Yet Another Week In Seattle

Jan 20 - Jan 25, #1109, Hyatt Regency Bellevue, window facing west, over the hills down the road is the Lake Washington.

The only task was to attend the ExPo-Tech program. All the time I explained it as a training, although it is stressed as a journey at the kicked off meeting months before. I totally agree with Karen that it is so much more than a training. Training usually gives one person some things like knowledge, skills, techniques. To talk about journey, it mainly means you are part of it other than standing outside. Here you learn, you experience, you grow. The only difference from general journey is that no goal is predefined. The only commitment is our time. The achievements totally depend every individual.

The content focuses on personality, networking, and communications. It added some about self-awareness as well. The 3.5-day-long time was full of these bunch of things, which made me exited, surprised, and a little bit tired. Hardly can I spell out every details. Let me try to highlight some points which impressed me a lot.

CREDIBILITY. I became to recognizing the importance of it as soon as I learn about this word, which is definitely one of the core values for the western people. To my understanding so far, it is kind of capability that others can expect something on you, although it is not necessary they do require that from you. They know you can make it. They believe you can achieve it. No promises, no conditions, only credit. Also, that reminded me that the whole western world is build on a solid credit base. Credibility is just like the sun rising everyday. I'd ever taken honesty as the most important thing to me. From now on, it is upgraded to credibility. Where is your sun? Is it rising tomorrow?

YOUR BUSINESS V.S. MY BUSINESS. It's well-known that the western people do not consider others as we Chinese do. Basically they are described more self-centric. They enjoy living isolate. They care about privacy. They break into your speech suddenly if they have question. They drive the children out once they are 18. They do not even take care of the elders. Is it true? Perhaps mainly yes. However, you may also find some other interesting things. They respect your greatness. They donate a lot. They serve the society. They enjoy being volunteers. They approach to help you out as soon as you are lost. They never hesitate show up the greatest smile to you. What's up? Why these things look so different from each other? I suppose they are clearly separate things of what's your business and what's my business. Never step on others' feet. Nor boring me by attempting to do me a favor without permission. Giving someone a hand is greatly praised. But, it must be necessary and the privacy is not violated.

CULTURE DIFFERENCE. It is even more complicated than that I can imagine. One game from Day 1 is to select top 6 personal important words from a bunch of cards labeled with words such as curiosity, passion, family, innovation, integrity, health, blabla. Possible you can figure out that curiosity must be have for the western guys. However, can you imagine that family is seldom included in their selection? Neither is the health. We randomly selected a partner to share the top 6 words with each other. It turned out to be a very small intersection.  The paragraph above can add to this point as well. Why it seems somewhat wired to us? It is roughly because the difference between cultures.

LANGUAGE PROBLEM. Again and again I suffered from the fact that English is my second language. Thinking, translating, then communicating. There's an extra step, which make me mad, especially in the small group discussion. Conversation kept flowing quickly from time to time. It is really hard to concentrate on both the idea and the language. Whatever, everything around language stuffs were improved more or less. I had no choice but try my best to catch up. One more personal trick is that speak aloud is really more important and more acceptable than murmured without language problem, especially for the western people. They will pass you if you cannot be heard clearly twice.

[-- Main part stops here. Some other interesting things below --]

Seattle was clear and shinning. But San Francisco was raining.

Watched one NBA game. Houston Rocket V.S. Seattle Super Sonic. 109:107 Yao was not bad.

Had a tour on the Museum of Flight. Amazing. 

Bought two books.

1. Yoga - The Path to Holistic Health by B.K.S Iyengar.
2. The Complete Sherlock Holmes