the first moment

Was observing 2 guys on the road the other day while parked at a red light. One was about 40, clearly full of life's stresses and walking purposefully early morning towards employment in singapore. The other was about 20, walking along with the other guy but was nearly bumping into electricity poles with his mouth open - staring at the city around him.

Got me thinking about the 'first moment' when people from low income countries experience life in a developed country. We all remember that first moment when we first saw the clean streets, the hip cars, the fashionable people, electronics galore, the short skirts, the taller/whiter race of people and the amazingly tall buildings.

Some had the first moment earlier in life and we were extremely jealous of those "uncles & aunties" who used to come loaded with toblerones bought off discount grocery stores selling them on sale in foreign lands (little did we know the source!). Whenever we would go through the first moment on our own, we were full of conversation and came closer to family - more words were exchanged with "did you see that?!!!!" than probably in the previous few months of "beta, karela kha lo" or something similar.

Since it had been a long time for me, was very refreshing to see the 20 something fellow with his mouth open, walking the singapore cement pavements (no fallen leaves ofcourse! this is foren land and would not want to disappoint the laddie and his stories for the folks back home).

what was your first moment?