Case #1- Bowing

So heres a pretty common area of uncertainty i run into quite often in professional environments. As an Asian, i grew up with the tendency of referring to my superiors as Sir/ Ma'am and bowing as a form of greeting/ acknowledgement/ respect. However, coming into LA, i realize more and more that people don't want to be called sirs and maams. My supervisor in my previous work told me to simply call him by his first name!! And whats more is that the more i bow, the more uneasy they seem to become...thats almost unheard of from where i used to be (Thailand, China).

Nice to meet you.

Hey everyone! I'm new to the blogging community so i just thought I would introduce myself at a deeper level. I've been moving around my whole life. After being born in Easton Pennsylvania, I moved to Thailand where I stayed for the first couple years of my life. Soon after, I moved with my family to Thailand where I stayed until I was five. Afterwards, I moved to Taiwan with my family and started my pre-kindergarten years there. However it wasn't long until we moved again, back to Thailand where I graduated from elementary school. At this point I was beginning middle school (6th grade) and again, my parents decided to move because of some potential business opportunities that they saw in a little city called Kunming, China. It was not an easy transition going from one school to the next especially at that age. However, I still managed to integrate into the community there and gained a handful of new friends. By the end of my 8th year, I made a personal choice and persuaded my parents to allow both my sister and I to go back to Thailand where we could graduate from High- School. Albeit the initial hesitation, my parents agreed and sent me and my sister back to Thailand. I graduated from an international school there and got accepted into the University of British Columbia where I studied business for a year. Why for only 1 year? well, after my freshman year my parents felt that I wasn't taking advantage of my U.S. citizenship enough and that i should be developing myself in the U.S. and not Canada. It took me a while to plan things out but eventually i adhered to their request and moved to Los Angeles California (woot! woot!) In retrospect, I'm more than glad my life has been a series of transitions one after another because it has instilled in me the ability to be culturally sensitive and adapt to different situations. Currently enrolled at USC, I am continuing my passion for business but this time, with an emphasis on international relations ( I know... it totally makes sense right? :P) anyhow, I realized i really enjoyed sharing my experiences to people i meet everyday and thought that maybe i should create a blog where ppl can share these experiences and learn from them! Obviously a blog on the topic of just "culture" would be too ambiguous and vague so I would like people to share their cultural experiences in relation to the business world. Happy Blogging everyone!