The IHT write it, I pass on their wisdom on… Someday I will reach TEFL enlightenment and all that will be in reverse!
First of all, the rather odd and sometimes insulting nicknames that Thais give their kids to keep them away from the attention of jealous demons:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/america/name.php
The subtext here is the hatred of foreigners and all things foreign that can sometimes lie behind the Land of Smile. It can be healthy sometimes, like the way the Thais seem to be reclaiming Kao San road in Bangkok from the unwashed backpacker types and are starting to pay more attention to their traditions, but the sudden awareness of this feeling is perhaps the biggest “wait a minute, everything is the opposite of how it seems” shock moment long term residents in Thailand are likely to go through.
Continuing the culture shock theme, even New Yorkers who like the idea of wildlife reclaiming the shores seem less than enamoured of the cormorant’s tendency to vomit at the slightest opportunity:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/europe/bird.php
It’s another case of how understanding another culture (human or animal) can only go so far to making you accept it. Sometimes, though, there comes a moment when you realise that something that happens in the country where you are a guest is your business. The Japanese love of cutting down the forest of South East Asia to make disposable chopsticks is one. And for the English, of course, the thing we can’t stand most of all is how people treat their animals. In Japan, that’s whales. And in Spain that’s bulls:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/news/spain.php
As I’m not one of those Englishmen who put animals before people (famously the national association for the protection of animals was founded years before the one for children in the UK), I will finish with something a bit more serious. The Turkish government continues to deny any existence of the massacre of Armenians, even though it was carried out under the Ottomans rather than the modern Turkish state:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/opinion/edjacoby.php
Not sure why I’m doing a world tour of countries that can’t deal with history like normal adults (Turkey, Spain, Japan), but it does seem to be turning out that way. Should any politicians from those countries be reading, denying massacres is another thing I can’t be bothered talking about (see below).