Sep. 5 2008 Bowling for meaning

What is it about us guys that often we need to do something to have a reason to talk. I went out with some workmates tonight and I enjoyed myself as I think they are a pretty funny bunch who don’t take themselves too seriously. I honestly think a few of them should get into comedy just by taping stuff they adlib in the teachers’ room. Often some teachers can be quite entertaining just simply because they are bored waiting to participate in another structured lesson where their creativiity is not really challenged. I guess you can say, “Welcome to the world of EFL in Japan”.

Getting more back to our topic, men tend to want something to do, while having conversation as a background device. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that often you can’t simply sit down and talk to another guy without scheduling something else to do such as killing small animals or dismantling something, preferably while drinking alcohol or coffee, or better yet, both.

Myself, I often don’t mind just getting together to talk and find out what drives people. This is where businesses are born and people find out what they are really meant to do sometimes. Of course socialization is part of it, as relationships are also important for most of what we do, unless you plan to be a hermit or participate in one of those wilderness survival contests.

Onward shock – Sep. 3 2008

I’m thinking about the future, and all I can think about is future shock. Yes, many will snigger when they recognize the 1970 classic book title of ‘future’ trends, including social trends. One of the most telling for me is how people will move around more to find jobs (uh, huh) and how friendships will change in this faster paced world of communication.

How you may ask? Well think about it, things are faster paced with people changing locations; countries, sometimes continents as some industries become truly global. But what happens to the relationships that people spawn? Well, for many people, it’s difficult to maintan those connections as we realize we might want to spend more energy maintaining relationships with people closer to home, i.e. where we live and work now.

In Japan this has been a common problem for many foreign residents, as many Japanese don’t feel that foreigners will be here for the long haul, so they are wondering why bother to forge a relationship, when the average foreigner leaves in about 3 years. Multiply this factor by those same foreigners who left Japan, many of who now look at their past relationships in Japan often as disposable ones. These foreigners have settled into new lives, and Japan doesn’t feature as a main conversation topic unless they visit there or deal with Japanese people on a regular basis in their new place of residence. So ‘living in Japan’ quickly becomes ‘background history’, and their reasons for keeping touch with people there become less and less.

Friends now seem to come in cycles, and besides jobs sometimes defining work friends, places that we live also define friends for many as they find maintaining and keeping some social networks too time consuming. I think it’s a pity as now with web technology it’s easier in some ways to stay in touch than ever before, yet for many people their reasons for staying in touch seem to be declining as they are perhaps too busy or less emotionally attached to many people they call ‘friends’.

Or is it the defintion of friend has changed? Perhaps nowadays we have just a long list of acquaintances and ‘convenient friends’ until we decide to uproot ourselves and move to another place to work and/or live. Definately food for thought, and not one that may go down easy for many people who have lots of people they call ‘friends’.