Blog Post #8

I have long been aspiring to work for multi-national companies, and many of the companies I associated with had diversity in human resources, such as employees with various cultural backgrounds. Once I lived in the area where international expats from many countries temporarily rent houses (several months to several years, typically), and I, at that time, wished I would be able to hold the same type of position in future.

When I was working for a holding company, I was under a boss, who got near to his retirement date. The man was sent to more than 23 countries as an expat. He was, by our employer, required to learn foreign languages, cultures, and histories of many different countries, of course. Interacting with so many people having varying socioeconomic backgrounds and value systems, he was mentally strong and showed amazing adaptability to difficult situations in which people normally get bewildered, which was astonishing, considering the fact he was nearly 70 years old at that time. I still remember how he was, and he was definitely one of the individuals who directly inspired me.

Now, living overseas and in an international community, I learn foreign languages every day. I use Duolingo, an famous app for learning basics of foreign languages. First, I honestly did not expect much from this app and was planning to use it as a supplemental learning material. Some reviewers also complain about “rote memorization”.

But I noticed learning a foreign language requires boring repetitions, and this app can help ease this tedious learning processes. The app kept recommending, “making friends”, by following others, but I ignored the notifications first. But now I have been inspired by some people whom I follow and who follow me — we cannot chat or do any direct communication with them, but we can cheer up each other by clicking buttons for our achievements, which is surprisingly encouraging. Also, we can track progresses of “friends”, which makes me stay motivated. Of course, we cannot solely rely on this app — we need to read books in order to understand complex grammatical structures; however, I feel lucky I can use the app and share similar interests with others.

Working globally is difficult sometimes. Conflicts occur and the fundamental resolution is actually not very easy. Building trust is time-consuming and requires so much patience. But still it is rewarding.