American way of living...

It was a nice evening with a clear sky with the sun setting behind the mountains. I was on my couch and remembering those bygone days when i had a hard time learning grammar. I studied in an Anglo Indian school and one could imagine the standard of english education!

I still remember my english teacher. She was tall, lean, fair & brown-eyed. She was so sweet that she would give chocolates to the kid who answers her questions correctly. She was smart enough to make the kids learn grammar in an easy manner. I, for one, always had a hard time learning the Adverbs, Adjectives, Conjun(k)ctions, Punctuations and what not..!

How has it helped me to evolve in this modern era of communication? Certainly to a great extent... Communication skills have never been as important as they are now in the globalized world where we live today. This is true in the business era; global companies look for employees who can establish effective communication with multinational companies.

Talking about communication, the first thing that comes to my mind is the variety of languages and the cutural behaviours. While gearing for a foreign work assignment, the employee should be given some basic training/information about the cultural differences. Those who don't undergo such acclimatization are never safe in the new environment and feel like a fish out of water. The hardest part of working abroad isn't finding a place to stay or learning the language, it's learning to cope with the cultural shock.

American cities have people from all over the globe. It is necessary to be ready to deal with this kind of situation. The person who is coming from another country must understand that the American way of living can be very different from their native country. Some of the american mannerisms will be better than what the person has used while others will be worse. Better or worse, the foreigner must accept the rules of the new country instead of trying to change them. In a very respectful way the foreigner can even give suggestions for the local culture but never impose it on them.

To me, the cultural shock is alarming, it makes me more alert and inquisitive to learn more about the place where I live. I've been able to prehensile and in the process made myself a very flexible person.

Having said that, haven't we seen reverse cultural shock when people return to their native country. Perhaps without realizing that they have changed while being abroad, they would definitely need to readjust to get back into the grove of their native culture and society!

Just a random thought.. I kinda started writing something, but ended up writing this. It happens.. :)