Guest Speaker: Nithin Coca Report prepared by Mr Lim Theam Hee (Joey Lim) Title: Traveling to Build a Global Career Nithin started the talk by sharing with us a story about a taxi driver in Abu Dhabi. The taxi driver was in Abu Dhabi for five years. Driving people around in his taxi is his only source of income. Like many immigrants, he is working away from his family in a foreign land, sending back most of his income back home to Bangladesh. He was also separated from his family and had not even seen his youngest son because he could not afford to go home. With three children at home, this is the sacrifice he has to make. This is a typical story of immigrants, but Nithin pointed out that sometimes it takes traveling for us to realize the similar sacrifices immigrants at home make for a better life. Every person has a story, and traveling opens us up to perceive these experiences that we might have shut off at home. It lets us see the daily courage of people living their stories, both when we are traveling and when we are at home. Hearing Nithin’s story makes us wonder, what does traveling mean to us? Is it just an escape to temporarily run away from the harsh reality? What Nithin showed through his stories felt different from this picture of traveling. To use a quote by Paul Fussell in Nithin’s book, “before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and its fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of judgment. The traveler was a student of what he sought.” We can be certain that the student of traveling, Nithin was looking for something more than an escape, he was looking for new and different experiences that can influence and shape his self. Even though his travels did not bring him houses and cars, tangible items that serve as easy measurements to gauge one’s “success”, he had gained a wealth of experiences, friends, knowledge and skills. Judging from the fact that he pursued these instead of material wealth, it is safe to say that these intangibles mean more to him. He has incorporated multicultural experience into his life and what he learned through his travels into his work as a writer and social activist, lending contextual even handedness and global perspective to his writings and opinions. Nithin’s stories can be seen at nithincoca/. Nithin Coca: An ambitious, young writer with a unique, global voice, Nithin is a world traveler who aims to tell stories that connect us through our common human culture. Infected with the travel bug at a very young age, when his mom took her three months old firstborn child to India to meet his grandparents, he has already visited 44 countries and lived in Spain, France, Nepal, and Indonesia. (From Nithin’s Book “Traveling Softly and Quietly”) [link: memoir.nithincoca]
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 10:16:07 +0000
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