Job Discussion Forums

[roni]

After I calmed down I understood you were just sarcastic. Todah rabah (thanks very much) -- said totally unsarcastically--for your last post.

Roni

[bexely2000]

Can you imagine that earlier nutter getting a job in the ME? Crazy. I truly wonder sometimes how people can be so plain daft.

In some kind of weak notion of defending that idiot, humour is utterly culturally specific. I remember being in China and some teachers (Canadians especially, but Yanks too) simply did not understand me at all and frequently got offended for no good reason. (Although I guess I would say that).

Being British brings with is a peculiar sense of sarcasm and irony that many people (In my limited experience) simply don�t understand .

Anyway. Veiled Sen. had the perfect response to that over-zealous fellow.

[KiteBiker]

Humour is not only cultural but also a matter of style.

Compare Lenny Bruce with Benny Hill. As a Canadian, I can appreciate British humour, but my parents being very Quebecois just didn't get it.

Apparently, there was a Canadian humorist several years ago that learned Chinese and made the rounds of mainland China. He was a smash hit. Everyone rolled in the aisles. Chinese friends would come up to him and say he was great, but to have extra effect, he shouldn't use such precise and formal Chinese. He should dirty it up some with some slang.

Just imagine this guy who gets upset at the obvious context of this thread getting called "Nutter". Would he blow a gasket or would he get it?

[Sekhmet]

What is the deal with humour? It's so rare to find people here who understand sarcasm/irony/Monty Python... Even the Americans and Canadians I meet on a daily basis sometimes seem to struggle with it. I was stunned that none of my Egyptian friends found Monty Python even remotely funny, or even Blackadder or Red Dwarf! I guess there's no accounting for taste.

In terms of the poster who took this thread seriously, really not a good candidate for living in the ME. Even here, I find myself having to shrug off some fairly offensive things (only yesterday, a 15 year old boy told me "BEEP your mother, and BEEP your father"), and being able to ignore things and even laugh them off seems to be somewhat of a prerequisite, at least here.

I don't know about the rest of the ME so much, but I guess anywhere would be the same, pretty much. And from what I've heard, some a whole bunch worse! At least here I don't feel even slightly like a target. I'm not sure I would be comfortable in KSA, for example...