I hope you all feel safer...
now that Brother Corey and his gang have been captured.
Have any of you seen this guy? He's just another jive-ass homey who can't put together an intelligible sentence in English let alone destroy Chicago. He's been labeled as a 'home grown' terrorist. He looks and sounds more like a home grown pothead.
If al Qaeda is depending on this dufus they're going to get their asses kicked.
Oh, something else interesting. One of Brother Corey's crew, called Brother Sunni by the FBI, is known to his own sister as Sonny. All his life. Curious little play on words don't you think?
I guess Brother Sonny doesn't sound as diabolical in the headlines. Hard to keep people frightened with nothing but a Brother Sonny. A Brother Sunni though makes it a different story.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it. ~ H.L. Mencken
MEXICO (as I see it)
Culture shock is a real thing. Anybody who has changed homelands will testify to it. Here in Mexico, we foreigners seem to feel we are the only ones who must face up to it but, culture shock cuts both ways as I recently found out from a Mexican friend.
My friend is an executive, impeccably educated, from a well to do family, who has recently returned from a year in Boston Massachusetts. He was fortunate enough to be selected to be a Sloan Fellow and attended a one year seminar on international
finance at M.I.T. University.
When I asked him about his experiences I was devilishly delighted to hear that, even he, had been stupefied by certain cultural folderol.
As it happened the Sloan Fellows were divided into working teams of four people each. Since the one hundred participants were half American and half foreign business men the teams were correspondingly a mixture of nationalities. My Mexican friend was teamed with two Americans and a Japanese.
It was also arranged by M.I.T. that the team members socialize together as an extension of their total American experience. The whole program was sophisticated and well thought out. No plan, however, can touch all bases and in such a diverse conglomeration of people there were bound to be gliches.
My friend told me of the first dinner party he and his wife were invited to, hosted by the Japanese couple. He had received a written invitation, which my friend thought was very formal since the team spent every day working together. But stranger yet, the invitation not only noted the hour of the dinner party, which was 7:00 P.M., but also included the hour of departure, which was 11:00 P.M. There it was then, completely arranged, down to the going home time.
Well, you can be sure that my friend was unable to grasp the concept. In Mexico it would be folly to put a departure time on
an invitation, unthinkable. A party in Mexico goes until the guests decide it's over. A host understands that if he invites
his Mexican friends to a party at his house he is in for the
duration even if it means breakfast the next morning. And, no one is looked on as inconsiderate for wishing to continue the festivities. Anyone even mentioning the lateness of the hour would be thought to be a wet blanket, a party-pooper or worse.
In Mexico, the stated time a given event is slated to begin is only the vaguest of suggestions. It makes no pretense at being accurate. In fact, if one were to arrive at a Mexican party precisely on the hour indicated on the invitation it would border on bad taste and everyone involved would be embarrassed. A guest of such punctuality would be rewarded with a painful hour, or so, wait with no chips, dip or drinks. He will sit, with nothing to do but listen to muffled voices coming from the back rooms as he waits for his hosts to bathe and dress so they may come out to greet him. Talk about anti-climatic.
If it's a dinner party you've been invited to and you show up at the appointed hour packing a serious appetite you may faint dead away before the first morsel of food appears. Dining at 10 or 10:30 P.M. here in Mexico is very common.
With this in mind my friend was surprised when his phone rang at 7:45 P.M. and when he answered finding his Japanese host on the line.
"Hello"
"Hello, Gustavo? It is already 7:45 P.M. and we cannot begin to eat until you arrive. Are you coming or not?" said the host speaking English in a peevish yet sing-song accent.
"Yes, of course were coming. I'm sorry we have held you up." my friend said feeling a little wounded by the man's tone.
It was a cultural lesson not soon forgotten. Promptness in some parts is considered indispensable and any bending of it will not be looked upon with humor. Anyway, my friend and his wife quickly showered and threw on some clothes and sped for their Japanese friend's house.
Once arrived there were no preliminaries before being seated to dine. No chat, no chips, no dip, no cocktails, but straight to the, now overdue, dinner. It was clear to my friend he had missed the preliminaries and they were not to be resurrected for late arrivals.
Have any of you seen this guy? He's just another jive-ass homey who can't put together an intelligible sentence in English let alone destroy Chicago. He's been labeled as a 'home grown' terrorist. He looks and sounds more like a home grown pothead.
If al Qaeda is depending on this dufus they're going to get their asses kicked.
Oh, something else interesting. One of Brother Corey's crew, called Brother Sunni by the FBI, is known to his own sister as Sonny. All his life. Curious little play on words don't you think?
I guess Brother Sonny doesn't sound as diabolical in the headlines. Hard to keep people frightened with nothing but a Brother Sonny. A Brother Sunni though makes it a different story.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it. ~ H.L. Mencken
MEXICO (as I see it)
Culture shock is a real thing. Anybody who has changed homelands will testify to it. Here in Mexico, we foreigners seem to feel we are the only ones who must face up to it but, culture shock cuts both ways as I recently found out from a Mexican friend.
My friend is an executive, impeccably educated, from a well to do family, who has recently returned from a year in Boston Massachusetts. He was fortunate enough to be selected to be a Sloan Fellow and attended a one year seminar on international
finance at M.I.T. University.
When I asked him about his experiences I was devilishly delighted to hear that, even he, had been stupefied by certain cultural folderol.
As it happened the Sloan Fellows were divided into working teams of four people each. Since the one hundred participants were half American and half foreign business men the teams were correspondingly a mixture of nationalities. My Mexican friend was teamed with two Americans and a Japanese.
It was also arranged by M.I.T. that the team members socialize together as an extension of their total American experience. The whole program was sophisticated and well thought out. No plan, however, can touch all bases and in such a diverse conglomeration of people there were bound to be gliches.
My friend told me of the first dinner party he and his wife were invited to, hosted by the Japanese couple. He had received a written invitation, which my friend thought was very formal since the team spent every day working together. But stranger yet, the invitation not only noted the hour of the dinner party, which was 7:00 P.M., but also included the hour of departure, which was 11:00 P.M. There it was then, completely arranged, down to the going home time.
Well, you can be sure that my friend was unable to grasp the concept. In Mexico it would be folly to put a departure time on
an invitation, unthinkable. A party in Mexico goes until the guests decide it's over. A host understands that if he invites
his Mexican friends to a party at his house he is in for the
duration even if it means breakfast the next morning. And, no one is looked on as inconsiderate for wishing to continue the festivities. Anyone even mentioning the lateness of the hour would be thought to be a wet blanket, a party-pooper or worse.
In Mexico, the stated time a given event is slated to begin is only the vaguest of suggestions. It makes no pretense at being accurate. In fact, if one were to arrive at a Mexican party precisely on the hour indicated on the invitation it would border on bad taste and everyone involved would be embarrassed. A guest of such punctuality would be rewarded with a painful hour, or so, wait with no chips, dip or drinks. He will sit, with nothing to do but listen to muffled voices coming from the back rooms as he waits for his hosts to bathe and dress so they may come out to greet him. Talk about anti-climatic.
If it's a dinner party you've been invited to and you show up at the appointed hour packing a serious appetite you may faint dead away before the first morsel of food appears. Dining at 10 or 10:30 P.M. here in Mexico is very common.
With this in mind my friend was surprised when his phone rang at 7:45 P.M. and when he answered finding his Japanese host on the line.
"Hello"
"Hello, Gustavo? It is already 7:45 P.M. and we cannot begin to eat until you arrive. Are you coming or not?" said the host speaking English in a peevish yet sing-song accent.
"Yes, of course were coming. I'm sorry we have held you up." my friend said feeling a little wounded by the man's tone.
It was a cultural lesson not soon forgotten. Promptness in some parts is considered indispensable and any bending of it will not be looked upon with humor. Anyway, my friend and his wife quickly showered and threw on some clothes and sped for their Japanese friend's house.
Once arrived there were no preliminaries before being seated to dine. No chat, no chips, no dip, no cocktails, but straight to the, now overdue, dinner. It was clear to my friend he had missed the preliminaries and they were not to be resurrected for late arrivals.
posted by bbuckman | 7:19 PM
1 Comments:
Yes, I have encountered the same thing. I worked at a printshop where we bought a fabulous complicated new Japanese press, which took forever to set up and which came with a crew of three Japanese to oversee the set up, not to do the actual work.
The American owner of the shop, Al, a straight-shooter kind of guy, kept demanding that the Japanese consultants tell him that the press would be ready (and making money) soon, since the payments were about $10k a month on the thing.
The Japanese gentlemen always said, Yes, Yes, it is very near completion, any hour now.
What Al failed to realize was that saying a strong direct no in Japan is just not done, so one finesses one's way around it with indirect and polite forms of saying "no way, not today."
Al's continued anger and insistence made everyone crazy. The Japanese guys thought they had made themselves perfectly clear and Al thought they were lying.
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