Posts for 'Cultural Etiquettes' Category

What better way to show pride in your country than by flying the national flag? But did you know there are some ways of flying the flag which are offensive and disrespectful? A Moonta resident recently expressed to the Country Times how it is great to see people flying their flags but there are a few who aren’t flying them properly, particularly in North Yelta, and they need to know the proper etiquette.

“It bothers me because it is the main road into Moonta, we have visitors by the thousands and that’s what they see, it’s not good,” she said. “I think it is because we are not taught that sort of thing any more, when I was at school you were taught you put the flag up in the morning and you take it down at night, you don’t let it drag in the mud.”Kadina Primary School acting deputy principal, David Easter, said KPS takes great pride in recognising history and national obligations such as correctly flying the flag.

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Who knew that beach and pool etiquette was such a sore subject with so many folks? A recent survey by the Web site TripAdvisor of 3,800 people in the United States revealed that 84 percent of travelers agree saving beachside or poolside chairs by getting up early and leaving stuff on the chairs for hours is a no-no; 97 percent believe that it's a violation of beach and pool etiquette for parents to let their kids borrow others' sand or pool toys without asking permission.

Other findings: 53 percent of travelers say it's OK to urinate in the ocean if other swimmers aren't nearby, while 73 percent think the beach should be separated into kid-friendly and pet-friendly areas. Another 24 percent believe women to who wear revealing bikinis are violating beach/pool etiquette; and 35 percent say the same thing about men in Speedos.

The most common beach and pool etiquette violations cited by respondents were beach chair hogging; urinating in the water and littering. The most annoying violations included blasting loud music, smoking and again, urinating in the water.

Many believe that party etiquette is a thing of the past. A common misconception is that a party is an occasion for letting go of civilized conventions, throwing caution to the wind or getting out of line. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Proper party etiquette is more important than ever. Parties are becoming increasingly more elaborate and guest lists tend to be incredibly long. A major faux pas at a party these days will be witnessed by dozens and never lived down. A wedding for instance is extremely expensive and every activity is likely to be recorded on every digital device from a cell phone camera to a professional video camera. The dancer who trips on the dance floor may end up on a bloopers type television program!

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This recession is re-writing the rules on a lot of things, including how we behave. Social stress can take a toll on the social graces. So how can we all just get along?
Over a cup of tea at T Salon in New York City, Lyudmila Bloch described etiquette as something that evolves with time.
"When we have a recession or economic downfall it will affect the way we think and interact," Bloch said.
Rule number one: Bling is out, inconspicuous consumption is in.
"It is no longer in good taste to display your wealth or your affluence. It is actually in bad taste," explained Bloch.

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QUESTION: Is it a privilege for an Indian- born businessman to be called "Sooty" by the heir to the throne of Great Britain? The answer, if you were to believe Mr Kolin Singh Dhillon, is arguably: Yes.The nickname has long been a staple feature of the upper-class who consider it a term of endearment to banish Christian or, for that matter, a Sikh name and replace it with a term such as "Biffo", "Pongo" or "Stink".

So stranger would carry a racial sting, and could carry a jail term for racially aggravated breach of the peace? For Mr Dhillon, who arrived in Britain from the Punjab with his parents at the age of four and has built himself into a wealthy man.

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Every Saturday, Shin Gang-chul attends a Vietnamese language class arranged by a local civic group. He and his eight other Korean classmates, all men aged between 40 and 60, have a common goal: to communicate with their foreign brides.

The students gather once a week in a small lecture room at a migrants’ shelter in a busy working-class neighborhood in northern Seoul.For two hours, they learn to speak, read and write Vietnamese. After class, over shared platters of goi cuon  Vietnamese spring rolls  and tea, they discuss problems in their marriages stemming from different customs and family traditions.

But among many Korean males married to Southeast Asian women - a group that has dramatically grown in numbers here in the past five years - learning the bride’s language was long considered unnecessary.It is usually the brides, from countries like Vietnam.

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 A professor from Tsinghua University's Department of History in Beijing on Thursday called on educationalists to teach students traditional Chinese etiquette.Peng Lin, whose courses "Ancient Chinese Etiquettes" and "Classic Cultural Relics and Chinese Culture" have been listed as "National Excellent Courses", said that universities and schools should offer more courses on traditional Chinese etiquette and customs.

"As China enjoys the fruit of economic growth, many Chinese people, especially the young, have lost some traditions because of influences of Western cultures, particularly the American culture," said 59-year-old Peng.

"Young people often look to Western customs and etiquette as being fashionable and overlook Chinese traditions," Peng said with great concern.Being national excellent courses, a high honor from the Ministry of Education, Peng's courses attracted nearly 1,500 Tsinghua students, who have long been regarded as among the country's smartest, in this year's autumn term alone.

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Sakuraa Nihongo Resource Centre is a subsidiary company of a well established decade old public listed software company which has a successful track record of delivering software services & products to its clients in Far East and Japan.

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R ACISM AND THE RACIAL STEREOTYPES it spawns are so subtly interwoven into the fabric of Western society that very often, even those with the best of intentions will display bad cultural manners. This does not necessarily mean one is a bad person. Sometimes people just don't know any better.This guide is to help people avoid some of the obvious as well as not so obvious pitfalls of unwitting racism and anti-Semitism.

 This does not try to talk anyone out of being racist or anti-Semitic. Rather it seeks to help those with good and righteous intentions to refine behavior and attitudes bred in cultural ignorance.Ethnocentrism, according to the Random House Dictionary of the English language, means "a tendency to view alien groups or cultures in terms of one's own" and "the belief in the inherent superiority of one's own group and culture, accompanied by a feeling of contempt for other groups and cultures.The term "exotic," when applied to human beings, is ethnocentric and racist. It defines people of color only as we relate to white people.

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There have been better times to be an American, at least in terms of world opinion, yet tourists and immigrants continue to flock to the United States. And when they do, they find that our mores are a lot more complicated than what pop culture, or the chance encounter with fanny-packing tourists, has led them to believe. For all our vastness and diversity, we do have a culture of etiquette—one that can be just as confusing for the visitor to navigate as Japan's, or Egypt's, or France's is for the American tourist. Which is why this edition of Etiquette 101 is an inside-out affair, an introspective examination of the U.S.A. in the eyes of the rest of the world THE SMILE.

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