The corporate risk management department sent out a list of guidelines for travel safety in these troubled times. There was also a link to Executive Planet where there is a wealth of etiquette information for travelling and doing business throughout the world. The information is all serious but it’s given me a few chuckles. Highlights are:
[LIST]
[li]Saudi men often walk hand in hand. If a Saudi holds your hand, accept this gesture of friendship.[/li][li]The left hand is considered unclean in the Arab world.[/li] If you’re holding hands and facing the same way one of you has to use the left.
[li]Don’t smile at a German[/li] And if one smiles at you be afraid, be very afraid
[li]In India, pulling or boxing another person’s ears is a grave insult.[/li] Where is this a good idea?
What I’ve gleaned so far is that there is no country where discussion of religion is a good idea and any innocuous hand gesture you can think of will be incredibly offensive so someone. They even have a section on dealing with the slack jawed yokels (we like self-deprecating humor, it says so) in 'murrica but I found it kind of bland. I think the folks of SDMB could do a much better job. Perhaps a collaborative work, * Offending Foreigners for Dummies * so we don’t feel like Homer Simpson when there is a lull in the conversation: “You know, that Crocodile Dundee/Braveheart/Stalin was a heck of a guy.”
And after reading the thread title, I though this would be about something else entirely! So if you screw up in another country, will the Ugly Americans but the “Vulcan Death Grip” on you?
I remember reading that in some pubs in Australia, placing a glass upside down on a table indicates that you think you can win a fight with anyone in the bar.
I had heard that in the UK it was rude to put a coin on the bar heads up because that meant you were “slidin’ the queen on 'er ass.” The Aussie glass thing made me think of that.
When travelling abroad, if you meet someone you think may be a fellow American, ask them, “Are you Canadian?”
This is because many Canadians take umbrage at being mistaken for Americans, but most Americans don’t care or are flattered at not being spotted as an American tourist.
The Australian upturned glass thing exists, but it’s a bit old fashioned. Most young people wouldn’t know what it means. Some guys also put their empty glass on its side on the bar as a sign to the barman not to pour him another beer - also old fashioned.
Padeye’s thing about English coins reminds me of a situation in Thailand where an Aussie tourist was thrown out of a bar because he had dropped a coin and instinctively stepped on it to stop it rolling away - stepping on the King’s head! At first, the bar owner was so angry he wanted to hit him, but one of the other Australians who was more familiar with Thai customs explained to him that his friend didn’t know. The bar owner, still seething, said, “Then GET OUT. I don’t even want your money for the drinks. Just go now!” Be rude, get free drinks. I like it.
When travelling in a poor country, do not exclaim aloud over how cheap everything is at every opportunity. IT’S NOT CHEAP FOR THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE. IT MAKES THEM HATE YOU.
A friend of mine refers to all Canadians as Canucks. I thought this was derogatory, but she thinks that’s what they like to be called. Are there any Canadians in the house?
Years ago, one of my Irish uncles told me that in the old days, a lot of Welsh coal miners enjoyed a good brawl on Saturday night, and that in Welsh pubs, a man who turned his empty glass upside down on the bar was saying, in effect, “I can lick any man in the house.”
I took the story with a grain of salt, and didn’t think much more of it until years later, when I was chatting with an elderly black security guard at the retail store I was working at. He swore (I know, I know, stories like this are often too good to be true… just because the guy swore this was true doesn’t mean it was) that, when he was in the Army decades earlier (during the Viet Nam era), he and some buddies had some expereince with that custom, while on leave in Australia
Now, he told me that, in Southern bars that cater to a mostly black clientele, once you finish your glass of whiskey (or whatever you’re drinking), the bartender will come up, refill it automatically, and CHARGE you for it. So, in Southern black bars, once you’ve decided you don’t want any more (or can’t afford any more), it’s customary to turn your glass upside down on the bar.
Well, this old soldier claims that he and his other black Army buddies were in an Australian pub, and when they’d had enough, they did what they were accustomed to doing: they turned their glasses upside down. And almost immediately, they wound up in a fight with some beefy Australian lads who thought (incorrectly) these Yank soldiers were looking for trouble.
Gestures can be very funny…I remember that George Bush (Sr.) went to Australia and flashed what he believed to be a “Victory Sign” (palm inward, index and middle fingers in a “V” shape), but it was actually the local equivalent of the “go f*ck yourself” sign. I don’t know if this is true.
Richard Nixon made that sign a lot too…I wonder if the newscasts in other countries had to blur him out.
Also in Brazil, I know firsthand that the “A-OK” sign is vulgar. And in Turkey I think a fist in the air is vulgar. I wonder if in some country, an extended middle finger might simply the best way to hail a cab or call for the check at a restaurant. I’d have a lot of fun there…
If I remember tricky dick correctly, he was flashing the peace sign with the palm out. I don’t know any american that would flash the peace sign with the palm in. That would be two as in the number “two”. Sounds like a UL to me.
I don’t know if we all necessarily like to be called Canucks, but I certainly don’t find it offensive. Maybe it was at one time, but my father tells me that there was a series of “Johnny Canuck” comics during WWII, and I myself remember “Captain Canuck” comics from back in the 1970s. It can’t be that bad if we used it for the names of comic book heroes.
Of course, perhaps some of the confusion comes from the war movie The Devil’s Brigade, where the Canadian army major, played by Cliff Robertson, informs his American counterpart that “‘Canuck’ is a term that we find disparaging.”
But as I said, I don’t find it disparaging or offensive, although I’m not speaking for all Canadians, of course. But if you do use it, I’d suggest that you don’t overuse it, and always use it in friendly terms.
