globetrotter

Rebuilding this site and updating various documents recently got me thinking about a line I’d incorporated into my artist statement:

“This creative logic is shaped by years of international and intercultural experience with a mixed Filipino/American family, a childhood in Hong Kong, the UAE and Malaysia, and adulthood as an educator in the diversity of California.”

I was daydreaming about travel, as is pretty typical for me when I start to get fidgety this time of year, so I started idly counting up the various weeks, months and years that I’ve been elsewhere than the Bay Area. In doing so, I realized that I’d lived or traveled in Europe much longer in a cumulative capacity than I’d thought, which might bear inclusion in my statement at some point.

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My life has been shaped by motion and travel, but I’d never been too exact about this. I decided to try to quantify this on a spreadsheet (now that I know how to use Excel for actual math, not just for making pretty colored boxes. Hah!) and discovered that, beyond the biggest chunk of time that is the Bay Area, I’ve lived, traveled or undertaken art projects in

  • Asia-Pacific (including Hawaii): 10 yrs 1 month
  • Middle East: 2 years 6 months
  • Europe: 3 years 3 months
  • Mexico: 2 months 3 weeks
  • Louisiana: 3 months 1 week
  • North Carolina: 3 months
  • Continental US (not including CA, LA or NC): 6 months 1 week

So, while yes, I’m still primarily a Pacific Rim product, this data was a good reminder that other forces have shaped me, too. It also explains why, to this day, I really, really like wiping out the sink in the airplane lavatory. It’s something I’ve done to entertain myself on long-distance flights since I was small.

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