On walking / On stress / Friday night

I slept 8 hours and my English is much better now. I find rarer words, like,more easily. And I can think and come-up with semi-original ideas, at least. I conclude that for me 8 hours of sleep per day is an absolute necessity. If it prevents me from getting a GPA of 5, I am just happy to accept the fact.

On walking

Another cultural difference: how people walk. Observe e.g. Mr Bush. Almost nobody in Europe walks like him, but here his style is quite common. Or compare Italian and Finnish women. Now, let me explain why there are these differences. I think they are due the way we learn to walk by imitating our parents and ohters nearby. But this does not explain the origins of the differences, which must be due cultural preferences or, maybe, the type of shoes used, or the terrain most commonly walked on. Strange anyway. Send your explanations by email.

S sent some possible explanations:

I think one reason for walking differently is different body structures - the length of legs compared to back, the hip structure etc. Compare e.g. Europe and Asia in this respect.
But mostly it is a cultural matter. Ways of walking have always been - consciously or unconsciously - culturally impregnated. Cf. feet binding in China; the purpose was to make women to walk with as small steps as possible, i.e. to be supine, which was the sexual ideal.
But what is the difference between high heels and feet binding? High heels are a matter of free choice - and can be used powerfully to create a certain image of oneself - whereas no woman ever could choose whether her feet were bound or not.
Yes, and in India, and I guess in Africa too, people walk very slowly and with a very immobile posture. Two reasons for that: 1) the heat, you don't want to sweat any more than is necessary in that climate, 2) people are used to carrying things on the top of their heads, and then it is important to be as balanced as possible.

Then next puzzle is why people here walk to the cafe, get a cup a coffee and drink it while walking to some other place (office?), and people in Italy walk to the cafe, drink their coffee there and then walk to some other place (restaurant?). IMHO, if one is too busy to drink coffee in a cafe, one needs to reconsider one's time management skills. Being busy means being unproductive or at least uncreative.

On stress

I did not remember, that moving to a new country and trying to adapt to local culture and language is this hard. I am really exhausted. Even though there are many similarities between USA and Finland, I still find the culture rather strange. There are so many small differences, which one encounteres daily. Each of them requires a little amount of energy and concentration. And even though my English is not too poor, I find listening to all different accents rather hard. Some of our professors are speaking really fast, which is OK, but I need to get more rest. Moving to China was much easier, because my employer took care of practical matters and because my daily job did not change. When I moved here, everything changed at once.

Friday night

Well, one cannot spend all Friday nights at MIT, if one wants to be creative. So, I had dinner with Kumar in Pho Pasteus in Chinatown and later two (!) pints of local beer in the local Irish pub. Now I have relaxed, my brains are working again and I feel good. Using drugs is never a waste of money. Nor is talking to friends.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs January 2005".