Borderless Culture™ Life & Style: Why Another Blog?

7.15.2008

Why Another Blog?

Welcome to my new blog! Why another - you may ask?

Well this is my new brainchild after ten years of searching. Sounds very profound - but it really isn't. Being an avid reader, researcher, writer, traveler and consumer of the good life, I started to notice many years ago, while working on my graduate research on the effects of globalization on culture, identity and architecture, that there was just a dire lack of material out there that addressed people like me- global inhabitants, travelers, people of mixed heritage, culturally diverse; people who sit comfortably at the intersection of cultures and humanity merging. Instead I found that a lot of printed materials 'targeting' global nomads were often rather superficial and overly commercial.

As a result, I would often have to sift through mounds of literature to find a small singular sporadic item that would be directly relevant to me, my lifestyle. And aside from the occasional article in the Financial Times weekend issue, or the odd book, or an unorganized, haphazard group on a social networking site there really isn't much out there that gives us a voice. I have looked.

It is not that I find myself so interesting or unique. The numbers of people whom make their homes in multiple cities globally, or are of mixed heritage continue to grow, as do the numbers of people who are migrating and traveling worldwide. According to Richard Florida, in his book Who's Your City, he estimates that approximately 200 million people (1 in 35 people worldwide) live outside the country they were born. So my hope and intent for this blog was to take a more varied and deeper look at our global lives, identities, cultures, interests, travels, hobbies, etc.

If you have ideas as to what you would like me to research or focus on or write about in this blog - send me an email or make a comment on this blog. My email address can be found under my profile. (If interested you can also check out my other blog: www.borderlessculture.com ). I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you!

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If you're happy and you know it....

So it seems that researchers from Harvard Medical School (Nicholas Christakis) and UC San Diego (James Fowler) after studying close to 40 years of data concluded that when an individual becomes happier, there is a strong likelihood that a friend living within a mile experiences 25% increased chance of happiness. A spouse has an 8% chance to be more happy and a sibling who lives within one mile a 14% chance; and your next door neighbor 34% chance of greater happiness. There are however, a time and geographical constraints. The effect of someone else's happiness on your mood last less than a year. And of course the closer your happy friends are, the more likely you will reap the benefits of increased happiness levels.

Interestingly enough, unhappiness and sadness does not spread the same way.

Reliving the Best Part of my Childhood in Japan through Grilled Food

Since leaving Tokyo 20 years ago, there were foods I relished as a child that I thought I would never find again despite desperate attempts to do so. It wasn't that the food was so gourmet, in fact it was quite pedestrian. The grilled chicken or beef on a stick could all be bought at a tiny stall not far from our apartment in Tokyo. There were no room for seats. Our food came in crisp white paper bags and we would eat the warm flavorful pieces of meat while walking back home. Then there was the time we were on Mt. Fuji, freezing, surrounded by snow and the warm salty smokey smell of grilled corn wafted into our nostrils. I had never eaten corn so sweet yet savory. Since moving to North America, I have searched and searched but the flavors were just never quite right. They just weren't the same - until tonight. Nanbankan is hands down the best yakitori restaurant I have gone to outside Japan. And when I sank my teeth into that charcoal grilled chicken and that grilled corn I was eleven again.