User:Fishnogeek
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[edit] General
I grew up in Colorado, USA, where I originally aspired to become a minor pagan fly fishing deity. The international travel bug caught me early, probably as a predictable side-affect of having fallen in love with a series of foreign exchange students. First there was that Swedish girl...ah, but I digress.
I studied abroad myself in Denmark during college, then worked for a cross-cultural consultancy in Boulder for several years after school where I was surrounded by dozens of "citizens of the world" who'd been literally EVERYWHERE. They nourished my fledgling interculturalist tendencies and provided both the connections to and invaluable support for my first expatriate assignments to SE Asia: a year in Singapore followed by two years in Bangkok, then numerous projects elsewhere since.
Thus, I've been fortunate enough to fish and dive and wander my way through much of North America, Europe, SE Asia and Oceania courtesy of various multinational corporations. Since 2000, I've been doubly fortunate to be partnered with a beloved wife who shares (or exceeds) my passions for seeing new places, learning new things (mostly about ourselves, since that's the first function of travel), and of course, sampling new cuisines. We ditched our respectable jobs and wandered the globe for all of 2003.
But while the travel has been great, by far the greatest benefit of working one's way around the world lies in the meaningful relationships you're able to establish with folks you'd never meet as a tourist. I still can't think of a finer way to learn about a culture than to sit down at a table and solve common problems together -- all the better when there's food on that table. To me, those are the secrets to bridging cultural divides: work together, play together, eat together.
[edit] Interests
Regional: Asia & Europe, mostly. Not that North America isn't interesting; it still poses arguably the biggest cultural conundrum for me...knowing thyself and all. My latest literary interest has been Africa, though...and Cuba. All things in due time.
Intercultural: intercultural communication and the stages of cross-cultural adaptation; also, the practical impacts of history and propaganda on cultural evolution and contemporary intercultural dynamics. And of course, cuisine.
Gastronomical: we tend to eat a lot of Vietnamese food for reasons obvious to those who know us, but we don't discriminate much. As for Asian cuisines, we tend to seek out Japanese, Korean and Thai places before Chinese or Indian, but we'll grab Lao and Filipino food whenever possible. We've fairly well-versed in Nigerian and Ethiopian specialties thanks to some dear friends, and we eat Cuban & South American grub whenever we find it.
We eat plenty of 'American' food as well, and I do love my BBQ. That said, we tend toward the trendier so-called 'fusion' places when we eat non-ethnic, mostly because it gives my wife good ideas for new concoctions to try at home. But for all that foodiness, I freely confess a sentimentality for Lucky Charms, and my wife needs her regular doses of Texas-style Chicken Fried Steak. There's just no accounting for taste.
Musical: it's hard to pigeon-hole this one. My mother was a Lutheran church organist, so I grew up on Bach. Somewhere along the line I got interested in folk music and bluegrass, then Irish / Celtic music (including a stint playing fiddle in a band called No Fixed Abode in Bangkok), and now rap and hiphop...all in addition to those 80s hair bands, college alternative, my beloved a cappella, music from my nephews & niece, my South African stuff and our Latin dance music. I count my iPod among my best friends, but sometimes the shifts from Brahms to Johnny Cash to Sonia Dada to Cesaria Evora to the Nylons to Edgar Meyer to Blink-182 to David Bromberg to Vienna Teng to Eminem to Ladysmith Black Mambazo to Christy Moore can be a bit painful...chiefly for my wife, me thinks.
Fishing: can't do without this category, can we? Fly fishing, mostly freshwater...trout & steelhead & salmon throughout North America, New Zealand & England. I've also tangled with bass in Texas and Australia, sebaru & toman in SE Asia, and a few saltwater species. Need to spend more time in the salt.
Other Avocations: single malt scotch, SCUBA diving, competitive volleyball and obtuse phraseology.
[edit] Contact
fishnogeek = Brian Clark ( mailto:fishnogeek@gmail.com ) Current residence = Houston, Texas, USA (ugh)
[edit] Testimonial: A Born Again Wikipedian
All these years....and just this week I've finally discovered my true calling in life.
It happened like this: there I was at work, and somebody asked me a question that I didn't know the answer to, so I quickly slipped over to Wikipedia, found the answer in under a minute, impressed the hell outta everybody in the room, then went dutifully back to work.
But I left the Wikipedia page up -- that was my first fatal error.
When I got back from the cafeteria with my plastic fork and to-go lunch, I went poking through all the screens I had up...and something on that blasted Wikipedia page caught my eye. One link led to another, and to another, and -- and that's when it happened: I saw a mistake.
If only it had been something simple and common, like use of "affect" where it should have been "effect" or perhaps an "it's" where it should have been "its". No, it was gross and obvious, the sorta grammatical 'thorn in the flesh' that really annoys an anal and arrogant wannabe wordivore like me, even to the point that I forget what I'm reading and what I'm supposed to be doing -- which, at this point you'll recall, was working. Guilty as charged.
I hadn't edited a Wikipedia page before -- come to think of it, the thought hadn't even occured to me. But it hit me, "Hey! This is open source. I can edit this page. I can fix that mess. And while I'm at it, that second sentence is somewhat awkward...now where's that edit button?"
Blast those Wikipedia people, they make it awfully easy, don't they?
Things went downhill quickly from there. I made a second fatal error: "Hmm...I wonder how much they've got out here on Fly Fishing?" Not much, as it turned out -- but after three hours of poking at it during boring meetings, there's considerably more out there now. This could get ugly.
At my little Lutheran grade school in Denver, two classes shared a single room and a single teacher. So when your 6th grade math session was finished, you'd be assigned some work to keep you quiet while the teacher stepped over to the other side on the room and taught science to the 5th graders. For better or worse, most of that work came easily to me, so I had a considerable amount of free time on my hands.
I discovered the encyclopedia set somewhere around 4th grade, and I made sure that I sat next to the bookshelf every year after that. Some of the teachers worried about what I was reading -- and with some justification: let's just say that I was more familiar with the anatomy pages than with the articles on algebra. Some of the kids gave me a hard time about reading the encyclopedia instead of the Hardy Boys, but I suspect that those kids grew up into the folks who today think me strange for preferring The Economist to People. It didn't stop me back then, and, alas, I'm even more arrogant about it now.
But now I see that things have come full circle, although I must admit that some surprise accompanies the belated discovery of my true calling: all my life I've been a frustrated encyclopedia editor. You see, I've never been smart or dedicated enough to become qualified in any one area to write a real encyclopedia article on it -- but dammit, I'm definitely verbose enough.
And now, thanks to Wikipedia, I have finally found my ideal vocation. Hallelujah, I'm a born-again Wikipedian.
