No, not “the kissing disease”.
I suffer from mono-culturalism. (is that a word?).
i live in a mono-culture within a mono-culture.
Egypt is the larger mono-culture.
- Religion. The vast majority of residents are Muslim. I have nothing against Islam. I don’t find it any more or less “fanciful” than Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or Zoroastrianism.
- “Lifestyles.” While having more than one wife (at a time) could be viewed as alternative to the western mainstream, the day-to-day SAME-ness of things is getting to me. Coming from a place with a certain level of diversity (Seattle) to here is a bit jarring.
- Homogeneous population. Hair color, eye color, skin color, hair texture, “porn star” mustaches. It all blends together.
- Cuisine. There isn’t a lot of variety in the cuisine. There is an appalling lack of “ethnic” food. Or rather an appalling lack of appealing ethnic food. There is plenty of bad “italian” and worse “chinese”. One can only eat so much schwerma and kofta.
And then my social life is a smaller mono-culture within the larger context.
It is also rather homogeneous, though I suspect several people would object strenuously to that generalisation. (Too bad. Get your own blog!)
- Professors. How many times can you discuss cheating, lazy students etc and still have it be interesting? I mean really. Branch out. Go out on a limb. Talk about something else. ANYTHING else. Please.
- Politics. (Ok, so maybe almost anything else) Most people seem to be fairly liberal big “d” democrats. Like most people back home in Seattle. I have nothing against that. I think their earnestness is so cute. But, like most people in Seattle, living here gives them a distorted view of the political landscape. “EVERYBODY they know is voting for Obama. It is going to be a LANDSLIDE“. I am sorry to say that I think they are mistaken about the outcome in November. (Assuming, and I quote, Obama manages to keep “that woman” from “stealing” the nomination.)
- Race. Most of the American faculty are Caucasian. Not a big surprise, as most Americans are Caucasian. And most American college faculty are Caucasian. But it is still strange to me that there aren’t more minority faculty members.
The one place that the faculty has great diversity is in their travel. The people here have traveled quite a bit and have seen more of the world than most people. Talking to them about that is fascinating.
So what is the cure for Mono? Rest. Drink lots of fluids.
Well, 1 out of 2 ain’t bad.