What About Identity?

When you live and work 'abroad', you get confronted with your national identity quite a lot. Automatically you compare things that happen (check out lines in supermarkets, traffic behaviour, people's faces in public transportation, etiquette at work, meeting structures, lunches) with how it works in your home country. But what exactly is this national identity and where to draw the line? For one thing, in the Netherlands there is a course for 'newcomers' to learn about Dutch culture. There's even an exam that newcomers have to pass if they want to come and live in the Netherlands. For those Dutch people I know that have taken the exam for fun, they were all very surprised and a bit ashamed maybe as well. The Dutch culture as it is promoted in this, is generalistic, too fifties and not accurate for about 99% of the people I know. Apparently, this national culture, is hard to define, even in such a small country. So talking about national identy, where do you draw the line? Is it the place where you work, where you live, where you went to school, where you grew up, where you were born, where your parents were born, or their parents? For me, that poses a slight problem. I work in Europe, live in Paris, went to school in Amsterdam at one point, grew up and was born in The Hague. My parents were born in The Netherlands and on the Maluku islands, and my ancestors come from France, The Netherlands and the Maluku islands. So, what would be my national identity? Maybe it is determined by the language I speak? Well, more and more I speak English. Obviously Dutch is what I'm most fluent at, but my English improves by the day, I even have this blog in English. Actually, it is maybe better defined as Panglish, because my English is influenced by French words (a language that I am improving at more and more as well) and Dutch grammatical constructions.