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But You Still Have Your Hair...

The U.S. is being hit with climbing inflation like renting cars or buy cars, food, getting a hair cut, really everything has gotten more expensive.

A simple haircut is now U.S. 16 dollars or maybe 12 pounds.
 
charliebrown said:
The U.S. is being hit with climbing inflation like renting cars or buy cars, food, getting a hair cut, really everything has gotten more expensive.

A simple haircut is now U.S. 16 dollars or maybe 12 pounds.
Click to expand...
Yikes. There was a time when it just cost 2 bits. And a shave was thrown in!
 
1. The closed-mouth smile

Most often, Russians smile only with their lips, only occasionally showing the upper row of teeth slightly. Revealing the top and bottom teeth is considered vulgar, as it resembles either an animal with bared teeth or a horse.

2. The “servant’s smile”

In Russian communication, a smile is not a signal of politeness. Russians consider a perpetual polite smile an “servant’s smile.” It is considered a demonstration of insincerity, secretiveness and unwillingness to show one’s true feelings.

3. The non-smile

In Russian communication, it is not acceptable to smile at strangers. Russians smile mainly at people they know. This is why salespeople do not smile at shoppers.

4. The responsive smile

Russians do not automatically respond to a smile with a smile. If an acquaintance responds to a smile with a smile, this is considered an invitation to come over and start a conversation.

5. The smile as a symbol of affection

A Russian smile demonstrates to the recipient that the smiling person has personal affection towards him or her. A smile directed at a stranger may elicit the reaction, “Do we know each other?”

6. The official’s non-smile

Among Russians it is not acceptable to smile while performing one’s job or any important business. Customs agents do not smile because they are occupied with serious business. This is the same for salespeople and waitstaff. It is not acceptable for children to smile in class. One of the most common remarks Russian teachers make is, “What are you smiling at? Write.”

7. The genuine smile

In the Russian collective consciousness, there is a rule: the smile must be a genuine reflection of a good mood and good relationship. In order to have the right to smile, one must truly like the person in question or be in a very good mood at the moment.

8. The smile with no reason

If a Russian person smiles, there should be a good reason behind it – and this reason should be known to everyone likely to witness the smile. If the reason for a smile is not clear, Russians may worry about the reason behind it.

9. The appropriate smile

The other people present must consider the smile to be appropriate for the context. It is not acceptable to smile in a difficult situation or if there are people around with known serious troubles, or if someone is ill or preoccupied with personal problems and so on.

10. A laugh as a smile

Among Russians there is a blurred line between a smile and laughter; in practice, these phenomena are often the same and are likened to each other.

Russians often say to people who are smiling, “What’s so funny?”
Click to expand...
11. The FSB smile

A sardonic twist of the lips you see before you get the shit beaten out of you in a basement room by some muscly men with tatoos.
 
charliebrown said:
The U.S. is being hit with climbing inflation like renting cars or buy cars, food, getting a hair cut, really everything has gotten more expensive.

A simple haircut is now U.S. 16 dollars or maybe 12 pounds.
Click to expand...
About the same this side of the pond, and that's just a simple grade cut with clippers
 
Getting back to tap water, or "municipal pop" as some of us called it; I lived in England for 30 years from 1944-74, mostly in South Cheshire, but also at various times in Essex, Sussex and Southampton. "Bottled water" would have been a strange concept, back then; for all purposes we used it straight from the tap, and thought nothing of it. I emigrated to Canada in'74, and lived in and around Vancouver, B.C. for about 15 years, then Saltspring Island, again for about 15 years, then the Kelowna area, in the Okanagan Valley (allegedly the home of Ogopogo, Canada's answer to Nessie); In all those places, again, I would drink tap water. My wife runs hers through a charcoal filter - she's diabetic, and has quite a few allergies, so just as a precaution - and some of our friends do drink bottled water - as do we, if we're away from home and thirsty, such as on a long drive. We occasionally get a "Boil water advisory" from the municipality after a long dry period.

Since I retired, we spend a few months of each winter in Mexico, a tiny fishing village on the Pacific coast, called La Manzanilla, about 4 hours south of Puerto Vallarta (not to be confused with ManzanillO, a big port city about an hour further south). In Mexico, you don't drink the tap water, or even brush your teeth with it, though it seems to be perfectly fine when boiled for tea, coffee or soup. Drinking water is delivered by pickup truck in 20-litre plastic containers called garrafons; the drill is, you put your empty garrafon out on the sidewalk, and sometime during the day someone will come tapping on your door with a shout of "Hola! Agua?", and with a full one over his, or her, shoulder. It costs 15-20 pesos, equivalent to about $1.00 or $1.20. In my more cynical moments I sometimes suspect it's simply water from someone else's tap, but we haven't had any major problems - yet. They probably run it through activated charcoal, but it doesn't seem to be chlorinated.

I'll be turning 77 next month, and I still have all my own teeth - minus one, which I had to have pulled when I was about 22 (I found it kind of strange that, over a period of about 18 months, the other teeth gradually migrated to fill the gap), and a few fillings. I also have most of my hair, and even a bit of colour (reddish blond; my nickname at school was Ginger or Red). If I let my beard grow it would be grey, though.

So what does all this prove? Nothing much, probably. Luck of the draw, I guess.
 
Alchymist said:
Getting back to tap water, or "municipal pop" as some of us called it; I lived in England for 30 years from 1944-74, mostly in South Cheshire, but also at various times in Essex, Sussex and Southampton. "Bottled water" would have been a strange concept, back then; for all purposes we used it straight from the tap, and thought nothing of it. I emigrated to Canada in'74, and lived in and around Vancouver, B.C. for about 15 years, then Saltspring Island, again for about 15 years, then the Kelowna area, in the Okanagan Valley (allegedly the home of Ogopogo, Canada's answer to Nessie); In all those places, again, I would drink tap water. My wife runs hers through a charcoal filter - she's diabetic, and has quite a few allergies, so just as a precaution - and some of our friends do drink bottled water - as do we, if we're away from home and thirsty, such as on a long drive. We occasionally get a "Boil water advisory" from the municipality after a long dry period.

Since I retired, we spend a few months of each winter in Mexico, a tiny fishing village on the Pacific coast, called La Manzanilla, about 4 hours south of Puerto Vallarta (not to be confused with ManzanillO, a big port city about an hour further south). In Mexico, you don't drink the tap water, or even brush your teeth with it, though it seems to be perfectly fine when boiled for tea, coffee or soup. Drinking water is delivered by pickup truck in 20-litre plastic containers called garrafons; the drill is, you put your empty garrafon out on the sidewalk, and sometime during the day someone will come tapping on your door with a shout of "Hola! Agua?", and with a full one over his, or her, shoulder. It costs 15-20 pesos, equivalent to about $1.00 or $1.20. In my more cynical moments I sometimes suspect it's simply water from someone else's tap, but we haven't had any major problems - yet. They probably run it through activated charcoal, but it doesn't seem to be chlorinated.

I'll be turning 77 next month, and I still have all my own teeth - minus one, which I had to have pulled when I was about 22 (I found it kind of strange that, over a period of about 18 months, the other teeth gradually migrated to fill the gap), and a few fillings. I also have most of my hair, and even a bit of colour (reddish blond; my nickname at school was Ginger or Red). If I let my beard grow it would be grey, though.

So what does all this prove? Nothing much, probably. Luck of the draw, I guess.
Click to expand...
Whilst on holiday, in Puerto Vallarta, I was very careful with only using bottled water, one evening at a restaurant I had hiccups and, in a lapse of concentration, asked for a glass of water, I didn't even think about it, but regretted it for the next 2 days, I was very ill :(
 
Off on a tangent again...but it is connected to the theme of national differences and miscommunication.

American guest, who has just left, described in passing somewhere he'd been as "quaint".

I interrupted him to advise him to avoid using that word as an American tourist in the UK as its so associated with a cartoon stereotype of..well.. American tourists and is often interpreted as patronising. He was confused and perplexed insisting the word surely only meant old fashioned and cosy. That's what any American means by it. It made me realise in trying to explain further why it sounds condescending to (many of )our ears that id never really wondered let alone looked up the definition of the word. Its one of those whose meaning is assumed by exposure and repetition rather than any attentive thought.

I guess a British person would probably only use it to describe a particular kind of cottage or village or something of that ilk. Outside of that its almost always heard or written in the context of a brash American in a cartoon or sketch, indicating something is small and cutesy (by implication in contrast to his much more substantial and thoroughly modern home).

The best analogue i could think of was to suggest its the equivalent of calling a grown man "cute"...its a compliment, but one that diminishes or infantalises the recipient.

To reassure us both i wasn't just imagining this cross cultural miscommunication, I found and sent him a reddit thread in which British people answered an American who asked why they objected to visitors using the word.

He's now terrified of using it.
 
gattino said:
Off on a tangent again...but it is connected to the theme of national differences and miscommunication.

American guest, who has just left, described in passing somewhere he'd been as "quaint".

I interrupted him to advise him to avoid using that word as an American tourist in the UK as its so associated with a cartoon stereotype of..well.. American tourists and is often interpreted as patronising. He was confused and perplexed insisting the word surely only meant old fashioned and cosy. That's what any American means by it. It made me realise in trying to explain further why it sounds condescending to (many of )our ears that id never really wondered let alone looked up the definition of the word. Its one of those whose meaning is assumed by exposure and repetition rather than any attentive thought.

I guess a British person would probably only use it to describe a particular kind of cottage or village or something of that ilk. Outside of that its almost always heard or written in the context of a brash American in a cartoon or sketch, indicating something is small and cutesy (by implication in contrast to his much more substantial and thoroughly modern home).

The best analogue i could think of was to suggest its the equivalent of calling a grown man "cute"...its a compliment, but one that diminishes or infantalises the recipient.

To reassure us both i wasn't just imagining this cross cultural miscommunication, I found and sent him a reddit thread in which British people answered an American who asked why they objected to visitors using the word.

He's now terrified of using it.
Click to expand...
I find the whole topic rather twee - just joking :)

Americans have gotten used to (some) Brits using all kinds of terms to describe us. Many are not complimentary. Most people try to not say or write something deliberately offensive, and I personally make an attempt to look for the good intentions behind the utterance.

Middle class Americans often have a social status judgement about the size of homes. I have had several people comment about my small, little, "quaint" (really), old home. But my mortgage is paid, and the house is more than good enough.
 
Ringo said:
The water in the North East smells really strongly of chlorine. I didn't notice it when living there but since moving away, I can't drink the water when I visit back home. It stinks of chlorine and tastes really, really odd. It brings both me and my wife out in teenage-looking spots and gives the whole family the runs.

So now we only drink bottled water when we visit the UK (despite me being born and raised there for 19 years).
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The same thing happened to me when I returned to Derbyshire after a year away in the late 1990s. It was so strong I couldn't drink it, yet never noticed it when I was there. I wonder if that is partially, or fully responsible for the stomach problems I had/have in later life.

When I lived in Cheshire, the guy I worked for said that a few years previously, they were getting tiny fish coming out of the taps.
 
I think a lot depends on tone. Hearing someone say in an enthusiastic tone 'oh, what a lovely quaint village, it's gorgeous!' is very different to hearing someone say 'gosh, how do you manage living in these quaint little places?' in a rather patronising way.
 
Speaking of water, I haven't had much tap water since I lived in VIrginia and then in Midland, TX. In VIrginia the water was dangerous to drink right out of the tap. (too much flouride and other things due to the mines tailings leaching into the water). It had a smell and a taste that was unpleasant, all the locals had soft brown teeth from the flouride being so strong. In Midland it was oil wells contaminating the water. There at least they had revers osomsis stores where you could bring your gallon bolltes and fill them up for 25 cents a bottle. It was a necessity, not a luxury. In Albuquerque the water often smells of too much chlorine. I use filters to keep drinking water on hand. I think the bottle water bought at the stores and quicky marts is wasteful and stupid as it creates a lot more pollution. But it is a habit most americans have nowadays. We have cities in the midwest where people are dying from drinking the tap water.
 
That sounds ghastly.

In Cornwall the spring water is full of heavy metals but the tap water is safe.
 
Kondoru said:
That sounds ghastly.

In Cornwall the spring water is full of heavy metals but the tap water is safe.
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Read about Camelford.
I used to work with a young lady from there - she wasn't affected because she was away at uni.
 
Just had a two hour conversation with a Chinese lad staying here, covering everything from scouse exceptionalism to President Xi. He asked for my insights into so many aspects of British culture I thought I was working for the Foreign Office. Got to the subject of this thread .. stereotypes foreigners have of the British that we were completely unaware of and I started to tell him of the Chinese girl in my original post who expressed surprise that I still had my hair despite drinking British tap water

I could see from his reaction before I'd finished it he was very familiar with the idea. When I did finish the sentence and laughed at the notion he looked like his whole world had been turned upside down. He really was astonished to have a fundamental truth they had always been taught ( not a rogue guide book as I'd assumed misled the previous guest) pulled from under him.

You could see him trying to recalculate reality in his head. Perhaps more so because he's lived here several years and is self conscious about his own thinning hair.

It apparently really is a well established fact in China.

But..most British men are bald! he asked me to concur.

It would seem from this that the origin of this fable lies in something we seldom think about. Baldness is as rare in the Chinese as beards are. So we as a culture seem to them inexplicably afflicted by a plague of unnatural hair loss. An explanation has somehow presented itself to their collective imagination and taken root...it's something in the water.

Isn't it always.
 
Going back to the OP: in Hong Kong people would never dream of drinking water from the tap without boiling it first. Serving hot water in restaurants is also quite common, I guess because it proves that it has been boiled?. I got a water filter jug, and one of my friends was boggled that I didn't boil the water before filtering it. I actually do drink plain tap water on the sly and nothing has ever happened to me.

EDIT: I asked some friends, this is the reason. Most potable water in Hong Kong comes from a very contaminated river in nearby southern China (though it is of course treated afterwards, and I doubt boiling would remove the lead, people don't fancy it).
 
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James_H said:
Going back to the OP: in Hong Kong people would never dream of drinking water from the tap without boiling it first. Serving hot water in restaurants is also quite common, I guess because it proves that it has been boiled?. I got a water filter jug, and one of my friends was boggled that I didn't boil the water before filtering it. I actually do drink plain tap water on the sly and nothing has ever happened to me.

EDIT: I asked some friends, this is the reason. Most potable water in Hong Kong comes from a very contaminated river in nearby southern China (though it is of course treated afterwards, and I doubt boiling would remove the lead, people don't fancy it).
Click to expand...

This was always an issue in the late-40s and early-50s when it looked possible that the Communists would invade.

Apart from military practicalities (controlling the high ground and defending a narrower frontier when vastly outnumbered is extremely advantageous), there was a need to hold the New Territories in order to maintain a sufficient water supply for the rest of the colony. Fortunately tidal conditions meant that the east coast nearer to Kowloon (around Tolo Harbour and down to Sha-tin) are unsuitable for amphibious landings, but it was still a challenging proposition with only a reinforced division in hand.

Anxieties about supply were the reason for the construction of the fairly large reservoir at Tai Lam Chung (opened 1957), but there were still shortages into the 60s and water was brought down from Dongjiang Lake, which, as you say, is polluted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongjiang_Lake
 
James_H said:
Going back to the OP: in Hong Kong people would never dream of drinking water from the tap without boiling it first. Serving hot water in restaurants is also quite common, I guess because it proves that it has been boiled?. I got a water filter jug, and one of my friends was boggled that I didn't boil the water before filtering it. I actually do drink plain tap water on the sly and nothing has ever happened to me.

EDIT: I asked some friends, this is the reason. Most potable water in Hong Kong comes from a very contaminated river in nearby southern China (though it is of course treated afterwards, and I doubt boiling would remove the lead, people don't fancy it).
Click to expand...
AFAIK, boiling won't remove the lead. Filtration is what is required.
 
gattino said:
Just had a two hour conversation with a Chinese lad staying here, covering everything from scouse exceptionalism to President Xi. He asked for my insights into so many aspects of British culture I thought I was working for the Foreign Office. Got to the subject of this thread .. stereotypes foreigners have of the British that we were completely unaware of and I started to tell him of the Chinese girl in my original post who expressed surprise that I still had my hair despite drinking British tap water

I could see from his reaction before I'd finished it he was very familiar with the idea. When I did finish the sentence and laughed at the notion he looked like his whole world had been turned upside down. He really was astonished to have a fundamental truth they had always been taught ( not a rogue guide book as I'd assumed misled the previous guest) pulled from under him.

You could see him trying to recalculate reality in his head. Perhaps more so because he's lived here several years and is self conscious about his own thinning hair.

It apparently really is a well established fact in China.

But..most British men are bald! he asked me to concur.

It would seem from this that the origin of this fable lies in something we seldom think about. Baldness is as rare in the Chinese as beards are. So we as a culture seem to them inexplicably afflicted by a plague of unnatural hair loss. An explanation has somehow presented itself to their collective imagination and taken root...it's something in the water.

Isn't it always.
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Don't they realise that it's just a mixture of genetics and testosterone levels?
I guess young people haven't yet acquired that information, in spite of the information available on the Internet.
 
gattino said:
Just had a two hour conversation with a Chinese lad staying here, covering everything from scouse exceptionalism to President Xi. He asked for my insights into so many aspects of British culture I thought I was working for the Foreign Office. Got to the subject of this thread .. stereotypes foreigners have of the British that we were completely unaware of and I started to tell him of the Chinese girl in my original post who expressed surprise that I still had my hair despite drinking British tap water

I could see from his reaction before I'd finished it he was very familiar with the idea. When I did finish the sentence and laughed at the notion he looked like his whole world had been turned upside down. He really was astonished to have a fundamental truth they had always been taught ( not a rogue guide book as I'd assumed misled the previous guest) pulled from under him.

You could see him trying to recalculate reality in his head. Perhaps more so because he's lived here several years and is self conscious about his own thinning hair.

It apparently really is a well established fact in China.

But..most British men are bald! he asked me to concur.

It would seem from this that the origin of this fable lies in something we seldom think about. Baldness is as rare in the Chinese as beards are. So we as a culture seem to them inexplicably afflicted by a plague of unnatural hair loss. An explanation has somehow presented itself to their collective imagination and taken root...it's something in the water.

Isn't it always.
Click to expand...
So what is the explanation as to why British women don't (generally) go bald? As we all drink the same water?
 
escargot said:
I drink loads of tap water too and my hair is infuriatingly thick and bouncy.
Click to expand...
walk-pose.gif
 
A new one.

Visiting a ( UK based) Portuguese friend I told him these "foreign stereotypes about us we never knew" stories.

On the one about "to leave in the English way" ( meaning without saying your goodbyes) he said he understand that concept to be about the French. Which was interesting.

But then he told me a Portuguese expression. They apparently say "for an Englishman to see". This apparently refers to a façade or public front not reflecting reality. Relatable I guess to the old jokes about the Queen thinking the whole world smells of fresh paint...
 
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