I am a 26 year old Filipina third culture kid. I was born in Seoul, South Korea, and have lived in South Korea, the Philippines, Grenada, and the United States. I recently returned to the Philippines in July 2007.
I write about being a TCK, being Filipino, life in Manila, traveling, and anything else that might be related. I also try to find ways to make my degree in Anthropology relevant and useful, particularly when looking for a job and in thinking about how it can be useful to society. I am prone to fits of nerdiness, so there will be many moments where I get borderline incomprehensible. Luckily, my friends and family tolerate me.
December 23, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Erin,
I hope it isn’t strange receiving an unsolicited email from me, but I will be traveling to Manila on business in January and would like to do some networking and research an idea I’ve had for a while. My education is in Anthropology (university of utah ‘98) and now develop airline reservation systems. The company I work for has an office in Manila and I work daily with my colleagues there.
After I started, it didn’t take long to see problems in US-Philippine communication – problems caused by a lack of understanding (by both groups) of the fundamental components of their colleague’s culture. A little light bulb went off in my head and I thought, “there has to be something here”. I’ve been pondering how to use the methodologies of cultural anthropology to provide business intelligence to companies whose businesses cross cultural lines.
While I am in Manila, I want to meet with some anthropologically savvy people and bat the idea around. I found your blog while searching for anthropology resources in Manila and decided to send you a note. Let me know if the topic is of interest and I can better introduce myself and we’ll talk some more.
Thanks,
John