I've been in this country for a long time now. I remember days when my stable food was bread because i couldn't eat anything else. Now i have to think hard about stuff i don't eat or not. I don't like durians, tried them and they are not for me.
I think when you come to a new place its important to learn about the culture and customs of this new place. It tells the people that you respect their way of life. They start to accept you and only then are they interested in you, where you come from and how you own culture works. I see a lot of similarities between Asian culture and some African culture, since i've never been to another African country apart from Nigeria and yes Africa is NOT a country, its a continent just like Asia, or Europe and they're a lot of different countries and they speak a lot of different languages, just in my country alone there are more than 200 languages. So how do we communicate? English. Albeit a contextualised version of the language. Where was I? Oh yeah similarities.
In my house, in Nigeria we don't wear shoes or slippers in the house, same here in Malaysia. We don't necessarily have to sit on the table to eat i mean whatever is comfortable for you. The older people are treated with respect, and kids who don't conform to this kind of behaviour are a headache to their parents. Same here i suppose...you get my point.
So why am i bring this up? I think its a shame to come to a new place, a new culture and still live within your own cultural bubble. I think its a waste of opportunity and while there way be degrees of acceptance there should generally be no ethnocentrism. Yeah big word. It basically means that my culture is better than yours so i won't try to understand why you do the things you do because its just wrong from my point of view.
Why is any of this important? We had an interesting chat just randomly, my friends and I and I realised how un-African i have become since coming here. Its not that i don't care about my culture, I do, i miss it very much but there are aspects of it that are pointless, meaningless and should die. I realise that its easier for me to relate with a non-African, not because i'm biased but because i guess i lost my point of reference. I don't know how to connect with them, what to say, and they look at me funny, but it doesn't bother me. I'm used to all that. Sometimes you have to have thick skin :)
I guess what i'm trying to say is that all cultures are good to the extent that they are good and for an outsider its important to learn something new from someone new and different. And the goal is not to become like them, but to become comfortable ultimately in both your native culture and that of your adopted one so that when someone talks about you in hokkein you know what to say back. But more importantly people don't see you as a threat but as one of them because we are all connected.
-ONWARD