Why it?s difficult to develop meaningful relationships in Irvine

[Irvine2Irvine]

We've initiated two block parties at the end of our motor court.  Almost everyone in close vicinity who were invited showed up with finger foods/desserts and everyone said what a good time they were having and glad that we did it.  Our neighborhood has Koreans, Vietnamese, Caucasians, and Persians and everyone seemed to have a good time and we all got this close feeling.  We do say hi when we bump into each other and make small talk once in a while but that closeness we felt the night of our block party only last for that night.  I think that we don't know each other well enough to make a meaningful conversation and not all of us have stuff in common.  I think that if we regularly had a block party (say once a month or even twice/three times a month), I think we can grow a more meaningful relationship. 

I know that at our old apt., 4- 5 families got together every Sunday during the summer for a summer bbq at the pool and we felt pretty close to everyone during the summer.  But as soon as we stopped, it was hard to continue that feeling.  So as someone above mentioned, it takes a lot of work and you have to have a venue to see and do stuff with them on a regular continuous basis.

It's hard to keep a meaningful relationship when you don't have things in common.  I am sure most people have had close high school friends who have drifted away because the life took the friend in a different directionn than you, whetter it's job, kids, etc.  You may meet them once in a while but it's not like it used to be.  To have on going meaningful relationship with your neighbors, it helps to have things in common.

 

[kayochan]

We've initiated two block parties at the end of our motor court.  Almost everyone in close vicinity who were invited showed up with finger foods/desserts and everyone said what a good time they were having and glad that we did it.  Our neighborhood has Koreans, Vietnamese, Caucasians, and Persians and everyone seemed to have a good time and we all got this close feeling.  We do say hi when we bump into each other and make small talk once in a while but that closeness we felt the night of our block party only last for that night.  I think that we don't know each other well enough to make a meaningful conversation and not all of us have stuff in common.  I think that if we regularly had a block party (say once a month or even twice/three times a month), I think we can grow a more meaningful relationship. 

I know that at our old apt., 4- 5 families got together every Sunday during the summer for a summer bbq at the pool and we felt pretty close to everyone during the summer.  But as soon as we stopped, it was hard to continue that feeling.  So as someone above mentioned, it takes a lot of work and you have to have a venue to see and do stuff with them on a regular continuous basis.

It's hard to keep a meaningful relationship when you don't have things in common.  I am sure most people have had close high school friends who have drifted away because the life took the friend in a different directionn than you, whetter it's job, kids, etc.  You may meet them once in a while but it's not like it used to be.  To have on going meaningful relationship with your neighbors, it helps to have things in common.

Yes, I agree that it helps to have things in common.  But even with people we have in common such as age, neighborhood, kids (their age(s), etc., it is hard to keep up the relationship without seeing one other on some type of regular basis (even if it is only once a month).  We know many people with the same type of demographics as ours in the neighborhood with kids going to the same school.  We get along quite well when we get together, but with everyone being so busy with work + kids, that it is hard to get together unless we make a concerted effort to do so. 

In fact, we have been wanting to do another block party since summer time but have been just too busy.  It is easier when it is people we see for things we are already doing/involved in such as work, kid's sports/activities, and we see them regularly. 

 

[Zeistermeist]

Having been working in Irvine/Tustin boarder for almost ten years, I concur with many of the pointed symptoms of alienation, discomfortness and unfriendliness in the soup of this artificially constructed city called Irvine. Well that being said, it could also be amply applied to any other city in around the large metropolitan cities all around the world. Being an immigrant myself having been living in Placentia, Torrance, Fullerton and a host of other places and have been to many other countries, I can only attest that major cities are nothing but an erected artifice of labor force working for the industrialists and money paymasters. Why do you abandon your own country to come here? Why for work of course. Why else would you come to Calif or anywhere else in the US for? If it wasn't the promise of the better money opportunity, images imagined to be, a place us think as representing freedom or democracy? The image of Utopia has us fooled and we gladly abandon our own traditional way of life and gladly sacrifice it to the corporate state. You complained about the unfriendliness and disingenuousness of people, what do you expect, it is after all they not of your own tribesmen, this super artificial conglomerate of work force were assembled solely to support and maintain the state or municipal taxes, ladies and gentlemen, we are here to give ourselves to the state/Fed, to pay taxes and to work to contribute and nothing more. It is an evolution of greed and brainwash that took us out of our own national sovereignness to a foreign land seeking dreams, we unshed our cultural roots, abandon childhood friends/environment and willing subject this American experiment. America is after all an esoteric concept of salad bowl gone awry. I grew up in Asian and know how good friends mean for life, the closeness with friends and families was tight. Well that was back 20-30 some years ago, I am afraid it probably isn't so now. It is hard to expect younger folks to act with such genuine goodwill when we support corporate takeover of our own lives with iPods, iPhones, mobile devices hiding behind the electronic facades instead of being physically with others communicating face to face. This is a global endemic, globalization that started from European colonialism backed by clandestine group of powerful ruling elites and families has been in full force pushing for the breakup of all sovereign nations by the use of monetary/military/religious/wars to manipulate us into city-states instead of being a well-rooted sovereign individuals...... After all it is far easier to divide and conquer us with the lure of the $$$....