Cultural Exchange

An entry taken from my journal, originally dated 09 August 2010.

This afternoon I came back from lunch with a small white envelope that simply had my name scrawled on it.

I knew that it was from P. I had been warned earlier that my boss is back from his month-long training in the US, and that one of my US counterparts had thoughtfully sent along something for me.

I opened the envelope and found a card

and a coaster.

It's propped up against, yes, a green mug with wings
and is next to a sinister looking head massager.

The back of the card says that the black and egg-yolk yellow bird (I refuse to call it light orange) is a Baltimore oriole, and according to the note P wrote inside it, the ones on the coaster are bluebirds, and that both kinds visit her home in the summer.

It made me think back to what I had sent her a month before. You see, I sent her a picture post card and a really big paperclip that had a wooden Monkey-eating Eagle perched on one end, (apparently it’s a bookmark) and explained what those were in the note I wrote.

It’s strange how that last minute, not-too-well-thought-out, token I have given resulted in what my colleagues jokingly call a “cultural exchange”. Others have sent along small gifts for their counterparts as well, and most of them received chocolate or cookies in return. A month earlier, I also received an email from F, another counterpart who received a similar set of gifts (his postcard had Taal Lake instead of The Chocolate Hills in Bohol), which talked about how they had eagles too, but that they didn’t eat monkeys, and contained a link to a website about their lakes.

This is not to say that I’d have preferred for them to send me candy. I didn’t really think they’d send anything back, actually, although I’m not exactly jumping for joy at receiving this…information (I’m no hypocrite.). The feeling is more like satisfaction; perhaps because I’ve managed to share a glimpse of something beautiful to a bunch of people halfway across the world, and have received glimpses back. Considering I’ve never dreamt of visiting the U.S. (except perhaps Broadway in New York) these things have somehow become something precious, as if I had a friend somewhere there, even when the people who have sent them are those who I have never met in person and only contact about work-related matters.

Am I being weird again?