When my now-fiancé first told his parents about his new girlfriend a couple years ago, me being Chinese-Canadian, the first question my now future father-in-law asked was, “does her family run a Chinese restaurant?”
Now, I love my father-in-law to pieces, who is a lovely man with not one drop of racist blood running through his veins. But in his mind and through his experiences, perhaps the idea that a Chinese family can do anything other than running Chinese restaurants is a revelation. As far as I know, no members of my immediate family has ever ventured into the restaurant, grocer or laundry business. So he might be disappointed that I’m not that good of a cook after all.
The point of the story is that when it comes to the issue of race, there’s a lot missing in the collective European psyche. Through its own lack of experiences with multiculturalism – unlike in North American and other parts of the New World, where barriers and stereotypes get broken down and built up again, Europe is still stuck on Racial Issues 1.0.
I think this ad was meant to be funny, but is it?
Entitled “Ideal” – and to my eyes without the slightest sense of irony, the narrative goes to say that in an ideal world, the Netherlands is a small village, and then goes on to name various members of the farming community that produces the cheese in question.
After what feels like a great start to a propaganda film made for the Third Reich, where wholesome blonde girls and boys are contentedly occupied with various aspects of farm fun, the camera pans to an obviously dark-haired and ethnic girl – Fatima.
Slight pause, followed by the surprised but still jolly voiceover, oh, what the heck! The implication being that as long as she’s making cheese – and playing by the rules of the farm, she’s part of the village. Read more...
I used to think charging for toilets, and having up to two attendants sitting outside washroom facilities and collect coins in a little tray, ceremoniously spraying a whiff of air fresher in toilet stalls after each use, was an act relegated to developing countries with severe under-employment problems. I was wrong.
On the European Continent, it is the rule rather than exception to have paid toilets. Whether it’s in McDonald’s, department stores, highway rest stations, or sometime even museums, I always go forth with change in my pocket.
The newer automated paying toilet turnpike system adopted along the Germany highway is at least without attendants, generally well-lit, well-stocked and sanitary. You also get a coupon back for the amount you inserted to get inside the washroom, which can be used in the chain of highway rest stop restaurants and shops. So not all’s wasted.
In shopping areas and fast food outlets, I find it harder to justify installing paid bathrooms at 20 to 60 cents per use. Why penny-pinch the customers that are buying things and keeping your business afloat?
However, the idea of keeping customer happy in Europe is still stuck at a level where YOU, and not THEM, are expected to pay for customer service. The consumerist drive is still under check by relatively expensive goods and inconvenient shopping environments – expensive parking, spread out shopping areas, and a general indifference to the idea of comfort when shopping.
PS. Apparently Paris is also subjected to a pay-for-use public toilet system, with some places literally robbing the tourists on one whole euro per use.
Canada and the US top the giving chart, coming up high on instances of money and time giving. Although compared to the top performers of Europe, the difference is hardly noticeable.
The interesting difference comes from how giving changes with age. In no other region in the world, does giving rise at quite the same consistent pace as age as in North America. Given US (and Canada) hardly has the most “secure” welfare system for the old and presumably eventually sickly, it is interesting how the upward slope contrasts with that in Australasia and Western Europe.
Do Americans just believe more in “giving it all away” when faced with the prospects of death, or are there more plausible, and perhaps cynical explanations out there?
source: Charities Aid Foundation
Früh is a pretty famous brewery in Cologne, Germany. On their website, they have archived all their billboard campaigns, organized by year.
At the very bottom of the list, there’s a separate category called Düsseldorf, which is a rival city.
Those ads poke fun at Düsseldorf, with taunting taglines like “Now also in small villages around Cologne”, “line up”, “for relief, now available in A3 (German highway outside Düsseldorf)”.
Full archive here.
London is spending a pretty penny in getting a bike-sharing scheme up and running in the centre of the city. Sounds great in theory, but why do I have the idea that the focus on getting the science and logistics right on bike logistics will not go very far in promoting and fostering a mainstream biking culture?
The Netherlands is perhaps the most bike friendly country in the world, followed by countries such as Denmark (or at least Copenhagen). The roles that bikes play in everyday life has little to do with the availability of bikes on the road, but the fact that there are roads to bike on.
Now, like most of North American cosmopolitan centres that are also trying to encourage more biking and less driving, London suffers from a number of infrastructural problems. To put it simply: the roads are built for cars, and bikers – the minority, have to make do with minimal disruption to the drivers – the majority.
Having lived in a bike-centric country for more than two years, here are some problems I foresee with the London attempt: Read more...
- Most of the bike lanes are either totally unmarked (you and your bicycle squeeze in however you can), or marked but only wide enough to accommodate one single bike that does not swerve. This is unsafe. Drivers swerve and hit bikers. Sometimes bikers get killed. After a couple of front-page headlines screaming “Biker get killed by speeding/drunk/careless drivers”, no mothers will want their kids try this.
- Bikers get suited up. With reflective markings on their backs, anti-scratch shirts and pants, specialty biking shoes, protective gloves and helmet. Now going out by bike becomes more of an exercise in playing dress-up than anything else, relegated to the hardcore. Who else would bother?
If language is in fact an artifact of culture, then what does the way we name family members say about us?
In Chinese, the naming conventions for every member of the family is dependent on their gender, whether the relationship stems from the father or the mother’s side, and their age in relation to you or your parents.
For example, the concept of an “aunt” is dependent on whether the aunt is directly related to either the mother’s or the father’s side, whether they are older or younger, and whether they are siblings to your parents or married into the family.
Another example, my dad’s younger sister’s son would have a different name (a variation of the concept of cousin), than if he was the son of my dad’s older sister. And that would still be different than if he was the son of my dad’s older brother.
Still with me?
Anyway, when this is all too much, go Dutch. In the lowlands, the words neefje and nichtje, which covers not only the ideas of nephew and niece, but also cousins of the same sex. That’s to say, in a cross-generational sweep of generalization, a female cousin of yours bears the same concept as a niece, and a male cousin of yours is the same as a nephew.
As a result, most Dutch have trouble with the concept of cousins, which I suppose, in a familial sense, is probably just as remote as niece and nephews.
The Roma issue in Europe is complicated and very sensitive to all involved. Lately, those in richer parts of Europe, such as France and Italy, are turning what is fundamentally a social problem into a rhetoric that is increasingly becoming all about criminality and domestic security.
It is no surprise that this is making the news at a time when Sarkozy and Berlusconi’s supports are at all-time lows. Those countries are mired in a plethora of economic and social problems, least of which has anything to do with Roma.
But as any visitors to those countries well know, the roaming Roma are the ones that can potentially escalate your leisurely strolls in the windy streets and busy subways of Paris and Rome from one of annoyance, to paranoia and fear. And any long-term residents of the countries know about the unsightly camps, poverty, abuse, and organized crimes that plague those communities.
Compare the issue of Roma immigration and integration, which has been a thorn in Europe’s eye for over 600 years, to ongoing discussions over Muslim immigration and integration Western Europe, which when you think about it, only surfaced no more than half a century ago, then the magnitude of the Roma problem looks really deep-rooted.
This is not the first time France has attempted to expel Roma from its borders. But what is different now, are the bad examples the likes of France and Italy are setting Eastern Europe, where most of the Roma come from. It is hard to maintain a position of moral superiority and lecture the new member state of the EU on human rights and due processes, when a founding member of the EU literally ships out an unwanted group of minorities, back to a country where they are even more despised and discriminated against – rightly or wrongly, has a lot to do with where you live and how you see the problem, but that’s for another day. Read more...
On Swedish quirks, which include:
- Early morning birthday gift-giving rituals: I think there’s something quirky about birthdays in all these northern European mini-states. The Dutch bake their own cake and serve everyone but themselves on their birthdays, not to mention the circle party where everyone congratulates you and your family, presumably, for making it through another round of intolerably insufferable family gatherings.
- Shitty customer service: Again, much to be desired in much of the Continent. Yes, you need to pay yourself (often at exorbitant rates, of 20-30 cents per minute) to reach customer service. No, there’s no guarantee you’ll reach anyone within a reasonable amount of time. Yes of course the lines are closed on nights and weekends. And yes, to have someone tell you something is simply “impossible” is the most likely outcome of your concerted efforts.
- Odd breakfast spread combos like apple sauce on cereals: The Dutch has its own mind-boggling combination of breakfast specialties that include chocolate bits on top of butter and spread on biscuits.
- And wordsthatsticktogetherthatmakesyounauseous: Although English seems to be the exception in this case, in its refusal to jive with the rest of its ancestral Germanic cousins in putting words together with no breathing space in between.
This is how the likes of Geert Wilders hijacks meaningful conversations on immigration and integration. When a chasm the size of New Zealand’s newly torn fault line exists between what politically-correct politicians and media say, and what the Joe Schmo thinks, then these populist telling-it-as-it-is ideas begin to take hold.
What I’m getting from this Newsweek take on the Sarrazin non-sense sweeping Germany, is that one, Germany refuses to acknowledge its long-term negligence and mistakes made on immigration and integration policies. As a result, Germany’s post-war repentance took on a wildly ignorant and politically correct tone which confused racial equality and tolerance with recognizing disadvantaged and left-behind communities for what they are, disadvantaged and increasingly left behind.
And two, politicians and media cannot effectively deal with this underclass of mostly immigrant citizens, and refuses to acknowledge what is in plain sight – that is, their low economic and social status. I understand the nuances required in separating the underlying social problems from their attached communities, but that’s what politicians are paid to do.
So far, it looks to me as though they are only capable of doing one of two things. One, blaming poor development in the Turkish/Arab communities in Germany (and Turkish/Moroccan communities in the Netherlands) on Islam. Or two, pointing the finger on politicians on the other side of the table and calling them Hitler, and thereby exempting themselves from meaningful discussions on the wider social problems and policy mistakes made in the past, possibility by their own parties.
Many people have said that this is all but a distraction from the real economic and demographic challenges that Europe faces. No doubt, Europe could very well harvest this “crisis” into an opportunity and benefit from the younger demographic profiles of their immigrant communities.
But I would say that when you have 10-20% percent of your population in a politically provoked, socially isolated, and economically unfulfilled state, those countries are out of balance. In Brussels, Moroccan youths are (from reliable friends that live there) wreaking havoc in Arabic neighbourhoods – everything from petty theft and property vandalism to rioting against the police. Read more...
Home births has been getting more attention in the last little while in the English-speaking world, as the idea of purer and less interventionist births seem to coincide with the naturalist trend.
But are home births actually better and safer? Some claim the rate of post-natal depression is lower in women that do give births at home, others see the practice as primitive and risky.
In the Netherlands, as many as a quarter of births take place in the home – which seems high, but still much lower than what it was 30 years ago. The midwifery role is well-integrated into the health-care system – who replaces doctors in their roles of monitoring pregnancies, birthing, and post-natal care.
The affinity for expectant mothers to turn to midwives instead of doctors has perhaps more historical and cultural bearings than what’s been given credit to. The Dutch shuns painkillers and sees medication as the last resort, perhaps owning to its somewhat agrarian past where healthcare is not concentrated and widespread, and its Calvinist staunchness.
The government and the medical profession likes to keep the population think their stoic approach against pain and illness, is more sensible against what they view as the cry-baby paranoia of the Americans. In fact, when a relatively famous Dutch TV host gave birth with the help of epidurals and later praised it as “invention of the century” (blasphemy!), she was quickly condemned by both the health ministries and physician associations for giving women the wrong idea.
As a result, it still remains that in the 21st century and a somewhat post-feminist world, when the majority of developed-world’s women have made peace with the role pain-relief plays during the birthing process, the average Dutch woman is still guilt-tripped into viewing a drug-free birth as the ultimate testament to their womanhood.
Visits to the doctors usually end with the patients empty-handed, with doctors doing little except telling patients to wait-and-see, and let-it-blow-over. The entire healthcare profession also has little penchant for preventative care, which is to say, yearly check ups (no pap smears before the age of 40, and only every 2-5 years thereafter) and preventative dental care is almost unheard of. Read more...
By car, that is. According to a German paper, chauffeuring your kids to school not only denies them of physical exercises, but can also impair their social developments.
The Rabenmutter cultural spell lingers.
via Planet Germany
I heard about this movie last year, and just got around to watching it.
Here’s what the movie got right:
- The film was made in Egypt, you can tell because the whole deal with traffic is pretty much spot on. There’s no real concept of traffic lanes in Egypt, nor does the concept of traffic lights exist – there are none. Taxis are from the 60s, some release toxic fume from the inside. But most of the time you are poisoned from the pollution from out the window. Keeping the taxi drivers awake is also important.
- Patricia Clarkson’s character’s surprise in having men follow her everywhere when she goes out in blouses and skirts. Women get this pretty quickly: you either cover up, or you are “asking for it”. Unwanted sexual attention that is. And it goes without saying that every Arabic men that approaches you on the street will have no trouble telling you how beautiful you are. Without fail.
- There are too many camels and not enough donkeys in the film. There are more donkeys in Egypt.
- Yes, you will be offered hot hibiscus tea all the time, even when it’s 40 degrees outside and you are trying to cool down. Tea is usually served with spoonfuls of sugar.
- The gushing new foreigner, and the cynical long-term expat.
- When Clarkson says, I’ll write something about street children, and Tareq says, you don’t live here, it’s complicated. Right on.
- Everyone you meet seems to be studying some combination of language and tourism. Becoming a tour guide and one day running their own travel agency seems to be the best prospects for a lot of young people. I have heard every major language spoken while I was there, including impeccable Chinese while inside the Egyptian Museum.
- “Tomorrow I will take the day off.” Many Egyptian men that endlessly wander the street seem to have this luxury. Under-employment and outright unemployment seems to be a chronic malaise.
Where it’s not one hundred percent: Read more...
Who’s for it, and who’s against it.
Spain, Poland, Austria, and Belgium are backing the concept, France, UK, Germany and the Netherlands are against.
It seems that the more up-and-coming, politically and economically unstable ones are looking to the the EU for more centralized (and with luck, fair) power partitioning. Poland is still waiting on the doorsteps of the inner circle Europe, so you take good will where you can get it? Austria’s still awaiting the verdict on its eastern European investments, Spain struggling with higher unemployment and general economic ruin, Belgium barely able to keep the country together.
Bigger states like France and Germany want to retain more sovereignty, and it would look both politically untenable and silly to hand over more power when both believe they control the institution anyway. In the UK and Netherlands, the shift to the right has a distinct and not at all unsurprising anti-EU slant to it.
Before the whole Greek fiasco, euro crisis, and the news that European banks were on the verge of collapse (which is not happening according to this), some EU commissioner had the audacity to declare the travel some kind of human right. Actually, the idea was to convince more foreigners to come to Europe and spend their hard-earned money on a continent where tourism is the 3rd largest business and accounts for 12% of its jobs.
But of course the financial shit storms hit and this initiative is now probably buried deep inside Euro castles somewhere in Brussels or Strasbourg.
This is my first summer here with no off-continent travels, and I’ve seen first-hand the kind of exodus that happens on the road when July and August hit.
People schedule their vacations to coincide with their children’s schooling. The construction sector is closed for an entire month between July and August for vacation, and some government agencies also close for August. Half of the small/independent shops in my neighbourhood are closed, so if you want pizza or beef from the butcher, or dry-cleaning services, then tough luck.
There are several so-called Black Saturdays, where people literally pack up as much personal belongings and household apparatus as possible in their cars, endure hours of congested traffic, in order to drive to their neighbouring countries to camp.
Camping is huge. I haven’t tried it yet, but hearsay tells me camp grounds are generally more compact, well-serviced and in some cases, cheaper than across the pond.
Stay-cations are also almost unheard of here. Recession or not, the majority of people surveyed (at least in the Netherlands, although I can’t quite find the link) said they intend to go on vacation.
For most, that means packing up your house, drive 5 to 10 hours, and set up camp in a neighbouring country. I have seen everything from cars loaded up with camping and cooking wares, to more luxurious foldable tent set-ups hooked to the back of a car, to plastic picnic table strung on the top of a car, all to keep the vacation cost as low as possible, and to make those foreign destination feel as homely as possible. Read more...
Over the weekend, I met a couple of guys that actually lived (and one still living) in the city-state of Luxemburg. There’s around half a million of people residing in all of the 999 square miles of the country. But in the word of the young French banker-type, “the real Luxemburgish are all in hiding.”
Over the years, the country has literally been taken over by the neighbouring Italians, Germans and French, not to count the influx of Eastern Europeans once the EU borders opened. Most work in banking and related service industries. Taxes are lower (both consumption and income), wages are higher, so many make the 1-2 hour cross-border commutes everyday back to their home countries.
Both of these guys described the country as an incredibly dull place, with little to do except making money and going out to bars, and with no redeeming qualities of other well-known banking countries (and tax havens) like Switzerland and Monaco. Nor were they kind about the locals – red-neck farmers driving Ferraris – since selling their land to the banking businesses, and I’m guessing from some of the rich mineral deposits in the south of the country too.
I look forward to visiting someday.
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