Ryu2.mind

Their routing: UK - Belgium - France - Germany - Czech Republic - Austria - Hungary - Romania - Bulgaria - Turkey - Iran - Pakistan - India - Nepal - China (Tibet and Yunan) - Laos - Thailand - Cambodia - Malaysia - Indonesia - East Timor - Australia.  The organizers of the trip are also planning to do Alaska - Brazil, and London - Cape Town run as well.

In Asia, you often come across twenty-something folks like these, perhaps between college and the real world, or just taking some time off before getting settled down.  For me though, I think it's been the opposite: the more I live life in one place, and certainly in this past year, the more I'm meeting things, people, ideas that -- given what I know -- should not be there in my middle-class professional life, and make me realize there is much more to this world then I think... 

It's not so much the actual travelling, as it is the lens that I view it in: not (merely) meeting up with family and friends, or stocking up on Japanese video games or gadgets (before college, more or less the biggest thing that excited me about travelling to Asia =) )... but a chance to experience, live, and most of all, be in good thought about peoples and cultures.

True, on one level it's escapism, but then again, I don't want to shake my head and just dismiss it... yet again, life presents itself as a continuum of choices as to how it ought to be lived out.  No answers, right or wrong, but trusting that Someone provides in all circumstances and all places, rather than us having to discern any one true path.

Wow -- fourth travel related entry in as many weeks... I wonder if this is the start of something...

I pretty much never blog about work stuff, but this just couldn't be passed up.  Hopefully none of my local coworkers read this... =P

To make a long story short, one of the "behind the scenes" subsystems that I own and manage in our game's engine had to have a name for us to refer to (internally) during the production process.  Yesterday, a local coworker of mine without asking me decides to name it the "Advanced Shader System" and emails the entire engine team decreeing that this is what we'll call it.

While it describes things fairly concisely and accurately, it's not too hard for a native English speaker to see why it might not be the best idea if abbreviated...  Being the only one in my immediate group though, no one else noticed... or at least thought it important enough to overcome inertia and change for something that's "under the hood".

So, starting today, my inbox is starting to be filled with emails with subjects like those shown above.  You pretty much see where this is starting to go.  I thought about bringing this issue up at first, but the extra levity it silently adds to my workday encourages me to not worry too much about it for now... ;)  Let some other laowai in another group inform them.

In our company, and I'm sure in any other multinational organization working in China, there's always the issue of correcting or improving things and processes where there's a need -- where us expats always tread a balancing act between our desire to genuinely help out on one hand and on the other, a 19th-century colonialist mentality of "taking over because our way is better".  In my case, it's none of that, except that I find it all nonetheless funny.  OK, maybe I can be a bit childish at times too...

Just another day and another cross-cultural anecdote here in Shanghai...