Double Friday Five weeks later

[elusivek]

There were no questions for the 18-Sept Friday... these are questions from the previous 2 posts.

11-September-2020
1. What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?
It was the whole situation that led up to it. I'd be hard pressed to find the actual photo after these years... but I was in Salzburg with my friend P on our Austrian Tour (2014? 2015? 2016? I forget). It was kind of a disaster day/sequence of events of sorts (heavy rain, train track got washed off or a mountain got eroded, so we had to get off the train somewhere and change to the bus to go elsewhere and then continue the train trip), got to our hostel, dropped the bags, went out to scout for food, somehow met with some weird guy (no worries, he was a nice guy in the end), and he took us visiting around rainy Salzburg... slippery ground, wrong shoes, hilly walk and all that

As we were walking around the castle walls or something, we turned a corner, and the most humongous full semi-circle of a rainbow over the cityscape of Salzburg. Much like the rainbow I posted the other day, but that was huge and very visible!

2. What is your greatest dream in life?
As a kid it was to study in the UK for my University degree but of course that has gone to sh*t and will never happen. Now? I just want to continue to have this freedom and travel whenever I can.

3. What is the best book you have ever read?
My favorite book ever is still Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, but the book that pulled the most shock from me was still Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I know if I re-read it I will not get that spooky feeling anymore because, I know the big reveal already, but really, when I finally realized that as I was reading that it was totally ewe yuck macabre horror but OMG what's gonna happen next!

4. What is your most cherished childhood memory?
I kind of was a dumb kid when I was kid... I don't know about cherished... but recently there have been flashes of memory always popping up sporadically. I suddenly remembered of all the bullying (I didn't know I was being bullied back then, now I know better, as I remember stuff)... My previous dogs, the mutts that were super obedient and never had trouble with them... Sitting in my paternal grandparent's kitchen and my Opa (grandpa) talking to me (but I don't understand a word he said, coz he was speaking German)...

5. What is your best character trait or strength?
Guess I'm forgiving and optimistic?


21-August-2020
1. How closely do you think good manners are related to income and social status?
It's really hard to determine "good" and "bad" manners. I'm sort of brought up in a somewhat Western (European) cultural environment, and to me burping is super impolite. Try to burp quietly, or say excuse me. But for my Chinese friends, burping isn't anything, and they'll burp really loudly and don't say anything. There was a phase where I would scold them like a teacher and say "Excuse me!" Loudly but they just don't understand.

So I don't think it's really income or social status. Sure, someone with a higher income may mean he had a better education and have a higher social status and so seem to be more polite, but it's really the person, I think. There are rich people who never say thank you. So there you go.

2. Can the idea of good manners inhibit people's natural sense of fun and inhibition?
Maybe? I remember one time as a kid, we were visiting family in Austria, and I was in an uncle's home. They were serving dinner. There was a last piece of toast or something, and my aunt had asked if I wanted a second helping. There wasn't enough toast for everyone to have a second helping so I just said no thank you, to be polite. Then my cousin just swiped the toast away. My mom was all proud and said in Portuguese (the others only spoke German) "my kid has so good manners!"

I guess that wasn't really "fun" as the question asked, but I think there are many things in my life that I have decided not to do or pursue precisely because I was "trying to be polite."

3. Do people have more manners now or in earlier times?
I guess people would say people in the earlier times had better manners? I think it's all culture as well. Culture changes, so what people perceive as good manners change too.

4. Do you say "hi" to people even if they are strangers? Why? Why not?
It's funny, it depends. When I'm in Austria in my dad's family's town/village, there's so few people there, that you HAVE to greet whoever you pass while out. "Gruess Gott" I think, is the greeting. (And if they followed up with more questions then I had mastered the "Ich spreche Deutsche nicht!" phrase as a young kid already LOL

Over here, we don't greet strangers. Well, there are "strangers that we know are locals" and "strangers that are definitely not locals". The "strangers that we know are locals" are bit "dangerous" (jokingly) because... they will definitely know someone in the family... I once went with my friend for lunch with her internship boss. Her boss invited a guy from the television broadcast station. We got to talking and certainly he asks me "oh, your surname is xxxx. Is your grandfather Manuel, or Jose?" I didn't quite know my maternal grandfather's name, so I said "ugh... he worked at the printing press" and he goes "oh! So it's Lele! He has four daughters and....." went on to describe my family tree, all my aunts and their husbands and their kids (my cousins)...... And I don't know that guy.

As for the "strangers that are definitely not locals", they can be friendly tourists which i will gladly greet and assist if they ask for it. But there are times when there are not so nice people. Like one time an Indian guy greeted me and certainly started a spiel about me having lucky stars and 3 things that will happen to me. I was ready to help him if he were a tourist lost, but I caught on he must be doing a divination scam thing so I just said rudely "are you a tourist? Are you lost? Do you need my help? Don't waste my time!" And walked away.

5. Do you listen to other's people conversations on the street?
Most definitely yes. And because now Macau is mainly a "Chinese" place, people automatically assume I'm a tourist (because I don't look Chinese at all... well, I am not Chinese) so they tend to talk freely and don't care about me, thinking I don't understand Chinese (Cantonese). Well, I understand every single word.

The best is going to the staff canteen after any new policy implementation and I'll eavesdrop on their comments. But now people have caught on that I understand the language, so my espionage work has sort of stalled for a bit.