InterCulture Vulture; Adrienne Norris of AfroTriangle Designs...

Every once in a while, I get a chance to meet someone who really embodies the idea of interculturality and global nomadism. I rarely have a legit excuse to interview such a person(because to me, that's normal, and it's creepy to interview people about being normal) but in my other other job as a knitwear designer and craft networker, I had an amazing opportunity to interview the graphic artist and designer Adrienne Norris of Afro Triangle Designs. Adrienne is quite the global nomad, and she's managed to be so in several ways, making her a nomad among nomads, so to speak. She's a Bajan-born and US-raised ex-Marine, a capoeira practicioner, an alumni of the United World College, and an extremely gifted artist. The interview is more art-oriented and is posted in full on my SweetShop Creations blog, but a few of Adrienne's responses are very applicable to this blog as well. With her permission, I'll share them here as well...

Without further ado, I present to you...Adrienne Norris of Afro Triangle Designs!

Image courtesy of Adrienne Norris. Shirt available for purchase here

Welcome Adrienne! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where are you from, where are you now, where are you going, that sort of thing?

Well, I was born on the island of Barbados (which is in the Caribbean, for those who don’t know) and came to the US when I was 5. I lived in New York with my mom, grandmother and brothers until I was about 12, when we moved to New Mexico to live on the international school campus my dad taught at, the Armand Hammer United World College. So I’m Bajan by birth, but American by culture.

When I was 17, I had the opportunity to attend the United World College of the Adriatic in Italy, which is part of the family of international schools I grew up in. What should have been a two year experience turned into only one, though. I mean, it was Italy and I was 17. Studying just wasn't a priority. So I had a chance to start over at the school in New Mexico where I graduated with my International Baccalaureate degree.

After that, I joined the Marines to be an Arabic linguist and spent 5 years doing what people told me (sort of) and translating “things” from Arabic to English. Sorry, if I gave you more details, I’d have to kill you. ;)

These days, I’m working as a freelance artist here in Denver, designing t-shirts, business cards, logos, as well as drawing and painting portraits when I can. I would love for portrait painting to be my primary source of income.

Can you tell us a little bit about how your life inspires your art?

People fascinate me. I think that’s why I love drawing faces so much. We all have the same five features – two eyes, a nose, a mouth – but they can be configured in so many different ways to make each face we see so incredibly unique that even twins who share almost identical genes, can look different from one another.

I am also amazed by what the human body is capable of whether it’s pull-ups, hand stands, or flips. That we can use our muscles to create enough momentum to launch ourselves into the air is astounding to me. 


That' the preview, y'all...the rest of the interview, including loads of info about Adrienne's art, can be found HERE.

Music: Hocus Pocus

Just thought I'd take a quick moment and share a video from one of my favorite music groups, Hocus Pocus.  They're a jazzy hip-hop band(although I've always seen them perform as a multi-cultural duo composed of emcee 20Syl and guitarist Matthieu Lelièvre) from Nantes, France.

Check out this bilingual mini-performance of the song Smile, which originally featured Black British soulster Omar, here...

Love these guys...

Moving pains...

I haven't posted much lately, because I'm moving. I hate moving. I do it a lot, but I genuinely hate it.

I wanted to take a picture of the three suitcases and carry-on that I managed to fit my whole life in England into in order to move to the US(temporarily) to show you all, but it was too disheartening.

I wanted to say goodbye to everyone in Manchester properly, but there wasn't enough time to see everyone or to say all the things.

I wanted to visit all the places that I loved best and the places that I hadn't gotten to know well enough to love yet.

I wanted to bestow all the things I left behind on people lovingly, rather than dumping them in the local Oxfam for random passers-by.

I wanted to have more time to do all the things I could. But I needed to leave to do all the things that are waiting for me.

And right now, I want to go unpack.

Peace, beautiful people. Love where you are, and appreciate where you're going.

Only in California,,,the Sushirrito.

Source: http://www.sushirrito.com/

I first ran across this about a year ago. I haven't had a chance to visit yet but I hope to do so soon because I have a lot of questions.  Is this a burrito shaped food made with sushi ingredients? Or is it just a really really jumbo sushi roll? I'm not sure. Apparently this is the specialty food at a chain of restaurants in San Francisco, CA. The menu features food fusion delights like the...Sumo Crunch? Um. Not so sure about that name(I think we can all thank our lucky stars that the suffix -ito hasn't found its way onto the menu here.) Anyway, there's items such as the Sumo Crunch, which features "Surimi crab, shaved cabbage, cucumber, avocado, green onions, red tempura flakes" all topped with a sriracha aioli.

Suddenly I have questions. Red tempura flakes of what? Isn't sriracha Thai in origin? And isn't aioli Italian?

This looked amazing at first but I'm starting to wonder if this is true fusion food or just super trendy, doing too much food.  Any burrito purists and sushi enthuasiasts in the room are more than likely horrified, but it has the potential to taste pretty good. I think. I'm not sure. I have to admit I'm casting a mighty sideways eye at the Porkivore...which features "oven roasted pork belly, melted Swiss cheese, shaved cabbage, avocado, cilantro, green onions, [and] red radish." with a mustard seed mayo. That doesn't sound like a burrito-sushi mashup to me. It sounds like the illegimate child of a banh mi and a North Carolina barbecue.  That's not a bad thing but hmmm....

If you're in San Francisco, pop into one of the Sushirritto restaurants and let me know...

Serious Saturday: Cabbages, kings and buffalo wings...

The Walrus and the Carpenter, woodcut, John Tenniel. Source: victoriaweb.org

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--

Of cabbages--and kings--

And why the sea is boiling hot--

And whether pigs have wings."
~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

I know nothing of pigs, cabbages, or wings(unless they're buffalo), but I feel like now is a good time to talk a bit about what exactly this blog is for. 

So first of all, this blog is for you. That is, if you are a person who travels across multiple cultures, multiple classes, multiple languages, multiple ideologies and multiple locations on a regular basis, sometimes before you even have your morning coffee. (Or tea. Or wattlescino. You get the idea...) 

This blog is for multicultural, multilingual, traveling, rambling, crosscultural, lifestyle fusion people and their families. It's for third culture kids, global nomads, interculture vultures, immigrants, refugees and virulent trolls. (Okay, so maybe not that last one...)

And it goes without saying...it's also for their friends, neighbors, and anyone else who is curious about or embarking on a cross-cultural journey in life. 

Some of us do this naturally. We're born into one or more cultures and are raised in another, and slipping from one mode to another is as natural as blinking. Some of us are doing this for professional or practical reasons--we work in or have suddenly been exposed to people from other cultures, or we're traveling and suddenly discovered that there can be a steep learning curve in the space between the guidebook and that first international friendship. Some of us do it for love--the one thing that knows no color, class, or international boundaries. 

And some of us do it because it is fun. 

There's a growing group of people who live both between and across cultures and nations and languages and beliefs, and I am one. Sometimes it can seem as though managing all the different parts of our lives can be so fragmented and unrelatable that we may as well be talking to a walrus about vegetables and monarch, for all the sense it initially makes. It makes sense to us but describing the experience--and even better, finding others who are living the experience--is largely left up to luck, chance, and if you're a professional nomad, drunken office mixers.  This blog is (hopefully) to highlight some of the people and places and things that make the global nomad lifestyle--all of its fusion culture and linguistic crossbreeds and of course, the food--amazing.

So when we get to the part about pigs having wings, please pass me the buffalo sauce. And subscribe/follow for more global culture minded shenanigans, every week. Thanks!

Interview with the dictator's grandson; Kim Han-Sol talks about travel, culture, and his grandfather Kim Jong-Il...

There's a couple of obvious demographics that contribute to global nomadism and the intercultural experience...missionary, military, politics and the arts are probably the four biggest global nomad fields--both for professional nomads and for creating new ones.

Of the four, I've been wondering whether it's politics or art careers that are the rarest of intercultural professions. I'll talk about artistic nomads in (several) future posts, but today I'm more focused on politics. Blame the upcoming US presidential elections and the upcoming UK referendum vote.

If you count all of the military nomads who go on to ambassadorial careers, politics isn't a rare thing at all. In fact, military and political are often so closely intertwined in the global consciousness that there's no distinction at all. But if you narrow it down to ambassadors, embassy workers, envoys, and diplomats, the demographic becomes much narrower.

It gets even narrower if you think of the interculturally raised children of globally notorious politicians. Which brings me to a video I found, courtesy of The Korean's Facebook page.

Apparently the late Kim Jong-Il's 18 year old grandson is studying at a European university and granted an interview to Finnish TV. His candor and open-ness are refreshing, as are his simple insights on his experience as a global nomad and an intercultural child of political origin.

Here's part 1;

And part 2;

Watch this space--I'll be keeping media tabs on Kim Han-Sol simply because I hope he survives to be a diplomat or whatever else he wants to be. The saddest part of this whole situation is that all of the things that make this a charming, interesting interview also may be placing this young man's life at risk. His uncle, Yi Han-Yong, when caught publicly speaking about his defection, was summarily murdered.

Spy and assassin are two demographics of global nomad that I don't want to address in this blog. Best of luck, Kim Han-Sol

These people speak Latvian!

Russell Peters is probably the most popular intercultural comedian in the West...check out this quick bit on language fakeouts...