“The future starts today, not tomorrow.” - Pope John Paul II

Poland has had the unfortunate luck of being sandwiched between the Russian, German/Prussian, and Austro-Hungarian empires during its history. Poland was partitioned three times by these empires, and was absent from the European map for a 123-year period, until 1918. Poles have been coming to the USA at least since the first partition (1772), evidenced by the American Revolutionary War (1776) hero Casimir Pulaski, who has two holidays, one in Illinois (Casimir Pulaski Day), and a US federal holiday (General Pulaski Memorial Day) dedicated to him.

The majority of Polish immigration to the United States came in 3 distinct waves: 1850-1920 during the partitions; post-World War II and during the communist takeover of Poland in the late 1930’s through late 1940’s; and in the 1980’s after the imposition of martial law in Poland (1981). It was after the November Uprising (1830-1831), an ultimately unsuccessful armed rebellion against the Russian Empire, the first known group of Poles made their way to Chicago.

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The first time I visited a new friend’s house when I lived in Japan I was asked at the end of the evening if I wanted to take a bath. What?! Do they think I need it? How strange. I politely declined but kept thinking about why they had asked. My friends were not Japanese but they had been born in and grew up in Japan so they really lived a mix of cultures. Finally, curiosity got the best of me and I asked, “Is it common to offer a bath to visitors in Japan?”

“No”, they said, “It’s just that we have had this traditional wooden bath built and often people want to try it out.”

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After talking about greetings around the world with our friends in PocketCultures, I would like to give a more detailed answer to this question:

The first thing one needs to know about language in the Philippines is that we have lots of them. We’re an archipelago of different cultural communities with various languages and dialects (not to mention foreign influences that enriched our languages). English is widely spoken here and we also have the vernacular Filipino with Tagalog as its base. Up to this day, this has become an issue to some who belong in other ethno-linguistic groups. It deserves a separate post.

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This is the first in a new series where we explore different social situations from the point of view of our contributors around the world.

Today’s topic: how to greet people in different countries.

Credit

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Thanks to a friend of mine, I have become a regular at the huge second hand clothes market. The taxi driver I always use is not only reasonable but is something of a mine for information on the history of Lusaka. When driving me to the market recently he mentioned that it is on a large compound called ‘mandevu.’ Now I know ‘mandevu’ means beard in the local language Nyanja, so I of course asked why the compound was called, well, ‘beard’. He explained that mostly Zimbabweans had settled there years ago and they had the habit of shaving their heads but leaving their beards to grow. Zambians would refer to Zimbabweans as ‘the ones with beards’ and as a result the compound where they lived adopted the name ‘beard’.

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Image Courtesy : Travel Webshots

6th of July, 2010.

Tuesday evening, around 10.20pm Netherlands time.

The whistle blew signalling the end of a thrilling, high adrenaline semi-final encounter between The Netherlands and Uruguay.

And the Oranje fever gripped the nation!!

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It’s hard for me, a Taiwanese, to clearly describe what Taiwanese culture is.

We speak Mandarin and have similar traditions to the Chinese, but in other ways we are not akin to China; the majority of our young people are crazy about Japanese and (recently) Korean pop culture; we sometimes refer to all the foreigners as “westerners” or “The Americans” (That really angered my English teacher who was a Canadian!) and we are so friendly to foreigners while we can be secretly biased against different ethnic groups on the island.

Sounds ridiculous? I’m serious.

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