On the way back to Helsinki. Yes, Finns have a “special relationship” with alcohol.
And Heathrow is still not that great.
Was in London on Friday. As usual, absolutely love the city, one of my favourites in the world. One thing that truly stood out this time was that we had a business lunch during a meeting. They brought some sandwiches, potato chips, fruit and cheeses to the room, and we continued as usual. The attitude to it was very contrasting to a business lunch I had in a similar situation in Paris, where we had trays with 3-course meals brought to the room, and the meeting itself was stopped during lunch.
I'm not saying one is better than the other, but it drove home the point of food-as-fuel vs. food-as-a-ritual.
All the possible similarities with “1984” are just pure coincidence. If we have to lose our liberties to beat the terrorists, they have already won.
After around 14 months, I’m back in Japan, but this time is not on pleasure. Funnily enough, I still feel rather comfortable here as I’m also from the big city.
A couple of things that I have noticed (relevant or not) below:
* The current fashionable look for ~18 year old women is small shorts with long tights. Wouldn’t work in Finland.
* There seems to be much more contacts between Japan and China. I met in the plane a Japanese woman who is married to a Chinese man and lives in Shanghai. I’m also watching a Chinese movie subtitled in Japanese at the moment.
* Tokyo has always felt a little futuristic. Both times I’ve been here it feels I’m experiencing the future of other cities. Definitely I would like more parts of Mexico City to look like this, not just Santa Fé.
* Surprisingly enough, I feel more comfortable here than in Paris or London (even though here I don’t speak the language) only because people are more polite. The service level is also excellent compared to what you get in Europe.
* Even coming from an expensive Nordic country, shopping here is pricey.
Time to sleep for me now.
As readers of this blog know, I spent the last 3 nights in Paris. Even though I really like the city, this time around I was slightly disappointed by the state is seems to be in. Of course, in all the tourist areas everything is as pristine and glorious as only Paris can be, but just walking a little bit away from that you find out that the city is dirtier than I remembered.
The contrast is even starker given that 5 months ago I spent a week in London. Even though both are very beautiful cities with monumental architecture, the British capital is much better preserved. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the British economy is doing much better than the French one. Maybe it is related to the British having embraced globalisation, whereas large swathes of French society don’t know what to do with it/about it.
Furthermore, another detail that caught my attention is not really the amount of foreigners in the city, but the fact that they don’t seem to be economically integrated. Even though of course this is purely anecdotical, and it was a long weekend, I didn’t see a lot of middle-class Frenchmen of non-European descent around their city.
Maybe Terry what'shisname is an institution in the UK, but I found his comments generally annoying, bigoted and very, very bitter at the UK's possible bad showing (the contest is still going on).
I have French, Dutch, Walloon, Flemish & British TV channels for watching Eurovision, and all the others are much, much better than this guy.
I usually understand and like British humour, but this guy seems too over-the-top for me. I'll stick with the other channels.
An advertising campaing that shows that cultural differences are certainly not restricted to speakers of different languages, or languages other than English, “So where the bloody hell are you?” was a very controversial Tourism Australia campaign. Even though I like the ad, I find it really funny.
The worst part is that it seems to not have impacted the amount of visitors to Australia very much where it was aired.
A mis lectores hispanoparlantes: Es como si hicieran un comercial turístico de Venezuela y la Miss Universo al final le preguntara a la audiencia “¿Y dónde coño estás?”.
I was chatting over messenger with a good Mexican friend of mine who is now living in the UK. She told me a couple of stories that dovetail nicely with my own that I’ve also posted in this blog.
She’s rather fair-skinned, with blue eyes and blond hair, so I asked her if people believed her when she said where was she from. She answered that usually they don’t, but the worst part was with her doctor, who for half an hour analysed her facial features until declaring that “I thought that all Mexicans were short, dark Native Americans”. The funniest part was that he was Pakistani himself.
In another instance, after arriving in Barcelona for spending the holidays she was asked to answer a survey. The interviewer started going through the survey in English and as she stutterd with a word my friend ask her to switch to Spanish. The interviewer then seemed rather taken aback, as she didn’t expect my friend to be a native Spanish speaker.
So, the lesson is that in Europe people think she’s from an English-speaking country, whereas in my case people think I’m Morrocan, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian, or even half-Thai half-Finn, but we’re both Mexican.
I think it’s time we all get rid of our stereotypes. They might be reference points, but they’re not very valid.
