on their culture but a rather dramatic self-actualization.' [23 is a pretty ripe age for those wondrously narcissistic self-actualizations, and believe me, i relished mine.]

oh vancouver-g.o.b., i can just picture you trotting along to your local starbucks on the weekend wearing linen draw-string pants and d&g sunglasses perched on your head, thinking about all the -pour places you've been and how happy you feel to live in such a 'well-cultured' place. congrats on your placement in the that guy hall of fame.