DECEMBER 7 -->> AUGUST 15 SSSHHHH !! JULY 4 -- OH YEAH!

How many of you have worked for a Japanese company?  Hmmm!  Ok, how about a British one?  Well, what are you waiting for?  And do you remember the date of Lionel's wedding to Eileen?  Hmmm?  The thought that got me here is one about the Pearl Harbor attack because of the December date.  It also came first because the first time I worked for a foreign company while here in the United States.  I worked for a Japanese company.  There were many comments and remarks about "did you wear your sneakers today?" This, always in the privacy of some corner or closed office.
The Japanese "surprise"attack on Hawaii always caused the great silence to take place on December 7 of any and every year that I worked for a Japanese company.  I soon learned that it was best for me to stay behind my desk, take a short lunch and leave the office early to avoid the tension filled air.  Actually I remember one year when some of us got into a conversation about the Mitsubishi cars that were beginning to get popular.  One guy made us all laugh when he wondered out loud if they were going to make them steel grey with propellers on the front grille.  One guy said that, "No, that would be too expensive.  They were  thinking of making their logo "0".
That was the way we spent most of the December 7th occasions.
The August 15th days were not much more comfortable.  Every now and then we would hear an indelicate question raised about, "Gotta check with ya about did ya call Missouri yet?"  We always were very careful about what we said in front of our Japanese bosses during these two days.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

Now, I have to say that the Brits were altogether different.  They had as many barbs about the Revolution as we did.  Stuff like, "after we took care of the French in Canada, we lost our thirst for anyone else."  The fourth of July was not somber, by any means.  It was a holiday, true, but the 3rd and the 5th were generally banter and needles all day long.
It has been quite a wonderful experience for me to be able to get these opportunities.  It gave me a chance to live human experiences on the other side of the coin, so to speak.  After having been the employer in the Philippines and in Mexico, I could feel some of the challenges that the people who worked for me in the other countries must have felt.  It is not until you have life experiences such as these that you realize just how different people can be in the most normal and natural situations.  In the instance of the Japanese, for example, I went from having employees who wouldn't, or couldn't ever say "no", culturally, (Filipinos) to being an employee of people who couldn't or wouldn't say "no".  To this day I still  haven't made up my mind which experience was worse.
Oh, by the way, I did meet one Filipino who knows how to say "no" and who is not bashful about it one single bit!
That's it for today.  Believe it or not, I have a couple of thoughts still in the oven, so to speak.  Some great pictures too.