The normal is also an abnormality.

Alright, who here have friends all over the world? I'm largely assuming if you're reading this, the answer is yes. They don't have to be of different nationalities. It can be someone like you, but living abroad, you know the like.

I'll go over being abroad first, because to be honest, it will be hard to talk about being in the country you're born. Right, here we go. So I left Indonesia at a fairly young age of 7. Leaving my friends behind, my school, my normal activities I  have done since I was born.. Towards new friends, culture, school and a whole set of different activities. Why am I stretching this topic, because I'm not sure where to start. Okay let's try this...

Being abroad for years have really taught you to stick to your natural culture, aka your parents' culture because of the way they bring you up. Yet you have to be able to live in the outer realms of your house with people from another culture, and being in Qatar, it's a  lot of other sets of cultures. I'm now mentioning cultures because the various people react to various things, easiest would be eating. Some tend to use spoons, others chopsticks, and others just knives and forks. That's one thing to learn, the others would be the interaction with people there are different ways, where I cannot explain clearly, because of the very, very minor adaptations that takes on through time. I realise this when I re-connect with friends from my country, there's that tension where we're not used to each other.

I've sometimes bruised these differences, and say hurt someone because I didn't know that it wasn't something normal for them. On other instances I wouldn't laugh at something because I didn't know it was a joke. Communication isn't the major point here, but rather how we feel about what we think is normal.

See, if I were to be switched with someone who's lived their life back in their home country, and knowing someone like me who's been abroad for half their life, I would see myself as someone who's oblivious to that outer world. I would put them into the norm and think that they're used to local cultures, or in Indonesia, there are 'funky' or 'slang' words that the youngsters would use.

I'm not implying that you should be globalised or updated to the world in the context of socialising, neither should you not. It's that people have very big differences and we should be very careful with our approach on socialising. I admit that I tend to just talk with people, not thinking whether this is a real person or not, considering it is the big interwebs-of-websites, But you see it's sometimes the differences that begin to separate us, the mis-understanding between two beliefs that will collide roughly and contradict with each other.