cultural-differences

Fantasy like thought that no man could rainJust let her reignRun wild with her unafraidOf any rain stormsThey only wash the mud away and make wayFor double rainbows and sunny days

...I fell asleep and had a dream that a king was liquidated by a group of kind faces....

...I fell asleep and had a dream that a king was liquidated by a group of kind faces...

They play, said the old man. Every week the anglos play a game to celebrate who they are. He stopped, raised his cane and fanned the air. One of them whacks it, then sets off like it was a trip around the world, to every one of the bases out there, you know the anglos have bases all over the world, right? Well the one who whacked it runs from one to the next while the others keep taking swings to distract their enemies, and if he doesn't get caught he makes it home and his people welcome him with open arms and cheering.

Sophia could just as well have gutted me. In Allah's name, I drank beer for you. I dismantled my entire value system of holding Allah's word above all for you. I reinterpreted my Islamic teachings to justify being with you.

I always feel myself being thrust back into loneliness when someone tells me it's cold on a hot day. It isn't good to talk so much about the weather _ weather is a highly personal matter, and communication on the subject inevitably fails.

Nabir came out to drive the children away, but she stopped him. "I like to be friendly she said." "But they are not your friends," said Nabir. "You don't know them." "Respect first," Nabir would have said if he could have explained, "friendship after.

It is not easy to be stranded between two worlds, the sad truth is that we can never feel completely comfortable in either world

Irish and English are so widely separated in their mode of expression that nothing like a literal rendering from one language to the other is possible.

In WASP families, if you don't get along with someone, you have as little to do with them as possible. In Jewish families, you move next door, to make them as miserable as possible.

The Swedes have coined the term 'management by perkele' to portray the Finnish managerial approach. Instead of collectively pondering all the possible alternatives and letting every member of the staff from the cleaner to the MD voice their views, as the Swedes do, the Finns act swiftly and don't waste time on the decision-making process. If something isn't happening quickly enough, it is necessary for the top managers to slam their fists on the table and yell, 'Perkele!' Repeatedly, if necessary.

People from different cultures have different definitions for beauty. Isn't that sad to judge others with our standards... rather than appreciate them?

Growing a culture requires a good storyteller. Changing a culture requires a persuasive editor.

Wherever you travel to, appreciate the culture and beauty of the place.

Whereas, in the west, individuality and drive are considered positive qualities, they are not seen the same way, in Japan. In that country, if you are too much of a rugged individualist, it might actually indicate that you are a weak, unreliable character and that you are selfish, in a childish, willful kind of way.

Culture is the celebration of diversity. Let us therefore not deny our origin; but instead celebrate ours as a cultural mosaic not a tower of Babel , but a power of Babel

We build this country ourselves every day and we have to be, in the most positive sense, totally unreal.

Most of my important lessons about life have come from recognizing how others from a different culture view things.