The Chinese - gotta love 'em!
Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 12:16 am
OK, so you know that every country in the world has a stereotype. The Chinese are inscrutable. The Australians are convicts. The Irish are green, and stupid. The Brits are uptight. New Zealanders are bucolic... And Americans are idiots... JFK JFK!
Actually, funny you bring the USA up, because a good buddy of mine just got back from the US. I asked him what he got me for Christmas. He replied that he thought long and hard about it, and he wanted to get me something uniquely \"American\", but he ended up getting me nothing. I asked him why. He said he didn't think he'd be able to slip through customs with a kilo of coke, or a hand gun.
Anyway...
You have this idea about how people will react to things, and I suppose we all have images of people helping stranded whales around the world, but sometimes things happen which change your perception, and give you a chuckle at the same time. I'm talking about the chinese saving two dolphins - as in the story found here: http://xtramsn.co.nz/news/0,,11965-6704463,00.html
(Of course, if you follow the news too, you'll recall that there was a species of near-blind, long nosed, river dolphins in China which they've just announced have gone extinct.)
So, this story cracks me up. The inscrutable Chinese are brilliant: \"Surgery fails because plastic is hard to grip with surgical implements. OK what now? Hey, there's the tallest man in the world just down the road - why don't we get him to stick that looooooong arm of his down the dolphin's throat, and HE can pull the plastic out? That's gotta be worth 90 seconds on CNN!\"
To me this is wonderfully pragmatic. I surmise that a similar problem in the USA would be solved by building a gut-walking robot in 2 days, which would be able to crawl inside and grab the plastic bits using wireless technology, computers, fibre optic lights and video cameras at a cost of $1,500,000.
This leads me to my stereotyping of the three countries I have lived in:
\"In Japan, if there's a problem, throw more people at it.
In the USA, if there's a problem, throw more money at it.
In New Zealand, if there's a problem, don't worry about it. It'll probably go away.\"
Actually, funny you bring the USA up, because a good buddy of mine just got back from the US. I asked him what he got me for Christmas. He replied that he thought long and hard about it, and he wanted to get me something uniquely \"American\", but he ended up getting me nothing. I asked him why. He said he didn't think he'd be able to slip through customs with a kilo of coke, or a hand gun.
Anyway...
You have this idea about how people will react to things, and I suppose we all have images of people helping stranded whales around the world, but sometimes things happen which change your perception, and give you a chuckle at the same time. I'm talking about the chinese saving two dolphins - as in the story found here: http://xtramsn.co.nz/news/0,,11965-6704463,00.html
(Of course, if you follow the news too, you'll recall that there was a species of near-blind, long nosed, river dolphins in China which they've just announced have gone extinct.)
So, this story cracks me up. The inscrutable Chinese are brilliant: \"Surgery fails because plastic is hard to grip with surgical implements. OK what now? Hey, there's the tallest man in the world just down the road - why don't we get him to stick that looooooong arm of his down the dolphin's throat, and HE can pull the plastic out? That's gotta be worth 90 seconds on CNN!\"
To me this is wonderfully pragmatic. I surmise that a similar problem in the USA would be solved by building a gut-walking robot in 2 days, which would be able to crawl inside and grab the plastic bits using wireless technology, computers, fibre optic lights and video cameras at a cost of $1,500,000.
This leads me to my stereotyping of the three countries I have lived in:
\"In Japan, if there's a problem, throw more people at it.
In the USA, if there's a problem, throw more money at it.
In New Zealand, if there's a problem, don't worry about it. It'll probably go away.\"
