Posted on 03/04/2009 5:06:27 PM PST by COBOL2Java
Where It’s Offensive: Korea, Thailand, China, Europe, the Middle East.
What’s Offensive: Personal space varies as you travel the globe. In Mediterranean countries, if you refrain from touching someone’s arm when talking to them or if you don’t greet them with kisses or a warm embrace, you’ll be considered cold. But backslap someone who isn’t a family member or a good friend in Korea, and you’ll make them uncomfortable. In Thailand, the head is considered sacred — never even pat a child on the head.
What You Should Do Instead: Observe what locals are doing and follow suit. In Eastern countries remember that touching and public displays of affection are unacceptable. In places like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, men and women are forbidden from interacting, let along touching.
Where It’s Offensive: India, Morocco, Africa, the Middle East.
What’s Offensive: Many cultures still prefer to eat using traditional methods — their hands. In these cases, food is often offered communally, which is why it’s important to wash your hands before eating and observe the right-hand-is-for-eating and the left-hand-is-for-other-duties rule. If you eat with your left hand, expect your fellow diners to be mortified. And when partaking from a communal bowl, stick to a portion that’s closest to you. Do not get greedy and plunge your hand into the center.
What You Should Do Instead: Left-handed? Attempt to be ambidextrous — even children who are left-handed in these cultures are taught to eat with their right hand — or at least explain yourself to your fellow diners before plunging in.
(Excerpt) Read more at travel.yahoo.com ...
I’da guessed Rosie O’Connel.
Blasting the Bhuddas in Afghanistan.
I have a good friend who I haven’t seen in a few years. He is American but of Italian ancestry. One thing I never could get used to was he would always get too close to you.
Although he was very handsome, (the girls were always crazy over him) he ate a lot of garlic.
Guess why that is. Because the left is for using their primitive latrines, and these are (*ahem*) "cultures" where people don't wash their hands. Their solution, instead of inventing or stealing the concepts of running water and sanitation, is to have one hand that is "clean" and the other "unclean." Yecch.
That’s what’s known as a thread killer.
Projectile vomoting...thinking of Rosie’s big “back” and her left hand.....
This article claims that road rage is inappropriate in Italy. Apparently the author has never tried to cross a street in Napoli.
Islam.
do I win a kewpie doll?
A friend of mine at least started eating with his left hand in India. He said the people around him all gasped.
What You Should Do Instead: Stay home, here, in civilization.
A few years ago, there was this hilarious TV series called Grounded for Life.
It’s about an American Irish-Catholic family, and in one of the episodes, the character, Uncle Eddie’s peculiar inability to throw a ball, comes into discussion. It was later revealed that when he was a baby, he would try to grasp objects with his left hand, and thus was forced by his parents to keep his left hand tied, so that it could not be used. When he realises this “oppression” against his left hand, he makes everyone repent for forcing ambidextrousity on him.
Yeah, that assertion casts some doubt on the rest of the piece. About Italy, I'd say keep your hands in your lap, since virtually every conceivable hand gesture has some kind of hidden meaning.
But no one seems to give a sh*t as to what’s offensive to Americans.
It seems its Americans who have to put aside their own culture in deference to third-world/Islamic cultures.
The Tschuktschis people of Siberia offer their women to travelers, however to be worthy of the offer a test of friendship must be passed. The daughter or wife presents the traveler with a cupful of her urine. If he drinks it the traveler is regarded as a sincere friend. If not he is treated as an enemy of the family.
LOL! Ninety-nine percent of Italian gestures have to do with food or sex (and the other one percent are about eating food during sex)!
Putting beans or macaroni in Texas chili.
In Tokyo, we left the hotel about 9:30 am and headed to the city center. As we got closer, I moved as far as I could across from a door. At one stop the "squeezers" pulled a rugby move and they pushed so hard it got me all the way across the car.
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