Location: Burnaby, Canada
Local time: 3:20pm
Weather: 19°C and sunny
Before I start I would just like to mention a little bit about the title of this blog, which I thought a while about. Big thanks to my friend Jo the pun-master for coming with "Eh-sia"! Memoirs was borrowed from one of my favourite book (who am I kidding, it's like the only novel I have read since first year university) Memoirs of a Geisha, which is fitting not only because it is coincidentally sitting on my bedside table, but Japan is actually my first stop.
A note that I can't promise to blog everyday like I did on my bike trip across Canada (for those of you who don't blog, it takes a lot longer than you would expect), but I will do my best to update at least every week. This time around in addition to writing about what I saw and did I will also add more of my feelings and opinions.
I have been thinking about my goals for this trip. Being an outdoor enthusiast, of course I want to go hike/bike/swim/paddle/snorkel...at beautiful places on that side of the world. I also want to learn as much as possible from my work in Taiwan about a field that I plan on pursuing in the future. But unlike any other of my previous travels, this trip is also a cultural experiment. As an Asian who has lived in Canada for over 13 years, this will be the first time that I go back for an extended period of time and live independently, and I have no doubt that I will have many cultural limbo moments (bring on the cultural AND reverse cultural shocks). There was a long-ish time in elementary school, especially after when I first came to Canada, that I wished I was born in Canada, so much so that I lied to people sometimes. As an eight-year-old I wanted to fit in, and even though the other Asian kids looked just like me, they were somehow cooler because they were born here. That longing grew weaker after I learned to speak English fluently, but didn't fully go away until high school, when I realized that I was actually cooler because I had already lived in two very different places from a young age. Today, I am 99% of the time very comfortable in my skin and fully embrace my heritage. I am telling this anecdote because being Asian and having lived there before bring extra meaning for my trip and will be definitely beneficial. I can't say that I have never been racially discriminated, both in Canada and abroad, but hopefully that will not happen as much when I'm in Asia. This time travelling I actually want to explore racial stereotypes. In Canada, and especially Vancouver, you meet and interact with people of all different countries and start to create ideas of what that country might be like without ever having been there. Personally I think that stereotyping is only natural, after all, they are not pulled out of thin air and based on at least one real experience. The human brain likes to categorize things and as long as we don't harm others based on stereotypes they are okay to have. Living in Canada (and other developed countries), as fortunate as it is, is certainly very sheltering and I can't wait to experience life in non-developed countries.
Enough about the cultural stuff, although I just know that there will be a lot of it to come. Stay tuned tomorrow for how my plan of bringing only my camping backpack goes!
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