Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Cross-cultural communications

As some of you know, I regularly communicate with an engineering team in China. It's easy communicating with them about engineering matters, their textbooks and lectures in college were all in English, but when things turn away from work and turn towards pleasure, the communications can get odd. We simply don't understand each others' cultural referents. They're young, Chinese, just out of college, haven't ever been more than 100 miles from the place they were born, and I'm a penguin. See the problem?

But this week I found something in common between both cultures. See, for Autumn Festival they all went on a field trip. They went... fishing.

How big was the fish that our team lead caught? (Holds hands far apart, with thumb and forefinger about 2 inches apart). Yep, by the time they were through excitedly telling me about catching that fish, that fish was bigger than the smallest member of the team!

So remember: Some things are cultural, and some things seem just built into what makes people human. Fish stories, apparently, are the latter :-).

-- Badtux the Easily-amused Penguin

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2 comments:

  1. SantaBarbarian18/9/08 6:15 AM

    And no matter what country or culture, there will always be someone who says "my horse is faster than your horse", too...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous20/9/08 7:00 AM

    That reminds me of a time we went to see an Uncle that was BIG into fishing just after a fishing trip. My boys were 4 and 6. He asked how big were the fish they caught and the 6 yo said my aunt said the brim were as big as her hand. The 4 yo stretched his arms out as wide as he could. My Uncle said the 4 yo was the fisherman.

    s

    ReplyDelete

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