Listening to Deborah Tannen's course.

It turns out that different cultures use different sentences to strike up a conversation; not just different along the lines of "how are you?", "how are things?", "what's up?", but even stranger stuff. In Fijian, for example, it's common to say "where are you going?" as an ice-breaker. To which, the answer might be "I'm going this way". In Thai or Chinese, you might great someone with "have you eaten?", and he'd answer "I have eaten". Imagine a Westerner taking these questions literally, and thinking the other person is a policeman, or, in the second case, inviting them to have dinner :)

And...

Happy New Year everyone!

May 2006 bring you peace, health, and abundance in the gifts that really matter :)