As most of us have lived all over the place, I was wondering how everybody deals with their identity, both past and present. I really have when people ask "Where are you from?," because then I have to try to condense my entire autobiography into a paragraph.
I figure I'm a pretty adaptable guy, as I've only been living in Syracuse for two years, and already feel pretty Syracusan, yet don't feel nearly as close to Vestal, NY anymore, even though I spent the majority of my life there. Then again, I never felt very Viennese in Vienna, either I sort of also thought of this when we were discussing the olympics selection, whether or not I wanted NYC to win. I guess these are currently my identity threads, ranked by strength:
University Hillian > Syracusan > New Yorker > American
---------------------- Vestalonian > New Yorker > American
---------------------- Viennese > ----------------- Austrian
------------------------------------------------------ German
It's also weird how I don't always attach myself to subsidiaries. For example, I have no attachment to the 13th district of Vienna, and no special attachment to any city in Germany, even though I was born in Bochum.
Yeah I have a very difficult time identifying where I am from. I usually just tell people I am a citizen of the world, however if some really wants to know I bust out the list of places I've lived. Here goes.....
Born in Miami Florida --> Winston Salem, North Carolina --> St. Louis, Missouri --> Battle Creek, Michigan --> Fremont, Michigan --> Houston, Texas --> Milan, Italy --> Vienna, Austria --> Katy, Texas --> Rochester, NY --> Atlanta, Georgia --> Claremont, California --> and next year Barcelona, Spain
Well I tell people that I'm from Taiwan, then people assume that I'm one of those immigrants who've lived in California for a couple of years because I'm fluent in English. So I have to launch into this whole spiel about living in Germany and Austria most of my life, then they assume that I should speak perfect German and not fluent English, so I'll have to point out that I went to English-speaking schools. Then they find out that my parents are living in Berlin, so they assume that Germany is my permanent home, which is not true, because it just happens to be where my parents are living at the moment....So, you see, I always have to launch into this elaborate explanation whenever people ask me that question. Sometimes I wish that I had a more simple answer just to save my breath.
So, this is my life in a nutshell:
Taipei, Taiwan -> Bonn, Germany ->Taipei ->Bonn ->Berlin -> Vienna -> Davis, CA(Taipei) -> Goettingen, Germany(Berlin) and in the next month it will be back in Davis, then who knows where I will be a year from now.
p.s You can see from my recent spike of participation on this board as signs of procrastination. I hate writing papers, grrrrr!