I wrote this quite a while ago, well, about 3 days ago. Anyways, its an update. So here you go.

You know, traveling internationally is a really interesting experience. I'll be honest, traveling domestically, in the same country, is also interesting, but not near as much as international travel, especially when you hit major international hubs. I just ate food, in Doha, served to me by Bangladeshis. The people sitting next to me, I THINK are British, I can't hear actual words, but the accents are british and the guy has an English Language book. I know their not America; at least I'm pretty sure. Actually, thats an entertaining thing about Europeans in general. 90% of the time, they could be American, I mean, they're white, haha. But you get to know enough Europeans and, except maybe the Brits who always struck me as very similar to Americans, they all actually look pretty different. Different fashion preferences are the main giveaway; language is another, haha. Anyways... so there are people from South Asia, East Asia (so many East Asian looking people! I'm actually surprised), the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and obviously America. The only major people type I haven't noticed are South Americans... erm... I'm not sure how to describe them. Brown, but not South Asian brown, or Middle Eastern Brown. And they speak Spanish and/or Portuguese, not Arabic or Hindu or English or anything like that. I'm gonna guess the couple that walked past me was from Scandinavia. I am probably wrong; they could easily have been speaking German or Dutch.

Another fun thing about Traveling Internationally, especially across several time zones (it takes forever to get from Johannesburg to London; its also about the same time zone), is that Time, or your sense of time... disappears. In a sense, time has no meaning. There are no clocks around me to tell me what time it is. I look outside and its dark, but I don't know what that means. In some countries, it gets dark at like 5PM, in others, 10PM, all I know is that its late enough to be dark in this country. Obviously, this is even less relevant if you don't have a lot of windows. I can estimate the time, based on common sense and the departures screens around me, but honestly, the exact time doesn't matter right now. All that matters is I make my flight, which I will, because, honestly, I'd be an idiot if I didn't.

What's also fun is something that has cropped up really only in the last 5 or 6 years of traveling: the search for a plug. I know this is something that has come up after I was born, because there was a time when only the elite businessman carried a laptop. Now it seems, especially amongst those that travel often (you can tell the type, often times) or the younger people (I fit both categories, yes!) laptops are very common. Mobiles, and mobile gaming devices as well. There is “charge station” just a short walk to my left—every socket has a plug in it with either a laptop or mobile plugged into it and people doing everything from watching movies to working. When you travel internationally, the ability to jump right on to the internet and send your friends and family a short email or facebook message (because, honestly, despite everyone having a cell phone, most people still don't have international roaming) and say “hey! I'm in X airport. Flight was good, ect.” That, or just waste time on the internet because you have nothing better to do. When I flew to the states with my dad about a year ago (more like 18 months, actually) I got out my laptop, plugged it in, and watched Naruto for a few hours. That's the beauty of digital age.

In a lot of ways, I think traveling internationally, despite being expensive and tiresome, oh and stressful too (why do I always panic right as I go through security? I don't know; I've never done anything remotely illegal in the airport), its also... interesting. Its an adventure, and yes, this is me, the guy who doesn't like to adventure much, but I think I kinda like this sort of adventure. Finding your next gate, looking for where you can get free food, trying to figure out if the guy sitting next to you is Turkish or German (that is actually really easy, haha), window shopping, exploring the airport, its all really cool, and in a way, I like it. Strange as it may sound, but I think I could spend a great deal of time sitting in an airport just watching people, seeing what they do, trying to figure out where they are from and why they are traveling. Laugh at the silly tourists and nod approvingly at the professional businessmen . Its all... so interesting.

Another thing I was thinking about... something completely unrelated note, since I have nothing better to do and despite not having slept properly in something like 24 hours now am still quite awake, I'm going to talk about... erm... how do I say this: normality.

Now, I think a lot of people want to be normal. That's... not a bad thing. I think the funny thing is how I don't want to be normal, at all, and I think it stems from the same reason, honestly. I watched a movie on the airplane (its one of those things people do on airplanes these days, watch movies), and the main character said something like “I just want to fit in and be normal.” To this character, fitting in meant being normal, it meant following the general conforms of the culture and society he dwelt in: Modern Day New York City. For me, fitting in, actually doesn't meant that. I want to be normal, I want to follow the general conforms of the culture (not so much society, however) I choose to dwell in. But the thing is... that's a fringe society. I grew up amongst the international community and amongst friends who were, because of their positions in life, either a part of that community themselves or internationally minded. I'm a TCK, part of a TCK's heritage is being international: we have within our culture elements from ALL cultures. Sure, I don't know much about Africa, but to me, an Africa TCK is just the same as a TKC from Europe or South America, or even from somewhere I know like South Asia or America (I have yet to meet a person who was not from America that grew up there... actually wait, I've met one guy, and only briefly).

So obviously, my heritage as a TCK is part of this: TCKs really, honestly, can't be “normal” in the sense that we can integrate ourselves into society. At least, we can't do that without masking our true identity (something we are actually very good at doing... so it does happen). We can't integrate without losing part of ourselves, something an American from New York City living in New York City shouldn't have to do. Oh sure, he might have a hard time making friends, but, culturally he shouldn't have any problems, unlike a TCK. However, that's not the only part of my heritage that makes me not really care about being ordinary.

Again, I was surrounded by unordinary people. My father was the first person from his side of the family to have left the United States long-term in decades. I was the first person from my paternal grandfather's side of the family to have been born outside of Texas since my ancestors immigrated from Germany. One of my best friends in Dhaka, his dad moved to Bangladesh when he didn't really speak much English, let alone Bengali. I haven't asked him, but I get the feeling he would likely admit to being a foolish and eager young man who wanted to do something out of the ordinary. He had the right motives, God had called this person to move to Bangladesh to work there and raise a family there, but the man was still very young and likely did not realize what exactly this entailed, and how revolutionary and powerful his step would be in crafting his own company and the nation of Bangladesh, the person I speak of was unordinary. A lot of people around me were unordinary like this person, they came to South Asia with no money, little education, but a lot of faith. That's something we don't see too often these days. People laugh at you when you do something crazy like move to India just after you finish high school. Why would an 18 year old from the 1st World waste his entire life doing volunteer work in a poor, corrupt, backward nation like Bangladesh or India? Stay in your home country and get a job first, then maybe consider doing some work elsewhere. That's not how the people I know did it, that's not the heritage I have. Ordinary isn't who I am, I'm unordinary because of my background, and to try and “blend in” to American culture, or whatever culture I end up living in long-term, would be living a lie, a sad, pitiful lie.

Finally, to against draw back onto that idea of people who came to South Asia with little or no education, or with not a really good idea of what they were going to doing, they were pioneers. When my parents moved to India, they were some of the first to do what they were doing for their company in South Asia. They pioneered things that no one else in their company had done in that part of the world. They trained and recruited people and expanded that specific field of our company all over South Asia: India, Nepal and Bangladesh. They were pioneers. When the man I mentioned above came to Bangladesh, his company did not exist in Bangladesh: he was the first one. That company now has hundreds of members all over the nation and has effected hundreds, if not thousands, of other people, all within the span of 25 years. These people were pioneers, men and women who did things that no one had done, gone places their friends or co-workers hadn't. Its rubbed off on me. There was a time when I thought I would be the “normal” one in my family. My brother and sister would do something crazy and exotic, while living in the South Pacific or Europe or Africa or something like that. I know that's a lie now, and I'm likely to be just as crazy exotic as they are. At one point I realized, if I did pursue law, and did move to India, that meant I'd be an American Lawyer, with an American Law degree, attempting to practice law, or regulate law, or create law in India. That is, by the way, pretty much the craziest thing I've heard of. How does an American Citizen create Indian laws when he can neither vote nor run for election in that country? That's pretty crazy.

Yeah... my point is, I think I've given up on being ordinary. At one point I thought I would actually settle down and work a 9-5 job at some office in a city in the US. Now I know I couldn't settle for something so... mundane. That's what BORING people do. (no offense to my various friends and relatives who actually do that, but its boring compared to what a lot of people I know do. Why do that when you could teach primary healthcare in Bangladesh? Or Run Bible Schools in a Castle in Germany? Or work with Crack Addicts in San Francisco? Or prostitutes in Calcutta? Or HIV/AIDs patients in South India? WHY?!) I'm not saying I want to do any of those as a profession, but the point is, I know too many people who didn't settle for ordinary or the status quo of their society to go back to that society and say, “hey, you're pretty cool, I want to be a part of you.” That status quo is, after a fashion, cool, and to be frank, we need those office workers and 9-5 people to make our world run. But I don't want to do that anymore. I want to be an unordinary pioneer.