[777d7_rr66444]

As an American expatriate I'm always shocked or bemused by the US-centric comments I get from family.

I live in East Asia, which is by no measure a cultural or technological backwater, and was surprised to hear my mother say, two days ago, "you must get YouTube over there...".

For some more perspective, I'm the most successful member of my family (from a financial pov) and from the condo I live in to the car I drive, I have nicer things than my parents ever did. I'm the first in the family -- and this is something I only considered just now -- to sends his kids to a good / expensive private school.

Though I don't lord it over them, my life is way more advanced / cushy than theirs. But from their point of view I'm not in the US and therefore don't have access to what they consider the gold standard of civilization.

And this point of view has not changed even though my parents have experienced my life in Asia first hand. Truly bizarre blind spot.

[culturestate]

When I first moved to China ~10 years ago, I mentioned to whomever I was on the phone with back home that I needed to go grab some cash and that I might lose the call when I got in the lift. They asked where I planned to get money in the middle of the night, and were surprised to learn that ATM technology had indeed made it to "the Orient."

These days most people just ask if I've eaten a dog.

[tim333]

Guess there's a time lag. I was in China 35 years ago when they didn't have ATMs or anything like that and the west did. Times change.

[culturestate]

I obviously wasn't around back then, but even today the pace of modernization in China is astounding; I can only imagine what it must've been like in Deng Xiaoping's later years.