HOW DO YOU SIGN FOR TWO?

It has been a long time since I have had some fun at this site.  Lately I have had some intellectual and emotional throwback moments.  One of them hit my funny bone when I and the Voice from the Kitchen went out for something to eat while we were on a relaxation trip.  It just so happened that we were the only two non Chinese Nationals in the entire two or three acre  mall.  It was  a very interesting experience.  We went in to a simple restaurant and when I entered the hospitality lady asked me to confirm that we were two by holding up her fingers in the configuration that you see here on the left.  
I decided to have some good natured, humorous banter with her by holding up my hand with my thumb and forefinger separated.  She caught on and said, "Is that two?"  I said, "Oh, sorry.  No this is what I really wanted to say," and I held my hand up with my ring finger and pinky in the air and said, "This is what I really meant."  She laughed and again, ferociously, this time, literally threw the culturally proper sign for the number two into my very sharply focused line of vision.  Laughing and chuckling we made our way behind her sashaying saunter to the table that was available.  When she had put a safe and private distance between us, Belle asked me, "How do you think up this stuff?"  Actually, I don't think it up.  It just slices and stabs its way into my brain.  Many times  day.  You don't hear it because I am so busy with so many things all day that I can't capture it all.  Every day I finish the day with more forgottens than remembereds.  Trust me, it is very frustrating.  It is perhaps a good thing that what I fail to capture is really not very important or significant.  I suppose that is a good thing.  
I hate to imagine what would happen if I captured significant thoughts and then proceeded to run them through the mish-masher of my brain for public consumption.  It would be a disaster.  You too, then must be thankful that society at large is not in any grave danger of being severly and crippingly brain-wounded.  
So, friends, take it easy.  I will not take you through the pain of telling you how many cultural ways I have observed of how to count to ten on your fingers.  We (United States) start with the index; some Europeans start with the thumb and the Japanese start with the pinky.
Some start with holding the finger out away from the palm while others signify the count by folding the appropriate finger into the palm.  So you see.  If you live long enough in the company of people from different corners of the world, you can learn a lot of ways to do a lot of unimportant things.  
I wonder in which country or on which planet the people who invented the computer on/of protocol of using the same command switch for the start and the stop.  

Relax and enjoy my vacation time along with me.

BRAINSTORM -- CULTURE -- BEAUTY

Hello.  I am in the middle of a constant brainstorm since last night...actually about 18 waking hours now.  I am still being besieged by this cerebral violence.  So far it has not brought on a headache, but it is playing tricks with my emotional state.  All I can think about is "doing something" but I don't have the foggiest idea where to start.   So what I did then was to choose a picture that would be close enough to my entangled state and still have a dose of aesthetics to it.  Beauty is an important inducer of inner peace.  I sought out a piece that was beautiful in a different way.  I did not want to have something symmetrical.  You see, I am not a great champion of symmetry.  Those of you who have been around a while, know this about me.  I admire beauty such as it is found in nature.  Nature does not present its beauty in symmetry.  Don't go outside to check it out.  Look at the person you've been married to for the last century.  Is that person perfectly symmetrical?  Of course not.  Is that person beautiful?  Of course.  
So.   I chose this picture because the artist is not a symmetricist.  Right now, my coconut is so far out of symmetry that it is approaching disharmony, or discord.  I have competing things to do and I have competing satisfactions that I want to continue to enjoy before I straighten out my mind.  Trouble is, I don't have enough time to  sit back and enjoy it.  So, I am taking the time to let you know that you are not the only one to whom this happens.  Life gets out of symmetry often.  Like now for some of us.  We have a friend who has just died.  We know that there are many people in grief over this.  We also know that many of those same people have not been in our lives for a long time.  We think of the good times we had together.  We wonder if this is an appropriate time to talk about them.  We wonder if these same people have the same outlook on dying and living that we do.  We strive to be ourselves and at the same time we strive to practice what our culture drives us to do.  We seek symmetry of calm and we have a heard time finding it.  I do what I do.  I find a whacko painting and strive to see the beauty that the artist wanted me to see and it calms me down.  It doesn't get my work done, but it does make me feel more quiet. (:-)
Let me leave you with this, in an attempt to make you feel better...In the last five days I have three friends who have died and two more who have developed some nasty health problems.  All of this across the globe.  Madgascar, France, Philippines, New England.  Just as there are jokes that do not cross cultural lines, I'm here to tell you that neither do the rituals of expressing emotions in the great changes that we suffer in life.  The results are all the same.  The personal emotions and their expressions are not.  Whooo...all that and Chinese New Year too!
Now, I have to see if I can start what I have to finish by 
Tuesday, 9:00 AM

HEY! HOW YA DOIN'? -- I'M O.K., YOU?

See this fuzzy cartoon character?  Just like the question in the title.  Fuzzy.  Not fuzzy to us, in North America, but fuzzy and mysterious in other parts of the world.  We ask each other this question only because we don't want to stop at a pure "Hello."  It is so ingrained to hear, "OK" that when someone really says the truth, like, "I got this tooth that's killing me" we are caught off guard and all we can come up with is, "Uh, gee, umm, sorry to hear  that."  It's so bad that for the most part we just say "OK" or "Fine" and get it over with.  We then go on our way and the friend leaves because there is nothing else to say.  Now, before you say something innocent like, "We Americans are really weird" please allow me to put you at ease.
France is slightly more complicated.  It goes like this:
9:00 AM  "Bonjour" (Good day) "Bonjour." followed by a handshake...obligatory.
9:01 AM  "Ca va?" (It's all good) "Ca va."
9:01:30 AM "Bien dormi?" (You sleep well?) "Oui, merci." (Yes, thanks)
I have never dared to tell the truth during this exchange.  If I had the least bit of discomfort, I would never declare it because I have no idea how the interlocutor would handle it.  I have to admit that when I first arrived in France, I had to translate the culture of the whole interchange into our abbreviated form.  It was not easy.  It was surprising for me to see the greeter just leave as though nothing had happened.  It seemed to me that such intimate information should lead to something better than an abrupt separation.  But hey, "C'est la vie."
Italy really is different too.  Similar, but more, how shall I say, Italian?
"A, Paolo, buon giorno!" (Hey, Paul, good day)  "Come stai?" (How are you?)
"Bene.  E tu?" (Fine.  And you?)
"Bene, pure.  Hai ben dormito?" (I'm fine too.  Did you sleep well?")
"Si.  Grazie.  E tu?  Buoni Sogni?" (Yes.  You?  Sweet dreams?")
"Si.  Tutto bene, grazie.  Un cafe, Paolo."  (Yes.  All's well, thanks.  How about a coffee, Paul?")
Notice how personal the interchange is, without being intrusive?  After it's all over, we Americans figure that we're never going to get any work done that day.
The Philippines have a rather interesting cultural pattern about greetings.  It is mandatory to greet everyone that you encounter upon first laying eyes on the individual.  "Good morning" (or whatever part of the day it is) is all it takes.  It is also mandatory to take leave upon separation, but this is rarely a separatory blessing, it is just a simple, "I'm leaving now."  It is also mandatory to greet someone with an invitation to eat if that someone happens to appear while you are at table.  We don't do it the same way.  In the Philippines it is a simple "Let's eat."  But remember, it is just a mandatory greeting, not an invitation.  I know.  It took me a little while before I learned the difference between the greeting and the invitation.  So, the next time you burst in on Filipinos while they are eating and they say, "Oh hello, Father.  Let's eat."  Remember that you're supposed to say the equivalent to our American "I'm fine", which is, "No thanks, I just ate."  This not a lie.  It is true that you just ate yesterday.  Just like, we all know that you are fine, but that you'll be better when you get back from the chiropractor.  
I have many vignettes about language culture that I could entertain you with.  A few of them are errors that I made along the road of my short life.  Most of them in public, if you please.  Some in Italy and some in the Philippines, but perhaps the funniest one happened in Tijuana, Mexico.
We were talking to the owner of a landscaping company.  This was a woman in her early 40's, very sharp, very well educated and very business oriented.  I and my assistant were taking her around the property of the manufacturing plant where I was the director of human resources and the outside "environment."  As we were talking about the way to trim and maintain the edges of the property along the bottom of the chain-link fence, I used a word that I imported from another language which I thought meant "edge" or "border."  I saw her face stiffen and relax all in the space of a couple of nano-seconds.  I saw my assistant blush to the point of wilting the nearby flowers.  We all stayed in character for the 15 minutes  that it took for the meeting to come to term.  We shook hands (Mexican women have good handshakes) and parted.  When we (I and the assistant) got to my office, he softly announced that I had used a slang word spoken on street corners to name the male member.  All I could do was to laugh.  Then, I wrote a letter of apology to the lady.  I thanked her for staying cool.  I also pleaded that she continue to speak to me in Spanish during our business encounters.  Which she did, after we finished laughing at my linguistic faux-pas the next time she came to examine the work of her crew.  If I we ever meet again, we will speak Spanish, as usual, but only after revisiting the humorous side of my moment of cultural indecency.

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.