All Looks the Same?

Every day my bus passes by the construction site of a new embassy. Last year, someone mentioned that the workers were building the Japanese embassy. I thought that was odd because there was already a Japanese embassy. Then, I looked at the map behind the bus station, and the map seemed to indicate that the Singapore embassy was in the location of the construction. So we all thought the building was for Singapore for the past few months.

Riding on the bus last week, my friend and I started talking about the embassy. I said something about Singapore and he gave me a confused look. "They are building the Chinese embassy!" I did get some grief from people about not knowing that the workers were Chinese, but I am horrible at telling different Asian ethnicities apart. Singaporeans versus Chinese, would you know?

Honestly though, I do not feel guilt about my inability to identify people's ethnicities. It is not necessarily that all Asian people look the same. Rather, people within each Asian ethnic group vary so much. I do not look stereotypically Vietnamese, and neither does my 6'2 brother.

...but, we do fit the "nerdy" Asian stereotype, at least when we did dressing up as Star Trekkies (you asked for it, and today my dad sent this to me without request).