Cross Cultural Tips

[blamebrampton]

Still plaguey. Will be fine once I can sleep without any coughing. Way behind in sending out flist love, but LOVE!!!! to all of you, especially the ones having crap weeks.

Very shortly, I have noticed that Australia and America have been exerting cultural influences on each other more strongly of late, and just wanted to share a few hints on the topic.

Things Australians SHOULD do more like Americans
* Personal and corporate philanthropy
* Respect for and interest in the arts
* Recognition of people achieving in academic fields and celebration of those achievements

Things Australians SHOULD NOT do more like Americans
* Politics (I'm looking at you, Tony Abbott!)
* Health care (Still looking!)
* Pop music (OK, this time it's whoever that crap was on 2Day that was playing in the Turkish pizza place. But I feel certain Tony Abbott's probably bought the CD.)

Things Americans SHOULD do more like Australians
* Irony. Some of you have the hang of it, but it needs wider acceptance
* Health care
* Media critique (there's not enough mixed ownership here, but there is a solid focus on cross-checking and making loud reports about perfidy when certain outlets are crap)

Things Americans SHOULD NOT do more like Australians
* Constant natural disasters
* EPIC STORMS
* Wear flipflops to work, even if they have some sparkly bits glued on. They're not professional. And I have been here too long as I originally wrote thongs and then realised the enormous potential for cross-cultural confusion.

Stay safe you East Coast kids. That earthquake looks like fun in comparison, I'll bet.

Comments

[jadzialove.livejournal.com]

Flip flops to work are already prevalent in warm climates (such as mine). Men and women, in the right work atmosphere. Though the men mostly tend to wear less sparkly ones...

We're about to get an epic storm too, here on the east coast. We've had tornadoes, an earthquake and now a hurricane all in one week.

I'm not arguing your points - I think you've got something here! I just wanted to tell you about my exceptions. :D

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Don't think the Aussies aren't aware that you're trying to gazump them in the epic storm stakes. It's right out of order, they have had years of establishing it as their 'Thing' and then you come along and try to hog all the glory.

We'll let it slide as long as you lot all stay safe this time, OK? None of this dozens dead rubbish, it's just overdoing things ridiculously.

We have your booming economy at the moment, BTW. We also have Tea Party-like loonies who insist that despite said booming economy, we're all doomed. Did you lot ever develop a spray to deal with them?

[jadzialove.livejournal.com]

I think we'd like that economy back, thanks. But you can keep the Tea-loons...