No matter if you relocate to a new country or join a new company, you will always feel like you are missing a sense of belonging. When I started working at the Hong Kong office, the culture shock was even more intense. When I first arrived in the office at my desk, my colleagues were pretty reserved in their welcome. My direct team members and line manager were located all over the Asia region. On the first day of my arrival in the office, two of my colleagues took me out for lunch, and that was one of the few occasions I had company during lunchtime in the first six months. Even though the office was located in a busy and popular district in Hong Kong, the office still had an interior from out of the 80s. Office sub-dividers made it impossible to see your colleague unless you got up and walked around. Also, the office was much quieter than I had experienced in other Shell offices. People seemed to be working silently, and if they had conference calls, they went to the phone booths. Because I worked in a virtual team, all of my interactions with my team members, line manager, and other stakeholders necessitated virtual meetings, and I was one of the only people in the Hong Kong office who talked on the phone all of the time. However, without those regular virtual meetings, I would not have had the chance to speak to anyone. Not only was it quiet in the office, but no one made an effort to greet each other in the morning or when they were leaving the office. At first, I thought it was my fault that my colleagues did not want to interact with me. Even though it was a global organisation, the Hong Kong office staff were from Hong Kong, and even though the written documents and emails were in English, they usually spoke Cantonese with each other unless there was a visibly non-Chinese colleague attending the conference or meeting. Yes, I mentioned visibly non-Chinese because I was seen as Chinese, and the expectation was that I would pick up Cantonese like a breeze. When compared to non-Asian foreigners, the expectations for someone who appears to be Chinese were different.
One of the advantages that I had was that I was fluent in English, because I grew up multilingual. My parents met each other speaking different Chinese dialects, and to communicate with each other, they relied heavily on English since both of them were educated in English-speaking schools. When my brother and I had friends over to visit, my parents would use at least four different languages in just one sentence, which would cause major confusion. Using multiple languages at the same time is commonly called “rojak”, which is a Malaysian dish consisting of various fruits mixed all together with different flavours.
— Fyiona Yong, How to Thrive as a Misfit
