First Impressions

Note: I have to write weekly reflections to get internship credit for this summer.  'Personal reflections' are a form of writing that I'd like to work on, since I see the upcoming few years as a marathon of admission and scholarship applications, so feel free to critique away!  The normal short posts will return soon.  

Sometimes when I’m very tired I think I can understand Tagalog.  The
rhythm sounds distinctly like Spanish and a lot of the vocabulary comes directly from English, which means that often some especially sleep-addled part of my brain will pipe up and say, in the face of overwhelming odds, “Kevin, I think you just understood that radio advertisement.  I think you really did!”   

A church in Manila

My hallucinatory proficiency in Tagalog, however, won’t be enough to get me through a fifteen-page survey with moneylenders.  That’s why yesterday I found myself in the somewhat surreal position of interviewing applicants for a translator position with my employer.  Most of my interview experience has come from the other side of the table, and although I much prefer being the one asking questions I also found that the whole process felt a little bit like two interns playing dress-up.  What gave me the right to judge these applicants?  Since when did I know enough about my employer to represent their interests? 

It wasn’t just the interviews that felt somewhat imaginary.  It’s a feeling that I remember really well from ricocheting around several cities in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan last year: the first week in a new place always seem like an extended game of make-believe.  Yesterday, for example, I ‘ran errands.’  My shopping list included towels, shampoo, notebooks and pens, and the afternoon felt like a pretend version of a normal day.  I was just doing my thing, you know, buying some stuff, no big deal.  Walking to the store with a grocery list in hand, it was easier to pretend that the heavy jungle heat and swarms of tuk-tuks were just a part of my new daily routine.  “Look at you, Kevin!” the same optimistic part of my brain that thinks I understand Tagalog declared, “You’re just like a local!”     

The fire escape at my hostel

But I’m not like a local at all.  I don’t understand the language.  I don’t know what Filipino interviews are like, I don’t know what brand of shampoo is good and, standing in the middle of a school supply store that looked like a battle zone and paging through notebooks with miniscule ruling, I realized that I don’t even know what the paper looks like.  Everything is a mystery.  No matter how much I pretend that I know what I’m doing, every decision I make is a bluff.  An insufferable teacher once said that a tourist visits new places whereas a traveler experiences them.  That may be true, but for the first few days perhaps the traveler is just a better actor.