Working Abroad

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-Ive enjoyed all my career sucecess working either around non-americans, or abroad. I think that foreigners(not the same country/culture/language) are less able to tell you are not the same as them. At the same time why has autsim been so diagnosed in Anglo-phone countires?
-I believe that the Anglo-centric approach to life exacerbates the difference between AS and NT. Remember the story about the French civil servant with no brain and an IQ of 80? Who had a career and a family? Because we value inter-personal behaviors higher than ability, and the practical over the theoretical we have created a group of people who think all deviation(unless you like to sleep with people of the same gender that is COOL!) is wrong. As our society becomes more tolerant of 'lifestyles' we become less tolerant of 'individuals'.
-Look at ADHD. 300 years ago ADHD was an asset. NOT being able to settle down meant you could outwork most people at the physical tasks that were most valuable. Today if you can't sit still and learn in class they want you on pills. I guess Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett would be medicated today.
-When you work in East Asia you are STRANGE de facto. You will never be one of them, but you are not subject to the cruel and subtle discrimination of the social pecking order, but rather the empty blunt racial discrimination that all people have suffered. For once, two white people are equal...NT or AS. A Japanese boss doesn't care that one was a football captain and the other a PC nerd. He hires for ability and talent, or at worse physical looks. He doesn't hire you because you can make small talk, and mention sports.

I lived in Japan for 3 months and it was wonderful. Any faux pass and its shrugged off because you're just a Gaijin speaking the language rather badly.

At first I thought it was racism like most people say it is.. but then I realized its more like an unconscious fear they have of anything and anyone outside their own little world. That is, its not hatred (like you see in KKK or bigoted people) but more of a 'go away I dont know how to deal with you' issue.

Which was super for me because thats my daily life issue no matter who it is I interact with.

One thing that struck me a lot is that some of them would freeze.. literally.. just like I freeze when talking to some people... just because they would look at my face. A westerner that came to our class (I was in a language course over there) that had been in Japan for decades told us that this was because they'd see you as an alien because the shape of your eyes. I thought it stupid at the time but after having some shopkeepers freeze on me I began to go back to their shops with dark sunglasses and voila! they'd talk to me fine. Take off the glasses the next day and its freeze-a-thon.

I'm curious. Do you have light colored eyes, where the pupil is visible? I sometimes startle myself, looking into the mirror. My emotions are obvious from the pupil expansion/constriction - my eyes are extremely light, contrasted with red hair. Dark eyes make it much harder to read emotions. I think subconsciously, Asians find our physical emotional obviousness distressing. I also think Europeans/descent find it somewhat distressing, but deal with it differently, using it as an advantage to be able to read you easily. I think it's an advantage to have your inner self shrouded with the biological mask of dark eyes. I wondered what proportion of aspies have highy visible pupils?

light eyes and red hair? marry me!






..and no. my eyes are brown. The thing with them was the facial structure being different from theirs plus the shape of the eyes. It was interesting to see since people from India that were in my class did not experience it so I guess its just because the shopkeeps were used to seeing them around but not westerners.

Oh my, you're not very picky, are you!

I think that this is a very interesting and valid point.

If you are from abroad/a different culture, then people are going to perceive - and accept - that you are different! This removes somewhat the negative of it being regarded as a detrimental personal facet.

My wife is from Eastern Europe and at some stage I want to live and work over there for this reason.

I think that - from a personal perspective - it would reduce my self-percpetion of being different and so put me more at ease both with myself and with others.

Kornik