Instinctive cultural behaviour in reverse (London)

During my house-sitting stint in south London, the old neighbour (in his 90s, from Pakistan) from across the road came knocking on the door one day.  

He’d just returned from a family visit in Canada, to find that he couldn’t ring out on his mobile phone, for some reason, so could I give him a hand, he asked.   I went over with my phone to ring the people on his list (someone to fix his boiler, someone to fix something else).  His son was there, too.

The following day, returning from a food shopping trip, I thought I’d check on him, just in case he needed more help.

As the son opened the door, my head was already shaking from side to side, the Indian sub-continent way, even before I asked him, “Has your mobile phone problem been sorted out?”  

And I’m from a culture that doesn’t do the head shaking….  So impressionable!

(London, 2023)

Instinctive cultural behaviour (London)

I had a Japanese student in one of my evening classes.  Let’s call her Yuki.

During the course of the lesson, I’d call out individual students to answer the question I’d put forward to the class.  

Whenever I addressed her in the Japanese way, calling her Yuki-san, her immediate reaction would be to say “Hai!” and bow (even while seated).  

(I could almost feel the military-style heel-clicking as well…)

(London, 1995)

Inadvertent word play (London)

I’ve just learned a new skill:  the channelling of cosmic energy to adjust a person’s balance of 氣/气 qì.  

The practitioners of Longevitology (LG; 長生學 cháng shēng xué / "long life study") have an impressive success record with cancer, stroke, and all other conditions of the internal organs that my style of massage cannot reach (or not to the same deep level).

I’ve been telling people about it, encouraging them to come along for the free adjustment sessions.

My reply to an ex-student’s email asking how I’ve been says:

Quote

LG is adjusting people’s 气 balance using cosmic energy through their chakras.  All free of charge.

Unquote

(London, 2023)

My tennis "playing"

When I first arrived in London, my English friend said he’d teach me to play tennis.  

There were two parts to it, he said: serving, and hitting back.  As one starts the game serving, that was what he taught me first.  

This went on for a few weeks, once a week, then the weather got cold and I started college, so the sessions stopped and I never learned how to hit back.

A year later, someone at university said his parents were going away for the weekend, so he and his siblings decided to have a children’s partying weekend at home, inviting their friends round.  

They had a tennis court at home, so this friend invited me to play singles with him.  I told him I’d only learned a bit the previous year.  When I served beautifully into his court, he said, “I thought you said you’d only learned it for a few weeks?  That was good!”  But when he hit it back to me, I’d either miss it altogether or hit it way up into the air.  We spent more time retrieving the ball than hitting it.

At one point, however, he said something that made me very angry.  I then found myself doing something quite surprising:  not only was I able to hit the ball back properly, I was even able to hit it back into the furthest corner away from him, to make him run all the way across the court for it.  Back and forth, back and forth, I kept it up for quite a few minutes, in perfect control of the ball.  

I had never been able to repeat it since.  Interesting how anger is capable of making one do things one’s normally unable to…

The hitting the ball high up into the air bit, I was able to repeat without any trouble at all.  A few years later, a friend invited me to play tennis at a tennis court surrounded by plane trees.  When my racket did actually manage to make contact with the oncoming ball, it’d send the ball flying high up into the trees.  At the end of the hour’s session, the plane trees all had a big pile of green leaves at the base…

The man who taught a crane to fly (Japan)

When I had a TV set in the 80s, I saw a documentary programme about a Hokkaidō National Park warden who found an abandoned crane’s nest after the heavy rain flooded most of the park.  

He took the egg home and incubated it in his oven, getting up every few hours to turn it over, apologising to it for disturbing its sleep.  

After it hatched, it followed him everywhere, as he was mummy, being the first creature it saw upon hatching.* 

 

When it got big, the warden felt it needed to learn to fly and go somewhere else to start its own life.  He started off running up and down the paddock, with the young crane chasing him close behind. 

 

A few more sessions later, he started to flap his arms while he was running, and the young crane mimicked him.  

One day, the flapping raised the crane into the air. 

 

So, a human taught a bird how to fly, haha.

When the crane found a mate, it brought her home to “mummy”, then their children when they were born.  

Year after year, they’d come home to visit “mummy”.  Sweet.

(Japan, 1980s)

*  Reminds me of Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989) and his geese.  Google: Quote In his classic experiment, Lorenz divided eggs laid by a greylag goose into two groups. One of the groups was hatched by their mother and immediately began following her around. The second group was hatched in an incubator, but in the absence of their mother, they began instead to follow Lorenz. Unquote

Word play (London)

A married professor at an educational institution I’d worked at in the 80s had caused a huge scandal, culminating in a scene in the reception area with one of the women pulling off the other’s skirt.  

My supervisor and I had somehow got embroiled: he’d kindly listened to the other woman’s sob stories about the professor when she’d turned up looking for him in person but couldn’t find him; I’d taken a phone call on my supervisor’s behalf one day when he was out, and had listened sympathetically to her sob stories (complete with sound effects).  Anyway, so that’s how I got to know the details.

One day, the professor and I were at the bank — he two places in front of me, with an American woman between us.  

Trying to check if that was the queue, the American woman asked him, “Are you in line?”  (She didn’t say “the”.)  

The professor said to her, “Oh yes, Madam, very much so.”

And I immediately thought, “Really?!  That’s not what I’ve heard.”

(London, 1987?)

Chinese sayings: 05 (癩蛤蟆想吃天鵝肉 / 癞蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉)

癩蛤蟆想吃天鵝肉

làiháma/làihámá xiǎng chī tiān’é ròu

“toad would-like-to eat sky-goose meat”

A tiān’é / “sky-goose” is a swan, all white and graceful.

This is a Chinese saying for describing someone who’s aiming for the impossible, often applied to a man in trying to win a woman’s heart.

It’s a common put down delivered by women when pursued by someone they don’t desire.  The man doesn’t have to be ugly (warty like a toad).  The woman doesn’t have to be beautiful (like a swan).  It’s cruel enough to put the man off.

A more cruel one, in my opinion, is the woman asking the man, “When was the last time you had a look at yourself in the mirror?”  Ouch.