General India musings

[mdrnprometheus]

I'm finally getting around to posting the final thoughts about the India trip -- the moving has just been a whirlwind of packing, and graduation's also kept me hopping. They feel a little stale now that I've been back for two weeks, but the insight's still there. There's also some more professionally-oriented reflections up at the main blogAs you

Comments

[metallian]

Interesting. You don't see all of that on TV, or even in Slumdog Millionaire. I, too, would find it massive frustrating - especially as I've had a moderate amount of germophobia drilled into me.

[turnberryknkn]

Apropos of nothing: I understand this weekend is Commencement for UPMC, and Monday you march.

Congratulations, old friend. Congratulations, *Dr.* mdrnprometheus. :-)

[qatar]

Have you read anything about high-context vs. low-context cultures? I came across it through John Hooker from Tepper.

Some cultures, like ours, like things to be navigable without people needing to know a lot of extra context, so they post lots of signs and schedules and rules and so on so that anybody, dropped into a setting, can figure out what they're supposed to do. Other cultures are high-context; people are expected to learn how to behave and how to navigate particular situations, so there's no need for signposting. Ethnically homogeneous cultures tend to be high-context; diverse and/or immigrant-heavy cultures tend to be low-context.

You can see this in Doha by visiting the American and Indian embassies. At the American embassy you go to the window marked 1 and then the window marked 2. At the Indian embassy you also have to go to two windows, but they aren't marked... you just look to see what other people are doing and figure it out

[mdrnprometheus]

I had not read that, but it's an interesting framework for explaining what I noticed.