Temporary TCKid Home

Greetings,

For those who may remember from TCKID’s old days, I am Uncle Dan. I had some interesting times providing advice to those who asked about anything in life. It started to feel uncomfortable though, as questions became far more searching, serious, and deserving of a professional voice. Nevertheless, I always have thoughts to write down.

For those unfamiliar with me, I begin with my background:

I was born in the US to a Vietnamese family. When I was 3 years old, I moved to Indonesia. I lived there until I was 18, going to a British International School for the entire time, graduating with the International Baccalaureate. I attempted to try American university life in the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, but after a bit less than 2 years ended up moving to Switzerland, where my parents had moved in the meantime. There, I studied a Bachelor’s degree in International Business in Hospitality and Tourism Management from a little Hotelfachschule with over 40 nationalities, more or less reliving the TCK experience all over again.

I am currently working in Florida at a hotel as a manager-in-development, but am plotting to return to Europe, hopefully to re-align myself back into an area I take much more passion in: International Relations.

As my history suggests, I speak six languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Vietnamese and Indonesian. I am, however, only truly fluent in English. My German is pretty good, though I learned it in Switzerland and that accent permeates all my German. My French was great when I was 14 and… has deteriorated since. My Spanish reached its peak when I was 19, and I manage it shakenly. My Vietnamese was learned entirely from my family, and therefore informally. I can manage to read a menu, write basic words by guessing, and understand more by listening than I can form sentences on my own. My Indonesian was the product of living with house staff and basic school classes until I was 11.

I still enjoy refreshing them though, whenever I get the chance. And I enjoy picking up phrases in other languages. My roommate right now is Lebanese, and I have learned various phrases in Arabic. I have learned fun phrases in Swedish, Portuguese, Croatian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and… well others. I can’t think of them all.

I hope to continue to contribute to this interesting group!