I treated Asian people terribly at 21.
I made fun of their accents, called them slow drivers to their faces, threw Pokemon cards at them, and criticized their food.
Now I’m married to an Asian woman.
They say it’s funny how life gets revenge on you in strange ways.
I’m glad for the behavior change. My wife is always commenting on how Western Culture is different. These are her observations that will change how you think about Western versus Asian culture.
Our obsession with freedom causes us to talk too much
Free speech is good, and I love it.
My wife loves it too but during coroni-rona we’ve seen the downside and she reminds me often.
When everyone is simultaneously using their right to free speech we start loudly talking over the top of each other.
Coroni caused commonsense to go out the window. All the debate led to more confusion.
A former friend of mine saw an opportunity. He started posting all sorts of crazy opinions on Instagram. By being controversial and telling people the jab was bad his following increased threefold.
His evil plan didn’t work long term. He got banned for life by Instagram for spreading blatant conspiracies.
Free speech is pointless if no one listens to each other.
We stay late at the office but often don’t know why
My wife works for a big company.
Often her boss and colleagues stay back late. When she attempts to find out why, they can’t truthfully answer.
Wife: “Couldn’t you do this work tomorrow?”
Colleague: “I can, I guess.”
She suspects there’s something bigger at play. Perhaps some deep insecurity or a problem at home they might be avoiding. It’s sad.
It’s almost like they’re stuck on auto-pilot and aren’t able to switch it off.
There’s always more work to do. Have you ever seen your emails slow down? Me neither.
Work less.
We spend more than we earn
My wife grew up in a one-bedroom apartment with her mother, father, and grandmother. (I got to meet grandma once before she died. We had ice cream together and she couldn’t stop smiling.)
Yet in Western Culture my wife sees our friends and family spend as if all money will get lit on fire in the next 24 hours.
We pay for everything on credit. We even pay for gas with buy now pay later. She doesn’t get it.
In Asian culture the savings rate is extremely high. Her dad saves as if he’s about to face 5 years of rainy days in a row.
His mindset is to fix broken things rather than replace them. His first choice is always secondhand if he has to buy an essential item.
And if anything needs to get bought brand new, he’ll haggle on the price until the other person falls to the ground from exhaustion. He doesn’t see anything wrong with a strong focus on getting the best deal.
If he doesn’t feel he’s getting a life-changing deal, he’ll simply walk away.
In Western Culture we struggle to declare war on any price we get offered. Our pride is at stake. It’s worse if friends are with us.
We’re reluctant to look poor in front of them. If anything, we spend in front of others as if money isn’t even a thing. Then we get home at night and go to bed in a cold sweat because we’re not sure how to pay bills next month.
Despite all the financial constraints of my wife’s upbringing, she feels it was happier than most of our Western friends.
We’re happier when we spend less.
Cars are trophies
On the weekend we drove to the other side of town. We get on the freeway. I look out the back mirror and half the bumper is flapping in the wind. I’m alarmed.
“Pull over we’ve got a big problem,” I scream with terror.
“Chill out, it happens all the time. I’ll just kick it back in when we stop.”
Sure enough, she karate kicked the bumper back into place. She doesn’t care about cars. They’re a tool to be used and abused, to get a person from A to B.
She’s noticed in Western culture it’s a lot different.
Our friends and family change cars every few years. They spend a lot of time caring about the brand of car they buy, as opposed to whether the car is fuel-efficient or has the right safety features.
In Australia we have a new breed of humans: greenies.
They’ve been greenwashed.
They buy electric cars to virtue-signal to the rest of us. In many ways they pollute more after they own an electric car. They use their electric car to justify letting other areas of their environmental life collapse.
One day we won’t each own a car. All cars will be shared via an app where we rent one for our trip.
The truth is your chest or phallic doesn’t get bigger when you drive a fast car with a loud exhaust.
I’d argue a car as a status symbol makes your brain smaller.
We use our hands to eat a lot of foods
I can turn any food into a hamburger.
Yesterday I poured my Indian curry into a burger bun. My wife doesn’t get it.
“It’s more convenient to eat this way. I don’t need a knife and fork,” I said.
I tried to sell her on the idea there’d be less dishes. She wasn’t buying it. In Asian culture it’s rude to eat everything with your hands. I blame Western fast food restaurants.
So many takeaway foods get eaten in our hands, it’s hard to remember what life was like pre-BurgerKing.
Perhaps cutlery still has a function.
The one that makes her bright red in the face
If my wife has alcohol her face goes bright red.
This isn’t an accident. According to science many Asian people are deficient in an enzyme that helps break down alcohol.
So they go tomato red.
It frustrates her a lot. In Western culture we drink at every occasion.
Birthday? Get drunk. Breakup? Get drunk. Baby? Get drunk. Got a job? Get drunk. Lost your job? Get drunk. Grandpa died? Get drunk.
Alcohol is a downer. It’s a substance depressed people abuse. It destroys our liver and messes with so much of life. Smoking is looked down on, yet alcohol is still seen as normal.
Why do we ruin our health to have a good time?
I quit alcohol a few years ago. Never felt better. My wife’s Asian heritage and distrust in the fake liquid confidence helped me abolish it from my life.
Alcohol is poison.
One day Western culture will wake up, the way we did with cigarettes.
