I Think I Have Been Kiwi-fied.

I truly am.

The other day I received a call from a harried Chinese businessman, who was so demanding it was almost offensive.

He demanded details about things from me so fast, I didn't even have time to wrap my head around what he was saying.

And the most silly thing was, I actually went through the whole Kiwi ritual of 'Hello, how are you?", "Good? I'm good." thing when the person on the other end of the phone is so pressing and demanding. This entire Kiwi greeting ritual is totally artificial to me, because it is almost too fake to ask how is the person when you don't really care about them, and how you need to pause awkwardly for about 2 seconds before you get down to business, by then it will make you feel like a lowly creature, because from a seemingly "genuine" greeting at the start of the conversation, you suddenly jump into business - to me it seemed like you put up a fake show from the start so that you could get down and dirty with serious things.

Sorry if it sounds weird, but that's how I truly feel. If I had it my Malaysian way, I'd just get straight into business, rather than lulling the other party into a false sense of warmth that I do actually care how they were, and also to spare myself from that irrepressible guilt that ensues after I get down to talk about my business.

It's not to say I am a mean person (because I'm not), it's just that... If I really cared about the person, I would naturally go about showing it in my own way.

So yeap, enough about my thoughts on my assimilation to Kiwi culture.

But wait.

Perhaps this a good thing afterall, because this indicates that I have been assimilating well into Kiwi culture - it's just that in the situation above, I wasn't swift enough to switch codes to communicate with the Chinese man.

The Chinese are all about being fast and productive, almost a world of difference from the Kiwi way of doing things. I should have been smart enough to quickly adjust back to my own culture. *Makes it a point to switch fast in work situations*

But hey, nothing wrong with being comfortable in the host culture, aye mate?