How has your country changed since you’ve been overseas?
The last time I lived in New Zealand was 1994. During my one trip back to Auckland in 2000/2001, I noticed some major changes, although my stay wasn’t really long enough to notice some of the less obvious stuff. Thankfully, the people seemed the same.
Anyway, here are some changes.
An large increase in the number of Asians living in Auckland. At times walking down Queen Street isn’t much different from being here in Taipei.
Much heavier traffic.
Higher density of housing (and subsequent shrinkage of the traditional garden).
Hamish down the glen put a new gate up on his front 40 because the heifers kept getting out. But I’ve only been away 17 years so of course I’m not going to see any REALLY major changes.
I’m from the US. I was gone for the pres. election and I had moved to Taiwan before 9/11. When I was home last year I could not relate to people. Their feelings towards the War and the overwhelming security baffled me. I come from rural nowheresville pop. 1500, the idea of armed security did not sit too well. It seemed like there was a loss of independence. People expected others (the goverment for one) to take care of them. The biggest city within 70km has a pop. of 16,000. So I always personally thought I lived in a bubble that did not reflect the outside world.
There were also two new highways and and an underpass. That made driving a little more fun.
The strip mall had a couple of new stores and a new giant superKroger. (a supermarket) But I had trouble shopping, to many choices.
I’ve been in TW 10 years. I’m from upstate NY, Albany, which has oh about 100,000 people so it’s not terribly diverse. But the last few times I’ve been back I’ve noticed a lot of interacial relationships, and I’ve gawked like people here gawk at my wife and I. Honestly the interacial relationships I’ve seen have mostly been in Taiwan, and usually consisting of a western/caucasian guy and a Taiwanese or other asian woman. It was cool to see black,white and brown folk holding hands in the mall. I was just something that was NOT common in 1994.
I’ve also noted a greater variety of races and cultures, Indian, middle easterm asian, which is also cool.
On the other hand, people have gotten terribly overweight, and it doesn’t stop the younger female ones from wearing low cut jeans and thongs. Ick.
Other things that have changed:
*TV programming is rude, boring, stupid and obnoxious…Cheers is so out now that it seems like Father Knows Best.
*People’s PC are huge antiquated monsters…nice living in Taiwan:)
*Wal-Mart is life
*Best Buy is heaven
*Youth fashion is…how would they say it? whack.
I’ve lived in Asia for 10 years. I can see big changes in just a year or two here, especially in China, but my hometown doesn’t seem to have changed at all. Sure, there are some new stores, and some old ones have gone out of business, but everything seemed pretty much the same.
What has changed are my perceptions. The streets back home look so shockingly empty, and the sky looks so blue. Everybody looks so old and tall and fat and white. I went Christmas shopping with my sister; when we got home, I was just about to comment on how the stores seemed almost deserted when my sister flopped down onto the sofa and started complaining about what a zoo the shopping mall had been.
I’m a relatively newbie oldbie. When I last went home after a 1-1/2 year absence I noticed a few things that had changed about buildings like the fact that after God knows how many years of debate, they knocked down most of the downtown mall (the downtown in my home town, which is almost over 200 years old, is dead and everyone shops in the strip malls near I-75). There are a few small businesses that have moved in and my ex showed me where he’s going to establish a music studio, but other than that it was still mostly the empty shop windows with tackily painted windows and dusty carpet remnants, pawnshops, run-down bars with yellowing Pepsi signs, and hairdressing shops with names like “Hair by Evelyn” or “Sheer Heaven” being run out of converted houses. Oh, the four buses that run for my entire hometown now have an indoor air-conditioned bus station with a Coke machine dispenses ice cold generic pop for 60 cents a can (imagine my horror when I pushed the button for a long-coveted Barq’s rootbeer and got a can of Kroger-brand root beer-esque crap instead) but is still full of the usual unemployed, obese crazies who shout at you if you look at them cross-eyed or make the slightest indication that their horrible personal grooming habits (or lack thereof) offends your nose. Oh and the golf community that my friends and I would vandalize as high schoolers by moving for sale signs there to the yards of people we didn’t like and knocking over the port-a-cleens for the construction workers who were building all these $200,000+ cookie cutter boxes of suburbanite bliss has expanded and we no longer have a forest near our high school campus for the cross country team to run through (as well as the less honorable uses the forest was put to). And all the bloody commercials tossing about the word “carbs”. Bloody hell!
It still wasn’t as shocking or disgusting as the display I saw when I went home after 9/11 and even the old curmudgeous anti-government leader of the local militia (who would incidentally always buy candy bars from my little sister and me for band fundraisers) had an American flag on his pick-up truck and a bumper sticker that read…
[quote=“jdsmith”]I’ve been in TW 10 years. I’m from upstate NY, Albany, which has oh about 100,000 people so it’s not terribly diverse. But the last few times I’ve been back I’ve noticed a lot of interacial relationships, and I’ve gawked like people here gawk at my wife and I. Honestly the interacial relationships I’ve seen have mostly been in Taiwan, and usually consisting of a western/caucasian guy and a Taiwanese or other Asian woman. It was cool to see black,white and brown folk holding hands in the mall. I was just something that was NOT common in 1994.
I’ve also noted a greater variety of races and cultures, Indian, middle easterm Asian, which is also cool.
[/quote]
This is truer and truer in Staten Island, New York too. A lot different, and nicer, than when I left 15 years ago.
For me it’s not so much how my country has changed, but how I’ve changed in relation to it. I used to have the antagonising behavior, who was just as ‘strong’ as the guys and could roll with the punches. I used to agree with just about every race problem out there that blacks talk about. I used to whine about America and the way it is or isn’t. And a whole other host of things…Being away has chilled me out, expanded my mentality and redefined my values, giving me real interpersonal skills, and a few tricks in handling things that would normally cause a meltdown in someone else.
[quote=“ImaniOU”]I’m a relatively newbie oldbie. When I last went home after a 1-1/2 year absence I noticed a few things that had changed about buildings like the fact that after God knows how many years of debate, they knocked down most of the downtown mall (the downtown in my home town, which is almost over 200 years old, is dead and everyone shops in the strip malls near I-75). There are a few small businesses that have moved in and my ex showed me where he’s going to establish a music studio, but other than that it was still mostly the empty shop windows with tackily painted windows and dusty carpet remnants, pawnshops, run-down bars with yellowing Pepsi signs, and hairdressing shops with names like “Hair by Evelyn” or “Sheer Heaven” being run out of converted houses. Oh, the four buses that run for my entire hometown now have an indoor air-conditioned bus station with a Coke machine dispenses ice cold generic pop for 60 cents a can (imagine my horror when I pushed the button for a long-coveted Barq’s rootbeer and got a can of Kroger-brand root beer-esque crap instead) but is still full of the usual unemployed, obese crazies who shout at you if you look at them cross-eyed or make the slightest indication that their horrible personal grooming habits (or lack thereof) offends your nose. Oh and the golf community that my friends and I would vandalize as high schoolers by moving for sale signs there to the yards of people we didn’t like and knocking over the port-a-cleens for the construction workers who were building all these $200,000+ cookie cutter boxes of suburbanite bliss has expanded and we no longer have a forest near our high school campus for the cross country team to run through (as well as the less honorable uses the forest was put to). And all the bloody commercials tossing about the word “carbs”. Bloody hell!
It still wasn’t as shocking or disgusting as the display I saw when I went home after 9/11 and even the old curmudgeous anti-government leader of the local militia (who would incidentally always buy candy bars from my little sister and me for band fundraisers) had an American flag on his pick-up truck and a bumper sticker that read…
