"You Speak Like a White Person."

I just had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant which has recently opened in Berkeley about four blocks away from my house. After I ordered, the waiter asked me, "Dari Indonesia, yah?" (Are you from Indonesia?)

Me: Bapakku dari Jakarta. (My father is from Jakarta.)

Waiter: Oh. Bahasa sudah seperti orang buleh. (Oh. You speak like a white person.)

Sigh. Ah well. I guess Indonesian isn't my first language, and although I spoke a little bit of it growing up, I (embarrassingly) learned most of my vocabulary taking courses at Berkeley. Still...can't speak Chinese well, speak Indonesian with an accent, and when I'm tired I start to get my pronouns and singulars and plurals all mixed up in English and sound like a FOB. It's a mild episode of the "cosmo-condition"--you don't really belong to any one country or place. The nice word for it is "cosmopolitan". Journalist Paul Kingsnorth calls the globetrotting middle-class versions "the citizens of nowhere" and labels them (or should I say, "us") as positively villainous, if not downright eeeevil.

I really have to learn to be comfortable with my twinkie-ness.