Tuesday, June 21
We officially moved into our new offices at the Royal Opera House today! The offices are very nice -- much more office-y looking than the little cubicles in our old office (which was just a temporary locale while the Opera House was being constructed). Now that we have separate offices spaces -- I get to share one with Alison, yay! -- each space is separated so that one has to go outside of one's space and walk down a hallway in order to enter the next - which is very inconvenient when the rest of the logistics team is located in the space at the end of the hall, and a bit sad - I liked being able to see everybody's faces all at once! Anyways, my only real complaint about the new office is that the building is freaking cold. I think the thermostat was set at 17 degrees Celsius, which translates roughly to somewhere around 60 degrees Fahrenheit, I think. For someone who wears cardigans in 80 (hell, I can wear 'em in 100) degree weather, definitely way too cold.
It was a relief getting outside into the warmth of the sun and Marie's oven of a car for our lunch break today -- to McDonald's! Alison screamed with excitement, literally, when Marie suggested we eat there. We took a picture of the food -- I got a free glass with the "large" value meal, woot! -- but I don't know how to upload it from Alison's phone, and I figure y'all know what a Mickey D's meal looks like already. It's amazing how McDonald's is everywhere, no matter where one goes. Kind of like Starbucks...
So the conversation of the day revolved around relationships [of course it would, that's what girls talk about], and the difficulty of maintaining cross-cultural relationships. Basically, the gist of it is that according to common knowledge (and experience), it is quite difficult to be in a serious relationship with a person from a different cultural background. Whether this culture be national, familial, or - often most important - religious, it is near impossible to date outside of one's culture. For me, I have two takes on the situation, also based on my dual cultures: American and Korean. America is supposedly the melting pot of cultures, where anyone can date anywho without any problem. True in some cases, quite false in a lot, as my Korean side jumps in. America is more of a tossed salad than a melting pot, and more often than not, people stick to their own cultures. Case in point: my Korean parents want me to marry a Korean boy. Although they probably wouldn't disown me if I married outside of my race (I think), it would most likely deal a large blow to my family if I were to marry someone my parents didn't approve of. So many families are broken, and so many children estranged from their parents, all for the cause of "love". And more often than not, it's because of irreconcilable cultural differences. In a world where we're supposedly moving forward, connecting with people from all over the world and calling it globalization, why do we still have problems with cross-cultural relationships?
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