multicultural high-brow

we seem to have stumbled onto a good theme here.

during that same evening of drinking with my co-workers that precipitated this whole train of thought, i asked the jameson-snubber (js?) if he had really sent me a message the other day in portuguese. i hadn't thought about it much at the time, since we were busy and i figured out what he was talking about, but three days later was wondering why he'd picked portuguese to thank me for my help. so we discussed his various travels a little, established that his portuguese came from three weeks visiting friends in portugal plus its similarity to other romance languages, etc.

i mentioned that if js had a need to communicate with his co-workers in portuguese, i'd be happy to be the recipient but he might also try my friend dwtacc. his surprise at her brazilian heritage was entertaining in that everyone thinks she's every ethnicity but her own, but funnier was his doubt that they'd communicate well, what with the whole portugal/brazil thing. i know he just meant that different countries have different dialects and all that, but it really sounded like js thought his three weeks in portugal would be too pure for her life of understanding the language. i let him dig himself a little hole before telling him i was sure her undergraduate portuguese major would surely iron out those differences.

i don't intend to disparage the poor jameson-snubber who just didn't know dwtacc to know what he was saying (although i'm secretly hoping that dwtacc will somehow use this information to her advantage and then tell me about it). i only use it as an example of my growing theory that prizing individuality and unique experiences has its limits. we all get through education and interviewing for jobs by talking ourselves up, trying to convince everyone to hire us because we have something special that they can't get anywhere else, packaging our eclectic experiences like they grant us a unique position to understand the world. but does it hold up? i think a set of experiences gets you into a certain job, social circle, academic standing, whatever, and after that initial acceptance those experiences are pretty much a version of what everyone else has done. is it special that js speaks some portuguese? yes, if he worked in a gas station in northern wisconsin and was trying to get out. and yes, in that i don't speak portuguese. but does it make him better at his job, or funnier over a beer, or quicker getting someone to sleep with him?

i kind of wish i'd spent some time in college working the cash register at fleet farm instead of all the resume-padders, so i could be less of a hypocrite while i rant.

ps: blogmate, mb just found the jason mraz cd i bought before moving to chicago.