I’ve been trying to tell you that there is much more to the decision about living here or not living here than dollars and cents.  You have enough money if you have enough to eat three squares a day and own a computer and rent monthly Internet access.

But things are very different at a unique, person to person level, and there are only two ways to deal with the differences:

1. Make an active effort to learn how to meld “your way” and “their way”.  (because there will always be ‘two ways’, trying to make one or the other ‘change’ is not only wrong, it is impossible)
2. Bumble along for the rest of your years, mystified, missing out on things and wondering why things are always going wrong for you.

photo credit: AIfred

It’s really just that simple, folks.  If you, as a westerner, are going to live here in the Philippines … or any other Asian country for that matter, you are going to have to make some subtle changes.

Here’s a couple excerpts from an article my wife just linked me to.  The headline is a link to the whole article, which I recommend you read … it isn’t very long:

Westerners read faces differently from Asians

LONDON – Westerners “read” facial expressions differently from Asians, paying more attention to the mouth than their oriental cousins who focus heavily on the eyes, a new study suggested Thursday.

And the oriental “neglect” of the mouth can lead to more mistakes in interpreting a person’s emotion, said the study, describing how feelings can be “lost in translation.”

“We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions,” said Rachael Jack, from the team at Glasgow University who carried out the research.

“Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect the mouth. This means that Easterners have difficulty distinguishing facial expressions that look similar around the eye region.”

…

“Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation,” it said.

Interesting.  I wonder if those folks in Glasgow got many hundreds or thousands of pounds to determine that here in the Philippines, it’s all in the eyes.  As Yogi is famous for saying that he didn’t say, “You can see a lot just by observing”.

Something interesting I’ll throw out as an observation.  Notice how the whole article is written with the slant as to how this is a “failing” or Asians.  It never mentions the corresponding “failing” of Westerners to recognize common Asian methods of expression.  I’m sure the author wouldn’t want to think of him/herself as a racist, but how else do you explain the total one-sidedness … “Asians neglect” to read Western expressions centered around the mouth, but Westerners look at all regions of the face equally.  Why wouldn’t you write, “While Westerners neglect the obvious Asian signals around the eyes” or language like that?

Doesn’t seem one sided to you?  Ok, fine, but remember it anyway.  If you learn to read the eye properly here in the Philippines, a whole lot will be revealed to you.

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