Which Part of the World Should I Live In?
Found this mini quiz on the Twittersphere the other day. It shows you to which part of the world or rather, to which culture your personality is most suited.
The quiz scores you according to 4 categories:
America, England & Israel
“You are often business oriented and enjoy status symbols. You are confident and impatient and sometimes prone to making blunt statements. You see yourself as adventurous, skillful and competitive. The bottom line – you like to be in charge. Your main strengths – you are decisive and efficient, but can often be perceived as intimidating and alienating. You find inefficiency and indecision irritating and are motivated by a challenge. During group projects, you don’t want to be micromanaged and you expect others to be efficient and responsible.”
Italy, Lebanon & Brazil
“You are stylish, animated and talkative. You enjoy interacting with people and can be dramatic. You see yourself as an expert communicator who is compassionate and caring. The bottom line – you like to be admired. Your main strengths – you are persuasive, fun loving and optimistic, but you sometimes have trouble following through on commitments. You find routine boring and enjoy being in the public eye and receiving recognition. During group projects, you enjoy team members who are friendly and creative.”
Mexico, Netherlands & Thailand
“You are casual, conforming, quiet and relaxed. You tend to be loyal and agreeable and see yourself as responsible, helpful and dependable. The bottom line – you like to be liked. Your main strengths – you are patient and steadfast, but sometimes gullible and indecisive. You find insensitive, overbearing people irritating and work best with people who are sincere, good listeners and proceed at a leisurely pace.”
Germany, China & Japan
“You are formal, precise and conservative. You tend to be accurate, reserved and often uncompromising. The bottom line – you like to be correct. You see yourself as predictable and factual, but others sometimes see you as stubborn and unimaginative. In a business setting, you appreciate others who are consistent, well prepared and tie new ideas to what has proven to work well in the past.”
How did Ivy score?
Given my heavily American and British-influenced childhood, it’s not too surprising that I scored highest for “America, England & Israel”, with a whopping 11 points lead. With that said, I don’t think England is that similar to the US culturally-speaking. I’ve never been to Israel though. So I can’t really make a judgment there. I blame it on the fact that I owned a Malaysian passport for large part of my life. (Yes, Malaysians are not allowed to visit Israel).
As for Italy, Lebanon & Brazil, I scored a 6. Well, I’m a Sagittarius; being social is like breathing air.
For Mexico and friends, I scored an gasping 0. I think I need to learn how to chill and be more peace-loving. Maybe I what I need is more salsa and merengue in my life – both the dance and food are fine by me. 
And finally, for Germany, China & Japan, I scored a 1. So much for preserving my ancestral culture. LOL! To my defense, my moral code is heavily influenced by Confucianism, so I don’t think I’m as un-Chinese as this quiz claims.
Awesome Blogs on World Cultures
Since we’re on the topic on world cultures and my nomadic childhood, you might want to check out these great blogs on culture too!
- Pocket Cultures: Founded by Liz, a British expat living in Turkey, who’s passionate about raising awareness on different cultures. I recently wrote guest entry on the perils (and rewards) of learning Chinese.
- Denizen Mag: An awesome online magazine that captures the essence of the lives of third culture kids. Founded by Steph, a fellow TCK and fellow alumna of the Singapore American School.
- Aspiring Polyglot: Another lover of languages like me, although Kelly is just a whole lot more dedicated to language learning than I could ever be!
- Angry Angmo: An expat’s take on life in Singapore. Absolutely hilarious and true to life. I highly recommend this blog to anyone who’s just moved to Singapore. Made me wish I had kept an expat blog when I was living in Indonesia. Although my content could never be as amusing as his, since life in Jakarta revolved around escaping sinophobia, bomb threats and natural disasters. :S
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And on a completely unrelated note, I had a very authentic, enjoyable Korean dinner for the first time in Singapore, thanks to HisFoodBlog. Also met some wonderful people at Social Media Breakfast Dinner #6 today. Special thanks to Claudia and Daryl for organizing it!
Dear readers, so which part of the world should you live in? Which part of the world do you want to live in?
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How I Organize My Friends
While reading Daniel’s blog, I stumbled upon a Facebook app called Nexus, which charts out how your friends are linked.
And here is how Nexus graphed my social network:
Clusters Based On Stage of Life
While there is a discussion here on whether friendship is primarily bound by geography or shared interests, my graph shows that it’s neither. My social networks seem to be based on the stages of my life. Well, that’s kind of obvious to me because that’s exactly how I organize my friends mentally and on my MSN account. I always group my friends according to when I meet them, and who I met them through.
Clusters Reflect Culture
However, what I did find particularly interesting is that the clusters reflect each network’s culture. The more clustered the network, the more conducive the network’s culture is for people to be closer. And all this has little to do with the size of the network. Take my Singaporean high school and Indonesian middle school for instance. Both schools were obscenely large. But my high school in Singapore had no system to ensure people from the same grade would know each other. We didn’t necessarily take classes with people from the same grade, and everyone just shared the cafeteria. So friendships were formed purely by interests. The blonde cheerleaders would sit together during lunch. The rich Asian girls would hang together after school. The British outcasts would aimlessly roam around the libraries. And of course, there would be no reason for the rich Asian girls to talk to the outcasts. And all that is reflected in my Facebook clusters since the network is a lot less dense than the one in Indonesia, where there were designated areas for each grade level – and everybody just knew everybody.
Clusters Reflect Inter-network Connections
And for the observant, you would’ve noticed that there are very strong connections amongst my networks, despite the geographic differences – especially amongst my high schools and middle school. No surprise, actually. They were all part of the same interscholastic association that allowed the schools to compete with each other in sports, forensics and music every quarter. So everybody knew everybody. And these people, mostly nomadic like me, spread across the world like a bunch of dandelion seeds to germinate universities. So, no surprise that there are links from school to university as well.
Limitations: Doesn’t Determine Who I’m Close To
With that said, that’s all Nexus is good for. It doesn’t quite track who I’m close to maybe because I have almost 900 friends on Facebook. But perhaps it’s because, as a nomad, who I’m emotionally close to is not necessarily who I’m geographically close to or who I share lots of interests with. I have extremely diverse interests, so I have hardcore party poopers and social hermits as close friends. Come to think of it, I share very little common interests with my best friends. And we don’t even live in the same countries for goodness’ sakes. But I deeply care for these people, as I would for my own family. So I know my close friends aren’t primarily determined by what they do and what they like, but more by how they think and how we get along.
And Nexus can’t possibly show that kind of dynamic.
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