Simon Damodaran: Third Culture, faith or not and non-blogging

To date, each of the interviewees who’ve featured on johnnylaird.net have been bloggers.

It kinda comes with the territory.

I do have some friends who don’t blog, or use Twitter (….I know, I know…it’s hard to believe!), yet they have important and interesting things to say, so I’ve been cajoling one of the most erudite of that number to come up with the goods.

Hong Kong based Simon Damodaran took some time out to chew the fat with me.

First – because he has no “about” page to visit, I asked Simon for a brief bio.

“OK, here we go with the bio:

Born in Wimbledon to parents who emigrated from India. Moved to Croydon at the age of five and lived there until coming to HK in 1999.

Parents – had a traditional Indian marriage (arranged). It wasn’t happy and they only stayed together until I had pretty much finished school. They separated when I was in my final year of A Levels. I was 17 and only saw my old man twice after that; once in 2002 when my sister and I brought him to HK and finally in August last year when my other sister, who was on holiday in India with her family, called me to say that his doctor had said he only had days to live. After a mad dash to India, I saw him for the final time. He died a few weeks after.

Parents were hard working and they instilled in their three kids a solid work ethic. We all started work when we were 14/15 either delivering papers or working in shops on Saturdays. That, plus the private education they gave us, is the greatest gift we got from them because it has stood us in good stead.

I have two older sisters who are both married. The eldest has been married for 17 years and has two wonderful boys. They live in a beautiful house in Sanderstead, Surrey which they (sis and husband) have worked their nuts off to pay for and I’m proud to say that they have.

The other sister was a bit of a wanderer and it’s because of her that I am in HK (more about that later). She married earlier this year and moved to Dubai where her husband is based, though they will be moving back to HK (he lived here in the 90s) in Sep or Oct this year. She’s currently doing the Mongol Rally with her best mate Dom.

I finished my A Levels in 1994 and did a degree in French at the University of London. Whilst studying, I also worked part time (there’s the work thing again) at habitat which is where I met a good bunch of friends, including our mutual acquaintance Justin, with whom I’m still in touch. I also spent the third year of my degree living and working on the Cote d’Azur (Cannes, Grasse, Antibes, Nice) which gave me the taste for life abroad. After returning from France, I decided that life in the UK wasn’t for me. Actually, that’s not right; I decided that there was more to the world than London, great city that it is, and that I would move somewhere else.

When I graduated, I didn’t really know what to do. If you study chemistry, you can become a chemist. If you study maths, you can become a mathematician. But if you study French, do you become a Frenchman? To be honest, I wasn’t that driven at that time; my only aim was to get out of the country. I finished Uni and Justin got me cash in hand job driving a van for now long gone professional photographic processor/printing company “Joe’s Basement.” I did that whilst still working weekends at habitat for about eight or nine months. Then habitat offered me a management position with the possibility of transferring to one of their stores in the south of France so it seemed like an easy ride to me.

Working in retail wasn’t ever something I wanted to do (who wants to work in a shop?) but it was a means to an end. Anyway, I took the job and it paid the bills. I also met Greta at that time as she was working for habitat as well.

In the summer of 1999, I came to HK for a two week holiday to visit my sis who had lived here since 1996. And to put it simply, I fell in love with the place. Why is hard to explain but if you are a city person and are interested in different things/experiences, HK is heaven for you. By coincidence, Greta came out a few weeks after me to visit some of her uni friends and she liked the place as well. We’d only been going out together a few months but after she returned, I asked her if she wanted to move out here with me and she said yes. We both left at the end of 1999 with nothing more than a couple of suitcases – no jobs lined up and only the goodwill of friends and family to put us up.

I was the first to get a job which was in Feb 2000 teaching English (I’d done a TEFL course between going back from HK and leaving the UK as I was told it was the easiest way to get work). Greta eventually found something in Sep 2000 and we’ve never looked back since.

We lived in Central, which is the downtown area of HK where all the skyline photos are taken, for eight years and it was great. Everything was on your doorstep, travelling was easy (Bangkok is 2.5 hours from here and you can get a return ticket for about 100 to 150 quid) and life was good.

We were both teaching, me English as a foreign language and Greta kindergarten. Work was hard and we had some ups and downs but it was good. We decided to study further and I got a Master’s in Education Management in 2006, whilst Greta is wrapping up her dissertation now for her second degree in Early Childhood Education (the first being in Clinical Psychology).

In 2008 our lives changed irrevocably when our daughter, Mohini, was born. She’s the light and bane of our lives as she’s wonderful (as any parent knows) and extremely difficult at the same time. But we wouldn’t change her for anything.

I’m currently working as the COO of a language service provider. The focus of our business is translation and editing. My job is to make sure that we are able to meet our customers’ needs be it customer service, IT, whatever.

So we’ve been in HK for over 10 years now and it’s home, far more so than the UK (which our daughter has only been to once) and I think we’re not really going to leave here. I guess the reason is the lifestyle – although we miss our friends and family (and friendship is difficult in a transient society like HK, where people come and go a lot) we wouldn’t have the opportunities to do what we can here back in the UK. It’s hard to put your finger on but I look at my friends in the UK and they are happy but I can’t help thinking “that’s not for me…” The other thing is, HK is unbelievably safe and I wouldn’t want my daughter growing up around the kind of violence I witnessed and my nephews have to put up with. It’s funny because I was the quintessential London boy before coming here. Now, on the rare occasions that I go to the UK (note that I don’t call it “home” any more as HK is my home) I just feel like people are so aggressive. Again, it’s hard to put your finger on it but it’s just a feeling.

Can’t think of anything else to say about myself really and I seemed to have rambled – apologies!

JL: I had suggested to Simon that we should just briefly explore some of the conversations we’ve had together in the past. One of those dialogs has been on the subject of Third Culture, and in fact just this week, author and Pastor Dave Gibbons reposted a video (shared here) that I found captivating. So, first off, as a British man of Indian descent, living in Hong Kong can you share some of your impressions and experiences of Third Culture?

Third culture – like I said before, I’m surrounded by it here and find it very interesting. From my teaching experience, there are also issues about education which are fascinating to me but I don’t know if others will find them so. I once taught a kid whose father was a diplomat and she moved country every two years. When I met her she was about 13 or 14 and could have a basic conversation in four or five languages but she wasn’t a native speaker in any meaning she couldn’t explain things in detail or have a discussion which was quite scary for her and her parents.

Saying that, my understanding of the subject is limited but here in HK, I see what I understand to be third culture kids every day and find them to be a lot more open to the world than kids who haven’t left their home country. My own daughter is really growing up with a much bigger mix than a “regular” third culture kid. On my side, my parents are Indian and though I was born and brought up in England; on Greta’s side, her maternal grandmother is Irish but she was born on the north Wales/England border; and, of course, she was born in Hong Kong where she is surrounded by Chinese culture but has friends of all nationalities. And she’s not the exception. The family behind us have an American father who is of Indian extraction whilst the mother is Danish, and the two kids are Hong Kong born.

So from my (limited) experience, the term does not really encapsulate just how international these kids are because there is often more than a “third” culture at play. Does this have an effect on the child? I don’t think so. If anything, “expat” kids tend to be higher achievers (check the stats) and are more “well-rounded” though that’s a generalisation and difficult to quantify.

As a British man of Indian descent who lives in a Chinese city, I think the whole idea is wonderful. It’s the variety of experiences and values which you grow up with and are surrounded by which makes me who I am.

Q: I asked you about what your take on “faith” was:

Faith – BIG subject and, to be honest, only one that I really think about when I read your blog/posts. It’s not something that preoccupies me because it’s not a big part of my life. Actually, it’s not a part of my life at all. But I am interested in:

a) How faith organisations function

b) Whether those organisations function in a way that is in line with what their religion (to my understanding of them) says they should

c) Whether those organisations/faiths are in line with what I believe is essential to being a good person.

I guess the biggest question I have is why religions over the centuries have been/are the biggest cause of war/conflict that we have seen/see. It just doesn’t seem logical because they are supposed to preach peace; but time and again we see religious wars or wars where the root cause was religious conflict.

Q: Do you acknowledge the difference between cultural religion /religiosity & its alignment to tribalism versus an individual and perhaps more authentic individual faith?  I.e. could the perpetrators of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland really be described as Christians, or did their actions in any way stack up against the teachings of Jesus? There are countless other examples for most faiths….

A: Yes, I acknowledge what you are saying and agree with it.  Most people would agree that the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland and Islamic fundamentalism aren’t carried out by people who are staying true to the teachings of their faith – they’ve warped it into what they want to hear. But the question in my mind is why does it almost always stem from religion and how is it that they are able to twist things in such a way?

Fundamentally, it seems, some faith organisations lose the original message somewhere along the way and thus lose sight of what the original “teacher” had to say. Why/how that happens, and why it’s usually conflict along religious lines, is what I still find hard to understand. I guess that these people are doing what they think is right and are living in what they feel is the right way to live. But as a person who does not believe you need to follow the teachings of someone in order to lead a good life, religion/faith seems irrelevant to me – I know what I think makes a good person so I will try to be that person for myself and not because “it was written”.

Q: Why you don’t blog or Tweet when you are so erudite and creative?

As I said, I don’t consider myself to be creative and don’t know if anything that I say is of interest to people. I like reading what people have to say and critiquing it (not criticising). But at heart, I’m a simple, easy going, laid back person and the things that go through my head are random to say the least. It’s only when I read something (and I have read the papers every day since I was about eight years old) that I start to think about it, the issues that it causes, knock-on effects etc. I know that the world we live in is very different from the one of 10 years ago. But I still think that communication is an art and great communication = great art. It’s what makes good books good, good journalists good, and as I don’t believe I have the creative skills to communicate an interesting and valuable message, I don’t believe there is a need for me to post. I’m aware that it’s very easy for me to but I believe communication is an art form and I’m no artist.

The other thing is, we all lead very full, busy lives and I would hate to get into a position where I was neglecting my family by spending time being online, checking my phone to see who has posted what. At the moment, I limit my online time (apart from work) to a few minutes in the morning before work, quickly checking stuff at lunch, and sofa time in the evening when the missus is watching crap on the box (which is when I read the paper, mostly). I rarely get online at the weekend as it’s “family” time though occasionally will check what’s happening on Facebook during the day.

With regards to Tweeting (and why the capital “T”?) 140 characters, or whatever it is, is not much at all. As you’ll have seen from the times that I communicate with you, I tend to ramble on and on so how I would fit anything into such a limited space is beyond me. I have an iPhone and it doesn’t count how many characters you have used when you send an SMS/text but I am pretty sure that I almost always exceed the limit!

Anyway, not sure if any of the above is of use/interest.

• Huge thanks go out to the far too modest Simon Damodaran, who is way more urbane and good looking than the pic he’s offered up for me to use suggests.
• I would love to give you his Twitter & Blog links, but as yet they don’t exist.
• The campaign to get Simon blogging starts now!

• More interviews on johnnylaird.net