Nov 072011
 
There's No One Here Who Knows You

“It’s not about who you know but about who knows you,” says a business adage. No matter how extensive or impressive your contact list or how many names you can drop, if you aren’t on anyone’s mind for yourself or your service, business success will elude you. Settling in a new country is like that. The post’s title is a line in “Peg of Old”, the 7th episode in season two of the HBO show Boardwalk Empire. In a main storyline, Margaret Schroeder, an Irish immigrant living in Atlantic City, […] Continue reading >

Oct 222011
 
My New Self in a New World

Kultur Shock, “House of Labor”, on Ministry of Kultur (2011) [audio:http://americanrobotnik.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/06-House-Of-Labor.mp3|titles=Kultur Shock – House Of Labor, 2011] My lies to myself Lies to my people Lies from my past, present, and future Made me sick to my stomach Made me hide my pride Made me hide my life Forget my kultur I wanted to find My new self in a new world But I got so lost What the fuck did I do—Lies!

Oct 032011
 
Acculturating? You Have Options!

It’s a special kind of discovery to learn your personal experience has an underpinning in academic theory. A paper by Jean Phinney, Gabriel Horenczyk, Karmela Liebkind, and Paul Vedder on the connection between immigration, ethnic identity, and well-being validated my personal transformation that led to American Robotnik. The Acculturation Model To be more precise, it was an overview of John Berry’s acculturation model that confirmed what I’d gone through. Berry asserts that acculturation has two dimensions: the degree of preservation of one’s heritage culture and adaptation to the host society. In […] Continue reading >

Oct 012011
 

They say the United States is a place where you can be who you want to be: if no one knows you when you get here, you can be anyone you choose. As a newcomer, you are free to take the opportunity to reinvent yourself. If you simply want to continue being who you were before you arrived, congratulations! But if all your life in the “old country” you felt compelled, even forced to become what others around you (your family, friends, society) expected you to be, the possibility […] Continue reading >