have you ever felt like a foreigner in your own home? in your own office?
\ni’m trying hard not to feel excluded, paranoid and irritated by the fact that two of my co-workers who share space with me spend most of their days talking to each other in their native tongue. i think my irritation stems from the fact that they both speak perfect english and i find it somewhat rude of them to hold their personal conversations not in english. it’s almost like they’re using it as a code. a way to talk about everyone without their knowledge.
\nyes, i’m paranoid.
\nthe weird truth is, they could be talking about anything in english i wouldn’t even pay them any attention other than to sub-consciously acknowledge the fact their conversation is making a noise i can hear. but, because it’s being spoken in something i don’t understand, i’m nervous and offended.
\nno, i’m not prejudiced.
\nwhen the irritation i feel starts to offend even myself, i take a step back and try to imagine what i would do. okay… i’m in, say, montreal. i grew up speaking english, but through necessity, i’ve learned french fluently to fit into francophone society (won’t happen, can’t stand french). i meet another anglophone in the office and we become friends. are we really going to have all our conversations in french? both of us native english speakers? can we honestly be expected to do so?
\nno. the answer is no.
\nso, what i’ve got to do is get used to the sound of tagalog being spoken three feet behind me and treat it as no more than routine background conversations i have no part of (won’t happen, i’m too nosy).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
have you ever felt like a foreigner in your own home? in your own office? i’m trying hard not to feel excluded, paranoid and irritated by the fact that two of my co-workers who share space with me spend most of their days talking to each other in their native tongue. i think my irritation …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}