a Vietnamese student correcting the English language usage of a French marketing teacher in Brussels...
And a Mexican posting about it in his blog.
Showing posts with label globalization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label globalization. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Monday, February 05, 2007
Le Superbowl
Few things I know are weirder than a Mexican watching the Superbowl in Brussels via a French
channel at 2 a.m. Shortly thereafter I went to sleep, and Chicago lost.
The photo is from the kickoff and ensuring touchdown run. What an amazing start! And to think I don't even like gridiron that much.
Merci France 2!
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Racismo a la mexicana
Hablando con algunas personas, me he dado cuenta que nosotros también podemos ser racistas, aunque prefiramos quejarnos amargamente de cómo tratan a nuestros connacionales en Estados Unidos.
Nos llegamos a quejar de la mafia coreana, de los inmigrantes argentinos, centroamericanos, chinos o judíos, y aunque sabemos que somos la mezcla de la mezcla de la mezcla, he oído quejas contra los negros o los árabes.
Tod esto viene a colación porque una persona que me visitó hizo un comentario con una mezcla entre sorpresa y desdén sobre la cantidad de personas de religión musulmana que viven en Bruselas. Cuando le hice la observación que alguien podría quejarse sobre la cantidad de mexicanos viviendo en Estados Unidos, guardó silencio. Eso, francamente, es racismo.
Algunas veces me gustaría que no viéramos la paja en el ojo ajeno sino la viga en el propio. Si queremos que el mundo se abra a México, México también tiene que abrirse al mundo.
Nos llegamos a quejar de la mafia coreana, de los inmigrantes argentinos, centroamericanos, chinos o judíos, y aunque sabemos que somos la mezcla de la mezcla de la mezcla, he oído quejas contra los negros o los árabes.
Tod esto viene a colación porque una persona que me visitó hizo un comentario con una mezcla entre sorpresa y desdén sobre la cantidad de personas de religión musulmana que viven en Bruselas. Cuando le hice la observación que alguien podría quejarse sobre la cantidad de mexicanos viviendo en Estados Unidos, guardó silencio. Eso, francamente, es racismo.
Algunas veces me gustaría que no viéramos la paja en el ojo ajeno sino la viga en el propio. Si queremos que el mundo se abra a México, México también tiene que abrirse al mundo.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Demonstrator in the World Economic Forum Second Life room
As demonstrators can't go to Davos, one decided to express his opinions in the Second Life Reuters interview room.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Not recommended book: The Silent Takeover
Read this book during the last month, didn't really like it. On one hand it is good to see the arguments of the detractors of globalisation, but on the other hand I felt really disappointed that the book offers no solutions, just complaints. In some parts it really shows its age.
A favourable review here, an unfavourable here.Thursday, November 23, 2006
Globalisation is...
listening to "La Bamba" being played and sung in Spanish by a guy with a marked Arab accent in the Brussels Metro...
Priceless!
Priceless!
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
You know you've been in Belgium too long when...
I saw this list at Genki David's blog. Much better than the list I had originally published.
And I haven't been here that long...
And I haven't been here that long...
Friday, October 20, 2006
Globalisation ≠ Americanisation
I have seen that a lot of the debate regarding globalisation as such is that we're all becoming "Americanised". Whilst it is true that many of the global brands are American, and that a sizeable part of the media we consume is also from the U.S, there is a lot of interaction that doesn't involve them, and that would even go against their interests. English, however, is one of the platforms that we use for international communication, like the Latin of old. The problem is that native English speakers have no incentive for learning a foreign language, so their horizons are a little bit more limited in the beginning.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
How to tell if you're from X
Similar to the post below, I came accross this page before. It's very good, and quite accurate for the countries I know.
You know you've been too long in X when...
A collection of "You know you've been too long somewhere" lists:
- Belgium
- Finland
- Mexico
- Japan
- China
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom
- United Arab Emirates
- Malaysia
- Korea
- South Africa
Friday, September 29, 2006
"Those dirty foreigners!"
Posted when I lived in Finland.
I've always tried to consider myself an open person, and have tried to receive and analyse new ideas as they come. I was reading Tecosgirl's blog and it reminded me of some things that have happened to me throughout the years.
The first one was when I was 17, we were invited to debate to the Harvard Model United Nations, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. As a high school senior, I was very excited to go to debate in that "temple of education", and to match my skills with the people there. You can imagine our surprise when we reached the place. Imagine the following conversation in a circle upon entering a conference room before the actual sessions start:
Boy 1: "So, where are you guys from?"
Boy 2: "Well, I'm from Rhode Island."
Girl 1: "We're from California."
Boy 3: "We came from Florida."
And so on and so forth until it was our turn to say: "We're from Mexico City.", point at which the rest of the group would turn around and leave. Not because we spoke with a funny accent or anything, but because we were Mexican and we were at the same level as those kids. It got even "better", as the topic that we discussed was the Taleban government in Afghanistan (you have to picture that this is 3 years or so before Sept. 11), and the Afghanistan delegate was agreeing with the United States, and everybody else cheered them on while we said that it was just a completely unrealistic position (a.k.a. bollocks). Most of my delegation who did the trip with me left the sessions as a lost cause and spent the rest of the trip going around Boston, but I still tried to instill some sense, with no success. That experience made me change my goal from studying in the US to studying in Europe.
Some years later, I moved to study Engineering in Finland. While I have to say that I really love this country (otherwise I wouldn't have stayed here), have generally found acceptance after proving myself, and have a family and friends that truly own a place in my heart, I have found a couple of examples of people that react to (my appearance, my being?) with marked discontent, especially among the older generation and the less educated. Why? Because they don't know where I'm from by looks only (I've been told that I'm half Thai, half Finnish, that I'm Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Arab...) and, let's face it, there's not that many of my countrymen here (around 180 last time I heard). I don't have it that bad at all either, some of my black friends have told me worse stories .
Then there is Mexicans as well. We tend to receive foreigners with gusto, but are also quite reticent to fully accept them. The latest controversy has been about Naturalised Mexicans in the football (soccer) national team (I've posted about it already). Then there are reactions like those that Koreans get in Mexico City, where they're charged with being the crime bosses of the Tepito area. Or the sterotype of Americans in Mexico as being pale, blonde, untrustworthy and stupid. As they say in Spanish, en todos lados se cuecen habas, loosely translated as shit happens everywhere.
Our biggest problem as a society (or societies) is that even though we're becoming more and more part of a globalised world and there are more and more interconnections between the different parts, places, countries and people, we understand very little, if anything, of each other, the little that we know is usually clouded by stereotypes, and saddest of all, there seems to be no will in our societies, in us, to change.
I've always tried to consider myself an open person, and have tried to receive and analyse new ideas as they come. I was reading Tecosgirl's blog and it reminded me of some things that have happened to me throughout the years.
The first one was when I was 17, we were invited to debate to the Harvard Model United Nations, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. As a high school senior, I was very excited to go to debate in that "temple of education", and to match my skills with the people there. You can imagine our surprise when we reached the place. Imagine the following conversation in a circle upon entering a conference room before the actual sessions start:
Boy 1: "So, where are you guys from?"
Boy 2: "Well, I'm from Rhode Island."
Girl 1: "We're from California."
Boy 3: "We came from Florida."
And so on and so forth until it was our turn to say: "We're from Mexico City.", point at which the rest of the group would turn around and leave. Not because we spoke with a funny accent or anything, but because we were Mexican and we were at the same level as those kids. It got even "better", as the topic that we discussed was the Taleban government in Afghanistan (you have to picture that this is 3 years or so before Sept. 11), and the Afghanistan delegate was agreeing with the United States, and everybody else cheered them on while we said that it was just a completely unrealistic position (a.k.a. bollocks). Most of my delegation who did the trip with me left the sessions as a lost cause and spent the rest of the trip going around Boston, but I still tried to instill some sense, with no success. That experience made me change my goal from studying in the US to studying in Europe.
Some years later, I moved to study Engineering in Finland. While I have to say that I really love this country (otherwise I wouldn't have stayed here), have generally found acceptance after proving myself, and have a family and friends that truly own a place in my heart, I have found a couple of examples of people that react to (my appearance, my being?) with marked discontent, especially among the older generation and the less educated. Why? Because they don't know where I'm from by looks only (I've been told that I'm half Thai, half Finnish, that I'm Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Arab...) and, let's face it, there's not that many of my countrymen here (around 180 last time I heard). I don't have it that bad at all either, some of my black friends have told me worse stories .
Then there is Mexicans as well. We tend to receive foreigners with gusto, but are also quite reticent to fully accept them. The latest controversy has been about Naturalised Mexicans in the football (soccer) national team (I've posted about it already). Then there are reactions like those that Koreans get in Mexico City, where they're charged with being the crime bosses of the Tepito area. Or the sterotype of Americans in Mexico as being pale, blonde, untrustworthy and stupid. As they say in Spanish, en todos lados se cuecen habas, loosely translated as shit happens everywhere.
Our biggest problem as a society (or societies) is that even though we're becoming more and more part of a globalised world and there are more and more interconnections between the different parts, places, countries and people, we understand very little, if anything, of each other, the little that we know is usually clouded by stereotypes, and saddest of all, there seems to be no will in our societies, in us, to change.
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