"Foot In Mouth" Disease

My stupid bad behaviour didn't stop there yesterday. What started out as fun, turned sour. I think I’m too nice to be mean cause soon those little angels who like to give you bad conscious, crept forward and danced around, telling me “Hey, the guy is maybe actually nice! And maybe his friends whom you know were a bit upset by your harshness”

It is so hard you know, when it comes to a different culture, even though people from a country and culture which is very similar to ones own. There are always misunderstandings, body language, wording and phrasing can easily be misunderstood.

So I wrote to this mutual friend of ours and told him, sorry if I had unintentionally in the process of insulting his friend ended up insulted him as well. I also explained that I had been very provoked by the pictures of uniform and gun and that maybe some girls are turned on by this but for me I just felt disgusted and got an urge to run as far away as possible when I see a uniformed person with a huge gun.

Two hours later it suddenly hits me.

This friend whom I wrote to, is one of those army types who had a very important job in the army (and maybe still has) and is extremely proud of it. I suddenly recalled a very heated discussion between this friend and another who is a pacifist. And here I was declaring to him my disgust of guns and uniformed people!

OUCH! Not so smart when I will be seeing very much more of him and be living in his country and culture shortly.
Oh why can’t I just shut up!

But it is much harder than one can imagine culture difference and it doesn’t really hit or hurt you until much later.

Body language is one such a cool thing and also can be so easily missed.

Once in the beginning of our relationship I was sitting and reading the paper with my loved one. I started to talk to him as one does, about something I read. He did something with his hand and I just kept on talking. The loved one was reading something at the moment and he did the thing with the hand again. I kept on talking. Suddenly he looked up angrily and nearly shouted “Wait, I tell you. Let me finish the page!!” I was stunned…

A few days later I was reading a Lonelyplanet Hebrew phrasebook and I found this: “When asking someone to wait a moment, an Israeli might place the thumb, index and middle fingers together and squeeze, with the palm facing up.”

My mind rewound fast to the café and me talking whilst the loved was reading. His hand fling thing was exactly this! DONG! The revelation was like a sledgehammer hitting my head making a very hollow dong sound from the vibrations of my head.

Other times it can be worse, life experience can be so different for two people of roughly the same age, and when you talk, party and have fun, it is something that can be easily forgotten.

Once we were talking to a wonderful person, having tea and just chatting. He had just burnt himself on a stove and he was talking about how disgusting his little scab was under the plaster. I started to tell the story of the Irish Red Lobster. A friend of mine who in Oz was so badly sunburnt on the back of his legs that when his friend accidentally kicked his shin under a table the skin of his shin peeled off as thick as an orange peel. Yes, it was very disgusting! But anyway after telling about this my friend - this wonderful person was very quiet for some time and soon after he left.

My loved one, then told me gently that maybe it wasn’t such a very good story to tell a guy who was inside a burning tank during a war recently and where most of his friends were burnt extremely bad or even killed.

Holy fuck! Did I run head first into a concrete wall?

I wanted to.